Substacks
Soviet Temporalities Substack
“Soviet Temporalities” explores late socialist ideas about time and how they matter today. Curated by Katerina Pavlidi and Isabel Jacobs.
This is a publication of The Soviet Temporalities Study Group, which critically explores conceptions of time which were developed during the Soviet period. In the years following the October Revolution in 1917, a future-oriented outlook dominated politics and social life. The period between the 1960s and the late 1980s—widely known today as the ‘era of stagnation’—saw a dramatic shift in attitudes towards time and history. Many people and social groups shared a feeling of being stuck in the Soviet system and its bureaucratic structures. The immutability of that system generated a sense of time unique to late socialism: an eternal present. However, it was precisely during that allegedly stagnant present that eclectic notions of repetition, emptiness, impermanence, circularity, ritual and death surfaced in late Soviet culture and thought. In turn, the engagement with such notions, especially in artistic underground circles, produced a dynamic multitude of co-existing temporalities. Those temporalities were expressed in the philosophy, art and science of that time, circulating both through official channels and samizdat.
Organisers: Katerina Pavlidi (University College Dublin) & Isabel Jacobs (CEREES Affiliate, Queen Mary University of London)
Click here for Soviet Temporalities Study Group
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