Living the Revolution: urban communes & soviet socialism, 1917-1932

This book follows a revolutionary trend popular among young activists and would-be radicals after 1917, the formation of collective units of cohabitation and association known as 'urban communes'. In these spaces, activists tried to live what they understood as the 'socialist lifestyle', self-consciously putting Marxist and Bolshevik theories into practice. By telling the story of the urban communes, this book reveals how grand revolutionary ideals, such as collectivism, equality, proletarian ethics, and modern practice, were experienced, understood, and appropriated on a human level. This enables us to better understand the messy realities of the early Soviet state, showing how ideological beliefs and revolutionary contingencies actually came into being during this time.

The kommuna impulse: collective mechanisms and commune-ists in the early Soviet State

This study examines the creation of the urban kommuna (commune) and the ideals that stimulated this social phenomenon – the kommuna impulse of the nascent Soviet state. Collective idealism affected Soviet housing, architecture and even urban planning, but little is known of social experiments in commune‐ism. As a result, these collective cells have been dismissed as utopian anomalies or the product of a housing shortage. Here it is argued that these discursive assessments are unsatisfactory and isolated from the historical narrative. While utopian ideals and domestic necessity were central to the formation of collective living, the kommuna was also involved in an active discourse with collectivism and socialist ideology. The kommuna cell was a dynamic entity that required considerable formative planning. The activists who forged these cells – the self‐identified ‘communards’ – turned their everyday domestic life into a socialist battleground, in which they struggled with the key debates of the early Soviet state. This article examines the communard as a social activist in order to better understand this phenomenon. It clarifies the coexistence of ideological and idealist trends among Soviet youth with practical contingencies for socialism. Furthermore, it reveals the process by which the kommuna impulse and these contingencies developed throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

Monuments should not be trusted exhibition

Monuments Should Not Be Trusted brings together over 30 leading artists and groups from the “golden years” of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - the period between the early 1960s and the mid 1980s. Over 100 artworks and artefacts illuminate the key contradictions of this single party state – built after WWII on socialist principles, yet immersed in “utopian consumerism.” This is the first time in the UK that the art of this period, which has attracted increasing attention, has been shown in the context of the social, economic and political conditions that gave rise to it. It draws on new and innovative research on this period, and features many of its most celebrated artists. The exhibition begins with the rise of consumerism, midway through President Josip Broz Tito’s 37 year presidency, and ends a few years after his death in 1980. As well as artists’ works in moving image, collage, photography, sculpture and painting, the exhibition encompasses music, TV clips and fascinating artefacts, such as gifts made by workers for President Tito’s birthday, and relay batons which were carried across the country and ceremonially presented to him.

The virtual world of exercises and deterrence

Miliary Exercises, Command Post Exercises and War Games serve to test procedures, but in some forms also serve to signal ability to defend against aggression, or to intimidate neighbours with the threat of aggression. Some indicators suggest that the solidarity of NATO and the EU is decreasing, and with it a plausible nuclear deterrence posture. This article discusses whether recent exercises and TV war games make matters better or worse.