http://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=35910
Lilya Kaganovsky
How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity
under Stalin (University of Pittsburgh Press)
In Stalinist Russia, the idealized Soviet man projected an image of
strength, virility, and unyielding drive in his desire to build a
powerful socialist state. In monuments, posters, and other tools of
cultural production, he became the demigod of Communist ideology. But
beneath the surface of this fantasy, between the lines of texts and in
film, lurked another figure: the wounded body of the heroic invalid, the
second version of Stalin's New Man. In How the Soviet Man Was Unmade,
Lilya Kaganovsky exposes the paradox behind the myth of the
indestructible Stalinist-era male. In her analysis of social-realist
literature and cinema, she examines the recurring theme of the mutilated
male body, which appears with startling frequency. Kaganovsky views this
representation as a thinly veiled statement about the emasculated male
condition during the Stalinist era. Because the communist state was
"full of heroes," a man could only truly distinguish himself and attain
hero status through bodily sacrifice-yet in his wounding, he was forever
reminded that he would be limited in what he could achieve, and was
expected to remain in a state of continued subservience to Stalin and
the party. Kaganovsky provides an insightful reevaluation of classic
works of the period, including the novels of Nikolai Ostrovskii (How
Steel Was Tempered) and Boris Polevoi (A Story About a Real Man), and
films such as Ivan Pyr'ev's The Party Card, Eduard Pentslin's The
Fighter Pilots, and Mikhail Chiaureli's The Fall of Berlin, among
others. The symbolism of wounding and dismemberment in these works acts
as a fissure in the facade of Stalinist cultural production through
which we can view the consequences of historic and political trauma.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: "Bodies That Matter" 1
2 How the Soviet Man Was (Un)Made 19
3 Visual Pleasure in Stalinist Cinema 42
4 Heterosexual Panic 67
5 What Does Woman Want? 119
6 Epilogue: "Female Masculinity" 154
Notes 175
Bibliography 203
Index 217
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