How well do you know your krai? The kraevedenie revival and patriotic politics in late Khrushchev-era Russia
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Date
01/10/2015Author
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Abstract
This article examines the state-sponsored rise of local patriotism in the post-1961 period, interpreting it as part of the effort to strengthen popular support for and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime during the second phase of de-Stalinization. It shifts the analytical focus away from the Secret Speech of 1956, the time of Nikita Khrushchev's full-scale assault on Iosif Stalin and his legacy, to the Twenty-Second Party Congress of 1961, the inauguration of a Utopian and pioneering plan to build communism by 1980. I consider how this famously forward-looking program gave rise to an institutionalized retrospectivism, as Soviet policymakers turned to the past to mobilize popular support for socialist construction. I examine how this process played out in the Russian northwest, where Soviet citizens were encouraged to turn inward, to examine their local history and traditions, and to reread these through a socialist lens.
Citation
Donovan , V S 2015 , ' How well do you know your krai ? The kraevedenie revival and patriotic politics in late Khrushchev-era Russia ' , Slavic Review , vol. 74 , no. 3 , pp. 464-483 . https://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.464
Publication
Slavic Review
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0037-6779Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2015 Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies. This work is made available online with the permission of the publisher. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.464
Description
This article is based on doctoral research carried out as part of an AHRC-funded project titled “National Identity in Russia since 1961: Traditions and Deterritorialisation” (2007–11).Collections
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