The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of PracticesOleg Kharkhordin has constructed a compelling, subtle, and complex genealogy of the Soviet individual that is as much about Michel Foucault as it is about Russia. Examining the period from the Russian Revolution to the fall of Gorbachev, Kharkhordin demonstrates that Party rituals—which forced each Communist to reflect intensely and repeatedly on his or her "self," an entirely novel experience for many of them—had their antecedents in the Orthodox Christian practices of doing penance in the public gaze. Individualization in Soviet Russia occurred through the intensification of these public penitential practices rather than the private confessional practices that are characteristic of Western Christianity. He also finds that objectification of the individual in Russia relied on practices of mutual surveillance among peers, rather than on the hierarchical surveillance of subordinates by superiors that characterized the West. The implications of this book expand well beyond its brilliant analysis of the connection between Bolshevism and Eastern Orthodoxy to shed light on many questions about the nature of Russian society and culture. |
Contents
14 | |
A Technology of No Mercy The Collective as an Object | |
Purge and SelfCriticism The Collective as a Subject | |
Other editions - View all
The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices Oleg Kharkhordin Limited preview - 2023 |
The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices Oleg Kharkhordin No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
according activity Aksenov aktiv analysis Anton Makarenko Aret background practices became behavior body Bolshevik brochure Cambridge Central Committee century Christian Church collective collectivization colony Communist comrades confessional Conscience Control Commissions courts criticism culture Dedovshchina disciplinary discipline discourse discussion dissimulation Dmitrii Dreyfus and Rabinów everyday example genealogy Gosizdat human Ibid individual istorii Ivan the Terrible Joseph Volotsky Khrushchev kollektiv Komsomol labor laroslavsky Lenin Leningrad lichnost litso Makarenko mass means method Michel Foucault misdeeds moral Moscow mutual surveillance NKVD novel oblichenie official oneself organizations Orthodox Party Congress Party members Pedagogical penitential Petersburg plenum political Politizdat Pravda private confession Psikhologiia public penance punishment purge revealed revelation by deeds Revolution revolutionary ritual Russian Russian language samokritika self-criticism self-fashioning self-training Slovar social socialist Solts Soviet society Soviet Union specific speech Stalin Stalinist techniques term trans TsKK University Press usage USSR VKP(b word workers