Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda

by Kevin M.F. Platt (Editor)

Focusing on a number of historical and literary personalities who were regarded with disdain in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution—figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov— Epic Revisionism tells the fascinating story of these individuals’ return to canonical status during the darkest days of the Stalin era.      An inherently interdisciplinary project, Epic Revisionism features pieces on literary and cultural history, film, opera, and theater. This volume pairs scholarly essays with selections drawn from Stalin-era primary sources—newspaper articles, unpublished archival documents, short stories—to provide students and specialists with the richest possible understanding of this understudied phenomenon in modern Russian history.

“These scholars shed a great deal of light not only on Stalinist culture but on the politics of cultural production under the Soviet system.”—David L. Hoffmann, Slavic Review

Genres: History

372 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 2006

About the author

Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of cultural history in the Russian and Eastern European Studies and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory departments at the University of Pennsylvania. He authored the books History in a Grotesque Key. Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution (Stanford University Press, 1997; in Russian, «История в гротескном ключе: Русская литература и идея революции». М.: Академический проект, 2007) and Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths (Cornell University Press, 2011). He edited the recently published book Global Russian Cultures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Currently, he is finishing a book titled Near abroad: Russians in Latvia and is researching Russian historiography of the 18th to 21st centuries. He is the founder of the symposium Your Language My Ear.

Reviews

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epic Revisionism is a different type of book on Russia than I usually read. I have tended toward historical, or political science works or fiction. This book is mostly a history of literature and the culture of literature and other creative work during the Stalinist period.

This paragraph from the final chapter of the book neatly sums up the issues raised in the book.

...history was statecraft for Stalin, a statecraft that enlisted the efforts of thousands of historians, teachers, journalists, writers, and artists throughout the USSR, and that reached millions of readers and spectators. Complex historical figures such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, state builders and breakers of men who had been dismissed outright by the simplistic Marxism of early Soviet historians, were lionized during the mid- to late 1930s. Plays, poems, movies, and novels were devoted to their state-building skills, to their campaigns against invaders from abroad and dissent at home. Readers will note the obvious echoes with Stalin's own program, as he consolidated his personal power, as well as the power of the public over the private, of the capital over the periphery, and rid Soviet Russia of its deference to foreign ideas and cultures.

The book has an interesting mix of review essays and primary source material.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in Russia.