‘Soviet Culture’ Many Russians Now Recall Fondly was Profoundly Anti-Soviet, Mirovich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 13 – Russians who look back with fondness to Soviet times often acknowledge that times were often hard and repressions exist, but they argue that at least there was culture worthy of the name unlike now. But in fact, Maksim Mirovich says, “no ‘Soviet culture’ in the sense the fans of the USSR remember ever existed.”

            Instead, the Russian blogger says, “all the works which they remember in reality were not Soviet but anti-Soviet,” regardless of the genre involved, something that becomes obvious if one surveys they one by one (maxim-nm.livejournal.com/448327.html, reposted at   https://charter97.org/ru/news/2018/10/13/308821/).

            The two cinematographers of Soviet times Russians today most often recall, Mirovich points out, are Ryzanov and Gayday; but their wonderful works in fact involved “the most clever trolling of things Soviet.” They gained their strength and their popularity by calling attention to the absurdities of the Soviet system.

            In contrast,official films about great Soviet construction projects and the like have all been forgotten, he continues.

            The same thing is true of writers. That gray mass of scribblers who celebrated Soviet values and achievements are not what Russians remember. Instead, they recall as Soviet authors who were profoundly anti-Soviet, including Ilf and Petrov, Bulgakov, Bunin, the Strugatskys, Venedikt Yerofeyev, Varlam Shalamnov, Solzhennitsyn and Voynovich.

            “Even the laureates of the Nobel Prize,” Mirovich says, writers “like Brodsky or Pasternak were entirely anti-Soviet.”  Consequently, one has to conclude that “in general, no ‘soviet’ literature remains in the 21^st century. What remains and is recalled instead is more anti-Soviet albeit created in that period.”

            The same thing can be said about music and the stage, he continues. Those singers, actors and actresses Russians recall and celebrate from Soviet times were all anti-Soviet to one degree or another – even though Russians who celebrate those times a appear to think otherwise by citing anti-Soviet figures in their hopeless defense of the Soviet system.