"Life has become more joyous, comrades": Politics and culture in Soviet celebrations, 1934-1939.

Abstract

During the Second Five-Year Plan, the leaders of the Soviet state sought to create an atmosphere of joy and prosperity through public celebrations that demonstrated the privileges of being a loyal Soviet citizen. Through an exploration of the forms of Soviet celebrations and the actions of Soviet organizers and audiences, this dissertation examines official representations of Soviet power, hierarchy, and nation. Celebrations illuminate the construction of a Soviet national identity, the politics of Soviet elite formation, and the nature of local political and social relationships in the Soviet Union. Each chapter of the thesis focuses on a different Soviet celebration. The form of May 1 and November 7 demonstrations reveals Soviet notions of hierarchy and precedence in the 1930s. The transformation of New Year's Day into a depoliticized holiday illustrates the Sovietization of a popular religious holiday. The celebration of the 1936 Constitution became a forum for discussions about rights and freedoms in the Soviet Union. The 1937 Pushkin Centennial made a Soviet national hero out of the Russian poet most revered by the intelligentsia. The Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution created a Stalinist version of the events of 1917. Soviet aviation and polar exploits constructed a mythic geography of the Soviet "nation." In physical culture parades, Soviet officials, non-Russian delegations, and Moscow workers all represented themselves as citizens and the Soviet Union as a nation. Holidays in the 1930s reveal propagandists' attempts to broaden the public support of the Soviet government beyond its traditional constituency of urban, male, industrial workers. Celebrations encouraged youth, women, the intelligentsia, housewives, the elderly and collective farmers to identify with the Soviet state. The extensive celebration culture of the 1930s offered opportunities for Soviet citizens both to express their support for the state and to articulate alternative or even oppositional ideas about freedom and the nature of politics in the Soviet Union.