The Gothic Tradition in Russian and Early Soviet Culture

Abstract

The Gothic aesthetic first appeared in Russian public discourse and literature in the immediate pre-revolutionary decades. It was deployed in satirical journals of the 1905 Revolutionary period to portray the tsarist regime as an inhuman and demonic force. The prerevolutionary tropes subsequently carried over into posters, satirical magazines, painting, music, and children’s literature in the early Soviet era. Satirical “Gothic laughter” figured in official Soviet propaganda and public discourse. Moreover, critics of the Soviet regime began to apply the Gothic as a tool to critique the despotic excesses of the new era. As Stalinism rose the Gothic, which had become perhaps too suggestive of political opposition, retreated from the mainstream of Soviet cultural life, with the exception of several works of children’s literature. Here it continued to exert influence and expressed the violence and terror of life under Stalin.