Soviet Materialities

‘This important volume traces the many ways in which materiality shaped Soviet subjectivities, structured social meaning, and conditioned historical processes. In so doing, the collection forcefully demonstrates the value of taking the mutually-constitutive relationship between humans and objects seriously. Indeed, the individual contributions show this approach to be especially productive at the newest frontiers of Soviet studies, especially histories of emotions, time and memory studies, and sensory and corporeal histories. Provocatively, the book also suggests that the Soviet Union’s own schools of materialist thought might retain contemporary relevance as an alternative tradition of thinking about materiality. A major contribution in its own right, Soviet materialities is also a lodestar for future research.’ —Antony Kalashnikov, University of Waterloo, editor of Time and Material Culture: Rethinking Soviet Temporalities and author of Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time ‘Soviet materialities is that rare thing in an edited volume: a tightly conceived polyphony where rich dialogues emerge between and across essays. In its capacious attention to materials, it reveals, recuperates and interrogates specifically Soviet understandings of the interaction between human and object worlds. It marks an important reorientation of our scholarly field.’ —Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge, Professor of Slavonic Studies, Author of Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling, and the Soviet Subject ‘Soviet materialities is much more than an indispensable resource for those seeking new research informed by recent writing on material culture in an area where such theories were foreshadowed (and subsequently overlooked). The essays anthologized here reveal a wholly revitalized sphere of inquiry into the creative and lived experiences that shaped the former Soviet space. They span a remarkable range of approaches, periods, and, indeed, materialities, all stemming from the proposition that a renewed focus on the particularities of human engagement with the material world (whether artistic, domestic, or sacred) is urgently needed in our own time. Authored by a diverse group of scholars, some established, many newly published in literary, anthropological, and art historical disciplines, these texts accomplish an extraordinary feat given the challenges of original research we all encounter; they should succeed in conveying the vibrancy of our field to readers in many disciplines, and appeal as well to those for whom the strange may now become both more compelling and familiar.’ —Jane A. Sharp, Rutgers University, Research Curator, Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Museum, author of Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, 1905-14 -- .