Chapter 1 Introduction
Journal: Directory of Open access Books (OAPEN Foundation)
Year: 2023

The authors of our book focus on Soviet scholars and cultural theoreticians during the Stalin era from a methodological perspective that distinguishes between Stalinism and culture, an outlook that forms one of the common threads of the book. This introductory chapter focuses on the theoretical grounding of this approach. We argue that the received picture of Soviet culture in general and of Stalin era culture in particular has yet to be fully disentangled from the political and historical narra