Joseph Kellner, The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2025), 258 pp. Joseph Kellner’s The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse traces the outlines of what the author terms “the seeking phenomenon”—a highly visible search for meaning that millions of Soviet and post-Soviet citizens embarked upon in the years leading up to and following the collapse of the Soviet Union. With a focus on Russia, the book tr...
