RUS - Revista de Literatura e Cultura Russa

16

Authors: Fabiola Bastos Notari

Why watch, read, and talk about Sergei M. Eisenstein today? How important is this filmmaker to the Brazilian public? In this article I present briefly and succinctly the discussions developed in the thesis Eisenstein in Brazil. The thesis presents an unprecedented research on the influence that Eisenstein's theory and films had on some historical-cultural events in Brazil, or more specifically on the performance of certain intellectuals and institutions that were supporters, disseminators and defenders of cinematographic language as artistic expression.

19

Authors: Gabriela Soares da Silva

This article presents an analysis of Venedikt Erofeev’s novel Moskva-Petuchki, retrieving the iurodstvo’s archetype to understand the protagonist's anti-heroic character, as well as the image of Moscow as a symbol of an oppressive city.

21

Authors: Ilia Kalinin

Having influenced many figures of the Russian avant-garde, including Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, Pavel Filonov and Andrey Platonov, by the early 1930s the teachings of Fedorov were suppressed, along with the utopianism of early revolutionary culture. It is all the more interesting to encounter the open evocation of his name and ideas in the work of a completely officially recognized author such as Viktor Shklovsky, who had assumed this status from the 1930s and who had emerged most forcefully at the center of cultural life in the era of the Thaw, when his roots in the avant-garde origins of Soviet culture endowed him with additional symbolic weight. Even more striking, one must note that in Shklovsky’s early works, that was enrooted in the avant-guard art, the name of Fedorov was completely absent. However, in perspective of already revealed Fedorovian stratum one may find the echo of Russian cosmism even in these early works.

17

Authors: Henrique Gomes Santos

Considered one of the best-known authors in Russian literature of the second half of the twentieth century, laureate of several prizes, Rasputin nevertheless remains completely unknown in Brazil. “Rudolfio,” the story with which we present him to our readers, is remarkable for its complex plot in which a sixteen-year-old girl, Io, falls in love with Rudolf, a married man who is twelve years older. Upon entering his life, first with a tap on the shoulder, she increasingly occupies his space.

22

Authors: Flavio Ricardo Vassoler

The article establishes a dialogue between (i) [thesis] the diatribes of Ivan Karamazov, a character of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s (1821-1881) novel The Brothers Karamazov (1878-1880), related to the eschatological coexistence of a Creator, who is supremely good, and evil throughout creation; (ii) [antithesis] Augustine of Hippo’s (354 A.D.-430 A.D.) theological and philosophical ressignification of evil’s and freedom’s nature in his Confessions (397-398 A.D.); and (iii) [(an attempt of) synthesis] the notions of plurality of existences, reincarnation and the healing of the spirit from The Book of Spirits (1857) and The Gospel according to Spiritism (1864), by Allan Kardec (1804-1869), spiritist doctrine’s encoder.

28

Authors: Daniela Mountian

The article analyses the production of self-portraits by Daniil Kharms (1905-1942), a Russian writer and playwright and one of the founders of Oberiu (Association for a real art), the last great collective of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

32

Authors: David Mandel

This article examines the attitude of the “democratic,” left-leaning intelligentsia to the revolutions of 1917. It documents and analyzes the latter’s growing alienation from the popular classes, the workers and peasants, over the course of 1917. That alienation is explained on the background of the deepening class polarization of Russia society, a process that can be traced back to the Revolution of 1905 and even earlier, but which reached its apogee in 1917 in the October Revolution. That revolution is revealed as an exclusively plebeian affair to which the left-leaning intelligentsia was intensely hostile, a situation that deeply worried worker activists.

17

Authors: Arlete Cavaliere

The formation of the first socialist state in Russia in 1917 generated an extraordinary atmosphere of restlessness and renewal in the social, political and cultural spheres, whose effects were felt throughout the 20th century. In 2017 marks the centenary of this stormy historical moment that gave rise to one of the most surprising and multifaceted cultural and artistic movements in the history of modern art, called the Russian avant-garde. Many Russian artists presented themselves as genuine representatives of the new proletarian era, combining extremism in form with marked political propaganda, producing a bold symbiosis of varied aesthetic and artistic tendencies that thrived during the revolutionary years. This new conception of art and culture and the profusion of aesthetic experiences of that period is a subject of great interest.

18

Authors: Lars T. Lih

I propose a new category to describe the Russian revolution of 1917: the “anti-bourgeois democratic revolution.” “Soviet power” was actually proclaimed in during the February revolution in 1917. The basic force behind this new power or sovereign authority—the workers, soldiers and peasant who made up the constituency of the soviets—was hostile to the burzhui both in its narrow meaning of industrial owners and in its wider meaning of the tsenzoviki (an abusive term for the educated elite that derived from property requirements or “census” for voters). The central aim of this revolution was to carry out the vast program of reforms earlier denoted by the term “democratic revolution”—first and foremost, land to the peasants and liquidation of the pomeshchiki (gentry landowners) as a class. Commitment in a positive way to socialist institutions was much less powerful than a negative attitude toward the bourgeois as individuals as well as toward bourgeois values.

28

Authors: Kevin Murphy

This article investigates strike activity in the early Soviet Union period. Using monthly OGPU (political police) reports to Stalin, the essay provides statistical evidence on the frequency, participants, and resolution of workers' strike activity. It argues that rather than repression, workers and state reached a 'compromise' during the New Economic Policy era that was later undermined by Stalin's draconian measures against the working class during rapid industrialization. It shows workers unrest during this later period and explains why some workers fought back while the overwhelming majority did not.