Culture of Russia
The struggling new government, which had to focus its efforts on establishing a new administrative system and building up the nation's backwards economy, could not be bothered with attempting to control literature, so studies of folklore thrived.
Finnish scholars collected comparable tales from multiple locales and analyzed their similarities and differences, hoping to trace these epic stories' migration paths.
The RAPP specifically focused on censoring fairy tales and children's literature, believing that fantasies and "bourgeois nonsense" harmed the development of upstanding Soviet citizens.
Apart from expounding on the artistic value of folklore, he stressed that traditional legends and fairy tales showed ideal, community-oriented characters, which exemplified the model Soviet citizen.
[30] Also, Gorky explained that folklore characters expressed high levels of optimism, and therefore could encourage readers to maintain a positive mindset, especially as their lives changed with the further development of Communism.
[25] Apart from circulating government-approved fairy tales and byliny that already existed, during Stalin's rule authors parroting appropriate Soviet ideologies wrote Communist folktales and introduced them to the population.
[51] Following Pushkin's footsteps, a new generation of poets were born, including Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet.
It also produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.
[citation needed] In its further developments, Russian philosophy was always marked by a deep connection to literature and interest in creativity, society, politics and nationalism; cosmos and religion were other primary subjects.
[citation needed] Chastushka, a type of traditional musical Russian poetry, is a single quatrain in trochaic tetrameter with an ABAB or ABCB rhyme scheme.
Russia's relations with the Greek world were hampered by the Mongol invasion, and it is to the isolation arising from this that we must attribute the originality of Slavo-Russian ornamentation, which has a character of its own, quite unlike the Byzantine style and the Romanesque.
[citation needed] In the early 19th century, when neoclassicism and romanticism flourished, famous academic artists focused on mythological and Biblical themes, like Karl Briullov, Orest Kiprensky, Ivan Aivazovsky and Alexander Ivanov.
The realists captured Russian identity in landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries.
[citation needed] The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modernist art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930.
Notable artists from this era include El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Pavel Filonov and Marc Chagall.
[citation needed] However, in the late Soviet era many artists combined innovation with socialist realism including Ernst Neizvestny, Ilya Kabakov, Mikhail Shemyakin, Igor Novikov, Erik Bulatov, and Vera Mukhina.
Among the best known are violinists David Oistrakh and Gidon Kremer,[92][93] cellist Mstislav Rostropovich,[94] pianists Vladimir Horowitz,[95] Sviatoslav Richter,[96] and Emil Gilels,[97] and vocalist Galina Vishnevskaya.
Several notable electronic and experimental composers emerged from the studio, including Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Stanislav Kreichi, Alexander Nemtin, Sándor Kallós, Vladimir Martynov, Alfred Schnittke and one of the pioneers of new age music, Eduard Artemiev.
After the fall of Soviet Union, several electronic music subgenres have emerged from Russia, namely hardbass, drift phonk, dark psytrance, hookah rap, operplugg, sovietwave.
Soviet animators developed a great and unmatched variety of pioneering techniques and aesthetic styles, with prominent directors including Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Fyodor Khitruk and Aleksandr Tatarskiy.
Various online communities formed, and the most popular one grew out of the Russian-speaking users of the California-based blogging platform LiveJournal (which was completely bought out in December 2007 by Russian firm SUP Fabrik).
[128] Russian web design studios, software and web-hosting enterprises offer a variety of services, and the results form a sort of national digital culture.
[211][212] The handcraft Hohloma which originated in the Volga region is made out of wood and depicts numerous plants of the forest, like the berry Viburnum opulus (Russian: Калина, Kalina), flowers and leaves.
[citation needed] Although ice hockey was only introduced during the Soviet era, the national team soon dominated the sport internationally, winning gold at seven of the nine Olympics and 19 of the 30 World Championships they contested between 1954 and 1991.
[246] Major tourist routes in Russia include a travel around the Golden Ring of ancient cities, cruises on the big rivers like Volga, and long journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway.
Diverse regions and ethnic cultures of Russia offer many different food and souvenirs, and show a great variety of traditions, like Russian banya, Tatar Sabantuy, or Siberian shamanist rituals.
[citation needed] Most popular tourist destinations in Russia are Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the current and the former capitals of the country and great cultural centers, recognized as World Cities.
Moscow contains a great variety of impressive Soviet-era buildings along with modern skyscrapers, while Saint Petersburg, nicknamed Venice of the North, boasts of its classical architecture, many rivers, channels and bridges.
Veliky Novgorod, Pskov and the cities of Golden Ring (Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and others) have at best preserved the architecture and the spirit of ancient and medieval Rus', and also are among the main tourist destinations.
[citation needed] Other popular natural destinations include Kamchatka with its volcanoes and geysers, Karelia with its many lakes and granite rocks, Altai with its snowy mountains and Tyva with its wild steppes.
