Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City

Using public storytelling as driving force, this book explores everyday social moralities relating to stories of sex, crime, violence, and nightlife in the 1920s city space. Focusing on capitalist New York, communist Odessa, and colonial Bombay, Mark D. Steinberg taps in to the global dimension of complex everyday moral anxiety that was prevalent in a vital and troubled decade.

Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombaycompares and connects stories of the street in three compelling cosmopolitan port cities. It offers novel insights into significant and varied areas of study, including city life, sex, prostitution, jazz, dancing, gangsters, criminal undergrounds, cinema, ethnic and racial experiences and conflicts, prohibition and drinking, street violence, ’hooliganism’ and other forms of ’deviance’ in the contexts of capitalism, colonialism, communism, and nationalism.

The book tells the stories of moralizers: empowered and insistent critics of deviance driven to investigate, interpret, and interfere with how people lived and played. Beside them, not always comfortably, were the policemen and journalists who enforced and documented these efforts. It also reveals the histories of women and men, mostly working class and young, who were observed and categorized: those judged to be wayward, disreputable, disorderly, debauched, and wild. Steinberg explores this global culture war and the everyday moral improvisations-shaped by experiences of class, generation, gender, ethnicity, and race-that came with it.

Mark D. Steinbergis Professor of History at the University of Illinois, USA. He is the author of several books, including A History of Russia (9th Ed., 2018; co-authored with Nicholas V. Riasanovsky), The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921 (2017) and Petersburg Fin de Siècle (2011). His books have been translated into Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. He is also the co-editor of volumes such as Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2011; with Valeria Sobol) and Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies(2008; with Catherine Wanner).