Granting the idea that certain theoretical conceptualisations of Marxism broadly represent a political religion, this paper seeks to explore how one can come to understand the function of individual theoretical concepts within the wider theory of Stalinism. In so doing, this approach to political religion will be explored within the confines of Stalin’s concept of the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism. Assuming that individual theoretical concepts of an ideology that has been labelled a political religion serve the same function (...) as doctrines within traditional religion, this paper argues that the Intensification of Class Struggle under Socialism can be interpreted as having an apocalyptic quality. By doing so, this paper seeks to extend the boundaries of both the study of political religion and the theoretical exploration of Marxism as it relates to the question and role of religion within the social and political sphere. While doing so, this paper also seeks to provide an illustration of what the exploration of political religion in relation to Marxism looks like at the level of specific theoretical elements as opposed to a mere overarching characterisation of the entire theoretical enterprise. (shrink)

The article deals with the dichotomous process of production and experience of the soviet Houses of Culture as an appropriated «common space» with their further transformation into a disciplinary institute of social ordering. On the basis of Lefebvre’s triad of the perceived \ conceived \ lived space, the production of public places was analyzed in relation to changes in the representational field from early Soviet times to the present. This development marks a transition from the perception of the Houses of (...) Culture as the most innovative common places for the creation of a new human being to the places of achievement of centralized biopolitics in times of totalitarianism. In the absence of relevant social practices, abandoned Houses of Culture cannot find their place in the social network of the modern world. In the late capitalism era, public spaces become specific private places, implying the subjectivation regime prescribed by its type. This process intensifies the feeling of alienation and prevents the creation of a universal public space open to different practices. In the context of the destruction of public spaces and spatial identities as a problem tendency of a contemporary city, it is necessary to appeal to the experience of Houses of Culture in search of new forms of universal multifunctional public places. The article applies the experience of Houses of Culture to modern conditions in order to create a new type of «common spaces». (shrink)

This paper locates its genesis in a small town called Vitebsk in Belorussia which experienced a flowering of creativity and artistic energy that led to significant modernist experimentation in the years 1917–1921. Marc Chagall, returning from the October Revolution took up the position of art commissioner and developed an academy of art that became the laboratory for Russian modernism. Chagall’s Academy, Bakhtin’s Circle, and Malevich’s experiments, artistic group UNOVIS—all in fierce dialogue with one another—made the town of Vitebsk into an (...) artistic crucible in the early twentieth century. We argue that this creative collective transformed creative energies of Russian drama, music, theatre, art, and philosophy in a distinctive contribution to modernism, structuralism and formalism that contributed richly to the social understanding of creativity itself that is so evident across Mikhail Bakhtin’s subsequent body of work, and elsewhere across the world. This paper argues that a consideration of such interplay has much potential for twenty-first century educational philosophy. (shrink)

This attempt to interpret Communist society through the total social fact of the gift takes up Mauss's strategy, which attempted to explain social reproduction without written laws or state institutions. It was a culture of chronic revolution (‘revolution’ in the etymological sense), where the rules of the game changed with each party congress, institutions were in a state of permanent reform, science discovered new truths every five years, and yesterday's heroes became the traitors of today. The very concept of living (...) in a transitory society renders every social form temporary and unreal - starting with the proclaimed disappearance of the State, the family, and private property. (shrink)

The article examines the “utopian reception,” that is, occurrence and reproduction of the common understanding of the utopian. Attention is paid primarily to the visual experience, that is, the “utopian vision,” which means here a special social skill of the perception and interpretation of space as having being assigned the status of 'utopian'. Thus, a certain inertia of vision encourages the observer to link visual materials produced in the Soviet period to the media construct of “Soviet utopia”. Here, two patterns (...) of spatial description are especially popular, those of “totalitarian place,” and “queer place.” The article focuses on both patterns of “utopian vision” in detail. The first implies intensive rationalization and semiotization of space, while the second implies semantic crash and affectivity. The space is characterized within the former pattern by the metaphor of text, while within the latter by metaphors of night dreams or memory. The author refers to the semiotic, and, at the same time, the spatial analysis of the classic utopia within the framework offered by Louis Marin in 1973, and demonstrates that space perceived by the “utopian view” ceases being social. The reverse side of the imaginary construction of a perfect society is, paradoxically, the blocking of any intersubjective relationships. (shrink)