1. Utopian Visions: The Soviet Experience through the Arts
Jan Plamper, Simon Huxtable

2. Week 8 Outline

3. Utopian Visions: Week 8
Socialist Realism: How did we get there?

4. Utopian Visions: Week 8 Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
Socialist Realism: The Basics

5. Utopian Visions: Week 8 Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
Socialist Realism: The Basics
Socialist Realism in situ

6. Utopian Visions: Week 8 Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
Socialist Realism: The Basics
Socialist Realism in situ
Exporting Socialist Realism

7. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
From here…
Kazimir
Malevich,
Suprematist
Composition –
White on White,
1918

8. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
…to here
Boris
Vladimirskii,
Roses for
Stalin,
1949

9. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
From here…
Vladimir Tatlin,
Monument to the
Third International,
1919

10. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
…to here
Vera Mukhina,
The Worker and the
Kolkhoz Woman,
1937

11. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
From here…
Konstantin
Melnikov’s
Rusakov
Workers’
Club, 1928

12. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
…to here
Moscow
State
University

13. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
From here…
Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

14. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
…to here
(at 1:08)
Mikhail Chiaureli, The Fall of Berlin,

15. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
From here…
(at 8:00)
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony no. 2, October (1927)

16. Socialist Realism: How did we get there?
…to here
(at 2:30)
Red Army Choir

17. Socialist Realism: Rupture or continuity?

18. Socialist Realism: The Basics 1
1932: Stalin decree ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations’  vast array of literary, art etc. associations dissolved; small number of all-Soviet unions (one for each sector of the arts) established  organisation and financing of cultural production put on a new footing

19. Socialist Realism: The Basics 1
1932: writer Maxim Gorky ( ) returns to Soviet Union

20. Socialist Realism: The Basics 1
1934 Writers’ Congress: writers and delegates discuss Soviet literature

21. Socialist Realism: The Basics 2
What was it? A doctrine? A style?

22. Socialist Realism: The Basics 2
All of the above. (1) Away from abstraction, back to mimesis

23. Socialist Realism: The Basics 2
(2) Tenets of ‘accessibility’ (dostupnost'), ‘the spirit of the people’ (narodnost‘), and ‘the spirit of the party’ (partiinost')

24. Socialist Realism: The Basics 2
(3) ‘National in form, socialist in content’ – Stalin, 1934

25. Socialist Realism: The Basics 2
‘Comrade Stalin has called our writers engineers of human souls. What does this mean? What duties does the title confer upon you? In the first place, it means knowing life so as to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, not to depict it in a dead, scholastic way, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development’. – Andrei Zhdanov, 1934

26. Socialist Realism: The Basics 3
Often defined by its Other, bourgeois formalism

27. Socialist Realism: The Basics 3
Find middle-ground between poles of bad naturalism (=hyper-realist) and bad formalism (=abstraction) dialectics

28. Socialist Realism: Dialectics
Naturalist ‘thesis’, Isaak Brodsky’s Stalin, 1937
Formalist ‘antithesis’, Pavel Filonov’s Stalin, 1936

29. Socialist Realism: Dialectics
Socialist realist ‘synthesis’, Alexander Gerasimov’s Stalin, 1939

30. Socialist Realism: The Basics 4
Predecessors, e.g. in visual arts: Wanderers and Realists of AKhR (Association of Artists of the Revolution, founded in 1922) Socialist Realist Isaak Brodsky, painted by Wanderer Ilya Repin, 1913

31. Socialist Realism in situ 1
1949 Art Soviet discussion of N. N. Yerushev’s painting V. I. Lenin’s Funeral on Red Square: POKARZHEVSKY: Don’t you have eyes? Then there is Stalin’s face. You should have shown the face and the body in the center, but you have the balustrade and snow-covered fir tree branches at front center. That is your center. And no people to be seen Lenin can hardly be made out. After all, this is a picture, you should remember that Lenin is surrounded by people, friends, you should have made them stand out. Tone down the snow, you should have made a gray day and more light on the faces.--The picture is unsuccessful. Its main flaw is that there are no people and no faces

32. Socialist Realism in situ 1 cont’d
PLASTOV: Comrade Yerushev, what happened on that woeful day? The leader died, next to him stands another leader, Stalin, stand comrades, comrades-in-arms, soldiers, stands the entire Russian people And how are you solving this question? You are solving it, it seems to me, without an understanding of the moment and the faces that you are depicting. How are you composing? In the foreground, you devote one-third of the composition to the most motionless [element] in the composition--the balustrade, the branches, the smoke, etc. The main, key elements--Stalin, Kalinin, Dzerzhinsky, and other comrades-in-arms of Lenin--cannot be seen It is confusing. Then you begin searching--who is standing there? That is probably Stalin--yes, it is him And altogether you get neither the people, nor the atmosphere in which this is taking place, nor the people behind these leaders, nor the leaders in front of the people

33. Socialist Realism in situ 1 cont’d
Furthermore, regarding the psychology of those present: Stalin’s face should express the sorrow of a great man about a genius who has passed away, and how have you expressed this? You have not. All we see is a man with a lowered head, and so forth. On to Dzerzhinsky. It is impossible to see his face, how he looked. Even his felt boots are better drawn than his head. The people who are coming up, the simple people, how have you painted them? Very superficially, very dryly, without any details of what they felt, with what kinds of eyes they looked at the terrible grief that had struck the country. Whichever spot you look at, you find low-quality drawing, a lack of precision, or an inability to express the emotion that you undoubtedly felt in the most authentic and sincere way. I think it would help if you worked on this theme more thoroughly Do keep in mind that you have chosen an exceptional moment in the history of the country, in the history of mankind, and all of a sudden you approach this moment somewhat mechanically. I do not think this is right.

34. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
Simple, widely understandable reading, viewing, listening

35. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
Simple, widely understandable reading, viewing, listening
Example: censorship. Censorship institution Glavlit established in s move from elimination of heterodox meanings to purging of multiple meanings (polyseme)  goal: monoseme

36. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
Kirov statue in Petrozavodsk, Karelia

37. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
‘In addition to everything said [above] I will mention one more fact, which, in my opinion, must be seen at least as an act of serious negligence, if not as conscious wrecking or political hooliganism. In ... Petrozavodsk on Freedom Square a monument [in honor of] S. M. Kirov was erected in Fall The monument’s pose is not characteristic of S. M. Kirov at all. Besides that, he stands with his back turned toward Karl Marx Avenue (main street) and the House of Folk Art, and with his face toward the city bania; when looking at the statue from the angle of the entrance to the summer garden, one hand, which points forward with a stretched-out index finger (the other, left hand [rests] in the pocket of the pants), creates the impression of male genitals. When I reported this to Irklis he merely burst out laughing, suggesting that it is not worth paying attention to all sorts of trifles.’ Denunciation of Karelian Party Chief Irklis. Source: GAOPDFK, f. 3, op. 4, kor.[obka] 175, d. 280, ll. 76–79 (dated 10 August 1937).

38. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
Kirov’s multivalent finger

39. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
‘Glavlit RSFSR brings to your attention that in issue no. 9–10 of Rintama, published in Finnish, on Comrade Stalin’s portrait (p. 6) the service jacket’s button is sown [on the jacket] in the shape of a cross and bears great resemblance to the Fascist swastika. Inform us about the measures you took’. Source: TsGA RK, f. 757, op. 1, d. 4/3, l. 70 (dated 23 December 1937).

40. Socialist Realism in situ 2: ‘Accessibility’ (dostupnost')
Swastika in button

41. Socialist Realism in situ 3: ‘The Spirit of the People’ (narodnost‘)
‘Under the Leadership of the Great Stalin – Forward to Comm- unism‘, 1951

42. Socialist Realism in situ 3: ‘The Spirit of the People’ (narodnost‘)
‘Great Stalin – a Flag of the Friendship of the Peoples of the USSR’, n.d.

43. Socialist Realism as USSR’s most successful export product: GDR

44. Socialist Realism as USSR’s most successful export product: China

45. Socialist Realism as USSR’s most successful export product: North Korea

46. Socialist Realism as USSR’s most successful export product: Vietnam

47. Socialist Realism as USSR’s most successful export product: Mozambique

48. Socialist Realism: Interpretations 1
Not art, but propaganda (often: Stalin’s whim)  long-term consequence: Socialist Realism = ‘rare example in today’s cultural context—in a world where otherwise “anything goes”—of a truly irreducible other’. Boris Groys, ‘The Art of Totality’, in The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Seattle, 2003), pp. 98–99.

49. Socialist Realism: Interpretations 2
'Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers except their money -- not even their time.'
From: Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 5, no. 5 (1939), pp. 34–49.
Nicholas Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York, 1946)
Argument also dear to leftists

50. Socialist Realism: Interpretations 3.1
Part of much wider stylistic-sociopolitical trend, encompassing Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist China  Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People's Republic of China (New York, 1990)

51. Socialist Realism: Interpretations 3.2
…including FDR’s USA 1942 mural, 'Security of the Family’, in main entrance of the Social Security Building in Washington, D.C. Part of Federal Art Project (FAP) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) programs.

52. Socialist Realism
But what if the avant-garde and Socialist Realism have more in common than we like to think? Groys and the continuity thesis…