Elemental Materialism: Objectifying Power and Selfhood in the Late Ussr, 1961–1991
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ELEMENTAL MATERIALISM: OBJECTIFYING POWER AND SELFHOOD IN THE LATE USSR, 1961–1991 by Alexey Golubev Specialist Diploma, Petrozavodsk State University, 2002 Candidate of Sciences, Petrozavodsk State University, 2006 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (History) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2016 © Alexey Golubev, 2016 1 Abstract This dissertation explores the link between materiality and individual and collective selves in late Soviet society. Focusing on material objects ranging from space rockets to heritage buildings to weightlifting equipment to TV sets, it argues that material objects in late socialism were key elements in the organization of the Soviet historical and spatial imagination. They embodied various, often contrasting social techniques and understandings of time and space, and acted as material coordinates of the Soviet self. The central concept of this dissertation is elemental materialism, by which I mean a culturally rooted recognition of the power of matter and things to shape human bodies and selves, a prominent feature in the Soviet system of signification which regulated the production of meanings on daily basis. Soviet elemental materialism was a social reaction to pre-ideological experiences of daily life, including entangled assemblages of bodies, objects and physical space which exercised a social agency that did not originate from the dominant Soviet ideology. It was a set of spontaneous and situational cultural forms which gave Soviet people ways of making sense of the social agency of things. At the same time, my research historicizes Soviet things and material space in their spontaneity and affectivity as actual agents of historical change in the late USSR on a par with people, social institutions, and ideologies. By tracing the biographies of Soviet things and spatial constructions, I demonstrate how the material world of late Soviet period determined people‘s habitual choices, social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. This research contributes to several key debates in Soviet history including how the Soviet state fashioned its citizens into subjects, and how Soviet people embraced and questioned the dominant paradigms of selfhood. My study of social reactions to the recognition of the power of things over people – that is, elemental materialism of Soviet society – contributes to a better understanding of cultural logic of late socialism. In a broader context, my research contributes to the debates on how we as historians should conceptualize the role of objects in history. ii Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, A. Golubev. The fieldwork reported in Chapters 2, 3 and 6 was covered by UBC Ethics Certificate number H13-02595. All figures are used with permission from applicable sources. Portions of the Chapter 1 are used with permission from Alexey Golubev and Olga Smolyak, ―Making Selves through Making Things: Soviet Do-It-Yourself Culture and Practices of Late Soviet Subjectivation,‖ Cahiers du monde russe 54, no. 3–4 (July-December 2013): 517– 541. Only my contribution to the co-authored article is used in this dissertation. A version of Chapter 2 has been published as Alexey Golubev, ―Time in 1:72 Scale: Plastic Historicity of Soviet Models,‖ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 69–94. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ ii Preface ......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv List of Figures .............................................................................................................. v List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements...................................................................................................... ix Introduction: Elemental Materialism in Soviet Culture and Society ........................... 1 Chapter 1. The Soviet Man as a ―Master over the Material World:‖ Techno- Utopian Visions of the Soviet Future ............................................................ 31 Machines as the Measure of Men .................................................................. 37 Vernaculars of Soviet Techno-Utopianism ................................................... 46 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 2. Time in 1:72 Scale: The Plastic Historicity of Soviet Models ................... 62 Censoring Objects of Modelling ................................................................... 69 The Fetishism of Detail ................................................................................. 73 Historicities of Scale Model Collections ....................................................... 81 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 88 Chapter 3. ―A Wonderful Song of Wood:‖ Heritage Architecture and the Search for Historical Authenticity in North Russia ................................. 94 Lyrical Landscapes of Socialism ................................................................... 100 Aleksandr Opolovnikov‘s Making of Kizhi .................................................. 107 Accretions of History .................................................................................... 117 Identities under Sail ....................................................................................... 123 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 129 Chapter 4. When Spaces of Transit Fail Their Designers: The Social Antagonisms of Soviet Stairwells and Streets ..................................................................... 137 Exposition: The Soviet Stairwell ................................................................... 140 iv Sex on Stairs .................................................................................................. 147 Containing the Stairwell ................................................................................ 153 Traces on the Walls ....................................................................................... 158 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 166 Chapter 5. Empowering Iron: Bodybuilding and Elemental Materialism in the late USSR (1962–1991) ....................................................................... 172 A Morally Dangerous and Aesthetically Dubious Activity .......................... 177 Basements, Filthy and Clean ......................................................................... 184 Iron: Medicine or Drug? ................................................................................ 192 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 200 Chapter 6. Ordinary and Paranormal: The Soviet Television Set ............................... 209 The Voyeuristic Revolution of Soviet Apartment Interiors .......................... 220 New Rhythms of Life .................................................................................... 225 Paranormalists on TV .................................................................................... 228 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 235 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 237 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 243 v List of Figures Figure 1. An antenna of a ballistic missile early warning radar in Chernobyl, Ukraine ................................................................................... 30 Figure 2. People and material objects from the 1961 issues of Ogoniok, the leading Soviet illustrated magazine ......................................................... 39 Figure 3. Aleksandr Deineka, Conquerors of Outer Space, 1961 ............................... 43 Figure 4. Pyotr Sarukhanov, a caricature on the current state of affairs of the Russian space program ........................................................................ 58 Figure 5. A World War II-themed diorama with plastic models ................................. 61 Figure 6. The Young Technical Designers pavilion at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy in Moscow, early 1980s ............... 63 Figure 7. Box cover designs of USSR-produced models of the Gypsy Moth and the Fairey Barracuda ............................................................................. 71 Figure 8. Illustration from Modelist-Konstruktor for the feature article about the Morane-Saulnier G showing Pyotr Nesterov‘s attack on an Austro-Hungarian plane in 1914 ......................................................... 77 Figure 9. Soviet private and public collections of scale models.................................