UNIT 3: HOW EFFECTIVE WAS THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT'S USE OF CULTURE AND THE ARTS? Flashcards
What was the “new Soviet man”?
An ideal socialist who thinks and acts accordingly to scoialist values.
The government aimed to use artists and writers to construct a new culture that would remove the culture associated with the Tsarist regime.
What were the Bolshevik’s attitude towards the arts and popular culture?
Lenin’s cultural tastes were conservative but saw culture as subordinate to the retention of power and class conflict.
Commissariat of Enlightenment set up to replace the heavy restrictions and censorship of the old regime.
Describe the difference in the approach of using culture and the arts between Lenin and Stalin.
Lenin was slow to see the potential of using arts and culture so wasn’t able to use it at his advantage
Stalin used art and culture to promote idealised images of life under socialism
Describe the features of Prolekult
Proletarian culture
New group of proletarian artists created to serve a political and social purpose e.g. Constructivists aimed to create a new socialist culture.
Great emphasis on workers and peasants where they were encouraged to produce their own culture e.g. writing stories, thearte productions.
The government used festivals to develop new culture and bribed people to attend with extra food rations
The anniversary of the revolution in 1920 was celebrated by a re-enactment of the storming of the winter palace.
Describe the features of Avant-garde.
Avant-garde was the experimentation of ways of expressing culture and beliefs, to convey visions of a new futuristic world.
V. Mayakovsky produced slogans and posters for the government as propaganda.
In paintings and sculpture, K. Malevich and V. Kandinsky represented examples of ‘fellow travellers’ - there was a stong use of visual arts to accomodate the low literacy rates.
Lenin emphasised the importance of cinema as a tool for promoting political messages
Vyacheslav Meyerhold produced Mystery Bouffe (1918) which was a fantasy based on workers defeating their exploiters.
Describe the features of the cultural revolution.
Part of the attempt to get rid of the bourgeois elements in society
Full-scale assault on traditional writers and artists, fellow travellers replaced by artists whose loyalty to socialism was not in question
Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) criticised fellow travellers and preferred the works that emphasised the achievements of workers aka the cult of the little man- for example, Kataev’s novel Time Forward (1932) recounted the story of the shift in Magricogorisk Steelworks
RAPP closed in 1932 replaced by Union of Soviet writers
What was socialist realism?
Art that presented idealised images of life under socialism to inspire the population to work towards its achievement.
It was controlled by the Union of Soviet Writers.
Writers who confromed e.g. Mikhail Zoshchenko, meant the quality of their work suffered.
How was art used to promote socialist realism?
Abstract art and other avant-garde styles rejected
Projected ideal images of life under the Five Year Plan
Presented images of the workers and peasants working for socialism
How was literature used to promote socialist realism?
Changes of emphasis away from the cult of the ‘little man’ to heroes connected to the party
The standard plot of novels in 1930s was of a hero from the people who is guided by the party to greater things
‘Low brow’ literature was usually concerned with heroes from Russian history where they thwart the evil capitalists
Low book prices of books ensured the population had easy access to this material
How was music used to promote socialist realism?
The government favoured military songs more than jazz
Saxaphone banned in 1940s
In 1953, Stalin walked out of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mstensk due to discordant notes
How was architecture used to promote socialist realism?
Promoted the style ‘Stalinist baroque’ which made use of classical lines eg Moscow university
Features were decorated with chandeliers, murals showing the endeavours of the workers
How was film used to promote socialist realism?
Conveyed the achievements of the revolution eg Eisentein’s October (1927) presented a heroic version of the storming of the winter palace
It led to deaths when making the film because of the use of live ammunition
Describe culture during Stalin’s last years.
After WW2 the government allowed artists and writers greater freedom e.g. writers such as Boris Paternak and Anna Akhmatova gave public readings of their unorthodox poetry in Moscow 1946.
However signs of greater freedom was removed by the Zhdanovschina campaign which condemned elements of Western culture.
What are the features of de-Stalinisation of culture?
Previously banned work could now be published e.g. work by Isaac Babel and the book by Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which was an account on experiences in the gulag.
Writers explored new themes such as alcoholism and the bleakness of rural life.
Non-conformity amongst the youth grew in the late 1950s as they became more influenced by music such as pop and rocknroll from the West in which they were smuggled into the country and Western fashions such as short skirts.
Alexander Galich - guitar poet who addressed the socially alienated.
Tape recordings became a probelm for authorities.
Desribe culture under Brezhnev.
The boundaries were more narrow than Khrushchev’s but artists and writers found it easy to work with but still attempted to push boundaries.
Culture focused on propagandaand the achievements of socialism and the Soviet state.
