Automatic for the Masses : : The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist Realism / / Petre M. Petrov.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter ACUP Complete eBook-Package 2015
• VerfasserIn: Petrov, Petre M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction --; Part One --; Chapter 1. The Imperative of Form --; Chapter 2. The Imperative of Content --; Chapter 3. Knowledge Become Practice --; Chapter 4. The Organization of Things --; Chapter 5. The Organization of Minds --; Part Two --; Chapter 6. The Anonymous Centre of Style --; Chapter 7. The Unbearable Light of Being --; Chapter 8. Ideology as Authentication --; Chapter 9. The Blind, the Seeing, and the Shiny --; Chapter 10. Life Happens --; Notes --; Works Cited --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781442616936; 9783111274027; 9783110439687; 9783110438673; 9783110606812
• DOI: 10.3138/9781442616936
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Petre M. Petrov.

At the end of the 1920s, the Modernist and avant-garde artistic programmes of the early Soviet Union were swept away by the rise of Stalinism and the dictates of Socialist Realism. Did this aesthetic transition also constitute a conceptual break, or were there unseen continuities between these two movements? In Automatic for the Masses, Petre M. Petrov offers a novel, theoretically informed account of that transition, tracing those connections through Modernist notions of agency and authorship.Reading the statements and manifestos of the Formalists, Constructivists, and other Soviet avant-garde artists, Petrov argues that Socialist Realism perpetuated in a new form the Modernist “death of the author.” In interpreting this symbolic demise, he shows how the official culture of the 1930s can be seen as a perverted realization of modernism’s unrealizable project. An insightful and challenging interpretation of the era, Automatic for the Masses will be required reading for those interested in understanding early Soviet culture.