Ebook: Constructing Soviet Cultural Policy: Cybernetics and Governance in Lithuania after World War II

Linköping: Linköping University, Department for Studies of Social Change and Culture, 2008 — 280 p. — ISBN 978-91-7393-879-2 (Linköping University); ISBN 978-91-89315-92-1 (Södertörns högskola).
After World War I, the Soviet Union was one of the first modern states to engage explicitly in the governance of culture, which was formalised and institutionalised as state cultural policy. In this process of governance, sciences and technologies provided the state with conceptual and material resources, which were used to define both the process and the object of governance. After World War II, scientific and technological progress gave birth to a new science of control and communication, Norbert Wiener's cybernetics, which was widely used not only in engineering, but also in the conceptualisation of humans, machines and societies. This thesis explores how cybernetics influenced the construction of cultural policy in the Soviet Union. It focuses particularly on the Soviet republic of Lithuania. The main argument is that since the 1950s a particularly powerful discourse of cybernetic governance was formed in the Soviet Union. A result of translation from techno-science, this discourse not only served the purposes of authoritarian rule, but was also used as a resource by cultural operators to criticise the Soviet government itself. By analysing organisational practices and official and public discourses, the study reveals the complexity of the relationship between governance, culture and sciences and technologies.Contents.
Prologue: A Journey into the Soviet Governance of Culture.
Historical Background.
The Economic Configuration of Soviet Cultural Policy.
Cybernetic Management: Setting the Preconditions for the Scientific Governance of Culture.
Cybernetic Rationalisation of Culture: From Knowledge to Steering.
From Hope to Discontent: Soviet Cultural Policy in the Grip of the Scientific-Technical Revolution.
Cultural Policy in Conflict with Calculating Communism.
Conclusions.