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[Great Order]

Over the course of the war I have started becoming ashamed of even being Russian, culturally. I hate my country's culture, I mean most Soviet and some modern stuff is okay but I fucking despise just about anything from before 1914. I hate Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky's books for example. Even destroyed the few I still had.

A strange take. I can't find anything more bland than Soviet culture and art except what Russia produced between 1991 and now which is a mix of the worst elements of Soviet times and bad copies of Western stuff.

A few good books have come from Russia/Russians.

Ferex, the Metro series. Although IIRC the guy's living in Israel now and faces imprisonment back home for being anti-war.

[Lord Shonus]

Note that USSR, a huge empire, a superpower with numerous allies and puppets, was unable to contribute to the world's mass culture in a meaningful way. Well, nothing is not exactly correct, there are minor things like Tetris (but is it a Soviet thing or a brilliant idea of one guy?) but there is nothing of the scale of, let's say, Japanese Anime.

You won't find any noticeable traces of Soviet culture in modern Poland or Vietnam or post-colonial Africa or Cuba. Why? Because it was bland and empty.

There's plenty of influential works from places that used to be Soviet Socialist Republics or were puppeted satellites of the USSR. Ukraine, Poland, Czechia and others have all had some pretty big impacts. The biggest problem with Soviet culture spread wasn't fundamental problems with said culture (though their aggressive state censorship likely didn't help), but the fact that they were locked in an ideological struggle with the most dominant cultural powerhouse the world had ever seen. Soviet stuff wasn't exactly suppressed, but there very much was a longstanding "they're the enemy, I'm not going to spread their crap" attitude among the people (generally private companies) who decided what was and wasn't going to get imported into Western nations) that wasn't present for other cultural producers. Japanese and European cultural output could fairly readily coexist with American because they weren't The Enemy.

[Strongpoint]

Western mass culture was... quite discouraged in the USSR but, nevertheless, it slipped through the Iron Curtain and captured the imaginations of people. Possessing a recording of the Beatles could bring you very real and unpleasing problems and yet people were getting them. If USSR had anything matching the quality of the Beatles it would become popular.

Of course, there is a huge (IMO negative) influence on all countries that were in the USSR. But outside of it, even in the Warsaw pact, the impact is minimal. Sure, it is not zero, some architecture there, some homage there, some nostalgia-inspired art here, some internet meme there, but nothing remotely close to what you would expect from a huge country with a huge web of puppets and allies if its pop culture would be halfway decent.

[KittyTac]

Most of the USSR's satellites were acquired by conquest or coup and people didn't really feel any identification with Russia. And besides, Western culture slipped into the USSR and appreciated by dissidents because it was something of a symbol of freedom. In the West our culture didn't penetrate too much because, well, it was the symbol of an oppressive communist state (deservedly or not).

What I really hate is that in the West some 19th-century novels like War And Peace are appreciated. They're all irredeemable shit, narratively. If I could burn them all I would.

[King Zultan]

some architecture there,

Does Soviet architecture even count though, I mean most examples of it I've seen are just big concrete blocks with some windows in them.

[scriver]

Well that's certainly been influential abroad though

[KittyTac]

The architecture is where Imperial Russia is indeed better than the USSR lol. Though Stalin-era USSR buildings are actually... decent. I mean they're not amazing but unlike Khrushchev and Brezhnev-era buildings, they actually have a shape that's not "cuboid" and a color that's not "gray".

Well that's certainly been influential abroad though

There are even some commieblocks in Africa, lol. Many falling apart and without water, but otherwise they look just like the ones here in Siberia.

[Strongpoint]

some architecture there,

Does Soviet architecture even count though, I mean most examples of it I've seen are just big concrete blocks with some windows in them.

There are notable things, like the aforementioned Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. But yeah, most of the Soviet architecture is ugly concrete boxes. By its very nature architecture is there to stay for some time but I would say that it had an impact if new generations would base their architecture on that one, it isn't happening.

What I really hate is that in the West some 19th-century novels like War And Peace are appreciated. 

Are they? Sure, there are some intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals that praise that monument of boredom but I don't think it has any notable place in the Western popular culture. There are no major movies based on it or anything of that kind. Tolstoy is no Dumas and Dostoevsky is no Hugo

[Starver]

There are no major movies based on it or anything of that kind. Tolstoy is no Dumas and Dostoevsky is no Hugo

Ok, so it's not Hollywood, but in major mini-series form.... Possibly even Cultural Appropriation, for those that truly find the original Klingon Russian version most inspiring.

(Perhaps geofenced from playing even the clips, but should show how 'big' budget drama has been done. Parallel form to the likes of the His Dark Materials adaptation, for example.)

I have to say that I know W&P as more a general designation of a "very long book" (the other day my own writing on a matter was described as such... can you imagine that?!?) and I'm not actually as familiar with it so much myself, and probably did not watch the above for the same reason I did not watch various English classics from the same stable. And I never had a hankering to see Les Mis (theatre/film), though I have heard a (non-musical) lengthy radio adaptation so I think I have a handle on the plot.


Yes, it's probably a "pseud's thing", but then I'd claim to have devoured all of the LOTR books (or, indeed, the Mission: Earth dekalogy, which I thought were a good read, given certain unorthodox parameters, but I'm fairly certain I'm not influenced by the author's 'culture'[1]).

I mean, one stumbling block is the lack of translator-microbes. Anything non-English is closed off to me until someone with sufficient cross-lingo ability is either bank-rolled to try to create a translation version or else does one off their own back from personal dedication whilst personal wealth supporte them/scraping an existence via a 'second' job. Or at least create something from which a potentially mood-unfaithful adaptation can be hung from once the hard work is done.

Would I know that much about Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours or Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers without the 'classic' English version? (Helped too by Hollywood features being made, sure, but Le Rayon Vert escaped that fate, to my knowledge, and yet...)


When young I probably knew more people who were excited by Soviet-era 'cultural' things (perhaps not entirely stuck to Russia itself, but clearly by implication) than things of Imperial Russia era, but that was probably a knock-on from their lands of origin wishing more to promote New Wave SF/frankly disturbing children's animations from "beyond the Iron Curtain" countries more than even the thoughtfully critical kind of pre-Soviet aristos-and-serfs tale. Probably more likely to depict the travailles of a tractor than the ponderings of a princeling. (Well, mostly, but that was the GDR anyway... But it also inspired an 'adaptation'!)

Probably the social impact of true Russian soviet-era culture never reached that far beyond the borders, for many different reasons[2], and I couldn't tell you what a person of my age would have appreciated in Moscow (probably seeing less of the Moscow State Circus/Ballet than I could, given their seemingly perpetual international touring schedule..!). Or perhaps it was all too much Vovochka humour, 'of an era' stuff that doesn't mature with age/dates badly (c.f. "On The Buses"/"Love Thy Neighbour", here in Britain) and so is easily forgotten as 'a thing'.


I'm sure there's lost gems, and right now we're probably all for non-Soviet or despite-Soviet culture as much as anything, but only the first is now open-domain 'classic' material and it's not really the time for those who know to uncover something like Smert' Postoronnego ("Death and the Penguin", which was an interesting Kiev-based story that was radio-dramatised in the early days of the current conflict, almost certainly driven by our national sympathies) only from deeper in historic/current Russia. It sounds like the Kafkaesque mentality was not limited to the area/era around the original eponymous stuff from around Prague, and I'm sure someone in Vladivostok had as much to say on the matter across much of the Soviet era, whether or not their ideas ever previously saw the light of day (or, possibly, themselves also. Ever again.)


[1] Indeed, I also think that the (separate) Battlefield Earth book was ill-adapted into film by the actual faithful promoters of the "Elron" legacy... Perhaps I just have a differently refined appreciation of "trash sci-fi", though.

[2] That which lacked the push had no corresponding pull? That which might have been happily pulled was never pushed?

[Mech#4]

some architecture there,

Does Soviet architecture even count though, I mean most examples of it I've seen are just big concrete blocks with some windows in them.

The style is a recognised class and called "Brutalist Architecture" and there are examples of it in many countries around the world like in the U.S. and England not just in the former Soviet Bloc
Wikipedia: Brutalist Architecture

[EuchreJack]

War & Peace has obtained the status of "Big Fucking Book" in the West, and that is primarily it's significance.

[jipehog]

A short video of close quarter combat showing special force action in game like scene, a contrast to my last video I posted which showed a hint of the more gritty reality

Over the course of the war I have started becoming ashamed of even being Russian, culturally. I hate my country's culture, I mean most Soviet and some modern stuff is okay but I fucking despise just about anything from before 1914. I hate Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky's books for example. Even destroyed the few I still had.

You are not Russophobic

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

enough

joking aside, I do not agree with such sentiments, the idea of destroying books and think that older works should be judged in accordance with their cultural context.

[King Zultan]

Destroying a book just because you don't like it is stupid.

[KittyTac]

joking aside, I do not agree with such sentiments, the idea of destroying books and think that older works should be judged in accordance with their cultural context.

It's not even about the content. Honestly I never even read War And Peace lol, I chopped it in half with an axe because it's a symbol of a culture I despise.

Destroying a book just because you don't like it is stupid.

It's because I don't like what it stands for: our "high culture". I don't even care what's in the book itself.

[Starver]

I can't think of any book (even Mein Campf, Mao's LRB, any version of the Anarchist's Cookbook or the most objectional[1] directory of perversions) that I would so prejudicially deface. If I burn a book, it'll only be because I need fuel. Banishment to some secure backroom of a library, maybe, but you can't actually counter that which has (effectively or actually) undergone total extestential failure. Books are paragraphs, paragraphs are words, words are letters and (give or take the precise alphabet/glyphs, lexicon, grammar and themes in use) all of these are pretty much the same morally neutral building blocks as any other example. The problem is what one does with them, not the things themselves.

If you really can't stand a set of books, just don't read tyem. Or perhaps put them on a special bookshelf, under a special filing system...


[1] Well, isn't that a loaded term? To some, that'd be Harry Potter (which to me is a sufficiently entertaining read that somehow found a zeitgeist), to others it'd be <insert some opposingly creed>'s Holy Book (to me, they're all meh), to yet others it'd be something like deSade (to which I've never had the pleasure; or the pain!). I'm not even sure I have an example that I could fit here.