The USSR instead/inside of Europe: Soviet political geography in the 1930s–1950s

Abstract

The article addresses the special conditions in Soviet society during the Stalin period that contributed to the emergence of latent ideas about the unique position of the USSR on the map of the world, of Europe in particular. The focus is on pedagogical methods, the theory and practice of cartography, literary and journalistic texts, cinematography, and pop music, all of which present an image of the USSR as the “center of world civilization” and thereby sustain its inculcation in public consciousness. An interesting and significant example is the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, launched on Stalin’s initiative and carried out under his patronage (1947). In this context, the logic and the rhetoric of encyclopedia articles on the physical and political geography of Europe must be analyzed as a kind of territorial “crowding out” (vytesnenie) of Europe to the periphery of the Soviet Union. “Crowding out,” not only by geographical but also by ideological illusions of space, which emphasize and reproduce fairy-tale and epic orientations of social self-knowledge, brings the illusory space clearly into view. These means motivate the cyclical movement from centre to periphery and from periphery to centre.