Soviet Socialism Research Articles

Neo-Leninism and Chinese Reforms: Soviet Perestroika Revisited

ABSTRACT The article presents a revisionist interpretation of the reforms in the late Soviet Union, focusing on the strong affinities between the perestroika and China’s reform and opening-up. The article draws on social constructivism, poststructuralism, and post-Marxism and formulates an original typology of Soviet political discourses as the main method. Discourse analysis reveals that the implementation of the Chinese reform model in the Soviet Union was possible in discursive terms. Politico-economic analysis shows that the reform of Soviet socialism, which began in 1983 before Gorbachev’s perestroika, coincided largely with the parallel process in China. The author argues that the neo-Leninist perestroika was modelled on Dengism until the hegemony of this discourse was replaced by liberal socialism in 1988. Nevertheless, neo-Leninism remained relevant up to August 1991 when the failure of the State Committee on the State of Emergency frustrated the prospects for socialism in the country. The article concludes that the dismissal of Dengism by Soviet leaders was one of the principal causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This historical experience provides the Communist Party of China with invaluable lessons and shows the crucial importance of the Four Cardinal Principles for reform and opening-up.

Revisiting the ‘Jewish Question’ and Its Contemporary Discontents

Abstract This article revisits the so-called ‘Jewish Question’ against the combined background of Marxist historiography and the resurgence of antisemitic and neofascist politics. It begins by analysing the critical reception of Marx’s formative essay, ‘On the Jewish Question’, and assesses its contemporary relevance in the aftermath of institutionalised antisemitism in the USSR, the monstrosity of the Shoah, the consolidation of the Israeli state, and the catastrophic ramifications of the ongoing Nakba. Despite the various defects of Marx and Engels’s reflections on the ‘Jewish Question’, their critical insights vividly anticipate the failings of liberalism, Soviet socialism, and Zionism in emancipating Jews, while also reminding contemporary Marxists about the political urgency of human emancipation. At its core, the ‘Jewish Question’ remains a universal question, extending to all oppressed peoples and classes that have been rendered abandoned and dispensable beings.

The Contemporary Vitality of V. I. Lenin’s Theory of Ideology

ABSTRACT This article illuminates the contemporary vitality of Lenin’s theory of ideology. Since the collapse of Soviet socialism, some have attempted to dismiss Lenin’s theory as anti-Marxist and lacking in critical power. More recent studies of the Marxist theory of ideology have neglected Lenin entirely. Contrastingly, this article argues that Lenin’s theory of ideology remains relevant, albeit misunderstood. First, Lenin highlighted the class essence of ideology with unparalleled force and clarity. He emphasised that every ideology serves the power of a definite class. Second, Lenin clarified the role of ideology as a weapon in the class struggle. He urged the working class to use socialist ideology to further its interests and overthrow capitalism. Third, Lenin outlined the principles for engaging in the ideological struggle. He instructed Marxists on how to advance their ideas and defeat bourgeois ones. These insights remain indispensable for communists, a hundred years after Lenin’s death in 1924.

Towards a new history of social policies: a genealogy rooted in Soviet socialism

Resumo: Este artigo visa problematizar as leituras quanto à gênese das políticas sociais que focam apenas as experiências anglo-europeias, secundarizando as contribuições dos modelos de proteção social fora do capitalismo ocidental. Por meio de historiografia, exploramos as influências diretas e indiretas do socialismo soviético no direito e nos esquemas de proteção social do Ocidente. Concluímos que o socialismo soviético teve um papel decisivo no surgimento e na expansão das políticas sociais pelo mundo.

Dreams of Socialism Reflected in a 1947 North Korean School Textbook

In 1945, with the participation of the Soviet Union, which sent naval forces to the northern coast of the Korean peninsula as well as paratroopers to Pyongyang, Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule. A limited contingent of Red Army units was dispatched in the northern part of the Korean peninsula to accept Japanese surrender and maintain law and order until the establishment of the national administration. From 1945 to 1948, Soviet citizens who worked in North Korea and the new North Korean authorities both made efforts to propagate a positive image of Soviet socialism. Their efforts would be successful among the lower classes of Korean society. The middle school textbook the “Kugŏ (Native Speech 국어),” published in 1947 in North Korea, provides a clear example of how the positive image of the USSR, when it came to village development, was presented to the Korean younger generation in the framework of traditional dreams about the lives of peasants. In particular, the Korean language textbook broke down the Japanese perception of the socialist village where, according to the former Japanese colonial authorities, peasants have no private property. The “Native Speech” textbook stated that the “peasants who choose socialism will own their land themselves and will be able to have private property.”

The Cultural and Political Imaginary of Cybernetic Socialism

The Cultural and Political Imaginary of Cybernetic Socialism Clemens Günther (bio) In recent years, we have seen a surge in research on Soviet cybernetics. Drawing on some earlier studies and Slava Gerovitch's seminal From Newspeak to Cyberspeak, researchers have substantiated the role of cybernetics as a key element in late Soviet epistemology.1 During the Thaw, cybernetics became an "intellectual, technical, and institutional resource for innovation and change" and one of the cornerstones of socialist governance.2 Through the computerization of economic planning and the production process, the government hoped to enhance the quality of decision making in various fields. In architecture, cybernetic modeling became one means for planning and designing the new Soviet city.3 In the humanities, cybernetics was a vital component for establishing the "Soviet Empire of Signs" and for the introduction of statistical methods in linguistics, art, and historiography.4 In environmental studies, cybernetic methods were [End Page 321] for the development of Soviet-style "earth system governmentality."5 These examples demonstrate the encompassing character of cybernetics and the interdisciplinarity of the field in which it thrived. Although not all Soviet cybernetics endeavors were successfully implemented, as Benjamin Peters's book about the failure of a Soviet Internet shows, they constituted a paradigm shift for postwar epistemology with consequences for all fields of society.6 Prior to its rise in the second half of the 1950s, cybernetics was condemned as a "science of obscurantists" (nauka mrakobesov) and as a pseudoscience (lzheteoriia) in the Soviet press.7 Cybernetic studies from the West were relegated to libraries and supporters of cybernetics expelled from institutes. The early Stalinist campaign against cybernetics not only exemplified the then obsessive condemnation of international cooperation and exchange but was also triggered by the fuzzy nature of cybernetics itself. In its early stage, cybernetics appeared to herald scientific and social change and implicitly challenged Soviet Marxism and its universalist claims. After Stalin's death, cybernetics became, in Gerovitch's words, "a vehicle of reform" and was officially rehabilitated in the Soviet Union.8 In his portrait of the intelligentsia during the Thaw, Vladislav Zubok holds that "more than any other branch of scientific exploration, cybernetics seemed to offer Soviet optimists a fresh and truly universal intellectual framework."9 The newly emerging discipline with its universalist, rational language provided an alternative to Stalinist dogmatism and rekindled the utopian promises of the early Soviet years that had been discredited during Stalinism. I argue that cybernetics was both a tool for changing and enlarging existing social structures and a means of imagining different social orders.10 [End Page 322] Building on such key principles of cybernetics as information, feedback, and rationality, writers and theoreticians challenged Soviet socialism and proposed "cybernetic socialism" as an alternative.11 The concepts and terms of cybernetics were used as a basis to develop alternative models of socialism and Soviet society. To this end, I want to look first at a play by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Candle in the Wind, which deals with social cybernetics, bio-cybernetics, and the moral obligations imposed by both.12 Next, I shift attention to Valentin Turchin's treatise The Inertia of Fear, a contribution to the political theory of cybernetics, which was published in the West in the late 1970s.13 These examples reveal the conceptual change that occurred in the 1960s and the diversity of the imaginative potential of cybernetic socialism. They stand paradigmatically for the establishment of a political imaginary [End Page 323] that was less concerned with criticizing individual weaknesses of the Soviet system than with the necessity of thinking about political processes against the background of new technologies. Although Solzhenitsyn's piece is a work of fiction and Turchin's a theoretical treatise, both are united by the impulse to create a new idea of the political through the idea of "social cybernetics" (Solzhenitsyn) or "cybernetic socialism" (Turchin). The Political Imaginary of Cybernetics To understand the rise of cybernetics during the Thaw, it is important to note that more than the sober rationality of mathematics and computation made intellectuals embrace cybernetics. Perhaps even more importantly, cybernetics set free an imaginative surplus for utopian fantasies. This may seem paradoxical at first sight, considering...

Expectations versus reality: Cuban students’ encounters with late Soviet socialism

Between 1960 and 1991, thousands of Cubans earned degrees from Soviet universities and professional-technical schools. Using interviews and archival documents, the article traces those students’ experiences during the late socialist period and the years preceding the Soviet collapse. Contrary to their expectations, many Cuban students witnessed glaring inconsistencies in everyday expressions of socialist values and, over time, became increasingly troubled by the paradoxes of late socialism in the Soviet Union. While Cubans were welcomed as socialist brothers and received a comprehensive education, they also noticed waning ideological commitment and simmering ethnic tensions among their Soviet peers. These contradictions did not diminish their gratitude toward the Soviet Union but did make them question whether their host country was truly a beacon on the path to developed socialism. Cuban students’ testimonies reveal not a singular narrative, but rather the complex interactions between two socialist nations at different stages of development and with different visions of the future.

MANIFESTATIONS OF LEFTISM IN LATVIA DURING THE NAZI OCCUPATION: 1941–1945

During the Nazi occupation (1941–1945), Latvia was subject to nazification. In the course of this process, the left wing elements of the Nazi ideology were actively introduced into Latvia. The process manifested itself in two ways: firstly, in the propaganda of the postulates of the Nazi ideology and, secondly, in a series of practical political activities. The main themes of the Nazi left wing propaganda were as follows: propaganda of the so-called German socialism and its achievements; criticism of the soviet socialism and the political system of the USSR; propaganda of the formation of classless society; propaganda of eradicating social injustice; singing praise to the prevalence of the workers in the social organism and introducing the left wing Nazi traditions into the occupied Latvia. However, the propaganda of the Nazi ideology in Latvia was introduced un- evenly and ambiguously. Several phases of its implementation can be singled out: the Hot Phase (1941), the Transitional Phase (1941–1942), the Pragmatic Phase (1943–1944) and the Disintegration Phase (1944–1945). The general trend was from propagating the ideas which maximally complied with the Nazi ideology towards gradual mitigation of the propaganda in order to achieve support from the local population for the occupation power and their involvement in the war. In practice, the Nazi occupation power, according to the common position of the left wing Nazi ideology, carried out the nationalisation of all the sectors of the economy of Latvia. This policy reached its peak in the autumn of 1941, when the German state took control of the great part of the Latvian enterprises. In 1942–1944, as the war developed unfavourably for Germany, re-privatisation of the property was permitted in order to achieve the support of the population and their active involvement in the war.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIALISM IN A SINGLE COUNTRY AND THE CRITICAL EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIALIST IDEAL

The final article in the series of materials published by the author in the “Russian Economic Journal” in the period 1917–1921 on the history, methodology and theory of Soviet socialism. It shows the objective influence of the Bolsheviks’ transition to the concept of building socialism in a single, poorly industrialized country on the socio-economic, political and spiritual appearance of Soviet society, the theoretical ideas about socialism that have arisen. The causes, role and future consequences of the current mobilization pattern focused on the survival of the USSR in an unfriendly environment are investigated; the significance of the combination of ideological and national tasks. The article analyzes the history of the formation of the imperfection of the socialist ideal, which was gradually formed as a high and inevitable payment for the positive result achieved in the formation of socialism and the dissemination of its ideas. It is emphasized that it was this circumstance, existential in its significance for the fate of socialism, that set an ambiguous socio-political situation in the life of a Soviet person, on the one hand, who was really able to think about the motherland before, and only then about himself, and on the other, who did not come to the war for this very homeland, having lost during the years of hard work the struggle and the difficult life of faith in the ideological and moral ideals and advantages of socialism.

Soviet socialism VS African socialism: promotion of socialist ideas in the African States in the 1960-1970s

The article examines the issues concerning the perception and promotion of socialist ideas on the African continent in the 1960s and 1970s. The purpose of this article is to show how socialism was perceived and interpreted in African countries that chose the "socialist way" of development, namely Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, Sudan and Ethiopia. The author set the task to show the reasons for the failures in the promotion of Soviet socialism in Africa. Attention was focused on the analysis of difficulties and obstacles in the promotion of socialism in the economic, political and cultural spheres. The work is based on the information of a survey conducted by the author among representatives of the African intelligentsia from different countries, many of whose representatives studied in the Soviet Union. The research showed that, despite the fact that the USSR spent an active policy in Africa, developing economic, military, political, educational cooperation, it was unable to implement its plans for socialist construction on the continent. This can be explained by the fact that after independence, Africans developed their own views on the socialist system. Perceiving socialism at the level of ideology, African leaders could not accept the socialist economic system. It was impossible to fully accept the Soviet model, since it did not correspond to the realities of African life in many ways. The fact that many African leaders studied in the West also played a role. The materials contained in the article can be used in educational and training activities, as well as for a better understanding of why Soviet socialism could not gain a foothold in Africa.

“The Fate of the Nation”: Population Politics in a Changing Soviet Union (1964–1991)

AbstractThis article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.

Theory of collectivist society formation (on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg)

The 24th of January 2022 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous philosopher, sociologist, culturologist, political economist, Doctor of Philosophy and Candidate of Economic Sciences, Professor Zakhar Ilyich Fainburg (24.01.1922 10.09.1990). The years of his life chronologically almost coincided with the time of Soviet socialism. His scientific work from the student times until his death was devoted to one topic the socio-economic mechanisms of social development during the transition or shift from individualistic societies to a collectivist-type society. These mechanisms covered the entirety of society development processes from changing the nature of labor at work to overcoming religious-like social consciousness. The results of the scientific search of Z.I. Fainburg are system-based, because they contain various aspects of the structure and functioning of modern society in their unity / solidarity, and, moreover, they are characterized as essential, because they provide the modern researcher with heuristically valuable methodology and social knowledge instrumentarium. There has been analyzed the characteristic features of Z.I. Fainburgs systemic approach concerning the scientists examination of the nature of labor and the formation of its new historical type; the culture and core values of the individual, as well as the personality development concept in a post-economic society and the prospects for the collectivist society formation as a new social reality. Serious attention is paid to semiotic problems related to the use of thought experiment methods in socio-philosophical science fiction and the construction of concepts of new social knowledge.

Framing the Socialist City as Practice

The publication of Stephen Kotkin's Magnetic Mountain in the mid-1990s transformed the field of Soviet studies. He presented Soviet socialism as a civilisation born of the Enlightenment, inspired by science's ability to sculpt society, and driven by the pursuit of an alternative to capitalism. His phrase ‘speaking Bolshevik’ spawned productive debate, as did his use of the Foucauldian paradigm. In something akin to a clarion call for urbanists, he proposed the socialist city as a metonym for this new Soviet world: Soviet socialism, he noted, was inherently industrial. Authorities regarded the city as a hallmark of socialist modernity, an endpoint and changing ideal toward which to strive, all of which makes the city a fruitful centre of investigation.

Does an enquiry for socialistic changes exist in Russia?

Objective: to study the problem of the request for change from the viewpoint of answering the question whether there is a reactionary desire of the least modernized strata of Russians to “return to the USSR”, completely abandoning the results of the “liberal revolution” of the 1990s.Methods: to answer the question whether there is a request for the restoration of the “Soviet socialism” in modern Russia, the materials of the all-Russian sociological surveys on a representative sample (mainly the pre-COVID survey of 2019), organized by the Institute of Sociology of the FCTAS RAS, are analyzed.Results: it is proved that, although the popularity of more authoritarian models of the state has been growing among the Russians in the last decade, at the same time, there is an active “habituation” to private property institutions and entrepreneurship. It is concluded that at present the main object of protest sentiments is not the exploitation of labor by capital, but bureaucratic corruption. This means that the high “demand for change” is objectively connected with the mass desire not to “return to the USSR”, but to complete the dismantling of quasi-socialist (political) institutions, which began in the 1990s, but then interrupted and partially canceled.Scientific novelty: based on the original databases of all-Russian surveys, non-trivial conclusions were drawn about the direction of the “request for change”, which controvert with the statement popular in the recent years about the request for the USSR restoration.Practical significance: understanding the direction of the mass request for change makes it possible, without waiting for a social explosion, to plan in advance those socio-economic reforms that best meet the requirements of the Russian citizens.

Soviet Socialism in Light of Marx’s Theory

Soviet Socialism in Light of Marx’s Theory

Конкурирующие проекты социализма в СССР периода политического романтизма. Часть I. Политэкономия социализма: проект или симулякр?

The paper examines public discussions on the political economy of socialism and the socialist project in general, which began after the death of I. Stalin and continued until 1973. The pragmatic and romantic lines of understanding social­ism and attitudes towards communism are highlighted. The position of the “pragmatists” is presented in the first textbook of political economy published in 1954. Eventually it retained the possibility of transforming Soviet socialism into a market economy. Actually, this possibility was implemented in China in the late 1970s. However, in the USSR, it provoked dead resistance. At the level of the party system and related political economists, the goal was to interpret eco­nomic phenomena within the orthodox version of Marxism. On the contrary, the “romantics” such as E. Ilyenkov defended the most radical project of building a future communist society, which would make it possible to overcome the divi­sion of labor and the related alienation still seen under the actual socialism. It is a historical paradox that romantic projects imposed the evolution of the USSR along the “Chinese path”.

Saints and Soviets Again — Inventing the ‘New Man’ by American Capitalism and Soviet Socialism Revisited

Saints and Soviets Again — Inventing the ‘New Man’ by American Capitalism and Soviet Socialism Revisited

Дискуссия по книге Крауса Тамаша «Судьба идей в истории СССР и после...»

N.E. Vashkau in the essay “On the way to the dialogue of national historiographies” notes the importance of historical memory, interaction within the framework of the intercultural dialogue of historiographies. A.A. German, in solidarity with some of T. Kraus’ views on the historical memory of the Second World War, starts a polemic with him on a number of problems related to the theory, history and practice of the creation, development and fall of Soviet state socialism. T.B. Ivanova (section “Historical memory forecasting the future”) focuses on self-government as an instrument of social emancipation as a direction to develop the social structure, which T. Kraus pays special attention to in theory and political activity. The author pays attention to the wide information and evidence base offered by T. Kraus to prove the value of this idea every time for the next social reconstruction. E.F. Krinko in the section “Soviet history in a Marxist reading: Tamas Kraus on revolution, socialism, war and other issues” notes that the publication of the book provides us with a deep understanding about the Hungarian historian views basing on the denial of capitalism with its ideals of individualism and private property and commitment to the socialist idea. He emphasizes that T. Kraus rejects both the application of the theory of totalitarianism to Soviet history due to its limited research potential, and the apologetics of Soviet man and state socialism. S.G. Sidorov focused on the second section of T. Kraus’ book “War and Genocide. Historical facts and the politics of memory”, in which the author gives answers to important questions: who is responsible for the war; whether it is possible to compare the Nazi Germany with the USSR as well as GULAG and Auschwitz; who is guilty of civilians genocide and others. Sidorov has come to the conclusion that the application of “his methodological conviction – the third way” actually led the author to estimates that are close to many ones given by modern Russian historians, and allowed him to reasonably and fairly criticize the views on World War II, the Soviet period of Russian history prevailing today in Hungary and in the West.

Butler , William E. Russian Law and Legal Institutions (review)

SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 790 to sit around and discuss ideas; they were more likely to be attracted to pacifism and spirituality. A completely new wave appeared in the 1980s. Generational divide is identified further in the conflict between Soviet acculturated parents and their disaffected children, but perhaps less so between hippies and their revolutionary-era grandparents. The book also explores the association of hippie nonconformism with the emerging political dissident movements of the 1970s. It points out in several places that there was very limited connection or commonality between the two. Fürst makes some bold broad claims in the second part of the book and its epilogue without always providing sufficient evidence to justify them. She argues, for example, that ‘Hippies did not contradict late socialist reality. Rather, they made it. […] And late socialism would also not have been what it was if not for hippies and the like. They were a motor for change’ (p. 183); and that hippies ‘became active agents of perestroika’ (p. 219). Whilst hippies were undoubtedly able to use and manipulate Soviet socialism and the opportunities it provided to their own ends, it is hard to see how they could have been so instrumental in its later adaptation and collapse. This is a book that many undergraduate students are likely to find appealing, though it may be difficult to persuade many of them to read it in full. In the broader field of Soviet history, it serves to reshape our understandings of late Soviet society and culture, and Fürst should be applauded for that. University of Gloucestershire Melanie Ilic Butler, William E. Russian Law and Legal Institutions. Third edition. Studies in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Law. Talbot Publishing, Clark, NJ, 2021. vii + 516 pp. Further Reading. Constitution of the Russian Federation. Index of Names. $135.00. Extremely welcome in the light of the significant amendments in 2020 to Russia’s 1993 Constitution, this third edition of William E. Butler’s book includes those changes within the context of Russia’s legal heritage and contemporary development. As with the first two editions (with a different publisher) the scope is the legal system, not substantive law, so covers: The Russian Legal System in Context (Russian Law in Comparative Legal Studies; Russian Law and Legal Translation); The Foundations of Russian Law (The Pre-Revolutionary Heritage; Russian Legal Theory; Sources of Law); Legal Profession and Legal Education; The Administration of Russian Legality (ministries of justice, judicial system, procuracy, notariat, registry for acts of civil status, REVIEWS 791 administrative commissions, law enforcement agencies, investigative agencies, arbitration and the role of non-State entities); and the State Structure of the Russian Federation (Presidency, Federal Assembly, Government, Subjects of the Federation, Local Self-Government). Having a clear and comprehensive understanding of these institutions, including their historical development, is essential for appropriate interaction with the Russian legal system. This book succinctly sets out the legal position for the agencies it covers. It helpfully includes entities sometimes ignored in other texts, such as jurisconsults (employed lawyers); by far the most common type of lawyer in Russia (p. 223). As Butler notes, ‘Three of the last four Presidents of the USSR and Russian Federation have a higher legal education and experience as jurisconsults (Presidents M. S. Gorbachev, V. V. Putin, and D. A. Medvedev)’ (p. 227). One important effect of the 2020 constitutional reforms is consolidation of international law’s status in Russia. Initially the 1993 Constitution transformed this through explicit recognition in article 15(4) of ‘generally-recognised principles and norms of international law and international treaties of the Russian Federation’ as an integral part of the Russian legal system. Butler includes (at p. 157; see also p. 147) a precise translation of an extract from a significant Constitutional Court Decree of 14 July 2015, carefully explaining the interrelation of Russia’s treaty commitments with her Constitution. The Court emphasized the priority of Russia’s Constitution and sovereignty. This led to a 2015 amendment to the Federal Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court (not discussed) giving that Court jurisdiction to rule on the ‘possibility’ of applying decisions of interstate agencies (such as the European Court of Human Rights). This...

Disco Culture and the Ritual Journey in the Soviet 1980s

This article traces a largely forgotten history of the 1980s Soviet disco craze by following the work of one of its pioneering figures, the Latvian DJ, musician, and performance artist Hardijs Lediņš (1955–2004). It documents how the movement coalesced amidst creative responses to the gradual opening of the USSR to Western popular culture on the one hand, and to the unique affordances of local political, social, and technological structures on the other. In Lediņš’s case, the response was also shaped by commitments to an ideal of Soviet socialism that persisted despite the grim realities of Brezhnev-era society. Drawing on archival research and oral history, I begin in the loosely monitored space of the Student Club at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, where Lediņš’s talents and ties to elites enabled him to found a wildly popular discotheque in the 1974–75 academic year, one of the first of its kind in the USSR. I follow his increasing investment in a distinctly Soviet form of experimentalist performance art in the early 1980s, in which—inspired in part by local readings of John Cage—the ritualized trek into the countryside became a vehicle for attaining spiritual enlightenment in communion with others. Finally, I consider ways in which his ritual journeys inflected his disco operation in subsequent years, when he reframed his events as experiments in communality—specifically, as means of experiencing, at least for an evening, the enlightening promise of Soviet socialism undelivered by the state itself.