Anguish Anger and Folkways in Soviet Russia Russian and East European Studies 1st Edition by Gabor Rittersporn ISBN 0822963205 9780822963202

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ISBN 10: 0822963205 
ISBN 13: 9780822963202
Author: Gabor Rittersporn

Anguish, Anger, and Folkwaysin Soviet Russia offers original perspectives on the politics of everyday life in the Soviet Union by closely examining the coping mechanisms individuals and leaders alike developed as they grappled with the political, social, and intellectual challenges the system presented before and after World War II. As Gabor T. Rittersporn shows, the “little tactics” people employed in their daily lives not only helped them endure the rigors of life during the Stalin and post-Stalin periods but also strongly influenced the system’s development into the Gorbachev and post-Soviet eras.

For Rittersporn, citizens’ conscious and unreflected actions at all levels of society defined a distinct Soviet universe. Terror, faith, disillusionment, evasion, folk customs, revolt, and confusion about regime goals and the individual’s relation to them were all integral to the development of that universe and the culture it engendered. Through a meticulous reading of primary documents and materials uncovered in numerous archives located in Russia and Germany, Rittersporn identifies three related responses—anguish, anger, and folkways—to the pressures people in all walks of life encountered, and shows how these responses in turn altered the way the system operated.

Rittersporn finds that the leadership generated widespread anguish by its inability to understand and correct the reasons for the system’s persistent political and economic dysfunctions. Rather than locate the sources of these problems in their own presuppositions and administrative methods, leaders attributed them to omnipresent conspiracy and wrecking, which they tried to extirpate through terror.

He shows how the unrelenting pursuit of enemies exacerbated systemic failures and contributed to administrative breakdowns and social dissatisfaction. Anger resulted as the populace reacted to the notable gap between the promise of a self-governing egalitarian society and the actual experience of daily existence under the heavy hand of the party-state. Those who had interiorized systemic values demanded a return to what they took for the original Bolshevik project, while others sought an outlet for their frustrations in destructive or self-destructive behavior.

In reaction to the system’s pressure, citizens instinctively developed strategies of noncompliance and accommodation. A detailed examination of these folkways enables Rittersporn to identify and describe the mechanisms and spaces intuitively created by officials and ordinary citizens to evade the regime’s dictates or to find a modus vivendi with them. Citizens and officials alike employed folkways to facilitate work, avoid tasks, advance careers, augment their incomes, display loyalty, enjoy life’s pleasures, and simply to survive. Through his research, Rittersporn uncovers a fascinating world consisting of peasant stratagems and subterfuges, underground financial institutions, falsified Supreme Court documents, and associations devoted to peculiar sexual practices.

As Rittersporn shows, popular and elite responses and tactics deepened the regime’s ineffectiveness and set its modernization project off down unintended paths. Trapped in a web of behavioral patterns and social representations that eluded the understanding of both conservatives and reformers, the Soviet system entered a cycle of self-defeat where leaders and led exercised less and less control over the course of events. In the end, a new system emerged that neither the establishment nor the rest of society could foresee.

Anguish Anger and Folkways in Soviet Russia Russian and East European Studies 1st Table of contents:

Part One: Anguish
1. The Omnipresent Conspiracy: Imageries of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s
Constructing Conspirators
Believing the Unbelievable
Enemies within the Establishment and among the People
2. Catching Spies, Trapping the System
Suspects, Metaphors, Analogies
Spies Everywhere
Data, Successes, Blunders
Spying on Spies, Beheading the Services
Trapping Post-Soviet Russia
3. Between the Catastrophe and the Promised Land: Public Mood, Popular Hopes, Elite Fears, and Mass Terror
Words Worth Noting versus Suspect Records
Fears and Reactions
Vocal Citizens, Worried Officials
Sudden Clampdown, Blind Terror
Vanishing Agitators, Multiplying Thieves, Intractable Shirkers
Part Two: Anger
4. From Revolution to Daily Routine: Endemic Violence, Suspicious Youth, Angry Bolsheviks
At the Receiving End
Accepting and Abhorring Force
Destruction and Self-Destruction
Executioners and Waifs of the Revolution
5. Citizens between Indignation and Resignation: Loyalty and Lost Hope
Ambiguities
Ambivalent Loyalty
Grievances, Musings, and the Course of History
The March of Progress and Sharp Turns
Enraged Loyalty
Party Doctrine, Popular Faith
Resigned Compromise
6. Rebels
Intriguing Stories, Ambiguous Sources
Graffiti, Leaflets, Letters, and the Great Famine
Crises, Innocent Conversations, Revolutionary Projects
Incendiary Calls, Collective Action
False Prophets and Closet Rebels
In the Revolutionary Tradition
The Struggle Continues
A New Generation
Confusing Projects, Claiming Legitimacy
Endgames
Part Three: Folkways
7. Breaking Step, Enjoying Carnival: Unorthodox Folklore
Noisy Conviviality
“Girls, Vodka, and Snacks”
Profanation of the Bolshevik Cult
Rumors, Curses, Jokes, and Broken Idols
From Irreverent Verses to Gestures of Revolt
Sublimating Passions, Closing Eyes
8. Exploring Frontiers: Entrepreneurship, Continuities, and Changes
Scarce Goods, Large Demand, New Institutions
Poor Administrations, Inventive Officials
Marketplaces and Survival Strategies
Managerial Practices versus Industrial Policies
New Challenges, New Opportunities
Tapping Symbolic Capital
A System Does Away with a Regime
9. Virtuous Girls Building a Sinful World: Misadventures of Modernity, Limits of the Thinkable, and the Politics of Folkways
Visions of Modernity
Counting, Gardening, Mapping
Controlling, Integrating, Making Do
Banal Routine versus Great Politics
Using Force, Exploiting Weaknesses
Giving Sense to the Senseless
Making No Sense of the Practical
Epilogue: Dilemmas of History
Notes
Selected Bibliography

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Tags: Gabor Rittersporn, Anguish, Anger