Staging the Absolute: Ritual in Russia's Modern Era by Thomas Seifrid

Thomas Seifrid's new book presents a cultural analysis of remarkable scope and ambition. Weaving together a complex tapestry from a wide range of sources, including copious references to works of Russian fiction, poetry, and theater from the late 19th century to the Stalinist era as well as historical accounts of official Soviet efforts to forge a new “proletarian” culture after the Bolshevik Revolution, Seifrid discerns an underlying thematic unity to Russian/Soviet cultural production on either side of the revolutionary divide. “The cultural practices I examine here,” he argues, “all strive toward a moment of eschatological ‘intervention’” (p. 6)—that is, a desire to disrupt history by “staging” the transformation of quotidian reality in Russia's urban spaces, the streets of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in particular. Seifrid traces the impact of this cultural tradition from the Bolshevik street theater of the early 1920s to what he portrays as its apotheosis: the Stalinist...