The Origins and the Meaning of Russian Anti-Americanism in Soviet Art (1947-1956)

  • Alessandro Farsetti Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i4.7481
Keywords: Socialist Realism, Cold War, fight for peace, lubok, propaganda

Abstract

What kind of forms has the Soviet art of the Cold War taken? In order to answer this question, I propose a cultural study on propaganda practices which involved a close collaboration between the power and the arts during the years 1947-1956 for the construction of an image of the enemy based on the superposition of a recent threat (Nazism) and stereotypes on America fostered by Russian-Soviet classics (Maiakovskii-Gor’kii). Heterogeneous texts such as films, poems, posters have been analyzed.

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Author Biography

Alessandro Farsetti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Alessandro Farsetti is Assistant Professor and Researcher of Russian Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where he got a Ph.D. in 2015. His fields of studies span from Russian futurist poetry, travel literature, Soviet popular culture. In 2016 he was awarded the prize “Opera Prima” by the Association of Italian Slavists for a monograph on the Russian avant-garde poet Ivan Aksenov, then published by Firenze University Press, in 2017. He also co-edited Nikolai Antsiferov’s memoirs about his travels to Italy (Staraja Basmannaja, 2016 with D. Moskovskaia and M. Talalay). In 2013 he translated for the publishing house Castelvecchi The Gadfly (1897) by Ethel Lilian Voynich, and co-edited the proceedings of a conference on this novel (Pisa University Press, 2017, with C. Cadamagnani). He is currently taking part in an international project on the reception of Soviet repressions in Italian and French cultures during the Twentieth century (University of Florence - Paris-Sorbonne).

Published
2020-12-21
How to Cite
FarsettiA. (2020). The Origins and the Meaning of Russian Anti-Americanism in Soviet Art (1947-1956). SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (4), 65-95. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i4.7481
Issue
No 4 (2020): The representation of the Cold war in literature and the arts (1947-1989)
Section
Monographic section I

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