Spirit of Socialism

<p><b><i>The Spirit of Socialism</i></b><b> is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse.</b> It examines the millions of Soviet people who during the cascading crises of the collapse and the post-Soviet transition embarked on a spirited and highly visible search for new meaning. Amid profound disorientation these seekers found direction in their horoscopes or behind gurus in saffron robes or apocalyptic preachers or by turning from the most basic premises of official science and history to orient themselves anew. The beliefs they seized on and even more the questions that guided their search reveal the essence of late-Soviet culture and its legacy in post-Soviet Russia.</p><p>To skeptical outsiders the seekers appeared eccentric deviant and above all un-Soviet. Yet they came to their ideas by Soviet sources and Soviet premises. As Joseph Kellner demonstrates their motley beliefs reflect modern values that formed the spiritual core of Soviet ideology among them a high regard for science an informed and generous internationalism and a confidence in humanity to chart its own course. Soviet ideology failed however to unite these values in an overarching vision that could withstand historical change.</p><p>And so as <i>The Spirit of Socialism</i> shows the seekers asked questions raised but not resolved by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Soviet order--questions of epistemic authority of cultural identity and of history's ultimate meaning. Although the Soviet collapse was not the end of history it was a rupture of epochal significance whose fissures extend into our own uncertain era.</p>