Nepandart. Forgotten experiments in Soviet culture, 1934-1964. Digest of articles

The academic consensus says that the socialist realism introduced in the 1930s brought to nullified those bold formal experiments that distinguished Soviet avant-garde aesthetics. The presented collection proposes to complicate, adjust, or, perhaps, to even rewrite this dominant narrative with the help of a kind of archaeological research in the fields of music, cinema, theater and literature. Instead of focusing on dominant trends, the authors of the book turn to the work of little -known outsiders, whose work deliberately or, by the will of chance, was deviated from the dominant artistic method. The focus of the collection is the significance of these outsiders in the formation of cultural tradition, as well as the plasticity of socialist realism as aesthetic method, its susceptibility to foreign aesthetic impurities and the uncertainty of its boundaries. In order to articulate a more multifaceted understanding of this period, the authors bring to the forefront of inconsistency and internal contradictions of this method.
Compiled by Yu. Wingurt, W. Nickell