3C: The State and Cultural Change.

Question 1

What was Proletkult?

Answer 1

• Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, argued revolutionary society should be dominated by proletariat culture, i.e. reflective of worker’s experiences.
• wanted to encourage a degree of artistic talent as part of a fulfilling life.
• helped establish Proletkult, proletariat culture movement, from 1918 to encourage collective involvement
• 84,000 members by 1920; access to studios
• independent organisation
• championed by Bukharin
• criticised by Lenin who advocated a universal culture incorporating bourgeois style too over ‘degenerate’ futurism
• Lenin’s suspicion = representatives sent to national congress of proletkult, which voted to merge w/ the commissariat of education; soviet press criticised dissenting artists
• from then on funds diverted to traditional arts

Question 2

Outline the features and branches of Agitprop.

Answer 2

• Department of Agitation Propaganda
• produced by avant-garde artists working for the government (Lenin worried by experimentation)
• Painting and sculpture: El Lissitzky’s ‘BTWWTRW’, reminiscent of suprematist work. 100 agitprop posters produced during civil war, designed to encourage support for the communist party
• revolutionary photography, e.g. Rodchenko’s photomontage
• revolutionary cinema: deemed by Lenin the most important art form, cinema was important to the revolution. Vertov = ‘cinema of fact’/documentary films like ‘A man with a movie camera’; laughed at by pravda for experimental work. Eisenstein = agitational films combining revolutionary messages and experimental techniques; traditional style under Stalin

Question 3

How did the NEP effect art?

Answer 3

• relatively large degree of creative freedom
• preoccupation with civil war = proletkult flourished
• avant garde style attacked as being unable to be understood; art schools attacked as using state funds to encourage debauchery and individualism
• official concerns about contemporary art forms and western influences encouraging promiscuity drunkenness and idleness
• movements celebrating traditional art and the achievements of the soviet union, e.g. the association of artists of revolutionary russia

Question 4

Outline the features of ‘Socialist Realism’ between 1930 and 1953.

Answer 4

• Stalin argued art should reflect government priorities and be accessible to all
• established the Union of Soviet Writers in 1932
• president of USW Ivan Kulik argued it should be true reflection of reality and participate in the building of socialism
• = realistic paintings of working scenes
• = novels w/ accessible plot and socialist themes like Cement, Gladkov, 1924.
• = traditional ballet’s telling epic stories
• artists set targets
• artists celebrated support for/socialist policies like collectivisation and depicted the utopia citizens were working towards
• Stalin praised rousing, heroic music based on folk tales and common instruments
• a small way to dissent was to celebrate Lenin, not Stalin, like Vertov

Question 5

Describe the ‘thaws’ and ‘freezes’ experienced under Khrushchev.

Answer 5

• Khrushchev torn between his desire to include intellectuals and artists in the development of socialism and the fear of instability if ordinary people were given too much cultural freedom
• 1953-54; novels acknowledging generational differences and critiquing stalinism authorised
• 1956; Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone, depicting workers struggle with corrupt gov published
• 1957; classical music of West put back on curriculum
• limits: Dr Zhivago banned, imprisonment of artists like poet Brodsky
• keen to challenge non-conformity by encouraging popular oversight; propaganda poked fun at non-conformists & acknowledged inefficiencies in the economy
• campaigns against style hunters and loose women
• associated modern fashion w/ frivolity decadence and wastefulness so restricted access to 1959 American National exhibition
• 1964-70: consumer spending on clothes tripled
• emergence of Samizdat publications
• dissident artists sent for psychiatric treatment

Question 6

Outline the clashes between artists and the government up to 1985.

Answer 6

• disinterested Brezhnev still recognised political impact of culture and eager not to expose difficulties of life in soviet union as K had
• attempted to revive nostalgia
• obedient functionaries, loyal oppositionists, dissidents (Piero Ostellino)
• internationally renowned Bolshoi Ballet performed Spartacus
• 1966: Sinyavsky-Daniel ‘show trial’ after KGB report indicates concerning anti-communist writings
• persecution = international outrage so artists released and emigration encouraged instead. h/e 7-8000 artists still receiving repressive treatment by early 1970’s
• 1968 Prague Spring =soviet army crushes support for freedom and end of communist rule in Czechoslovakia = pressure on artists to conform = more pronounced trend towards nostalgia
• bulldozers raids and psychiatric treatment couldn’t stamp out thriving underground art scene