The Soviet Culture Struggle 1917-32 Through the Lens of the Breshnev Administration. A historiographic study.

This Masters thesis is a historiographic study, which aim is to investigate how the Brezhnev administration 1964-82 describes the events taking place during the soviet cultural struggle 1917-32. The investigation is limited to how some of the literary groups, organisations and currents as well as a small number of Russian writers are viewed by the administration. The third and last edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which is considered as equivalent with the soviet official view, is used as source. The analysis made in this thesis is divided in two parts; the text analysis of the writers biographies is compared with the result of a discourse analysis, whose target is some of the literary groups, organisations and currents during the topical period. The discourse analysis is a pre-analysis, but its conclusions also have a value in itself. A historiographic theory concerning different use of history is applied to the result of the analysis. The thesis results indicate an ideological use of history, where some writers´ history is rationalized to fit into the theoretical frame of the cultural revolution and where the destiny of writers who was killed in Stalins purges during the 1930s is concealed. In comparison to that the encyclopedia openly reveals the destiny of a least one writer who was executed by the Bolsheviks during the 1920s.Uppsatsnivå: