After Wars and Revolutions: State and Stage in Ukraine in the Twentieth Century

The First World War and the revolutions catalyzed artistic experimentation, creating new relationships between the world of artists and visions of the postwar world. In the conversation After Wars and Revolutions: State and Stage in Ukraine in the Twentieth Century, we will focus on the topics that Professor Maigil Fowler brings to the forefront in her book Beau monde on the edge of empire: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (Rodovid, 2025).

We will talk about the relationship between art and political power in the context of the Soviet state - through the formation of the artistic beau monde and establishment; about the ambitious project of creating a new culture that would be modern and urban and Ukrainian at the same time; about the emergence of Soviet cultural infrastructure and hierarchies; about the centrality and peripherality, decentralization and de-peripheralization of cultural processes; about the construction of a system of state care and control and the peculiarity of the theater as a place of improvisation; about the multisensory nature of cultural life in the 1920s and its gradual and radical homogenization. While the focus will be on the postwar 1920s and 1930s, the conversation will also address the longer chronology of the "Soviet century" and its still-long shadows and lingering legacies.

Participants of the conversation:

The event will be held within the framework of the XIII International Book Arsenal Festival.