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Abstract
This article focuses on romanticism in socialist realist painting. One of the objectives of this style was to create a romanticized image of the goals and achievements of the Soviet people guided by the communist party. What was its ideal like and what was the nature of its romanticism? The answer lies in the works of the grandiose Industry of Socialism Exhibition that has been preserved to the present date in the State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSIZO. It was created by dozens of artists in the 1930s, who all followed a unified conception at a time when socialist realism was only taking shape and becoming established in all areas of cultural life in the Soviet State. These works embody the heroic enthusiasm with which the Soviet people were creating—or were supposed to be creating—a new world and had to believe—and believed—in the bright wonderful tomorrow.
Notes
1. [Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published with the following extended subtitle and description of the ROSIZO collection: “Paintings from the Industry of Socialism Exhibition from the collection of the ROSIZO State Museum and Exhibition Centre of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian FederationThe State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSIZO holds the archive of the works of art which formerly belonged to the Ministry of Culture of the USSR Up until 1992 this collection was housed in a tower of the Trinity-Sergeev Monastery Its core included canvases created especially for one of the grand projects of the 1930s: the Industry of Socialism art exhibition This unique and innately coherent collection includes works by masters of socialist realism as well as by members of the ‘Ost’ society and other interesting masters, many of whom have yet to receive due recognition”]In the two decades in which the archive has been kept in ROSIZO it has become the basis of several exhibitions in Russia and abroad Among these (with their eponymous catalogues) are: Soviet Idealism Painting and Cinema 1925–1939 (within the Europalia arts festival, Museum of Walloon Art, Liège, 2005–2006); Socialist Realism: An Inventory of the Archive The Art of the 1930s and 1940s from the collection of the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO (State Museum of Contemporary Art of the Russian Academy of Arts, 2009–2010 and Exhibition Hall of ROSIZO, 2013–2014).
2. March of Enthusiasts. Music: I. Dunaevskii, Lyrics: A. Daktil. 1940.
3. On the square in front of the exhibition entrance the visitors were welcomed by sculptures depicting representatives of the proletariat, the creators of socialist industry, while at the entrance to the halls viewers could see portraits of their “representatives”: the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. A colossal mosaic map indicating the gigantic dimensions of the Soviet motherland, together with the paintings of the history section, reminded visitors of their revolutionary past and the role played by the leaders in the victory of the socialist revolution. The industrial sections represented the main areas of Soviet industry, beginning with defense (its section was entitled “Industry strengthens the country’s defense”), mining (“The Bolsheviks discovered the resources of the country”) and ore-processing (“USSR became metallic”), through to the construction of hydroelectric power stations and canals (“The new construction projects of the first five-year plan,” “Socialism is part of everyday life,” “The country’s new face”). The halls called “New cities, new people” and “Life became better, Life became happier” showed views of “a country transformed” and presented an image of happy socialist life: leisure, weddings, ceremonial meetings, demonstrations. The “Hitting our enemies” section included works by caricaturists exposing the “isolated and atypical” shortcomings and recently discovered “enemies of the people” who “were aptly and mercilessly described in a series of comrade Stalin’s speeches.” See Vsesoiuznaia khudozhestvennaia vystavka "Industriia sotsializma." Katalog vystavki [All-Union Artistic Exhibition "Industry of Socialism." Exhibition Catalogue] (Moscow: “Iskusstvo,” 1939), 52.
4. A.I. Morozov has classified the large-scale thematic exhibitions organized to coincide with politically important dates as another form of mass political manifestation and as common as demonstrations. See A.I. Morozov, Sotsrealizm i realizm [Socialist Realism and Realism] (Moscow: Galart, 2007), 46.
5. In its thematic diversity Industry of Socialism can be compared to a number of films, e.g. those devoted to pilots and the conquering of the skies such as director Eduard Pentslin’s Fighter Pilots (1939), sagas about the labor exploits of Soviet enthusiasts such as Sergei Gerasimov’s Komsomolsk (1938) and L. Lukov’s Big Life (1939), and the numerous films of the 1930s about the heroic deeds of the October Revolution and Civil War.
6. The term “artistic method” emerged around the end of the 1920s within the framework of Marxist philosophy. In its most general form it can be defined as a system of principles which determine the creative process in art and literature. The method of socialist realism was defined in the code of the Union of Soviet Writers of 1934 and was claimed as the only valid and effective method, which required artists to produce “a truthful, historically grounded representation of reality in its revolutionary development” (Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990)). Added to this the method had to include the task of “the ideological transformation and education of viewers in the spirit of socialism.” It should be noted that the artists were denied the right to choose an individual method of creative conception and instead were required to express certain ideas in strictly stipulated ways. As such creativity was supplanted by aims alien to fine art but akin to advertising and political poster art. This leads to questioning whether socialist realism can be considered an artistic or creative movement. I would concur with A.I. Morozov’s claim that “classical” Stalinist socialist realism can only be viewed as a “system of strictly defined means” with the methodology simply acting a rhetorical tool justifying the uniformity of Soviet artistic output (Morozov, Sotsrealizm i realizm, 64). As such, renunciation of both originality and the significance of form allows scholars such as E. Degot’ and O. Aronson to see in socialist realism a foreshadowing of postmodernist practice with regard to the abandonment of formal constraints for the sake of content demonstration and the interpretation of the classical, figurative style of the previous century as a preferred “neutral” envelope; E. Degot’, “Idealistic Realism” [“Idealisticheskii realizm”] in Sovetskii idealizm. Zhivopis’ i kino 1925–1939 (Liège: Musée de l’art wallon, 2005), 17; O. Aronson, “The Labour of Images” [“Trud obrazov”], in Sovetskii idealizm, 25.
7. In comparison to “classical” romanticism which is understood as a system of artistic and literary movements of the end of the eighteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century, socialist romanticism in the twentieth century had its own, in many ways opposite, content. Nevertheless the outcomes and many initial principles of the latter reveal numerous features in common with the “pre-revolutionary” antecedents. It is worth noting that critics of romanticism refer to a common lack of consistent formal qualities and the potential of assuming any form.
8. Here it is worth quoting renowned Soviet critic V.V. Vanslov in his confirmation of the romantic origins of socialist realism: “Romanticism is a trait of the people of our times. It is to be found in heroic deeds in the battles of the civil war, in the enthusiasm for the Five-Year Plans, in the noble feats of the defenders of our realm, in the exploration of space, and in the great plans for building communism. The main feature of romanticism is a dream of great things and an aspiration to live and work for the fulfilment of this big and beautiful dream. Such romanticism is expressed in our art and is an integral part of socialist realism”. See V.V. Vanslov, Estetika romantizma [The Aesthetics of Romanticism] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966), 5.
9. V.V. Mayakovsky, Izbrannye proizvedeniia. Stikhi, poemy, proza [Selected works. Poetry, poems, prose], (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1967), 267.
10. M. Gorky, “Doklad na Pervom Vsesoiuznom s’’ezde sovetskikh pisatelei 17 avgusta 1934 goda,” Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury (GIKhL), 1953), 27:306.
11. ROSIZO possesses a large group of works by this original, poetic and subtle master, who was a member of the Concretivist group and NOZh (New Society of Painters).
12. A.I. Morozov drew some conclusions about the metaphor of light in the painting of the 1930s in his book “End of Utopia.” See A.I. Morozov, Konets utopii (Moscow: Galart, 1995), 92–7. There is a curious similarity between the concentric compositional schemes in the paintings by Kuzma Nikolaev, a member of the AKhR (Association of the Artists of the Revolution), and Aleksandr Deineka, an OST (Society of Easel Painters) member. In Deineka’s Defense of Petrograd (1928) the space is segmented and the figures set within in it gain a naturalistic three-dimensionality which replaces the planar Constructivist means of the 1920s, whereas in Nikolaev’s painting space is “colored” by a warm, jubilant light.
13. The Aviators’ March: Ever Higher. Music by Iulii Khait, lyrics by Pavel German, 1921.
14. A.N. Lavrentiev and V.A. Rodchenko, Aleksandr Rodchenko. Fotografii (Moscow: Planeta, 1987), 106.
15. March of Enthusiasts. Version sung in 1955 by the romantic heroine of her time, Liubov Orlova.
16. N.L. Adaskina, “30-gody: kontrasty i paradoksy sovetskoi khudozhestvennoi kul’tury” [“The 1930s: Contrasts and Paradoxes of Soviet Artistic Culture”], Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie 25 (1989): 25–6.
17. The idealism characteristic of people from different social backgrounds and which remains in the memories of former Soviet citizens and foreigners who visited the USSR can now be perceived as a form of infantilism, this explaining the mass enthusiasm, lack of reflection and ability to ignore the darker sides of life. At the same time one should acknowledge that man has a need to overcome his ego for the sake of something greater than himself and this need has repeatedly manifested itself in world cultures and historic catastrophes. We know that remembrances of the terrible years of the October Revolution and Civil War were held sacred by those who experienced the events since they belonged to a great, common cause allowing individuals to break away from their little “I” and giving a sense of a time of happiness.
18. Sports March. Music by Isaak Dunaevskii, lyrics by Vasilii Lebedev-Kumach, 1937.
19. Aleksandr Deineka. Zhivopis’ [Painting] (Moscow: Interrosa, 2010), 53.
20. The gradual demise of the romantic worldview in the socialist realism of the Stalinist era has been brilliantly analyzed by Andrei Siniavskii (Abram Terts) in his 1957 article “What is socialist realism?” [“Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm”] See: http://imwerden.de/pdf/abram_terz_chto_takoe_soc_realizm.pdf (23–5).