Obshchestvennost’ and civic agency in late imperial and Soviet Russia: Interface between state and society

Abstract

In modernizing Russia, obshchestvennost', an indigenous Russian word, began functioning as an indispensable term to illuminate newly emerging active parts of society and their public identities. This volume approaches various phenomena associated with obshchestvennost' across the revolutionary divide of 1917, targeting a critic and the commercial press in the late Imperial society, workers and the public opinion in the revolutionary turmoil of 1905, the liberals during the first world war, worker-peasant correspondents in the 1920s, community activists in the 1930s, medical professionals under late Stalinism, people's vigilante groups and comrade courts throughout the 1950s–1960s and Soviet dissidents. Furthermore, focusing on obshchestvennost' as a strategic word appealing to active citizens for political goals, this book illustrates how the state elites and counter-elites used this word and sought a new form of state–society relation derived from their visions of progress during the late imperial and Soviet Russia.