Cultural dimension of revolution: new images of man

The turning points of the history are characterized by people’s active participation in one of the most natural for the man social activity - the creation of new self-images. Being incorporated in these images, people are able to realize their involvement in social events. The new ideas and meanings acquire “corporality” in the new images of man and get accumulated in them becoming the reality accessible for the majority of people. Being revealed in the images of people, new ideas obtain real bodies, penetrate to the living tissue of culture, transform into reality, which can be perceived. Man uses their body as a tool for coding significant cultural meanings. The rules of behavior, public manners, the elements of appearance and clothing become the material signs of nonmaterial ideas. They transform into the complex distinguishing system, which allows for the consolidation of people with similar viewpoints. The creation of new visual images comes in hand with the experiments in the field of creating a new language. The authors demonstrate the appearance and creation of such images using the examples of Great French revolution, the revolutionary transformations of Post-reform Russia, Great Russian revolution, cultural revolution of the Chinese People’s Republic. M.M. Zagorulko and I.A. Petrova represent common theoretical approaches to the analysis of cultural revolutions of the New Time and Modern period, to understanding the principles of interaction between the “old” and the “new” in culture. I.A. Petrova carries out analysis of theoretical disputes of A.V. Lunacharsky and A.A. Bogdanov about the possibility of constructing “pure proletarian culture”. I.K. Cheremushnikova proves the significance of emblematic images in the culture, the connection between body self-representation and the privileged meanings, adopted during the revolution; she represents numerous examples of man becoming the carrier of new cultural meanings in the process of self-representation.