3.3 Arts & Culture

Question 1

aims of early Bolsheviks

Answer 1

construct new culture to replace bourgeois values
‘new Soviet man’

Question 2

Avant-garde

Answer 2

radical new movements, Futurism + Constructivism (abstract, futuristic world…)
focus on visual arts due to low literacy rates
too intellectual = inaccessible

Question 3

Alexander Rodchenko

Answer 3

most famous avant-garde photographer
made posters for Soviet gov. celebrating Revolution & for companies’ advertising during NEP
founder of Constructivism

Question 4

Mayakovksy

Answer 4

poet + designer
made posters depicting horrors of Tsarist times & encouraging support of Red Army
disliked Socialist Realism so much he committed suicide 1930

Question 5

Agitprop, 1920

Answer 5

Department of Agitation + Propaganda, 1920
Produced 100 posters during Civil War by avant-garde artists
poster art exciting & innovative form of propaganda
Very experimental

Question 6

Prolekult

Answer 6

Bodganov & Lunacharsky
Culture for proletariat produced by the state, focused on collective & workers
e.g 1920 reenactment of Storming of Winter palace involved >8000 people
Shut down early 1920s, hard to control and expressed too many viewpoints

Question 7

Commissariat of Enlightenment 1921

Answer 7

Ministry of Culture 1921
Reversed Tsarist oppression on arts
supported Fellow Travellers, well-liked by artists

Question 8

Fellow Travellers

Answer 8

artists sympathetic to Bolsheviks
removed & replaced late 1920s during Cultural Revolution

Question 9

‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’

Answer 9

Poster by El Lissitzky, 1918
Portrayed red triangle breaking ‘perfect sphere of capitalism’; represented piercing of the corrupt ideas that had dominated previously

Question 10

October, 1927

Answer 10

film by Eisenstein
dramatised events of October revolution

Question 11

Stalin’s view of art

Answer 11

revolutionary art should reflect gov priorities rather than individual ones
should be easy to understand by general public
dislike of avant-garde

Question 12

Cultural Revolution, late 1920s

Answer 12

full-scale attack on traditional culture by Komsomol & RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian writers)
replacement of Fellow Travellers
due to growing pressure (power struggle…)

Question 13

Socialist Realism, 1932

Answer 13

portrayed idealised life under socialism to inspire work
romanticised peasant life to avoid discontent
made farmers and workers focus of art
Pasternak gave up writing as protest
Babel: “genre of silence”

Question 14

Zdhanovschina

Answer 14

High Stalinism: anti-western propaganda movement by Zdhanov (Leningrad Party leader)
encouraged Cold War xenophobia, restricted freedom in arts
remove aspects of bourgeois culture

Question 15

‘Morning of our Motherland’

Answer 15

painting by Shurpin, 1949
USSR as utopia with Stalin looking forward to future, implying even greater developments
depicts collectivisation & industrialisation

Question 16

‘They Are Writing About Us In Pravda’

Answer 16

painting by Alexei Vasilev, 1951
unrealistic, plentiful harvests
to inspire population to work

Question 17

Moscow Underground

Answer 17

rebuilt after 1945
‘Stalinist Baroque’
elaborated murals, chandeliers…
extravagant display of workers’ efforts

Question 18

Khrushchev and art

Answer 18

alliance between gov and artists but inconsistent approach
legalised Jazz 1957

Question 19

Stilyagi

Answer 19

‘style hunters’
counter-culture 1950s-60s
soviet youth inspired by western fashion & music

Question 20

‘Doctor Zhivago’

Answer 20

novel by Pasternak
critical of Lenin
1958 Nobel Prize for Literature
refused publication in USSR but smuggled abroad & published 1957
banned until 1980s

Question 21

Pasternak

Answer 21

1958 Nobel Prize for Literature
embarrassed Khrushchev so he denied permission to travel to Sweden to accept it
international humiliation for gov

Question 23

New technology

Answer 23

made dissidence harder to control (gov can’t oversee media production/publication)
Magnitizdat: tape recorder self-publishing (e.g Galich: guitar-poet who spoke to socially alienated)

Question 24

Isaac Babel

Answer 24

writer 1020s-30s
shot during purges, died 1940
banned works published during Kh’s
critical of socialist Realism

Question 25

Solzhenitsyn

Answer 25

most high-profile dissident Russian nationalist writer 'One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' 1962 'The Gulag Archipelago' 1968 described gulag horrors expelled from RAPP 1969, exiled to USA 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature 1970

Question 26

Brezhnev's aims for art

Answer 26

more conservative and consistent, thought experimental art undermined public good absence of terror meant open defiance 70s distinct ethos in society: chastity, tradition...

Question 27

Social Conservatism

Answer 27

sexual themes more threatening than political ones concerned with growing consumerism & frivolity Brezhnev wanted to restore interest in heroic days

Question 28

Bulldozer Exhibition

Answer 28

Rukhin & Rabin hosted unofficial, abstract exhibition outdoors 1975 gov hired hooligans & bulldozers to destroy it event filmed + leaked to foreign press, gov embarrased allowed to reopen

Question 29

Dissident Movement

Answer 29

caused bad publicity with the west viewed as self-indulgent hard to control "good" rewarded with privileges, "bad" punished with unemployment/disciplinary warnings from gov

Question 30

Trial of Joseph Brodsky

Answer 30

unlicensed poet at underground gatherings arrested sentenced to 5 years; 'parasitism' & 'anti-Soviet' -> warning to independent artists courts smuggled abroad, campaigns for his release, free after 2 years

Question 31

Vysotsky

Answer 31

guitar-poet, controversial role model gov worried that youth liked songs about sex and delinquency thousands showed up to his funeral 1980