The Nude in Soviet Socialist Realism: Eugenics and Images of the New Person in the 1920s-1940s

NOTES

• Werner Rittich, Deutschlands Werden seit 1933 (Die Kunst: no date) and Paul Schultze- Naumburg, Nordische Schönheit. Ihr Wunschbild im Leben und in der Kunst (Munich and Berlin: 1937) exemplify explicit Nazi discourse on the ideal nude body in art: A. Richardson, “The Nazification of Women in Art,” The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Musk, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich, ed. B. Taylor and W. van der Will (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990) 62–73; B. Hinz, “Foreword,” Art of the Third Reich (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) no page nos; B. Hinz, “‘Degenerate’ and ‘Authentic’ Aspects of Art and Power in the Third Reich,” Art and Power: Europe Under the Dictators, ed. D. Ades et al. (London: Thames and Hudson/Hayward Gallery, 1996) 330–3; B. Nicolai, “Techtonic Sculpture. Autonomous and Political Sculpture in Germany,” Art and Power 334–7.
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• ibid 575–6, 578–9.
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• The article's title was “Theme and Image in Monumental Sculpture”: V. Mukhina, “Tema i obraz v monumental'noi skul'pture,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo 2 (14 November 1944) 2.
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• A.A. Zhdanov (Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU), “Soviet Literature—The Richest in Ideas: The Most Advanced Literature,” Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934. The Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism: Gorky, Radek, Bukharin, Zhdanov and Others, ed. H. G. Scott (London; Martin Lawrence, 1935) facsimile reprint (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977) 21.
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• Mukhina, “Theme and Image” 2; N. V. Voronov, Vera Mukhina (Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1989) 141, 264; V. P. Sysoev, Aleksandr Deineka (Albom) (Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1972) 29. This assumption goes back to the very early days of the Revolution: V. Friche, “V poshkakh novoi krasoty,” Tvorchestvo 1-2 (1918) 5.
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• Voronov, Mukhina 57; Sysoev, Deineka 48.
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• Among these works were: Vera Mukhina, The Industrial Worker and the Collective Farm Girl, 1937, 24m, stainless steel on wooden framework, (former) Exhibition of Economic Achievements, Moscow; Nikolai Tomskii, Monument to Kirov, 1935, bronze and granite (cast and installed in Kirov Square, Leningrad 1938); V. Ingal and V. Bogoliubov, Monument to Odzhonikidze, 1939, painted plaster, Industry of Socialism exhibition, Frunze Embankment, Moscow; Aleksandr Gerasimov, Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, 1938, o/c, 300 × 390cm, Tretiakov Gallery Moscow; Boris Ioganson, In an Old Urals Factory, 1937, o/c, 280 × 320cm, Tretiakov Gallery; Mikhail Nesterov, Portrait of the Academician I.P Pavlov, 1935, o/c, 81 × 121cm, Tretiakov Gallery; Sergei Merkurov, Figure of I. V. Stalin, Mechanisation Square, All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, Moscow, 1938, concrete, h.30m (destroyed); Vasili Efanov, An Unforgettable Meeting, 1938, o/c, 270 × 391cm, Tretiakov Gallery; N. Samokish, The Red Army Crossing the Sivash, 1932, o/c, 32 × 21cm, Simferopol Art Museum; M. Manizer, Monument to Lenin, Ulianovsk, 1940; S. Kagabadze, Monument to Stalin, Tblisi; F. Fedorovskii, Theatrical décor for Prince Igor, 1934; Martiros Saryan, theatrical décor for A. Spendiarov's opera, Almast; Iraklii Toidze, illustrations for Shota Rustavelli.
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• The model favoured by Lenin and others seems to have been based to some extent on Rakhmetov, the ascetic hero of Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done?: E.A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997) 24–6; T. Clark, “The ‘New Man's’ Body: A Motif in Early Soviet Culture,” Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992, ed. M. Cullerne Bown and B. Taylor (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1993) 40.
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• A. S. Solovtsova and N. F. Orlov, “Gomoseksualizm i reaktsiia dr-a Manoilova,” Klinicheskaia meditsina 5.9 (1927) 541–7; Bernstein, “‘What Everyone Should Know About Sex’” 101.
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• For example, works by the painters Vasili Yakovlev and Solomon Nikritin were heavily criticised for alleged pornography: M. Cullerne Bown, Art Under Stalin (Oxford: Phaidon, 1991) 113.
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• Adams, “Eugenics as a Social Medicine” 218–19; M. B. Adams, “Eugenics in Russia,” The Well-Born Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia, ed. M.B. Adams (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1990) 191, 196–7. In 1933 the Communist Academy also denounced eugenics, but as “Menshevising idealism”: D. Joravsky, “Soviet Marxism and Biology Before Lysenko,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20.1 (October-December 1959) 103.
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• M. B. Adams, “Eugenics in Russia” 191, 196–8; M. B. Adams, “The Soviet Nature-Nurture Debate,” Science and the Social Order, ed. L. R. Graham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1990) 103, 105–7; Ia.A Iakovlev, “O darvinizme I nekotorykh antidarvinistakh,” Pravda (12 April 1937): 2–3 published simultaneously in Sotsialisticheskoe zemledelie (12 April 1937) 2–3; Academicians A. N. Bakh, B. A. Keller, Professor Kh. S. Koshtoiants, Candidates of biological science A. Shcherbakov, R. Dozortseva, E. Polikarpova, N. Nuzhdin, S. Kraevoi and K. Kosikov, “Lzheuchenym ne mesto v akademii nauk,” Pravda (11 January 1939) 4;V.V. Babkov, “N. K. Kol'tsov I bor'ba za avtonomiu nauki i poiski podderzhki vlasti,” Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 3 (1989) 3–19.
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• A. Shcheketov, Iskusstvo 4 (1933): 121, cited in M. Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting 170. A Mother was acquired by the Tretiakov Gallery in 1934; X. Antonova, ed, The Tretyakov Gallery Moscow: Painting, Graphic Art, Sculpture (Leningrad: Aurora, 1983) 345.
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• See for example: E. Borisov, “Pisatel’ i khudozhniki: A.M. Gor'kii na iubileinykh vystavkakh,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo 33 (20 July 1933): 1; A. V. Lunacharskii, Vospitanie novogo cheloveka (Leningrad: Priboi, 1928) 26.
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• H. Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene (London: Constable and Co, (1912) 1927) 1–48; Adams, “Eugenics in Russia” 158. A concise definition of what Semashko understood by the discipline is contained in N. A. Semashko, “Friedrich Erismann. The Dawn of Russian Hygiene and Public Health,” (trans. H. E. Sigerist from Sovetskoe zdravookhranenie 4 (1944): 26–32) Bulletin of the History of Medicine 20.1 (June 1946) 6.
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• Zetkin noted that Lenin was in favour of fizku'ltura as a means to distract young people's minds from sex: C. Zetkin, Vospominaniia o Vladimire Iliche Lenine, Part 2 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1955) 85. See also: N. I Podvoiskii, Rabotnitsa i fizichestkaia kul'tura (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1938) 3; N.I. Podvoiskii, “Lenin I fizicheskoe vospitanie,” Krasnyi sport 4 (21 January 1948): 3–4; Semashko, Nauka o zdorove 30–31; Semashko, Puti razvitiia sovetskii fizkul'tury 57; J. Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society 98; F. Bernstein, “Envisioning Health in Revolutionary Russia: The Politics of Gender in Sexual Enlightenment Posters of the 1920s,” The Russian Review 57 (April 1998) 199.
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• In 1928 Lunacharsky wrote a very sympathetic script for a film about Kammerer (a German Lamarckian biologist, infamous for falsifying results from experiments on the midwife toad) entitled Salamander: A. V Lunacharskii, “Kak vosnik stsenarii ‘Salamandriia’,” Sovetskii ekran 1 (1929): 4. At the time of Kammerer's denunciation in the West, the Soviet Academy offered him a laboratory in Moscow to continue his experiments, but he declined: D. Joravsky, “Soviet Marxism and Biology Before Lysenko” 92,98.
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