Description:
A comprehensive account of the influence of occult beliefs and doctrines on intellectual and cultural life in twentieth-century Russia.
Brief description: Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal is Professor of History at Fordham University. She has edited or co-authored four books, most recently Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary.
Review Quotes: "Casting a rather wide net, the essays in this book succeed in documenting an amazing array of occult or occult-like ideas and practices, not only during the symbolist age, but also in the seemingly rational, materialist, and antisuperstitious Soviet period. In this sense, the book offers a contribution to the ongoing reevaluation of the relationship between modernist and Stalinist culture. . . . The main intention of this collection, according to Rosenthal, was 'to raise new issues for research and discussion.' The book certainly fulfills this purpose admirably."--Adrian Wanner, Slavic Review