Swift, E. Anthony

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 473Finally, the book gives more weight to the Italian case than it does the German.Nazi Germany is often given only a token nod, with Mussolinis Italy generallyproviding most of the evidence for points being made. Fascist Italy and NaziGermany is an ambitious and admirable project, with much that could be useful tothe general reader. Nonetheless, it suffers from extreme brevity, which appears tohave required compromises that have weakened the book as a whole.Lynne TaylorUniversity of WaterlooJames von Geldern and Richard Stites, eds.  Mass Culture in Soviet Russia:Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917–1953. Bloomington andIndianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. Pp. xxix, 492.This pathbreaking book is a much needed introduction to Soviet mass culture forEnglish-speaking readers. Richard Stites and James von Geldern, leading specialistsin Russian and Soviet cultural studies, have assembled an anthology that spans theperiod from the revolution up to the death of Stalin. In contrast to the many studiesthat have concentrated on the institutions which formulated and administeredcultural policies, this collection focuses on the content and reception of massculture. The editors have collected poems, folk tales, comic sketches, film scripts,plays, childrens stories, and anecdotes to bring to life the richness and variety ofcultural forms from a period all too often considered to be culturally barren.The volume is divided chronologically into four sections. The first spans theyears of revolution and Civil War to the end of the relatively free period of theNew Economic Policy (NEP), featuring proletarian poetry, anti-war pamphlets inpopular language, Red Army songs, agitational plays, excerpts from film scripts andnovels, and underground songs. The second section, covering the late 1920s and1930s, treats the more overtly official culture of Stalinism, illustrating the devasta-ting impact of the cultural revolution of 19281932 on mass culture and the emer-gence of the optimistic mass culture of socialist realism, with its mythology ofopportunity and social mobility. The more politically unconstrained and emotion-filled culture of the Second World War is presented in the third section, while thefinal one deals with the resurgence of a now stale socialist realism in the sombrepostwar years. Von Geldern and Stites have included unofficial anecdotes through-out the book to provide a counterweight to the predominance of offically sanctionedculture, and these allow the reader a glimpse into the minds of ordinary citizens.The selections are well chosen to illustrate the shifts in the changing mythologyof Soviet culture under Lenin and Stalin, and they demonstrate the variety andcomplexity of a uniquely politicized mass culture. Each selection is given a shortintroduction explaining its historical context, and a cassette featuring recordings ofpopular songs makes the book a superb resource for teaching.In his excellent introduction, von Geldern ties the various strands of the collec-tion together, arguing that Soviet mass culture was shaped by the often conflicting474 Histoire sociale / Social Historyinterests and desires of the Party, artists, and audiences. He paints a vivid portraitof the negotiations and accommodations that shaped cultural policy. After anoutburst of state-sponsored experimentation in the Civil War period, politicalpropaganda had to compete in the cultural marketplace of NEP with DouglasFairbanks, Mary Pickford, and contraband Pinkerton novels. During the culturalrevolution, the regime re-established its monopoly on cultural production anddistribution, but by the mid-thirties the officially sanctioned socialist realism wasforced to acknowledge audiences taste for Hollywood-style musicals and comediesthat promoted an ideal of social unity. The demands of popular mobilization behindthe war effort gave rise in the forties to a wartime mass culture which resurrectedpatriarchal family values and traditional Russian patriotic motifs.Far from being a monolith, official mass culture contained a surprising amountof diverse opinion, although it never entirely supplanted the unofficial jokes, anec-dotes, and tales that continued to question officially sanctioned values. Yet what thisvolume suggests is the extent to which the changing political agenda of the Sovietstate, rather than changes in mass taste, influenced shifts in the form and contentof mass culture. To be sure, Soviet mass culture was indeed mass culture, in thesense that it was designed for, consumed by, and shared by the vast majority ofSoviet citizens. Still, it was fundamentally different from the mass culture thatemerged as a product of the capitalist market economy following industrializationand urbanization, beginning in the United States and Western Europe and morerecently becoming global in scope. In the period covered in this book, Russiasnascent mass culture, originating in the pre-revolutionary period as a product ofsocial change and market forces, was destroyed from above and replaced by a seriesof attempts to find a substitute which would be acceptable to the masses whileserving the states ideological goals. The commercial culture industry and themarketplace are absent from the Soviet experience after 1928.Of course, von Geldern is right to suggest that Soviet cultural production was nota one-way street, something artificial and alien foisted on a supine population. Moreattention needs to be paid, however, to the question of audience reception. How canwe know, for example, what audiences thought of the films, novels, and stories weread in this collection? Are there any reliable attendance or sales figures to suggestwhich offerings appealed most to the public? In addition to the richly expressiveanecdotes that the editors have included, are there other sources, such as policerecords, which can fill the gaps in our knowledge of popular resistance to themessages promoted by the official culture? The burgeoning field of cultural studiesoffers a wealth of approaches to the study of mass culture: the Frankfurt Schoolsemphasis on its maintenance of social authority, Gramscis theory of hegemony andhis idea that mass culture contained conflict by channelling it into politically safeoutlets, feminist analyses of the male gaze and representations of gender, neo-hegemony theorys view of mass culture as a mixture of meanings negotiated fromabove and from below. Von Geldern seems to be pointing in the direction of thelast approach, but there are many others which could prove useful in understandingSoviet mass culture. This volume paves the way for a broader, more nuancedunderstanding of Soviet mass culture and for more research that goes beyond theComptes rendus / Book Reviews 475study of texts and their producers to explore the ways in which cultural meaningswere negotiated in a non-capitalist, non-market environment.E. Anthony SwiftUniversity of EssexNeil Semple  The Lord’s Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism. Mont-real and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996. Pp. x, 565.Adding to a list of very good works by, among others, William Westfall, Phyllis D.Airhart, P. Travis Kroeker, and Robert K. Burkinshaw, McGill-Queens UniversityPress presents this fine book by Neil Semple, released under the auspices of itsseries entitled Studies in the History of Religion. Semples primary aim is toshow that the Methodist Church, comprised of various groups that differed on non-essential points of theology, is nothing less than Canadas church. This does notmean that Methodism enjoyed any sort of official establishment, of course. Rather,by virtue of the dedication of those thousands of Methodists who gave time, money,energies, and prayers to the propagation of their faith in the Dominion, Methodismsroots permeate Canadian soil.Semple reiterates his point often. In the introduction to his ninth chapter, TheTransformation of the Social Means of Grace, we read that Canadian Methodistleaders viewed Methodism as the truly national church encompassing the full rangeof Canadas cultural identity (p. 211). During the settlement of the West in theLaurier years, Methodism was committed to Canadianize and Christianize ...settlers while providing familiar church worship for those from Methodist back-grounds (p. 285). In the early twentieth century Methodists felt a deep responsi-bility not only to nurture and protect their own members, but also to transform theentire nation into a highly moral social order (p. 334). Canadas Methodistscarried this temperament with them into the United Church (formed in 1925), whichconsequently also took itself to be Canadas national church: As such, it ...assumed that it had the right and the duty to reshape Canadian society in Christsimage and that its status empowered it to provide a tolerant and unbiased forum fordiverse interests from both the religious and secular communities (p. 450). Inshort, Semple wants us to know that the history of Methodism is not incidental tothe history of Canada, but rather is inseparable from Canadian history. Thus,Semple joins that ever-expanding and increasingly formidable cloud of witnesseswho are committed to reminding us that religion, theology, and faith really domatter.Though Methodisms abiding influence might be unrecognizable to most today,this book maintains that it is nevertheless present. With other historians who haverecently published works on Canadian Protestantism (Michael Gauvreau, for exam-ple), Semple sees Methodisms legacy everywhere in Canadas public life. Do youappreciate Canadas health care system and social safety net? Thank the Method-ists, for they were at the forefront of the social gospel movement which did so

James von Geldern and Richard Stites, eds. — Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917–1953

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James von Geldern and Richard Stites, eds. — Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917–1953

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