Abstract
Some characteristic examples of early Soviet chastushki, satirical folk verses which were propagated in the first decades of Soviet power as one of the main genres of popular entertainment, are discussed. A combination of the serious and the comic, the acceptable and the obscene made officially sanctioned (and possibly created explicitly for propagandistic purposes) chastushki into an indispensable discursive tool in the training of ideal Soviet citizens. It is argued that the possibility of a subversive reading of the texts, and of the Soviet reality itself, was integrated into the widely popularized texts, and thus rendered harmless. This mechanism of integrating the subversive into the voice of power was something that 'low' genres such as chastushki had in common with 'high' genres of state propaganda, which makes the short verses an especially instructive subject of analysis.
Published Version
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