Stalin's Modernization in the Context of Post-Imperial Cultural Situation

The article analyses the specificity of the Soviet modernization in terms of multiple modernity theories taking into account the role of traditions as factors of modernization. Considering the theory of Imperial modernization of the sociologist Arnason, the author proves reformatting Imperial complex in connection with the objectives of Stalin's modernization in the situation of the Russian Empire collapse. The expansion of the Soviet project into the global space is justified by the mission of new socialist culture and rhetoric of competition with the Western world. Imperial structures were the ways for the Soviet cultural model to dominate in the world. The Stalinist modernzation’s global mission triggered the ambitious intention to synthesize the trends of modernization process, originally radiated; then, at the turn of 1920–1930-ies, the paradigm of modernism was shifted to neotraditionalism and showed the differences between formal traditionalist discourse and objective processes in culture and art (music, cinema, visual art) of the Stalinist period.