Common Places

by Boym, Svetlana

• ISBN13: 9780674146266
• ISBN10: 0674146263
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-01-23
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

What is the "real Russia"? What is the relationship between national dreams and kitsch, between political and artistic utopia and everyday existence? Commonplaces of daily living would be perfect clues for those seeking to understand a culture. But all who write big books on Russian life confess their failure to get properly inside Russia, to understand its "doublespeak."Boym is a unique guide. A member of the last Soviet Generation, the Russian equivalent of our Generation X, she grew up in Leningrad and has lived in the West for the past thirteen years. Her book provides a view of Russia that is historically informed, replete with unexpected detail, and everywhere stamped with authority. Alternating analysis with personal accounts of Russian life, Boym conveys the foreignness of Russia and examines its peculiar conceptions of private life and common good, of Culture and Trash, of sincerity and banality. Armed with a Dictionary of Untranslatable Terms, we step around Uncle Fedia asleep in the hall, surrounded by a puddle of urine, and enter the Communal Apartment, the central exhibit of the book. It is the ruin of the communal utopia and a unique institution of Soviet daily life; a model Soviet home and a breeding ground for grassroots informants. Here, privacy is forbidden; here the inhabitants defiantly treasure their bits of "domestic trash," targets of ideological campaigns for the transformation (perestroika) of everyday life.Against the Russian and Soviet myths of national destiny, the trivial, the ordinary, even the trashy, take on a utopian dimension. Boym studies Russian culture in a broad sense of the word; she ranges from nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectual thought to art and popular culture. With her we go walking in Moscow and Leningrad, eavesdrop on domestic life, and discover jokes, films, and TV programs. Boym then reflects on the 1991 coup that marked the end of the Soviet Union and evoked fin de siegrave;cle apocalyptic visions. The book ends with a poignant reflection on the nature of communal utopia and nostalgia, on homesickness and the sickness of being home.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Theoretical Common Places	p. 1
Rubber Plants and the Soviet Order of Things	p. 5
Archeology of the Common Place	p. 11
A Labyrinth without a Monster	p. 20
The Mythologist as Traveler	p. 23
Mythologies of Everyday Life	p. 29
Byt: Daily Grind and Domestic Trash	p. 29
Poshlost': Banality, Obscenity, Bad Taste	p. 41
Meshchanstvo: Middle Class, Middlebrow	p. 66
Private Life and Russian Soul	p. 73
Truth, Sincerity, Affectation	p. 95
Kul'turnost': The Totalitarian Lacquer Box	p. 102
Soviet Songs: From Stalin's Fairy Tale to "Good-bye, Amerika"	p. 110
Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment	p. 121
Family Romance and Communal Utopia	p. 121
Art and the Housing Crisis: Intellectuals in the Closet	p. 130
Welcome to the Communal Apartment	p. 139
Psychopathology of Soviet Everyday Life	p. 145
Interior Decoration	p. 150
The Ruins of Utopia	p. 160
A Homecoming, 1991	p. 165
Writing Common Places: Graphomania	p. 168
History of the Literary Disease	p. 168
The Forgotten Classics	p. 174
The Genius of the People and the Conceptual Police	p. 192
Glasnost,' Graphomania, and Popular Culture	p. 205
A Taxi Ride with a Graphomaniac	p. 213
Postcommunism, Postmodernism	p. 215
The End of the Soviet World: From the Barricades to the Bazaar	p. 215
Glasnost' Streetwalking: Fallen Monuments and Rising Dolls	p. 225
Stalin's Cinematic Charisma, or History as Kitsch	p. 238
Trashy Jewels of Women Artists	p. 254
Merchant Renaissance and Cultural Scandals	p. 265
The Obscure Object of Advertisement	p. 271
Conclusion: Nostalgia for the Common Place	p. 283
Notes	p. 293
Index	p. 343
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