Stalin, Joseph (1878–1953)
Joseph Stalin (Iusif Vassarionovich Dzhugashvili) was born in Gori, Russian Empire, which is part of present-day Georgia. He adopted the name ‘Stalin’ from the Russian…
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Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
Literature Subject Overview
Literary modernism is a truly global and plural phenomenon, playing out in multiple cultural paradigms, in various timeframes, and in response to diverse experiences of…
Social Realism
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Photography
Babel, Isaac [БАБЕЛЬ, ИСААК] (1894–1940)
Known primarily for his short fiction, Isaac Babel was one of the most important literary figures of early Soviet Russia. He was born in 1894…
Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanas’evich (Булгаков, Михаил) (1891–1940)
Mikhail Bulgakov was a Russian prose writer and playwright. In the last 25 years of the Soviet Union’s existence Bulgakov was one of its most…
Zabolotsky, Nikolai Alexeevich (1903–1958)
Nikolai Alexeevich Zabolotsky was a Russian poet and translator, and a member of the avant-garde absurdist group Oberiu (a modified acronym for Obedinenie Realnogo Iskusstva…
Kharms, Daniil Ivanovich [ХАРМС, ДАНИИЛ ИВАНОВИЧ] (1905–1942)
Co-founder (with Aleksandr Vvedensky) of the short-lived Obedinenie real’nogo iskussta, or OBERIU (The Association for Real Art), Kharms was one of the leading figures of…
Feuchtwanger, Lion (1884–1958)
Born into a Jewish family in Munich, Lion Feuchtwanger lived in Berlin from 1925 to 1933 when Hitler’s accession to power forced him into exile,…
Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, The
The Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music (WarszawskaJesień) is one of Europe’s longest-running festivals of contemporary music. With two exceptions (1957 and 1982), the…
Makavejev, Dušan (1932–)
Dušan Makavejev is an avant-garde Marxist Serbian filmmaker whose film techniques, exuberant black humour, and sexual and political transgressive themes made him one of the…
Shkurupii, Geo (1903–1937)
Ukrainian futurist poet and prose writer Shkurupii was a close collaborator of Mykhail Semenko, the founder of Ukrainian Futurism. He penned articles about Marinetti and…
Semenko, Mykhail’ [Семенко, Михайль] (1892–1937)
Mykhail’ Semenko was the founder, theoretician, and major poet of the Ukrainian futurist movement, as well as the editor of the journal Nova generatsiia [New…
Workers’ Theater Movement
The Workers’ Theatre Movement (WTM) was an international project, largely promoted by the Workers International Relief, to conjoin left militant radical theaters during the period…
Zamyatin, Evgeny
Evgeny Zamyatin is a Russian author most famous for his dystopian novel We [My], which is said to have influenced George Orwell’s 1984. Criminalized in…
Dovzhenko, Alexander [ДОВЖЕНКО, Олександер Петрович] (1894–1956)
The Ukrainian film director, artist, and writer Alexander Dovzhenko was born in Sosnytsia (Chernihiv region) and graduated from the Hlukhiv teachers’ college in 1914. He…
Ryan, Oscar (1904–1989)
The leading cultural activist in the Canadian Communist Party in the 1930s, Oscar Ryan was the formative figure in the Workers’ Theatre movement in Canada…
Gubaidulina, Sofia Asgatovna (1931--)
Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, of mixed Russian and Tatar parentage. After graduating from Kazan Conservatoire in…
Zionism
Zionism is the umbrella term used to describe the various strains of Jewish nationalism that grew out of other 19th-century nationalist ideologies and movements. Zionist…
Bergelson, Dovid (1884–1952)
Dovid Bergelson was a major Yiddish prose writer and essayist. He had a lasting impact on Yiddish fiction writing, introducing new narrative techniques such as…
Trotsky, Leon (1879–1940)
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, is one of the most controversial figures in twentieth-century history. Along with Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), he played a decisive…
Lutosławski, Witold (1913–1994)
The music and life of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) pivoted around key events in his country’s tumultuous twentieth-century history. The so-called cultural ‘thaw’ at…
Walden, Herwarth (1878–1941)
Herwarth Walden was the force behind Der Sturm, an avant-garde journal, gallery, performance venue, bookstore and theater school in Berlin (1910–1932). Walden’s first wife, the…