This book highlights the role which images of national identity, gender politics, youth culture and the interaction of public and private consciousness have played in the formation of cultural forms in the USSR and post-communist Russia.

Introduction :why cultural studies? / Catriona Kelly [and others] -- 'Revolutionary' models for high literature : resisting poetics / Peter Kenez, David Shepherd -- Culture and crisis : the intelligentsia and literature after 1953 / Stephen Lovell, Rosalind Marsh -- Performing culture : theatre / Birgit Beumers -- Music in the Socialist state / Anna Ferenc -- Soviet music after the death of Stalin : the legacy of Shostakovich / Gerard McBurney -- Building a new reality : the visual arts, 1921-1953 / Catriona Kelly, Robin Milner-Gulland -- The art of the political poster / Stephen White -- Cinema / Julian Graffy -- The media as social engineer / Frank Ellis -- Creating a consumer : advertising and commercialization / Catriona Kelly -- The retreat from dogmatism : populism under Khrushchev and Brezhnev / Catriona Kelly -- Religion and orthodoxy / Jane Ellis -- Russian culture and emigration, 1921-1953 / Catriona Kelly -- Sexuality / Mark Banting, Catriona Kelly, James Riordan -- Gender angst in Russian society and cinema in the post-Stalin era / Lynne Attwood -- 'The future is ours' : youth culture in Russia, 1953 to the present / Hilary Pilkington -- Conclusion : towards post-Soviet pluralism? Postmodernism and beyond / Catriona Kelly, David Shepherd, Stephen White.