On Monday 21 of January the Cross-Disciplinary Workshop took place, organised by the Faculty of Humanities. It is an annual event on a cross-disciplinary theme from the field of humanities. This year it focused on communism, analysed from a multidisciplinary perspective.
The event was opened by Dr Paola lo Cascio (UB), who provided a historical introduction to the Russian Revolution and the birth of the USSR, underlining both its plural impact (there is not only one type of communism, but various types of communism) as well as the social and political conditions that allowed for the success and consolidation of an ideology that Karl Marx initially set out for a model of industrial society and which ended up becoming introduced into a fully agrarian society.
Subsequently, Dr Xavier Baró, a history professor from the Faculty of Humanities at UIC Barcelona analysed the relationships and confluences between the communism of Stalin (USSR) and Mao Tse-Tung (China), as well as its impact on the Balkans, particularly Albania, a country where Dr Baró undertook part of his research.
The next session was given by Dr Jose Manuel Rúa (UB), who provided an overview of the successes and failures of Russian communism throughout its history from an economic perspective, from the time prior to the Russian Revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Full professor from the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, Dr Alberto Estévez, focused his talk on the impact of communism on art, especially on the suprematist movement (Malevich). He also described Russian constructivism as the driving force behind artistic creativity that was overwhelmingly affected by the propagandistic interests of Stalin’s regime.
The event ended with talks from Dr Josep Puigsech (UAB), who analysed the impact of communism in Catalonia and how it took root in the politics and trade union panorama, and a talk from Dr Ferran Saez Mateu (URL) who talked about the anthropological error involving adopting the ideal of the noble savage in the soviet hero.
