Search

Throughout its history, socialist mass culture actively employed satire, humor, and comedy to foster emotional bonds with its audience. Orchestrated by the state cultural industry, public laughter released social and political tension while maintaining a balance between ignoring and buttressing the institutions of power. In turn, late Soviet irony or the aesthetics of grotesque that evolved “from below” became instrumental in articulating a cultural distance from the values promoted by the socialist state. Despite the heterogeneity of their impact and scope, these cultures of the comic invariably reengaged the irrationality and ludicrousness of socialist life. Whether officially approved or censored, totalitarian laughter relativized existing practices and norms and suggested alternative models for understanding and embodying discourses and values of “really existing” socialism., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Russian literary history is examined with respect to Stalin's politics and ideology of thirties and forties., info:eu-repo/semantics/published