Happiness and Toska: An Essay in the History of Emotions in Pre‐war Soviet Russia

In: The Australian journal of politics and history: AJPH, Band 50, Heft 3, S. 357-371

Abstract

This article examines the question of what can be gained from an investigation of people's emotions in Stalin's Russia. Such an investigation is inevitably limited by the type of sources available. However, the available sources on Soviet subjectivity provide some evidence of both "official" Soviet emotions (such as enthusiasm and righteous anger against enemies) and less officially prescribed, but widespread, emotions, such as fear, melancholy (toska), malice (zlost') and personal happiness. This article focusses on accounts of happiness (schast'e) and the yearning sadness known as toska, a frequently encountered counterpart of the former. The civic obligation to express public, collective happiness impinged on the capacity to express private happiness: grief and melancholy could be expressed, as long as they were not connected to complaints about the régime.