In the fifth of our Anglo-Russian Research Network lectures, Nick Hall looks at British tourists' views of the USSR.
For foreign visitors to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the cities of Moscow and Leningrad were often the first point of contact with the living Soviet world. Many of these travellers arrived in the Soviet Union with certain ideas about searching for and finding the ‘truth’ of Soviet life. The binary of ‘city and countryside’ was significant for this search: the cities were conceptualised as managed spaces of Soviet cultural diplomacy, whilst the countryside was where the ‘real Russians’ lived.
Nick Hall's talk will explore this binary to show how, even in the face of complex, nuanced experiences and encounters in both urban and rural environments alike, the concept of a divide between city and countryside was a powerful discursive tool for travellers as they sought to explain the Soviet world.
Nick Hall is a PhD student at the University of Exeter, working on British travellers in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
The Anglo-Russian Research Network was established in 2011 by Rebecca Beasley and Matthew Taunton to bring together research students, scholars and members of the general public interested in the influence of Russian and Soviet culture and politics in Britain in the period 1880–1950. The ARRN invites proposals for reading groups on any aspect of Anglo-Russian history of cultural relations and literary/translation/reception/art history studies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c. 1880–1950). To get involved, please, contact Dr Ben Phillips, Nicholas Hall or Anna Maslenova.
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