State and cultural change 1917-85

Proletkult

• proletarian culture movement- independent of CP, aim to create movement outside of bourgeoisie

• Est. by Lunacharsky- People’s Commissar for enlightenment

• by 1920- 300 studios to paint, sculpt, write plays

• Publication of Gorn (Furnance)- showcased work of proletarian artists

How many members did proletkult have by 1920?

around 84,000

support of key party members- Bukharin, Lunacharsky

when and why did Proletkult lose its independence and merged into Commissariat of Education?

• October 1920

• Lenin suspicious of Proletkult

  • believed dominated by enemies of state e.g anarchists

  • associations w/ futurism- too avant-garde for working people to understand (belief best art was universal)

  • threatened success of rev- independent from govt

Constructivism

• Vladmir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko

• art w/ a purpose (functional)- posters, buildings, furniture

Suprematism

• led by Kazimir Malevich

• abstract shapes and colours

• aim to reflect spirit of revolution- El lissitsky ‘Beat the whites with the red wedge’

Film under Lenin

• Sergei Eisenstien used montage in ‘Battleship Potemkin’ 1925

• Dziga Vertov- ‘Man with a movie camera’ - urban life 1929= ‘Kino-Pravda’- truth film

generally- greater freedom of the arts under Lenin

Agitprop

• clear messages for the illiterate

• ROSTA windows- cartoons and small captions to display revolutionary news

• AGIT- TRAIN/BOAT- travelled across Russia showing plays, films- brought revolutionary ideas to rural villages

• agit-train e.g ‘October revolution’

• (likely inflated statistics)- total audience of 2million claimed for boats and trains from 1919-20

Stalin’s cultural revolution

• 1st 5YP 1928-32 - ‘Cultural offensive’ against ‘bourgeois specialists’

• RAPP attacked ‘elitist artists’

• Komsomol policed theatres and studios- professionals denounced or exiled

When did socialist realism begin to appear, and what was held up as an example?

• 1930

• Fyodor Gladkov’s 1924 novel ‘Cement’- group of workers who had played role in civil war reconstruct cement factory

Socialist realism

• Stalin suspicious of avant-garde/experimental techniques

Govt actions towards socialist realism

• April 1932 decree- abolished independent artistic groups- state unions for writers e,g Union of Soviet writers

• 1934- first congress of Soviet writers- defined art should be

  • Truthful, historically accurate, show life as it ‘is’ under socialism- optimistic, heroic, party led

Examples of socialist realism

• Fedor Shurpin’s ‘Morning of Our motherland’ 1949

• industrial gigantism, cult of the little man

• Eisenstein’s ‘October’

Zhdanovshchina

1946-48

Brief liberalisation cracked down- cultural crackdown

• Anna Akhmatova/ Zoshchenko- writers banned or publicly criticized

• Composers e.g Prokofiev attacked for being too experimental (formalism)

Stalinist classicism

• architecture- Seven sisters in Moscow

• Stalin glorified in parades (generalissimo)

Kenez on early Soviet art

‘the regime provided the myths, and the artists the iconography’

1st Cultural thaw under Khrushchev

• 1953-54- following Stalin’s death- govt allowed publication of new works of literature

• Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel ‘The Thaw’ (1954)

  • revolutionary- portrayed soviet people as flawed and emotional unlike Socialist realism

2nd Cultural thaw under Khrushchev

• 1956-7, following 1956 secret speech

• cultural liberalisation

• ‘Not by bread alone’- Vladimir Dudintsev: engineer invents new machine but faces constant challenge from party bureaucrats- spoke to real frustrations of soviet people

3rd cultural thaw

• 1961-2, following removal of Stalin’s body from Red square (reburied at Kremlin Wall Necropolis)

• number of books published critical of Stalin’s rule

  • One day of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn- critical of Stalin and gulags

Evidence of cultural ‘freezes’

• Reaction of govt to ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1957) by Boris Pasternak (subtle criticisms of revolution

• Pasternak was expelled from the writers union, state forced him to decline Nobel Prize (1958), state media launched propaganda campaign against him - ‘traitor to socialism’

• Cultural thaws had limits- only temp softening of control

‘Popular oversight’- encouraged citizens to challenge non-conformist behaviour

• ‘The lazy bureaucrat’ 1961

• ‘The alcoholic’ 1959

• graphic designers e.g Denisovsky

• policing of morals by fellow citizens

‘Stilyaga’

• ‘style hunters’- campaign against young women who wore Western fashion- K claimed frivolous and wasteful

• some arrested for ‘hooliganism’

  • films and newspapers presented as comedic villains e.g ‘a sold soul’ poster

• official campaigns against ‘loose women’

• Tolerated degree of freedom of expression but not non-conformity

evidence Brezhnev had abandoned cultural liberalisation

1964- arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel, authors arrested for producing ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’

satirical stories published in West about life in Soviet union

Sinyavsky-Daniel trial of 1966- essentially a show trial, both sent to labour camps

Failure of attempts to ridicule non-conformity under Brezhnev

• 1977 ‘An office romance’- ridiculed young workers for provocative clothing

• but - audience identified with her-

  • mass hit: 58.4mill viewers 1978

  • normalised western clothing

Brodsky

• 1964 arrested and charged with ‘social paratism’

• trial- defended role of poet as moral guide, not servant of the state

• sent to Serbsky psychiatric institute

• forced into exile 1972

Moscow conceptualists

published irony ‘samizdat’ lit about dullness of life in USSR

1974- Bulldozer exhibition- works that looked like official propaganda

Brezhnev era- Mitki collective

• secret shows in Leningrad- exposing hypocrisy of Communist officials

• Dmitry ‘Mitya’ Shagin- encouraged followers to reject system by wearing shabby clothing and drinking cheap wine