Petrified Utopia

Happiness Soviet Style

Edited by Marina Balina, Evgeny Dobrenko

Publication date:

01 July 2009

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781843313106

Taken together, these essays redefine the preconceived notion of Soviet happiness as the product of official ideology imposed from above and expressed predominantly through collective experience, and provide evidence that the formation of the concept of individual happiness was not contained by the limitations of important state projects, controlled by state policies and aimed toward the creation of a new society.

‘This volume is an invaluable collection of excellent scholarship […] the chapters yield stunning insights into discursive claims of Soviet public and private happiness in circumstances least amenable to its flourishing: amidst poverty and homelessness, domestic shortages, postwar devastation, and routinized, mandatory celebration. The research usefully problematizes the inextricability of state celebration from private joy, labor from happiness, staged gaiety from unexpected contentment. The chapters are richly supported by thirty-six illustrations.’ —Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh, in ‘Slavic Review’