Collective and the Individual in Russia
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A01=Oleg Kharkhordin
Author_Oleg Kharkhordin
bolshevism
Category=JBCC
Category=JHB
Category=JHM
Category=NHD
communist
eastern orthodoxy
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fall of gorbachev
hierarchical surveillance
individualization
intensification
kharkhordin
michel foucault
novel experience
orthodox christian
party rituals
private confessional practices
public gaze
public penitential practices
russia
russian revolution
russian society
soviet individual
soviet russia
surveillance
western christianity
Product details
- ISBN 9780520216044
- Weight: 862g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jun 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Oleg Kharkhordin has constructed a compelling, subtle, and complex genealogy of the Soviet individual that is as much about Michel Foucault as it is about Russia. Examining the period from the Russian Revolution to the fall of Gorbachev, Kharkhordin demonstrates that Party rituals--which forced each Communist to reflect intensely and repeatedly on his or her "self," an entirely novel experience for many of them--had their antecedents in the Orthodox Christian practices of doing penance in the public gaze. Individualization in Soviet Russia occurred through the intensification of these public penitential practices rather than the private confessional practices that are characteristic of Western Christianity. He also finds that objectification of the individual in Russia relied on practices of mutual surveillance among peers, rather than on the hierarchical surveillance of subordinates by superiors that characterized the West. The implications of this book expand well beyond its brilliant analysis of the connection between Bolshevism and Eastern Orthodoxy to shed light on many questions about the nature of Russian society and culture.
Oleg Kharkhordin is Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, European University at St. Petersburg.
