The period of economic stagnation experienced by the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev began with poor agricultural performance. Though Russia was recently industrialized, the suffering breadbasket took a toll on the economy as a whole and caused massive demographic shifts. Brezhnev’s 1978 speech, “On the Further Development of Agriculture”, was full of savory statistics and…
Opera censorship in 1936The reformation in Soviet culture during 1936 caused controversy and contradictions, as the government castigated the creativity and innovation that it once supported. The primary victims of this artistic purge included poet Demyan Bedny and avant-garde composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, as their personal lives and creative work suffered because of the Soviets’ lack of tolerance of…
Modernizing TimeOn February 14th, 1918, Soviet leadership reconstituted an entity greater than politics or economics or society- they altered time. The Council of People’s Commissars, or Sovnarkom, was the governing body that made the decision to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar on January 24th, which was approved by Vladimir Lenin. The Gregorian calendar was…
