Russian Utopia: A Century of Revolutionary Possibilities(Russian Shorts)

About the Book

Winner of the 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles

Mark D. Steinberg explores the work of individuals he recognizes as utopians during the most dramatic period in Russian and Soviet history. It has long been a cliché to argue that Russian revolutionary movements have been inspired by varieties of ‘utopian dreaming’ – claims which, although not wrong, are too often used uncritically. For the first time, Russian Utopian digs deeper and asks what utopians meant at the level of ideas, emotions, and lived experience.

Despite the fact that many would have resisted the ‘utopian’ label at the time because of its dismissive meanings, Steinberg’s comprehensive approach sees him take in political leaders, intellectuals, writers, and artists (visual, material, and musical), as well as workers, peasants, soldiers, students and others. Ideologically, the figures discussed range from reactionaries to anarchists, nationalists (including non-Russians) to feminists, both religious believers and ‘the militant godless’. This innovative text dissects the very notion of the Russian utopian and examines its significance in its various fascinating contexts.

Table of Contents:

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Wings of Utopia
2. The New Person
3. The New City
4. The New State
Selected Further Reading
Index

About the Author :
Mark D. Steinberg is Professor of History, Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Chair at the University of Illinois, USA. He is the author of several books, including A History of Russia (9th Ed., 2018; co-authored with Nicholas V. Riasanovsky), The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 (2017) and Petersburg Fin de Siècle (2011). His books have been translated into Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. He is also the co-editor of volumes such as Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2011; with Valeria Sobol) and Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies (2008; with Catherine Wanner).

Review :
Russian Utopia is ... at once concise and comprehensive, short enough to assign to undergraduates, but also large enough in its breadth, encompassing virtually the entirety of modern Russian history, for their professors to learn from it. Mark Steinberg’s book, in other words, has something, indeed a great many things, for everyone. [I]ntellectually engaging ... and a stimulating read.

Steinberg’s rich and masterful new book revivifies the utopian mindset. It gives voice to the utopians and utopian impulses that helped shape Russian history. Steinberg refuses to dismiss the ideas and actions of utopians as naive or insincere. ‘Utopia’ is not presented as a dirty word. It is not understood as a fantastical ‘no-place,’ but as an inspirational ‘not-yet.’ Treating utopia as a critical method—as a means questioning and seeking to transform the present state of affairs—Steinberg offers a new lens through which to assess the making of modern Russia. The lure of the future and alternative possibilities held particular sway in the seemingly unchanging and unchangeable world of late autocratic Russia. Utopian visions pertaining to flight, the new person, the urban world, and new types of state provide the thematic nodes around which Steinberg structures this wonderfully original study. He presents these nodes as the jumping points from which his subjects made a leap into the great unknown—into an alternative, daring, and audacious future. Steinberg takes us on a delightful and rewarding journey through Russian utopia.
The reader is reminded that the present should not be mistaken for the future. Possibilities continue to abound.

Mark Steinberg masterfully unearths the utopian impulse in Russian history, showing how the dream of grasping that which lies just beyond reach motivated tsars as well as commissars, ordinary people alongside famed revolutionaries. In the process, he offers an inspiring rehabilitation of the utopian impulse. Utopia, for Steinberg, is not a quixotic goal, but a critical practice that rejects complacency and defeatism, demanding the promise of a better future in the present. This intelligent and often beautiful book offers a stirring message for our troubled times. Mark Steinberg breathes new life into utopianism --often dismissed as naïve or dangerous-- by showing it to be a more grounded belief in possibilities for improving the world in the face of circumstances ranging from difficult to disastrous. This engaging and illuminating study locates utopian thinking across the political spectrum in modern Russia, in the everyday experiences of ordinary, unsung people as well as in works by more famous visionaries. Rather than fixate on the ultimate failures of some of these ideas, Steinberg shows us the ways that utopianism opened up new avenues for social and political practices of all kinds.