Dr. Konstantin Rapp

Slavish Department

Postdoc (1/2017-12/2020)

in sub-project G3

Decreeing Work, Regulating Leisure – and Otium? Marxism and dosug in Soviet Culture

Postdoc project

My project investigated various conceptualizations of Muße in the Soviet Union in the 1920s–30s within the context of Marxist ideas about work and leisure. First, I examined the ‚new’ Soviet concept of Muße (dosug) based on texts on Marxist-Soviet ideology and work/labour theory, as well as reflecting exemplary aesthetic-programmatic statements by Russian artists (e.g. Kazimir Malevič). Additionally, the analysis included a discussion of the respective didactic mediation in Soviet children’s literature.

At its core, however, my research focused on discourses of otium in selected literary texts from the 1920s and 1930s. Using otium as an analytical category for literary imagery, I investigated to what extent the Soviet everyday life – which was strictly regulated and structured by (collective) work – offered niches for experiences of otium and which role these experiences played for the relationship between the collective and the individual under totalitarian conditions.

Publications relevant to the project

Search for publications in the CRC's bibliography