This dissertation illuminates the Sovietization and popularization of ballet in the 1920s through the 1950s. Through examination of ballet libretti, photographs, and film fragments, I analyze three versions of the ballet The Red Poppy (1927, 1949, 1957) at the State Academic Bolshoi Theater of the Soviet Union to show how the ballet repertoire from one of the former Imperial Theaters of Opera and Ballet changed as artists and administrators made ballet "Soviet." The Soviet government and Communist Party invested significant human, financial, and other material resources in artistic production for the purposes of politically educating and enlightening mass audiences. This pedagogical imperative brought about the conditions of possibility for Soviet artists and administrators to create out of their imperial inheritance a form of popular culture. I argue that Soviet ballet's accessibility and popularity were the result of a combination of audience development strategies that engaged working-class audiences and changes in ballet repertoire. This project interrogates the complex dynamics among state sponsorship, ideological oversight, and artistic practice. I examine archival institutional records, including contemporary discussions about ballet and ballet production processes. These sources reveal that ballet production was highly collaborative, and dancers (including women) were vocal participants in the processes. I argue that the Bolshoi artists of this period were committed to the pedagogical mandate for Soviet arts, and they used their professional expertise to develop genre-specific strategies to make ballet more accessible to mass audiences. Combining serious subject matter, well-developed characters, strong plotlines, and storytelling through dance, I contend that Soviet ballets of this period paved the way for productions of even greater psychological complexity: the through-danced ballets of the Thaw era and beyond. In this way, the most restrictive decades of socialist realism proved generative for the genre of ballet. This dissertation contributes deeper understandings of artists' integration into the Soviet cultural project, creative responses to socialist realism, collaborative creativity, dancers' agency and women's agency in ballet production, change over time in ballet's methods of corporeal storytelling, and the construction of twentieth-century popular culture.

Romanian archaeology was first institutionalized as a part of the Romanian state and government at the foundation of the Romanian Academy in 1866. Its induction as an institution within the Romanian Academy came before many natural sciences, demonstrating the importance of archaeology in the creation of the Romanian nation. From the moment of institutionalization, Romanian archaeology played a pivotal role in the creation of the literal boundaries of the Romanian state and the metaphysical boundaries of Romanian ethnicity. Romanian archaeologists adopted culture-historical archaeological theory, which offered a unilinear narrative of human history based on the divisions of ethnic and cultural groupings across all time and space. This theory arose from a political landscape shaped by nationalism – where national revolutions began dividing of the parts of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe into nation-states – as well as the development and privileging of scientific racism across Europe. It was not until the end of World War II and the creation of the Romanian People’s Republic (RPR) governed by the Communist Party that challenges to culture-historical archaeology arose in the Romanian archaeological community and specifically within the Romanian Academy. The RPR government, led by Romanian doctor and scientist C.I. Parhon who was also named the first RPR head of state, restructured the Romanian Academy, renaming it the RPR Academy Within the RPR Academy many Romanian archaeologists continued to apply and adhere to culture-historical archaeological theory, but Parhon and other administrative leaders within the RPR Academy insisted that Marxist-Leninist archaeological theory be privileged. Marxist-Leninist archaeological theory was also a unilinear theory of human history based on the divisions of class across all time and space. Because of the unilinear nature of both theories, they were in conflict with one another. In Romanian archaeology, however, adherents of culture-historical archaeological theory and Marxist-Leninist archaeological theory existed and worked in the RPR Academy, collaborating together, and constructing a new theoretical paradigm that combined culture-historical and Marxist-Leninist archaeological theories. This dissertation argues for calling this collaborative new theory practiced in communist Romania “complex archaeological theory.”