Soviet Studies: Culture

Abstract

This article examines a cultural approach in the area studies of the former Soviet Union. Part of the broader category of Slavic studies, Soviet studies focuses primarily on the history, politics, and culture of the Soviet Union and its descendant states, with the emphasis on Russia. However, the pre-Soviet period of the Russian Empire also constitutes a part of this regional study. Culture occupies an important place in Soviet studies. One sense of the concept refers to political culture, another to artistic culture expressive of Russian national culture, and the third to the anthropologically informed idea of culture as a realm of socially shared meanings. This article examines the development of the third sense of culture as the most related to the understanding of the term in cultural studies, although some attention is given to the studies of artistic culture. Thus oriented, the article outlines the research done in Soviet Studies on class, national, gender and sexual identities, consumer culture, youth and popular cultures. The analysis also identifies thematic and conceptual changes in Soviet Studies—a reflection of the 1991 decomposition of the Soviet Union. These developments pertain to the new social and cultural realities of the changing society, as well as the critical reconsideration of previous paradigms which exhibited their analytical limitations. Throughout, the term Soviet culture refers to cultural developments of the socialist period from 1917 to 1991. Post-Soviet culture defines the contemporary stage of cultural development.