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ABSTRACT
In this essay, the author examines Jewish art and literature in the context of the unofficial public sphere in the late Soviet Union. This Jewish cultural underground emerged within a specific communicative niche, which was the result of intensive private exchange, limited knowledge, and collectively discovered sources. The space in which artists and authors shared both their “work surface” and their coffee table, and in which the cultural production coincided with its own reception and analysis, constituted the cradle of very specific aesthetic features: particular forms of intertextual and intermedial links, self-reference, as well as a blend of the alternative lifeworld and art. Moreover, the close contact with “non-Jewish” artists in the same creative and often physical space brought about a synthetic form of culture. However, unlike with the Jewish vanguard artists of the first third of the twentieth century (such as the famous Kultur-lige), this synthesis was also caused by the largely non-Jewish socialization of “new Jews” in the late Soviet Union. This paper will focus on the following questions: How did the communicative context – the partial ban on Jewish topics and the alternative, semi-private public sphere of the Jewish unofficial culture in the late Soviet era – come about, and how did these aspects influence its artifacts?
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Klavdia Smola is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Center of Excellence “Cultural Foundations of Integration” in Konstanz. She received her PhD in Slavic philology at the University of Tübingen (2004), defended her second thesis on Russian-Jewish literature (Habilitation) in Greifswald (2016), and was a visiting professor at the Slavic Department of the University of Greifswald (2016–2017). Smola has authored “Types and Patterns of Intertextuality in the Prose of Anton Chekhov” (2004, in German), edited “Eastern European Jewish Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries: Identity and Poetics” (2013) and co-edited “Jewish Spaces and Topographies in East-Central Europe: Constructions in Literature and Culture” (2014, together with Olaf Terpitz, in German); “Postcolonial Slavic Literatures after Communism” (2016, together with Dirk Uffelmann) and “Russia – Culture of (Non-)Conformity: From the Late Soviet Time to the Present” (2018, together with Mark Lipovetsky, Special Issue of the Journal Russian Literature). She has recently completed her monograph “Reinvention of Tradition: Contemporary Russian-Jewish Literature” (2018, in German).
Notes
1 I employ the term “underground (culture)” as a cross-context designation for the culture that evaded, undermined, and thwarted the state-accredited cultural canon in the late Soviet Union. Regardless of their political implications, artistic and literary phenomena belonging to this culture question the realm of conformity based on sociocultural and political consensus. Terms such as “unofficial culture,” “second culture,” “underground literature,” “nonconformist art,” or “alternative culture” function as relative synonyms here. Stanislav Savitskii mentions two further attributes – “independent” and “dissonant”: see his discussion of these terms in Andergraund: Istoriia i mify leningradskoi neofitsial’noi literatury, 39–51. Unofficial artists were not allowed to practice their profession, nor were they allowed to publish or to exhibit; and they were generally persecuted by the state.
2 Glanc, “Avtorstvo i shiroko zakrytye glaza parallel’noi kul’tury.”
3 Savitskii, Andergraund, 89–103.
4 As Savitskii explains, the expression “second culture” (vtoraia kul’tura) was probably derived from the analogous “second literature” (vtoraia literatura). It spread in the early 1970s in Leningrad and became established as the preferred alternative designation for unofficial culture (Savitskii, Andergraund, 45–46). Hence, it is to be distinguished from the concept “Culture 2,” coined by Vladimir Papernyi. The latter refers to the 1920s to 1950s era and designates the phenomenon of the official (even more so) totalitarian Soviet culture.
5 The most recent larger publication linking Habermas’s communication theory, which was originally articulated in different publications, to the Samizdat phenomenon in Eastern (Central) Europe is: Samizdat und alternative Kommunikation/Samizdat and Alternative Ways of Communication, ed. Ina Alber and Natali Stegmann, in Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 65, no. 1 (2016) (particularly the introduction and the essay by Katalin Cseh-Varga).
6 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 209.
7 Eikhenbaum, “Literaturnyi byt,” 429.
8 Tynianov, “O literaturnoi evoliutsii,” 279.
9 Eikhenbaum, “Literaturnyi byt,” 433. In Tynianov’s example, the fact that Aleksandr Pushkin incorporated more and more journalistic material into his works had to do with the contemporary process of the professionalization of literary activity and the increasing role of journalism in literature.
10 Cf. the term “private-public sphere” that is used by Voronkov and Wielgohs, “Soviet Russia,” 113; and the similar term “alternative public sphere” by Hankiss, “The ‘Second Society.’” These terms are discussed by Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics.” See also Alber und Stegmann, “Einleitung; Samizdat und alternative Kommunikation,” 6–9.
11 Prigov, “Schet v gamburgskom banke,” 115. For more, see Berg, Literaturokratiia: Problema prisvoeniia i raspredeleniia vlasti v literature, 247.
12 Katalin Cseh-Varga stresses the importance of the “bodily presence” regarding the oral nature of “second culture” art: Cseh-Varga, “Innovative Forms of the Hungarian Samizdat,” 97.
13 Elsewhere, I refer to theories by Habermas, Eikhenbaum, and Tynianov to examine the unofficial cultural production in the late Soviet era. At this point, I refer to this older essay: Smola, “Community as Device: Metonymic Art of the late Soviet Underground.”
14 For the status of Judaism in the late Soviet Union, see a detailed account in the following essay: Charny, “Judaism and the Jewish Movement.”
15 “Archiv No. 2.” V. Nechaev, M. Nedobrova. Alek Rapoport in Gazanevskaia kul’tura o sebe (v kompiliatsii i redaktsii A. Basina), 223.
16 Refuseniks (Russian, otkazniki) were Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate by the Soviet authorities. They often waited years for their exit visa and cultivated Jewish customs in the underground. Many Jewish artists and authors were refuseniks.
17 The non-Jewish upbringing and the urban life of Jews in the cities was also one of the reasons why Jewish creative artists in the underground often showed no particular interest in the “living” Judaism (Jewish holidays and rites, praying together, synagogue visits), even though it was definitely present and accessible within certain limits.
18 Kukui, “Zametki o poetike Anri Volokhonskogo 1960-kh gg,” 236.
19 Ibid.
20 “Archiv No. 2,” 223.
21 Rapoport interpreted the artwork by the unofficial Jewish Alef group of artists as the fruit of a powerful “Jewish-Christian tradition” (Alek Rapoport, “Gruppa Alef”).
22 Feinstein, “Soviet Jewish Artists in the USSR and Israel,” 194.
23 Cf. Bargman, “Pervaia vystavka evreiskikh khudozhnikov. Leningrad. Noiabr’ 1975 goda,” 194.
24 Cf. Kantor Kazovsky, “Dmitry Lion: Jewish Experience and the Philosophy of Drawing.”
25 Gruber, Virtually Jewish.
26 Finkielkraut, Le Juif imaginaire.
27 Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry.
28 Gantner and Kovács, “The Constructed Jew.”
29 Rüthers, “Sichtbare und unsichtbare Juden.”
30 Roskies, A Bridge of Longing, 5.
31 Iurii Sobolev recollects his and Iulii Sooster’s “home” education: “Since entire cultural periods were virtually unknown to us, we decided to go through the whole history of modern art since the 1930s” (quoted from Bobrinskaia, Chuzhie? Neofitsial’noe iskusstvo, 80).
32 The memoirs of Jewish activists, which did not come into scholars’ focus until recently, provide information about topics that assumed an educational function for the new Zionists. These were for instance the Biblical stories about King David and King Solomon, about Jewish exiles, the captivity in Egypt and the exodus (Hoffman, “Voices from Inside,” 235–236). Increasingly important for the state of Jewish knowledge were also the publications of the Jewish Samizdat, in particular those of its cultural wing (cf. Hoffman, “Jewish Samizdat and the Rise of Jewish National Consciousness”). Also interesting are the fictional testimonies in late Soviet Aliyah literature itself: in David Shrayer-Petrov’s Samizdat novel, “Gerbert and Nelli” (1984), the authors from the “Aliyah Library” publishing house (Biblioteka Alii) read by the refuseniks are listed: Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Zhabotinskii, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Bernard Malamud, David Markish, Leon Uris, and Natan Alterman (Shrayer-Petrov, Gerbert i Nelli, 235). The Russian language Zionist publishing house “Aliyah Library” was founded in Israel in 1972. Among others, it published the essential texts of the late Soviet Exodus literature. Some volumes were smuggled into the Soviet Union and thus became known to the Soviet readers (cf. “Biblioteka-Aliia” in Elektronnaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia: http://www.eleven.co.il/article/15547 [15.02.2017]). For example, in Efrem Baukh’s novel Lestnitsa Iakova, the main character is reading Zohar and Sefer ha-chinuch; in Eli Luksemburg’s novel Desiatyi golod, Hasidic legends and kabbalist knowledge are evoked. Moreover, in works by Aliyah authors such as Baukh, Luksemburg, Feliks Kandel, and David Markish, there are numerous allusions to parts of the Pentateuch, psalms, and prophecies from the book Nevi’im of the Tanakh and the Aggadah.
33 An extreme example was the group based on a mutual enthusiasm for Marc Chagall, known as the “Shagaliata” (“Chagall Kids”), as described by Richard Vasmi (Roginskii, “Roal’d Mandel’shtam: Zhizn’ i poeziia,” 17).
34 Degot’, Russkoe iskusstvo XX veka, 156–158.
35 Berg, Literaturokratiia, 243–245.
36 Kantor-Kazovsky, “Vladimir Yakovlev in the Grobman Collection in Tel Aviv,” 96; 99; 107.
37 Kantor-Kazovsky, “Vladimir Yakovlev in the Grobman Collection in Tel Aviv, 109; Feinstein, “Soviet Jewish Artists,” 190. Grobman’s diary Leviafan is a significant source of information for today’s research into the Jewish sources that were available in the Soviet Union. Grobman, Leviafan: dnevniki 1963–1971 gg.
38 Baigell, “Soviet Artists, Jewish Images,” 259–260.
39 Baigell, “Soviet Artists, Jewish Images,” 261–262.
40 Rav Chaim Zanvl Abramowitz also emigrated to Israel in 1972. On Eli Luksemburg, see Smola, “Reinvention of the Promised Land.”
41 On the extreme diversity of the unofficial art in the Soviet Union cf. Eimermacher, “Von der Einheit zur Vielfalt.”
42 The fact that Alef constituted a wing of the Gazanevshchina is illustrated in the chronicle edited by Anatolii Basin. In the edition Gazanevshchina (1974–1989), a large chapter is dedicated to the Jewish Alef circle (Gazanevshchina, 191–267). Moreover, the Alef exhibitions featured paintings by artists who only occasionally worked “in a Jewish manner,” such as the members of the Aref’ev circle Rikhard Vasmi, Sholom Shvarts, and Aleksandr Aref’ev himself.
43 “Gruppa khudozhnikov Alef,” Art Object Gallery, accessed February 15, 2017, http://www.artobject-gallery.ru/ru/notes/gruppa-khudozhnikov-alef. Also in: Alek Rapoport, “Gruppa Alef,” 44–63.
44 Quoted from Alek Rapoport’s manifesto that was published in the Samizdat catalogue of the second Alef exhibition (cf. ibid.). In the 1970s, several Alef exhibitions took place in private apartments: in 1975 in Leningrad, in the same year in Moscow, and in 1976 on three occasions in Leningrad again. The group fell apart in 1977, after several members had left the Soviet Union. [Unless otherwise specified, all translations are by the author.]
45 Kazovsky, “‘Long Live Nationality!,’” 11–12.
46 Ekaterina Degot about the underground art: Degot, Russkoe iskusstvo, 161–163.
47 Bargman, “Pervaia vystavka,” 192.
48 In the third paragraph of the manifesto, the envisaged “genealogy” of the new Jewish art is defined: ancient Israel, the architecture of the Jerusalem temple, medieval synagogues in Palestine, Spanish “Moorish” architecture, handwritten books of Judaism, tombstones, and monuments, jewellery, clothes, and ornaments (Gazanevshchina, 207). Apart from the symbolic appeal of Palestine, the Alef initiators were apparently inspired by some sort of Jewish world culture. This kind of ethnic cosmopolitism can be interpreted as a counter model to the Soviet Union’s cultural isolation.
49 Lev Chernobel’skii, “Kartinki s vystavki,” in Gazanevshchina, 210.
50 Roskies, A Bridge of Longing.
51 Hobsbawm, “The Invention of Tradition.”
52 On the topic of the “second avant-garde” from a Jewish perspective cf. Genkina, “Vtoroi russkii avangard na Zapade.”
53 As noted by Musya Glants, the Jewish Renaissance was just one in a series of ethnic movements “back to the roots,” such as the Russian rural movement in painting (Glants, “Jewish Artists in Russian Art,” 238).
54 “Again, the exploration and reinterpretation of the Bible, Judaism, Christianity, Eastern philosophy and Hebrew started. Again, Byzantium’s spirit resurfaced and reminded us of its unwavering alliance with Russia” – this is how Rapoport describes the spiritual model of the Alef group (Alek Rapoport, “Gruppa Alef,” 45).
55 More about this in Smola, “Community as Device.”
56 The first was quoted above; the later, enlarged and revised, edition is Gazanevshchina (Saint Petersburg, 2004); and the third is Nashi nishi – Gazanevshchina 3 (avtor-sostavitel’ A. Basin) (Saint Petersburg, 2015).
57 Bargman, “Pervaia vystavka,” 193.
58 Perch, “O zhivopisi i kvartirnom voprose,” 219.
59 Gazanevshchina, 191.
60 “Evrei v SSSR” No. 15. E. Sotnikova, “Leningradskaia vystavka khudozhnikov gruppy ‘Alef’” in Gazanevshchina, 205.
61 Sotnikova, “Leningradskaia vystavka khudozhnikov gruppy ‘Alef,’” 206.
62 Sotnikova, “Leningradskaia vystavka khudozhnikov gruppy ‘Alef,’” 203.
63 Lev Chernobel’skii, “Kartinki s vystavki,” 208.
64 Clearly, the group only started to use the name “Alef” after the first exhibition.
65 Gazanevshchina, 237.
66 Gazanevshchina, 267.
67 Gazanevshchina, 238.
68 See Roman Katsman in this edition.
69 Nikita Eliseev, “Paradoksy Gazanevshchiny,” Expert Online, 2004, http://expert.ru/northwest/2004/44/44no-skylt_49659/.
70 The Apt-Art – “kvartirnoe iskusstvo” (“apartment art”) – turned the shortage in the housing market into a positive condition for a new form of performance art. Furthermore, it made the new, alternative art establishment of the 1980s spatial in a most striking way. “Kvartirnoe iskusstvo,” so to say, originates ex negativo from the real-life “kvartirnyi vopros”.
71 But particularly the second one (2004).
72 Basin, Moia genopis, 1.
73 Vgl. Shrayer and Shrayer-Petrov, Genrikh Sapgir – klassik avangarda, 58.
74 Shike ben Shike (Russian: Ovsei) Driz was born in the Ukrainian shtetl Krasnoe in 1908 and visited the kheder and the Soviet Jewish school until 1922. Cf. Dymshits, “Ili ili … K stoletiiu Ovseia Driza,” Narod knigi v mire knig, April 2008, http://narodknigi.ru/journals/73/ili_ili_k_stoletiyu_ovseya_driza1/.
75 Cf. a revealing comparative analysis of some poems in: Dymshits, “Ili ili … ”
76 Dymshits quotes Pivovarov: “Genrikh practically created a Russian Driz. None of us know what Driz is like in Jewish”. In: Dymshits, “Ili ili … ”
77 Shrayer-Petrov, “Vozbuzhdenie snov. Vospominaniia o Genrikhe Sapgire,” 180. Sapgir too, in the poem Ovsei Driz speaks of a charismatic, wise, and at the same time insane poet-preacher with a Holocaust stamp on his face: Sapgir, “Ovsei Driz.”
78 Kholin, “Pesnia bez slov.” http://www.arion.ru/mcontent.php?year=1994&number=129&idx=2478.
79 Ibid.
80 Cf. on this subject: Katsis, “Ovsei Driz.”
81 On the topic of intermediality and communicative practices in “Lianozovo,” see Hirt and Wonders, “Vorwort.”