Political animals: representing dogs in modern Russian culture

Abstract

tured’, and that Western technical rationality, with productivity and efficiency as its highest goals, works against the humanity of socialism. Avant-garde approaches to technology accentuate its exploratory and revelatory role – a role that is thoroughly subversive in times of industrial ‘window-dressing’ (pokazukha). Without naively extolling the often misled artists of the fledgling Soviet state, Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde provides a successful antidote to The Total Art of Stalinism by offering a close analysis of key texts, and connections between them, something missing from the sweeping generalizations put forward by Groys. Vaingurt does not explicitly address the banishment of the avant-garde under Stalin, which Richard Stites characterizes as a command to stop dreaming and get to work. The third part of the book becomes more descriptive in mode, something occasioned perhaps by the move away from the author’s confident literary analysis towards a discussion of avant-garde cinema. An otherwise stimulating journey through the conceptual realms of the avant-garde here loses some of its momentum, with the theory being applied in a less challenging manner (although the Red Pinkertons phenomenon offers gripping subject matter for the final chapter). This book is essential reading for anyone studying the literature and arts of Russia in the 1920s. Vaingurt offers an original analysis of some key works of the avant-garde canon, enhancing and renewing our understanding of the motivations and the theory behind them. Irrespective of its literary focus,Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde will interest people in any field working with concepts of technology, avant-garde art and signification.