In the annals of Soviet historiography, discord and rebellion mark the cultural form of the Khrushchev Thaw. Following the U.S.S.R.s loss of its Great Leader in 1953, a diffusion of political authority met a re-evaluation of established ideology; the dominant discourse of Soviet socialism shifted and, through the subsequent clash of orthodox and liberal forces, imparted a critical aesthetic to 1950s Soviet culture. But while the narrative of dissonance privileged by most historical texts cites the sharpness of post-Stalinist art, poetry, and literature as external evidence of a struggle, little attention has been paid to the internal logic of cultural production. Soviet cultural communication based itself on a mutual mythology that pursued both a dialogue of inclusivity and a sense of accountability. By re-examining how producers of culture managed their responsibilities to the state, to the public, and to their art against the Soviet ideal of the collective and its discourse of comradely persuasion, this thesis pursues the expression of Soviet thought by way of Soviet ideology in the malleable discourse of 1953-1958. / Graduate / 0582 / 0724

In the annals of Soviet historiography, discord and rebellion mark the cultural form of the “Khrushchev Thaw.” Following the U.S.S.R.’s loss of its Great Leader in 1953, a diffusion of political authority met a re-evaluation of established ideology; the dominant discourse of Soviet socialism shifted and, through the subsequent clash of orthodox and liberal forces, imparted a critical aesthetic to 1950s Soviet culture. But while the narrative of dissonance privileged by most historical texts cites the sharpness of post-Stalinist art, poetry, and literature as external evidence of a struggle, little attention has been paid to the internal logic of cultural production. Soviet cultural communication based itself on a mutual mythology that pursued both a dialogue of inclusivity and a sense of accountability. By re-examining how producers of culture managed their responsibilities to the state, to the public, and to their art against the Soviet ideal of the collective and its discourse of comradely persuasion, this thesis pursues the expression of Soviet thought by way of Soviet ideology in the malleable discourse of 1953-1958. / Graduate / 0582 / 0724

This thesis constitutes the first comparative study of the phenomenon of alternative art galleries functioning during the 1970s in two neighbouring state socialist regimes, namely, the German Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Poland. Firmly contextualised in the cultural-political climate of Honecker's and Gierek's quasi-liberalisation, it examines the socio-cultural function of non-conformist exhibition spaces and focuses, specifically, on two case studies: Galerie Arkade in East Berlin and Galeria/Repassage in Warsaw. By looking at a wide variety of practices produced in those spaces, this thesis investigates the commonalities and differences in how the galleries operated and how they related to the divergent post-Stalinist conditions. For instance, due to more repressive cultural-politics in the GDR, it proved more difficult to accommodate experimental practices in Arkade, since even exhibiting abstract art was problematic for the East German officials. Conversely, in Poland Gierek's liberalisation resulted in the state's limited acceptance of radical artistic practices such as performance and conceptual art but only in the marginal spaces of artist-run galleries. Despite their alternative status, the galleries were, to a certain degree, dependent administratively and financially on these socialist institutions and were at the same time exposed to surveillance by the state security services. These aspects of galleries' activities are often neglected and so to remedy this lack this thesis offers new perspectives on and insights into various aspects of the functioning of alternative culture in this region. The originality of this research lies also in its references to new archival material which has not been published, nor interpreted before. The interpretation of these rich primary sources makes use of a new theoretical framework that combines Michel Foucault's theory of heterotopia in a macro-level analysis and Henri Lefebvre's ideas on the social production of space in a micro-level analysis. In particular, the galleries' histories are seen in this thesis as intertwined with the advancing process of disintegration of state socialism in the Eastern Bloc as this was perceptible to varying degree in different socialist states. Accordingly, it argues that the galleries were symptomatic of and, simultaneously, contributed through various practices to the 'post-socialist condition'.