{"id":524,"date":"2018-11-18T23:06:08","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T04:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/?p=524"},"modified":"2018-11-18T23:06:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T04:06:08","slug":"the-fires-that-forged-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/soviet-aspirations-and-environmental-disasters\/the-fires-that-forged-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fires that Forged Socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Nature, to the burgeoning Soviet Union, is a means to a righteous end. The documentary \u201cMagnitogorsk: Forging the New Man\u201d shows the idea that, when combined with the hard work of men, natural resources can be used to change the world. This is summed up early in the documentary when the narrator says that \u201cIn 1932, the Soviet Union was characterized by two things: idealism and action. The goal: victory for mankind. This idea is shown throughout the film, specifically in the words the subjects of the film and the narrator choose to use, such as using metaphor to combine industry with nationalism: \u201cWorkers brigades are building furnaces for our glorious nation\u201d or how Magnitorosk is frequently defined through its \u201cmagnificence\u201d and \u201cstrength\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Viktor Kalmykov, the prolific worker profiled early in the film, is described as a \u201cnew man forged by socialism.\u201d The use of the word \u2018forged\u2019 is significant because it ties his work manipulating elements of nature to the idea of birthing a new world. An idea central to the Soviet ethos and one creates a complex precedent for how humans are supposed to interact with nature. These terms are not implying a symbiotic relationship, instead they are saying that humans can use nature to make a better world for everyone. While this involves man\u2019s dominion over nature, it is still an idea distinct from a more Cartesian capitalist ethos, where nature is meant to be manipulated for personal gain. No, in Magnitorosk the humans manipulating nature almost seem to mirror nature itself, acting not as individuals thinking primarily of themselves, but rather as parts of a larger process, all working together to keep the Soviet world progressing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This is complimented by Zabolosky\u2019s perspective in <i>I do not look for harmony in nature, <\/i>as this poem shows a perspective of nature as something that is not profound on its own, it is described as something that is \u201cpuny\u2019 and \u201cweary\u201d, This characterization neatly fits into the narrative of Mangitogorsk, that the grandness of nature is not inherent to the natural world, but rather is created by how humans choose to manipulate it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nature, to the burgeoning Soviet Union, is a means to a righteous end. The documentary \u201cMagnitogorsk: Forging the New Man\u201d shows the idea that, when combined with the hard work of men, natural resources can be used to change the world. This is summed up early in the documentary when the narrator says that \u201cIn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":689,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[150,147,149,131,146,148],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-soviet-aspirations-and-environmental-disasters","tag-action","tag-descartes","tag-idealism","tag-nature","tag-soviet-union","tag-strength"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/689"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}