Petrov’s innovative and challenging study offers theoretical definition and shape to the murky notion of Soviet ideology, interrogating what ideology is, how the term has been used to talk about Soviet culture and ideas, and how ideological concepts emerged from—and also created—the forms of both theoretical and everyday socialism. The opening chapters offer the reader models for theorizing ideology rooted in insights from Marxist-Leninist texts, on the one hand, and frameworks offered by Althusser, Epstein, Foucault, and others, including dialogue with literary texts. Ideology is the logic of ideas, Petrov shows, but it is also the process by which ideas both emerge from life and take form in life, how they are both “production and show.” In the later chapters, Petrov investigates the content of ideological production. He studies values like nauchnost’ (scientific character) and zhizennost’ (vitality) that, when taken together, form the total character of Soviet ideology. This study will be attractive to scholars looking for a chiefly theoretical analysis of the Soviet project, both how it was produced and performed and how scholars have chosen to speak about its legacy. Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty.

Choice Reviews