Russian Culture in Transition/Transformatsiia russkoi kul'tury: Selected Papers of theWorking Group for the Study of Contemporary Russian Culture, 1990-1991 by GregoryFreidinReview by: Martin DewhirstThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 147-149Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212015 .

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REVIEWS I47

Alexander Benois and to the pages of the journal Apollon, first published in I 909. James Curtis (pp. 54-6I) compares Mikhail Vrubel' and Gustav Klimt, linking apparently chance coincidences in their lives and work (for example, the complex relations between sitter and background in their canvases) to 'striking similarities' in the social and artistic world of the late Russian and Habsburg empires. Both artists were crucial to the growth of modernism in their respective countries. Elena Ovsiannikova's paper (pp. 62-79) evaluates the role of the Moscow Architectural School in the emergence of that movement, providing fresh insights into contemporary perceptions of Russia's 'leftist' artists. Popular culture, both rural and urban, also inspired avant-garde artists, as Alison Hilton demonstrates in a wide-ranging study (pp. 80-94) which considers the use of the 'decorative principles of folk art to invigorate contemporary art' (Elena Polenova, I885), the unsentimental handling of popular imagery by neo- primitive painters and the reworking and exploitation of the art of the narod for propaganda purposes. Musya Glants, in her examination of painting in the republics in the early Soviet period (pp. 95- I I I), rather contradicts her opening claim about the crushing of 'everything individual and distinctive' by providing examples of how artists adapted and compromised to produce works of high quality and even originality. The validity of the term 'totalitarianism' to describe Soviet control of the arts is in need of further revision. Milka Bliznakov, for example, provides a useful compendium of information (pp. I I 9-30) on major buildings in the Caucasian and Central Asian republics which succeeded in being 'national in spirit yet internationally acknowledged as contemporary'. Catharine Nepomnyashchy in 'Perestroika and the Soviet Creative Unions' (PP. I31-51) surveys the recent history of the artists' and writers' unions and their attempts to adapt to changed circumstances.

The black and white illustrations are generous in number (fifty-eight) although uneven in quality. The papers, too, as in any volume of this nature, vary in their originality, although none is less than instructive. It is good to see that artistic culture was so well represented at the Harrogate Congress. This, sadly, looks like being less true of the successor congress in Warsaw in I 995.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies LINDSEY HUGHES University of London

Freidin, Gregory (ed.). Russian Culture in Transition/Transformatsiia russkoi kul'tuy: Selected Papers of the Working Group for the Study of Contemporagy Russian Culture, Iggo-IggI. Stanford Slavic Studies, vol. 7. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, I993. 323 pp. Notes. Illustration. $30.00.

THIS volume, which manages to be both entertaining and scholarly, contains thirteen papers (seven in Russian, six in English, some of them slightly updated) originally given at meetings of the American-Soviet Working Group for the Study of Contemporary Russian Culture in 1990 and I99I. In some ways most of the articles are even more interesting now than they must have been then, if only because, from our privileged later viewpoint, we can observe intelligent and perceptive scholars trying to make some sense of the bewildering cultural events which were taking place around them, and in which several of the speakers were

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I48 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

taking an active part. Their occasional (apparent) misunderstandings and misconceptions may be as valuable to subsequent observers as their usual ability to conceptualize meaningfully what was going on.

The compendium is divided into four sections: 'From Russian Culture to Russian Cultures'; 'Popular/High Culture'; 'The Russian Intelligentsia Recon- sidered'; and 'Community, Nation, State'. In Part One Lev Anninskii warns us (what a pity that so little attention was paid to his words!) that the average Soviet citizen does not and will not want to follow the 'Western path'; Katerina Clark makes a convincing case for the idea that 'I931 was a more fateful year for Soviet culture' (p. 31) than I929, in part because of the 193I campaign for language reform (the results of which still influence the Russian literary language today); in 'Makulakul'tura' Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov write, inter alia, about the arguments over 'unprintable' language which so enlivened Soviet literary life during glasnost' and perestroika; and Liudmila Skvortsova provides a brief background piece on the independent press in the USSR.

In Part Two Condee and Padunov provoke us by claiming that developed socialism is stagnation and that 'a society with full larders and revered poets is not only impossible; it is the worst of both possible worlds' (p. I I5); Andrei Zorin discusses the legalization of obscene vocabulary (variously used for mimetic, expressive and conceptual purposes) and shows how the Soviet censorship system began to break down, first in ideological matters (from i 986), then in aesthetics (from I 988), and finally (from I 989) in the terrain of morality; Helena Goscilo, discussing the 'meatification of the body' (p. I 67) in late Soviet literature, makes some very perceptive comments on the work of Liudmila Petrushevskaia, who discloses 'repellent physical minutiae (signifiers) so as to camouflage what is truly obscene psychological and spiritual pain and desolation (signified)' (p. I52); and Susan Larsen provides a short piece on women as depicted in the press and in a play by Leonid Zorin.

In Part Three Clark concludes that 'pervasive anxieties about preserving cultural purity against market forces have proved more tenacious than "Soviet" culture itself' (p. 203); and Mikhail Iampol'skii contributes a highly controversial piece on the Establishment's encouragement of the Intelligentsia's (sometimes masochistic) indulgence in public admissions of guilt, loud claims of repentance and virulent acts of mutual denunciation (very much in the Russian Orthodox tradition, he claims, perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek) in order to discredit the Intelligentsia and retain its (the Establishment's) own positions in a rapidly changing system.

In Part Four Freidin ('Romans into Italians') prophetically raises the issue of whether Russians (russkie rather than rossiiane) can accommodate themselves to the almost total loss of empire or whether they will insist on living in a state with a substantial Muslim minority; Aleksandr Ageev writes about the deplorable state of his compatriots' moral health; and Freidin perceptively likens the muddled Mikhail Gorbachev to a ludicrous character from the pages of the excellent satirical writer Evgenii Popov. Gorbachev's strategy was bound to fail because the rationalism of perestroika was in fundamental conflict with the political mythology of Soviet socialism (p. 317).

This book, despite having been too hastily edited and containing a substantial number of typographical errors, should be read by political scientists as well as

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REVIEWS I49

by culturologists with an interest in Russia. It is very much to be hoped that there will be a follow-up volume containing the most lively and original of the contributions given at the subsequent meetings of the Working Group for the Study of Contemporary Russian Culture.

Department of Slavonic Languages and Literatures MARTIN DEWHIRST University of Glasgow

Posadskaya, Anastasia (ed.). Women in Russia: A New Era in Russian Feminism. Translated by Kate Clark. Verso, London and New York, I994. xiii + 203 pp. Notes. Tables. Appendix. ?39.95; C(I3 95.

THIS welcome volume discusses the position of women in the new Russian democracy at a time of privatization, increasing violence and continuing uncertainty in everyday life. Its contributors all live in Russia with the exception of Kate Clark, its translator and the author of its preface, who was previously a journalist in Moscow.

In the Introduction Anastasiia Posadskaia expresses pleasure at the failure of the putsch in August I 99 I, noting that it was a time of hope for positive change in the future. However, 'democracy without women is not democracy' (p. I). This has been a recurring slogan since I99I. Asymmetrical gender consequences of reform have led to women being squeezed from the legislature, discriminated against in the workplace and subjected to patriarchal propaganda.

In this 'difficult period' (p. I4) Tat'iana Klimenkova calls for serious research into the country's 'cultural memory' (p. 28) and into what legitimizes cultural foundations. The Soviet experiment failed to solve the 'woman question' in Ol'ga Voronina's view, because ideology, policy and practice were 'masculinist' (p. 54). One consequence, as Valentina Konstantinova vividly describes, is that Russian women 'have not yet learnt to fly' (p. 57). Powerful stereotypes and myths about the women's movement prejudice public opinion and do not help women. The movement has been dubbed a 'social monster' and 'an impermiss- ible luxury' (p. 6 i). Feminists have even been branded CIA agents.

Another myth is that 'the market has no sex' because the strongest competitor wins (p. 75). Elena Mezentseva successfully debunks this, illustrating the gender specificities of employment, in particular the fact that women workers are the first to be dismissed. Zoia Khotkina continues this theme, arguing that political, social and economic changes affect men and women very differently. She optimistically sees the emergence of 'public-minded businesswomen' (p. I o8) as crucial to the independent women's movement.

As Communist icons of the past become negative symbols today, misogynist attacks on the idea of emancipated woman flourish. Ol'ga Lipovskaia discusses the contemporary trend to reward particular parts of women, such as competi- tions run by Moskovskii Komsomolets for 'Miss Bust' and 'Miss Legs', the former predictably winning a more expensive prize. Voronina catalogues further sexist notions: women are inferior; women are chatterboxes and dim; women embody the dirty and the disgusting. The result is an atmosphere of degradation.

More progressive ideas, however, have a place in Russian history. Svetlana Aivazova presents an overview of thoughts on women expressed by Pushkin,

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