Sovietinės kultūros šaltiniai : tarp futurizmo ir paseizmo

Abstract

The paper examines certain peculiarities of the Soviet culture focusing on its relation to the values of the past, its origins, and its adaptation in the Lithuanian cultural environment. Semanticcommunicative methodology analyses essential features and peculiarities of the Soviet culture. What sources of the past were employed to construct the new ideals? What features of the former “bourgeois” culture were transformed and adapted? How did it deal with the problems of cultural heritage and what historical events, personalities, phenomena, topics and objects were selected and transformed? Chronologically research focuses on the Stalin era when the main features of the Soviet mythology were constructed that remained valid during the later periods. The research showed that Soviet culture developed gradually creating original and authentic forms that can be easily recognized today. However, it also selected from traditional aesthetic norms and values required by the official canon. It had to match criteria of accessibility (folk and heroic), romanticism, monumentality, realism and classicism to name a few. Soviet culture used four main historical sources: antique culture and aesthetics (especially that of the Roman Empire), mimesis of Christian liturgy and dogmatism, selected folk culture and arts aimed to create mass identity, as well as adaptation and re-interpretation of national signs and symbols. The latest was most problematic for the regime as it raised unfavorable nationalist potential. Despite these essential historical sources Soviet culture consciously avoided developing cultural continuity. All the sources were carefully filtered and mainly exploited as a form to fill with a new ideological content. As a result it only became a stylized aesthetic form of the past.