Research Catalog

Title

The art and science of making the new man in early-twentieth-century Russia / edited by Nikolai Krementsov and Yvonne Howell.

Publication

• London, UK ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2021.
• ©2021

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Howell, Yvonne, 1960-
• Krement︠s︡ov, N. L.

Description

xiv, 280 pages : illustrations (black and white); 25 cm

Summary

"The idea that morally, mentally, and physically superior 'new men' might replace the currently existing mankind has periodically seized the imagination of intellectuals, leaders, and reformers throughout history. This volume offers a multidisciplinary investigation into how the 'new man' was made in Russia and the early Soviet Union in the first third of the 20th century. The traditional narrative of the Soviet 'new man' as a creature forged by propaganda is challenged by the strikingly new and varied case studies presented here. The book focuses on the interplay between the rapidly developing experimental life sciences, such as biology, medicine, and psychology, and countless cultural products, ranging from film and fiction, dolls and museum exhibits to pedagogical projects, sculptures, and exemplary agricultural fairs. With contributions from scholars based in the United States, Canada, the UK, Germany and Russia, the picture that emerges is emphatically more complex, contradictory, and suggestive of strong parallels with other 'new man' visions in Europe and elsewhere. In contrast to previous interpretations that focused largely on the apparent disconnect between utopian 'new man' rhetoric and the harsh realities of everyday life in the Soviet Union, this volume brings to light the surprising historical trajectories of 'new man' visions, their often obscure origins, acclaimed and forgotten champions, unexpected and complicated results, and mutual interrelations. In short, the volume is a timely examination of a recurring theme in modern history, when dramatic advancements in science and technology conjoin with anxieties about the future to fuel dreams of a new and improved mankind"--

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Sociobiology > Russia > History > 20th century
• Sociobiology > Soviet Union > History
• Human evolution > Social aspects > History > Russia > 20th century
• Human evolution > Social aspects > History. > Soviet Union
• Human evolution in literature
• Art and science
• Human evolution > Social aspects
• Intellectual life
• Sociobiology
• Russia > Intellectual life > 20th century
• Soviet Union > Intellectual life
• Russia
• Soviet Union

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: On words and meanings / Nikolai Krementsov -- Encyclopedic Worldbuilding: Alexander Bogdanov and the cognitive creation of the new man / Michael Coates -- 'The Road to Life': educating the new man / Lyubov Bugaeva -- The new man in the nursery: making Soviet dolls and regulating children's play in the 1920s and 1930s / Olga Ilyukha -- New sciences, new worlds, and 'New Men' / Nikolai Krementsov -- Entertaining sciences, unlikely horrors: the changing image of Man in Soviet popular-scientific literary genres / Matthais Schwartz -- The New Man as a monster of eugenic imagination: the criminal brain in Mikhail Bulgakov's 'Heart of a Dog' and James Whale's Frankenstein / Irina Golovacheva -- 'A School of the Peasantry of the Future': constructing the image of a 'New Peasant' at the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition, 1923 / Olga Elina -- Revolutionary evolution in apes and humans in the 1920s: sculpture and constructs of the New Man at the Moscow Darwin Museum / Pat Simpson -- A New Man in the Ethnographic Museum: between the socialist content and the national form / Stanislav Petriashin -- Conclusion. The New Man: one hundred years later / Yvonne Howell.

Call Number

JFE 22-1854

ISBN

• 9781350232839
• 1350232831

LCCN

2021026866

OCLC

1251873600

Title

The art and science of making the new man in early-twentieth-century Russia / edited by Nikolai Krementsov and Yvonne Howell.

Publisher

London, UK ; New York, NY : Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2021.

Copyright Date

©2021

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Added Author

Howell, Yvonne, 1960- editor, writer of conclusion.

Krement︠s︡ov, N. L., editor, author.

Other Form:

Online version: Art and science of making the new man in early 20th-century Russia London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021 9781350232853 (DLC) 2021026867

Research Call Number

JFE 22-1854