Theme 3 Culture Lenin + Stalin Flashcards
What was the ‘New Soviet Man’?
Ideal socialist man that was modelled after the Bolshevik values
Often used used in art to convey hide old bourgeois culture
Summarise each of the following periods in their control of the arts?
Lenin: Slow to see the impact that culture had on communism. After civil war, he began to create new culture.
Stalin: furthered Lenin’s restrictions on art. Promoted new, idealistic paintings of art. Art expected to go along with regime.
Until 1970: Soviet culture developed although there remained some who wanted to oppose it.
What was Lenin’s opinion of art?
He had traditional tastes for old Russian Culture and wanted to maintain the writers/artists on his side.
What was the Commissariat of Enlightenment and why did it please artists?
It was a ministry of Culture that supported and encouraged artists. Replaced the censorship and restrictions from old regime and encouraged them and accommodated communist sympathisers.
What was the conditions in which artists were allowed to work under the Bolsheviks?
Those non-communist that sympathised with the ideals of the revolution were seemingly supported by Lenin.
Who were the key figures within the prolekult movement?
Promoted by the head of Commissariat of Enlightenment. Argued for the need of new technology to create “proletarian culture”
New proletarian artists assembled
Alt ans:
Workers and peasants encouraged to produce their own culture, from their own art and writing.
What were the Constructivists and what did they contribute?
A key part of the group of proletarian artists that aimed to create new socialist culture from the workers and industrial technology.
Focused on collective of workers as a class.
What other examples of prolekult were there?
-Magazine “Smithy” established that contained poetry about machines and factories.
-Anniversary of the Revolution in 1920 celebrated by a re-enactment of the storming of the winter palace.
What was high culture and how was it treated?
Prolekult challenged high culture which was art that had more restricted and exclusive audiences (such as fine art, ballet and opera). Bolsheviks disliked “high culture”.
What was avant-garde art?
Experimental period of art that mixed modernism’s abstract art with futurism that focused on the visions for a new world.
It was heavily used on Bolshevik poster art as propaganda.
What are the key examples of avant-garde art and how were they used?
Poster Art = Slogans and posters created for the government as propaganda.
Painting + Sculpture = experimental art used to visually depict the revolution as much of USSR was illiterate.
Jazz music trended in Russia.
. How was avant-garde used in the theatre?
Led by Vyacheslav MeyerHold.
Fantasy based theatre show depicting workers defeating their exploiters.
So confusing for audiences it was abandoned after 1 performance.
. Who were Sergei Eisenstein and how did he contribute towards the avant-garde movement?
Big name in cinema, Eisenstein made movies depicting the revolution and spreading the regime through film.
His experimental use of imagery made his work innovative, but sometimes too sophisticated for the audience.
Why did some people criticise the avant-garde movement?
Despite Lenin himself agreeing with the importance of cinema to promote political messages, some movies were too sophisticated for the audience.
Showed that Avant-Guard was not the way forward.
What was the context that the Cultural Revolution took place in?
In the late 1920s, the greater freedom under Lenin was removed in an attempt to make society less bourgeois.
This began the Cultural Revolution in 1928.
