The Other Side of the Picture: Soviet City & Countryside in 1930s Britain

For foreign visitors to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the cities of Moscow and Leningrad were often the first point of contact with the living Soviet world. Many of these travellers arrived in the Soviet Union with certain ideas about searching for and finding the ‘truth’ of Soviet life. The binary of ‘city and countryside’ was significant for this search: the cities were conceptualised as managed spaces of Soviet cultural diplomacy, whilst the countryside was where the ‘real Russians’ lived.

Nick Hall's talk will explore this binary to show how, even in the face of complex, nuanced experiences and encounters in both urban and rural environments alike, the concept of a divide between city and countryside was a powerful discursive tool for travellers as they sought to explain the Soviet world.