In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values In Soviet Fiction
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Beneath the rigid ideological surface of Stalinist Russia, a quieter revolution was unfolding — one not of workers and peasants, but of aspiring bureaucrats, cautious professionals, and comfortable domesticity. Vera S. Dunham's landmark study, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, uncovers this paradox at the heart of Soviet culture, arguing that the regime tacitly sanctioned a resurgent middle-class ethos — a phenomenon she terms the Big Deal — in exchange for the political acquiescence of the Soviet intelligentsia. Drawing on a vast corpus of Soviet popular fiction from the late Stalin era, Dunham meticulously details how novels, novellas, and stories became an ideological mirror, reflecting the regime's unspoken compact with a newly privileged stratum of Soviet society. Dunham's analytical method is both rigorous and revelatory, dissecting the language, character archetypes, and narrative conventions of Soviet literature to illuminate the gap between official Communist rhetoric and lived social reality. Her prose is precise and authoritative, wielding cultural criticism with the confidence of a scholar who spent decades immersed in this material. First published by Cambridge University Press in 1976, this work remains an indispensable text for anyone seeking to understand the social contradictions that quietly shaped — and ultimately destabilised — the Soviet order. What did it truly mean to be bourgeois in a state that officially abolished the bourgeoisie?
Author: Vera S. Dunham
Format: Paperback
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Beneath the rigid ideological surface of Stalinist Russia, a quieter revolution was unfolding — one not of workers and peasants, but of aspiring bureaucrats, cautious professionals, and comfortable domesticity. Vera S. Dunham's landmark study, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, uncovers this paradox at the heart of Soviet culture, arguing that the regime tacitly sanctioned a resurgent middle-class ethos — a phenomenon she terms the Big Deal — in exchange for the political acquiescence of the Soviet intelligentsia. Drawing on a vast corpus of Soviet popular fiction from the late Stalin era, Dunham meticulously details how novels, novellas, and stories became an ideological mirror, reflecting the regime's unspoken compact with a newly privileged stratum of Soviet society. Dunham's analytical method is both rigorous and revelatory, dissecting the language, character archetypes, and narrative conventions of Soviet literature to illuminate the gap between official Communist rhetoric and lived social reality. Her prose is precise and authoritative, wielding cultural criticism with the confidence of a scholar who spent decades immersed in this material. First published by Cambridge University Press in 1976, this work remains an indispensable text for anyone seeking to understand the social contradictions that quietly shaped — and ultimately destabilised — the Soviet order. What did it truly mean to be bourgeois in a state that officially abolished the bourgeoisie?