Description:
'Petrified Utopia' redresses the lack of scholarship on the issue of the pursuit of collective happiness in Soviet culture, and presents a collection of essays that discuss different manifestations of happiness in literature and visual culture.
Review Quotes:
'This volume is an invaluable collection of excellent scholarship [...] the chapters yield stunning insights into discursive claims of Soviet public and private happiness in circumstances least amenable to its flourishing: amidst poverty and homelessness, domestic shortages, postwar devastation, and routinized, mandatory celebration. The research usefully problematizes the inextricability of state celebration from private joy, labor from happiness, staged gaiety from unexpected contentment. The chapters are richly supported by thirty-six illustrations.' -Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh, in 'Slavic Review'