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Work Flows: Stalinist Liquids in Russian Labor Culture

Online ISBN:
9781501773693
Print ISBN:
9781501773679
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

Work Flows: Stalinist Liquids in Russian Labor Culture

Maya Vinokour
Maya Vinokour
New York University
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Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
15 February 2024
Online ISBN:
9781501773693
Print ISBN:
9781501773679
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

This book investigates the emergence of “flow” as a crucial metaphor within Russian labor culture since 1870. The book frames concern with fluid channeling as immanent to vertical power structures—whether that verticality derives from the state, as in Stalin's Soviet Union and present-day Russia, or from the proliferation of corporate monopolies, as in the contemporary Anglo-American West. Originating in pre-revolutionary bio-utopianism, the Russian rhetoric of liquids and flow reached an apotheosis during Stalin's First Five-Year Plan and re-emerged in post-Soviet “managed democracy” and Western neoliberalism. The literary, philosophical, and official texts that the book examines give voice to the Stalinist ambition of reforging not merely individual bodies, but space and time themselves. By mobilizing the understudied thematic of fluidity, the book offers insight into the nexus of philosophy, literature, and science that underpinned Stalinism and remains influential today. The book demonstrates that Stalinism is not a historical phenomenon restricted to the period 1922–1953, but a symptom of modernity as it emerged in the twentieth century. Stalinism's legacy extends far beyond the bounds of the former Soviet Union, emerging in seemingly disparate settings like post-Soviet Russia and Silicon Valley.

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