The 'short course' to modernity: Stalinist history textbooks, mass culture and the formation of popular Russian national identity, 1934--1956

History textbooks sanctioned by the state between 1937 and 1956 provided Soviet society with a narrative which allowed Russians as a group to imagine for the first time what it meant to be members of a national community. Since the cultivation of Russian national identity had been frustrated by the tsarist and early Soviet states, nation-centered history only became a major component of public and party education some twenty years after the revolution. In tone and content more nationalist than internationalist, the post-1937 generation of history textbooks signaled a profound sea-change in ideology which would engulf state-sponsored mass culture by the end of the decade. Stalinist social mentalite could hardly remain unaffected.;Although explicitly nationalistic sentiments surfaced among Russians in Soviet society only in the 1960s in connection with environmental protectionism, the preservation of historic monuments, and the celebration of "village prose," it is generally agreed that these movements drew upon older notions of Russian national identity already in wide circulation. While some of these beliefs date back to the ancien regime, it is not possible to speak of them as contributing to a single coherent national identity before the 1930s because the society's political and historical consciousness varied significantly form region to region. The present work argues that modern Russian national identity only coalesced on the popular level under Stalin as a consequence of the introduction of the society's first mass history curriculum and attendant transformations in popular forums ranging from literature and film to theater and opera.;A study of ideological reception as much as production, this work considers both the evolution of the official party line and the line's impact on the popular level. If research in almost a dozen archives informs the production end of the study, an extensive survey of diaries, letters and secret police reports provides glimpses of the popular reception of stalinist propaganda. Focusing on party and public education against the backdrop of literature, film and the arts, this study analyzes the heretofore unappreciated connection between stalinist history textbooks, mass culture and the formation of popular Russian national identity.