Russian Culture Test Two

Front 1

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Back 1

Theater professional and director, activist in new Soviet Theater after revolution, disregarded traditional method acting and was major inspiration for Eisenstein

Front 2

Aleksandr Blok

Back 2

symbolist poet; symbolist poets try to invoke transcendental meaning through use of symbols; supported Russian revolution, poem “The Twelve” is taken as endorsement, Russian revolutionary identified with Christ

Front 3

Anna Akhmatova

Back 3

poet, wrote about Stalinist terror, was tolerated by state (unlike support for M.), “Requiem” is about purges, principle poet of purges, wrote about women’s issues as well, poet of private emotional experience and suffering (M. more public celebration of Soviet achievement)

Front 4

Lev Kuleshov

Back 4

organizer of film workshop in Moscow that E. joined; believed that theatre actors should be retrained for cinema, specifically in gesture and facial expression, pregenitor “film model school” approach to training film actors, first film theorist to systematically study audience responses to film sequences, “Kuleshov effect” is process by which same image can produce different impressions depending on what immediately follows it

Front 5

Proletkul't

Back 5

proletariat and culture, agency in early Soviet Union which sought to bring new cultural forms to factory floor, most important as influence on Sergei Eisenstein (his first work was revolutionary play on factory floor), he absorbed values of Proletkul’t’s mission, to create new proletariat culture, especially through film (most accessible)

Front 6

Aleksandr Kerensky

Back 6

Prime Minister of Provisional Government until Lenin won power in the October Revolution

Front 7

The Great Purges

Back 7

Series of campaigns of repression under Stalin from 1936-38. Purged Party members as well as peasants and nonaffiliated persons. Time of paranoia, surveillance, imprisonments, and the killing of probably over a million people.

Front 8

zek

Back 8

slang for inmate

Front 9

Socialist Realism

Back 9

Style of art, realistic, purpose was furtherance of goals of Communism. Typified by Simonov's "The Only Son."

Front 10

samizdat and tamizdat

Back 10

Underground copying and distribution of censored media in Soviet-bloc countries and importation of literature; risked great punishment

Front 11

kolkhoz

Back 11

Collective farming in the Soviet Union, not the state-run cooperative farms

Front 12

The Thaw

Back 12

Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization in 1950s and 60s, repression and censorship partly reversed, millions released from Gulags, possible after death of Stalin, began irreversible transformation of Soviet nation and reforms

Front 13

Alexandr Pushkin

Back 13

considered founder of modern Russian literature, principle source of reference in Sideburns and The Mirror in their attempt to define “Russianness”, illustrates Russian logophilia (love of words and poetry)

Front 14

The Komsomol

Back 14

youth division of the Communist Party

Front 15

Vladimir Maiakovskii

Back 15

futurist poet; aesthetic priority was modern life, especially cities; wanted to develop new language of future; in particular, he introduced street slang of factory workers into poetry, an innovative addition of ordinary slang to poetry and high art; also brought poetry into theatre, wanted to eradicate distinction between genres, multimedia artistic experience; called “workers’ poet”, indifference to him declared a crime

Front 16

Futurism

Back 16

focus on modernity and urban life; interested in organic sound values of individual words, created many new words, ignored traditional patterns of rhyme, Maiakovskii

Front 17

Revolutionary spectacle

Back 17

October,

Front 18

Intellectual Montage

Back 18

in Eisenstein’s October, scene that discredits Orthodox church, depicts church objects in same light as Inuit masks and totems and Buddhist idols, cutting of film to prove a pointed thesis, argues for portrayal of all religion as superstition, unsophisticated

Front 19

typage

Back 19

typecasting, used and preferred by Eisenstein, casting actors based on physical appearance alone, revolutionaries in October selected for healthful, wholesome faces while bourgeois often fat

Front 20

Dekulakization

Back 20

Soviet campaign of repressions, from arrests to executions from 1929-32, targeted better-off peasants. Had goal of fighting counterrevolution and building socialism in countryside, accomplished along with collectivization.

Front 21

Dmitrii Shostakovich

Back 21

Soviet composer, was popular but was banned at times,

Front 22

Andrei Vlasov

Back 22

Soviet general who collaborated with Nazi Germany after attempting to lift the siege around Leningrad and being captured

Front 23

The Siege of Leningrad

Back 23

Unsuccessful attempt by Axis powers to capture Leningrad from 1941 to 1943. Key to Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.

Front 24

Valery Gergiev

Back 24

Composer and acclaimed conductor in contemporary Russia. His entanglement in the Georgia issue follows a long line of intertwinement of music and politics in Russia.

Front 25

Village prose

Back 25

Soviet literature movement that developed during the Thaw and focused on rural communities and idealized village life. Typified by Solzhenitsyn's Matryona's House.

Front 26

dacha

Back 26

summer house in country

Front 27

glasnost

Back 27

Gorbachev in late 1980s

Front 28

Informal social organizations

Back 28

allowed only as a result of liberalizing policies of Gorbachev’s glasnost, had previously been subject to control of Party or Komsomol, depicted in Sideburns as an anxiety-producing development; many were actually foreign churches and environmental organizations

Front 29

Four literary works

Back 29

"Heart of a Dog" Bulgakov
"Matryona's House" Solzenitsyn
"The Only Son" Simonov
"The Gulag Archipelago" Solzenitsyn