Art for the Workers: Proletarian Art and Festive Decorations of Petrograd 1917-1920 9004355685, 9789004355682

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Art for the Workers

Russian History and Culture Editors-in-Chief Jeffrey P. Brooks (The Johns Hopkins University) Christina Lodder (University of Kent)

Volume 20

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rhc

Art for the Workers Proletarian Art and Festive Decorations of Petrograd, 1917-1920

By

Natalia Murray

Cover illustration: Unknown artist. Festive decorations on Sadovaia street in Petrograd. May Day 1920. Photo: ЦГАКФФД СПБ (Central State CinePhotoPhono Archive St. Petersburg), Гр 4902. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murray, Natalia, author. Title: Art for the workers : proletarian art and festive decorations of Petrograd, 1917-1920 / by Natalia Murray. Description: Roots of proletarian culture – Festivals and proletarian art under the tsars and the Provisional Government – Narkompros versus Proletkult : festivals and proletarian art after the Bolshevik Revolution – The victory of figuration over futurism : from cultural diversity to military parade – Street art-collective, politicised : the new public spectacle. | Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2018. | Series: Russian history and culture ; Volume 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018003532 (print) | LCCN 2018004006 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004355682 (E-Book) | ISBN 9789004355651 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Arts and society–Russia (Federation)–Saint Petersburg–History–20th century. | Festivals–Political aspects–Russia (Federation)–Saint Petersburg–History–20th century. | Communism and art–Russia (Federation)–Saint Petersburg. | Working class–Russia (Federation)–Saint Petersburg–History–20th century. | Saint Petersburg (Russia)–Civilization–20th century. Classification: LCC NX180.S6 (ebook) | LCC NX180.S6 M865 2018 (print) | DDC 701/.03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003532

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-7791 ISBN 978-90-04-35565-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-35568-2 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To my beloved daughter, Alexandra

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Contents Acknowledgements ix Notes on Transliteration and Conventions List of Illustrations xii Abbreviations and Glossary xxi Introduction

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1 Roots of Proletarian Culture 32 2 Festivals and Proletarian Art under the Tsars and the Provisional Government 58 3 Narkompros versus Proletkult: Festivals and Proletarian Art after the Bolshevik Revolution 92 4 The Victory of Figuration over Futurism: from Cultural Diversity to Military Parade 189 5 Street Art – Collective, Politicised: the New Public Spectacle Epilogue

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Bibliography Index 295

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Acknowledgements Throughout the research and the writing of this book, many friends and colleagues have been enormously supportive and helpful to me, but I would particularly like to thank my supervisor, Professor John Milner, who advised me to extend my research from an article and write a book instead. This book could not have been written without his help, advice and support. I would also like to express my special gratitude to the curators of the Drawings Department at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Irina Arskaia, Valentina Skripkina and Ludmila Vostretsova, for discussing my book with me and for showing me the sketches for the street decorations of Petrograd held in their special trust. I owe a major debt of gratitude to Dina Kleiman from the Russian Museum, who sent me some vital books and photographs which I have used in my research. This book benefits greatly from exhaustive research in archives, museums and libraries in St. Petersburg and Moscow, all of which would have been much more difficult without the generous support of the Likhachev Foundation, which provided me with a fellowship and introduced me to the most wonderful Elena Vitenberg who arranged my research visits in St. Petersburg. I am especially grateful to the head of the Prints Department at the National Library in St. Petersburg, Elena Barkhatova, who facilitated access to the Manuscripts Department, which was essential for my research (especially since it provided me with the chance to read Nathan Altman’s unpublished writings), as well as Svetlana Khodakovskaia and Aleksei Kulegin from the Museum of Political History of Russia who presented me with a catalogue of banners from the museum’s collection and allowed me to research their photographic archive. I would also like to thank Julia Demidenko for giving me access to sketches and photographs of festive decorations of Petrograd held in the collection of the State Museum of history of St. Petersburg, Many friends and colleagues discussed and shared ideas with me. I am immensely grateful to Professor Christina Lodder for her continuous support and inspiration. This manuscript would never have been completed without Lauren Warner who painstakenly copy-edited it at rather short notice. I would also like to thank Elena Sudakova, Natalia Budanova, Maria Starkova, Maria Mileeva, Nicholas Bueno de Mesquita, Maria Kokkori, Jordan Tobin and Marie Collier. Their immense encouragement and trust in this research were irreplaceable. My family has been hugely supportive and patient with me when I was working on my book. I would like to thank my late father for his faith in me,

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Acknowledgements

and my late mother, who inspired my interest in art history. Very special thanks go to my beloved daughter, Alexandra, for allowing her mother to concentrate on her research. Last but by no means least, I thank my husband, Nicholas. He read and patiently edited this manuscript more times than anyone should have to and provided persistent and constructive criticism of my English language and knowledge of Russian history. Without him this book would have never been completed. Words cannot convey my gratitude to him and to all my friends and colleagues.

Notes on Transliteration and Conventions This book spans the pre- and post-revolutionary years, and so encompasses a change in the Russian calendar. All dates before February 1918 are given according to the Old Style (Julian) calendar. After that time, they follow the New Style (Gregorian) calendar, in line with Western Europe, which was adopted by the Bolsheviks on 14 February 1918. The city of St. Petersburg was re-named Petrograd on 1 September 1914 to make it sound less Germanic in the wake of the I World War, and Leningrad after the death of Lenin (21 January 1924), until post-Soviet times when it resumed its original name. In this book references employ the name in use at the time under discussion. The Modified Library of Congress transliteration system has been used, with the alteration that single or double diacritical marks denoting the Russian hard and soft signs have been omitted from people’s names and surnames as well as names of organisations (e.g., Proletkult rather than Proletkul’t). In order to establish consistency with the spelling of more well-known and established names, adjectival’s endings – ii and iy have been simplified to – y (e.g., Lunacharsky, not Lunacharskii; Trotsky, not Trotskii; Mayakovsky, not Maiakovskii). Russian monarchs are given their English equivalent names (e.g., Alexander, not Aleksandr and Nicholas, not Nikolai) and the spellings Alexander and Alexei are followed throughout. Where names have a recognised Westernised form (Marc Chagall, Feodor Chaliapin, Grigorii Yatmanov and Paolo Troubetzkoy, for example), these have been retained. Other exceptions apply to the format of Soviet bibliographical references, where the place of publication was cited, and not the publisher. This convention persisted throughout Soviet academic scholarship and is properly preserved here. Archival references included standard abbreviations for Russian terms: f. for fond [section], ed. khr. for edinitsa khraneniia [unit], op. for opis’ [list], d. for delo [case] (apart from the Archive of Cinematic and Photographic Documents, St. Petersburg (TsGAKFFD), in which all the photographs are catalogued under Cyrillic letters and numbers – Др 1527 etc.). Throughout this book, translations from Russian sources are by this author unless otherwise indicated. When quotations from unpublished sources are included in the book in English, the original Russian quotation is included in Cyrillic in the footnote.

List of Illustrations I.1 I.2 I.3

1.1

1.2

1.3 1.4 2.1

2.2

2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

2.7

2.8

Boris Kustodiev, Moscow I. Entry. Illustration for the magazine Zhupel, no. 2, 1905, p. 4 2 Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky) (1873-1928) in 1904. Photo: GARF, Moscow 11 Structure (in %) of the Russian population. Official Soviet classification. Based on statistical tables in Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1990), p. 506 20 Island of Capri and Villa Behring where Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva lived from March 1909 until February 1911. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, accessed 11.11.2012 36 Vladimir Lenin plays chess with Alexander Bogdanov during a visit to Maxim Gorky. Capri, Italy (10 (23) April-17 (30) April 1908). Photo: Wikimedia Commons, accessed 10.11.2012 37 Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933) in 1915. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg 39 Grottos on Capri, where Lunacharsky gave lectures on the history of art to Russian workers in 1909. Photo: Natalia Murray, 2011 40 Postcards with depictions of a demonstration dedicated to the funerals of the victims of the Revolution. 23 March 1917, Petrograd. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 67 Postcard with a depiction of the burial of the victims of the Revolution. 23 March 1917, Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 68 Lev Rudnev. Monument to the victims of the Revolution. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 69 The burial procession on 23 March 1917. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Д1880 70 Unknown artist. Sketch for decorations of Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. СРБ-964, 965 73 Unknown artist. Poster on the corner of the cotton factory on Bolshaia Morskaia Street in Petrograd. 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 188 74 Banner depicting worker by an anvil. Demonstration on 1 May 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 7734/52017 75 Palace Square on May Day 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 231/14172 79

List of Illustrations 2.9

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Postcard with depictions of demonstrators on Palace and St. Isaac’s Squares in Petrograd. May Day 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 81 2.10 Members of the Union of Metal Workers and the Central Union at the demonstration on May Day 1917 in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН В 16447/50000 82 2.11 Members of trade unions after the May Day 1917 demonstration with banners depicting various images of workers. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Б1109 82 2.12 Boy scouts selling liberty bonds in Petrograd. 25 May 1917. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg 87 2.13 Production of Le vendeur de soleil written by Rachilde and performed by Gaideburov’s Mobile-Popular Theatre in front of the Winter Palace. 25 May 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 88 3.1 The presidium of the national Proletkult organization elected at the first national conference, September 1918. Sitting from left to right in the first row – Fedor Kalinin, Vladimir Faidysh, Pavel Lebedev-Poliansky, Aleksei Mashirov-Samobytnik, Ivan Nikitin, Vasily Ignatov; second row: Stefan Krivtsov, Karl Ozol-Prednek, Anna Dodonova, Nikolai Vasilevsky, Vladimir Kirillov. 1918. Photo: RGALI, f. 1230, op. 2, ed. khr. 27 97 3.2 Members of the IZO Narkompros. Left to right: Aleksei Karev, Olga Rozanova (?), Iosif Shkolnik, Sergei Chekhonin, Mikhail Ilin, David Shterenberg, Nikolai Punin, Petr Vaulin, Kirik Levin, and Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, 1918. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg 100 3.3 Unveiling of the Monument to Alexander III by Paolo Troubetzkoy, 1909, Znamenskaia Square (after 1918 – Uprising Square), St. Petersburg. Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 116 3.4 Typographical veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1918. The top sign reads, ‘Art is one of the means to unite humanity’. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5448 117 3.5 Monument to Alexander III covered with a plywood structure. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5468 118 3.6 Veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2541 119 3.7 Monument to Alexander III covered with spruce branches with the temporary sculpture Trumpeter of the World Revolution in front of it. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1266/10479 120

xiv 3.8

3.9 3.10

3.11

3.12

3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16

3.17

3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22

List of Illustrations Ilia Fomin, Scarecrow in a Cage; ‘imprisoned’ monument to Alexander III. 7 November 1927. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 121 Monument to Nicholas I covered with red ribbons on May Day 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 112 122 The first monument in fulfilment of Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda; Leonid Shervud, Monument to Alexander Radishchev, opened on 22 September 1918 in Petrograd (a copy was erected on 6 October 1918 on Triumphant (now Maiakovskogo) Square in Moscow). Photos: State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 124 Opening of the monument to Karl Marx (sculptor Alexander Matveev), Petrograd, 7 November 1918. Photo: State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 125 Boris Korolev, Monument to Mikhail Bakunin, June 1919, Turgenevskaia Square, Moscow. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg 127 May Day demonstration on the Field of Mars. Petrograd. 1918. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 7727/52017 133 The sad outcome of the air show on 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 120 134 Viktor Bulla. May Day 1918 demonstration in Petrograd. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 7734/52017 135 Viktor Bulla. German and Austrian prisoners of war at a May Day demonstration. 1918. Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2360 137 Viktor Bulla. Representatives of Baltic nationalities at a May Day demonstration. 1918. Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 40846 138 Panel on the façade of the National Library. Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2347 139 The former Mariinsky Palace, where the main painted panel proclaims ‘Build the Red Army!’. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 123 143 Decorative panel on the Duma building on Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2348 144 Decorative panels on the Duma building on Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 145 Performance of the comedy by Antimanov, Vova Korolevich, which was staged by the Theatre Section of Narkompros on 1 May 1918 at the Musical Comedy Theatre in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 147

List of Illustrations

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3.23 Nikolai Tyrsa. Sketches for decorations of Nevsky Prospect (corner of Liteiny Prospect). Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-956, 963 153 3.24 Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Sketches for decorative panels on Theatre Square, Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-874, 875 154 3.25 Kseniia Boguslavskaia. Sketch for a panel for Okhtenskii Bridge, Petrograd. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-913 155 3.26 ‘For God, Tsar and Fatherland’ in the satirical illustrated newspaper Pliuvium, 23 June 1907 (St. Petersburg), no. 38, p. 2. Photo: reproduced in Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013), vol. 19, p. 89 156 3.27 Vladimir Kozlinsky. Sketches for panels The Worker and ‘Long Live the Red Navy’. Decorations for Okhta and Liteiny Prospect, Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-862, 857 157 3.28 Nikolai Tyrsa. Union of workers, peasants and intellectuals. Sketch for decorations of Nevsky Prospect (corner of Liteiny Prospect). Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-957 158 3.29 On the left: Alfred Eberling (professional artist, graduated from the Academy of Arts). Sketches for decoration panels. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-996. On the right: Shleifer (amateur artist, member of Proletkult). Sketch for a factory banner. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-979 159 3.30 Tikhon Chernyshev. Union of workers and peasants and union of workers, soldiers and peasants. Sketches for decorations of the Metal Factory in Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-853, 854 160 3.31 The Alexander Column on Uritsky (former Palace) Square decorated by Nathan Altman; children from Petrograd ophanages in front of Alexander Column on 7 November 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 163 3.32 Nathan Altman. Design for the decoration of Uritsky Square, Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1371 164 3.33 Nathan Altman. Design for the decoration of the General Staff Building, Uritsky Square, Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1370 165 3.34 Viktor Bulla. Crowd of spectators in front of Altman’s plywood panel designed to hide bare trees. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5515 166 3.35 Nathan Altman. Design for decorations of the General Staff Building. Slogans on the two large panels read: ‘Factories to the working people’ and ‘He, who was nothing will be everything’. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1370, 1372 167

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3.36 Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. Spheres in front of the Admiralty decorated with a ribbon bearing the signs of the zodiac. 7 November 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 441 168 3.37 Boris Grigoriev. Portrait of Walt Whitman. Sketches for the composition Socialism for the decoration of the English Embankment in Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-742-746 170 3.38 Boris Grigoriev. Sketches for the composition Socialism for the decoration of the English Embankment in Petrograd. Inscribed: ‘Bridge decorated with lanterns, some decorated with signs and flowers, some with heads of workers, lit from inside by an electric bulb. Lanterns are red, some are covered with fabric with painted flowers.’ Signs on the lanterns read: ‘My password: democracy!’; ‘All things are equal’; ‘My great comrade whom I am missing’, etc. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-742-746 171 3.39 Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Sketches for decorations of Teatralnaia (Theatre) Square in Petrograd. The two panels above illustrate the exploits of Stepan Razin. Below: the design of a free-standing panel (also by Petrov-Vodkin, seen at the sides of the Square in the sketch above). Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-876 172 3.40 V. Shcherbakov. Sketch for the banner Scales of justice. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-1005 173 3.41 Tikhon Chernyshev. The Call. Sketch for decorations of the Metal Factory in Petrograd. Photo: State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg. СРБ-1009 174 3.42 Mikhail Rundaltsov. Sketches for decorations of the Catherine Canal Embankment (in front of St. Nicholas Cathedral). Inscribed ‘Triumph of the Revolution’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-923, 924 174 3.43 Decorations of the Catherine Canal Embankment (in front of St. Nicholas Cathedral). Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 175 3.44 Arnold Lakhovsky, Iakov Bluvshtein. Sketch for a decorative arch, ‘Glory to Labour’, which had to be erected at the crossing of Simeonovskaia Street and Liteiny Prospect. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-850 176 3.45 Konstantin Bikshe. Temporary arch at the entrance to Pestel (former Panteleimonovskii) Bridge (linked to the Summer Gardens) in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5448 177 3.46 Lev Rudnev. Sketches for banners. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-940 178 3.47 Alexander Klein. Sketch for a panel for the former Synod Building with the theme ‘The old world has collapsed; a new world is imminent’. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-851 179 3.48 Mikhail Blokh. The Metalworker, Petrograd. November 1918. Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 180

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3.49 Vladimir Lebedev. Competition entry for Palace Square decorations. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-717 181 3.50 Vladimir Lebedev. Sketches for two panels for Narodny Bridge ‘Long Live the Red Army’ and ‘Long Live the International’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-828, 829 182 3.51 Lebedev’s panel on Narodny Bridge. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5451 183 3.52 Ivan Puni. Sketches for decorations of Okhtenskii Bridge and Liteiny Prospect. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-906-909 184 3.53 Ivan Puni. Panel for decoration of the former Army and Navy Hall on Liteiny Prospect. Photo on the left: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-910. Photo on the right: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5447 185 3.54 Vladimir Kozlinsky. Panel for decorations of Okhta. Photo on the left: State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg. СРБ-911. Photo on the right: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5448 186 3.55 Sergei Chekhonin. Sketches for decorations of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The text on the poster on the right reads: ‘Death to oppressors’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-1011, 1013 187 4.1 Nikolai Punin in 1919. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg 190 4.2 Front page of Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo kommuny], 5 January 1919 190 4.3 Subscription booth for courses in Esperanto. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 168 208 4.4 ‘A float of the New World’. 1 May 1919 in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5478 209 4.5 ‘The Old World float’, which was called The Dragon of Capitalism. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5464 210 4.6 Show float in Petrograd on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5370-5371 211 4.7 Demonstration on Vasilievskii Island in Petrograd. Motorcar draped with fir branches and decorated with a poster with a caricature of Alexander Kolchak on the front and a poster representing members of the International on top of the car. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1252 and TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 163 212 4.8 Decorated automobile on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 1267 212 4.9 Demonstration on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1297 213 4.10 Planting new trees on the Field of Mars. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1419 213

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4.14 4.15

4.16

5.1

5.2

5.3 5.4

5.5

5.6 5.7

5.8

List of Illustrations Decoration of the road in front of Smolny. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5513 214 Central Press kiosks in Petrograd. 1 May 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2415 215 Rally for Petrograd school children. Chernyshevskaia Square, Petrograd. May Day 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 16276 (02) 216 Petrograd Agricultural School at May Day demonstration. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 12202 217 Performance of Vladimir Rappoport’s theatre play, Spring, during a rally for Petrograd school children. Chernyshevskaia Square, Petrograd. May Day 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 16276 (01) 218 Mikhail Blokh, The Death of Capitalism. Part of the veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2541 218 Vladimir Tatlin, ‘Venice from Kumer’ and ‘Tsar’s Son’. Costume designs for Tsar Maximilian, 1911, pencil and gouache on paper, 23 × 17 cm. Photos: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg 232 Crowds watching an outdoor performance in front of the Musical Comedy Theatre on Nevsky Prospect. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 238 Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army. 23 February 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 239 Performance on Uritsky Square of The Overthrow of the Autocracy by the Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army (director Nikolai Vinogradov). 20 July 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 240 Episode ‘9 January 1905’ from the performance on Uritsky Square of The Overthrow of the Autocracy by the Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army (director N. Vinogradov). 20 July 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 241 Street performance in Petrograd. 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 242 Members of the Polish proletariat in Petrograd on May Day 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg. Below: Banners left during work at a day of unpaid labour [subbotnik]. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 5065 244 Loading the railing’s foundations onto a rail cart. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 40376 246

List of Illustrations 5.9

5.10 5.11

5.12 5.13

5.14

5.15 5.16

5.17

5.18 5.19 5.20

5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24

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Dismantling of the railing which surrounded the Winter Palace Garden. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 40385 247 Street stand dedicated to 100 years of French Revolution. 1 May 1920. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 40555 248 Pantomime Transferral of a Slave’s Labour into Bright Construction on a mobile tram platform. Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 249 Theatrical performance on a platform attached to a lorry. Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 250 Spectators watching the performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour in front of the former Stock Exchange in Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 251 Performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour, which took place in front of the former Stock Exchange in Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 252 Performance The Blockade of Russia. Kamenny Island, Petrograd. 20 June 1920. Photos: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 254 Workers’ representatives from all of Petrograd’s factories lined up in front of the Moscow Railway Station to meet delegates of the Second Congress of the III Communist International. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 255 International rally on Uritsky Square dedicated to the Second Congress of the III Communist International. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 256 The participants of the mass performance Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 257 Scenes from the mass enactment of Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 258 Nathan Altman. Design for decorating the Stock Exchange building as a stage set for the mass dramatisation of Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 260 Street exhibition in Petrograd. 7 November 1920. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2975 263 Gymnastics demonstration in Petrograd. 7 November 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 264 Mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. 7 November 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 265 Mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. 7 November 1920. Photos: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 266

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5.25 Red Guardsmen marching through Red Square in the mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg 268 E.1 May Day demonstrations in Leningrad. 1979. Photo: Family archive of N. Murray 273 E.2 Decorative installation diagrams and statistics with the slogan ‘Revolution is calling everyone to hard work’, 1 May 1921. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg 277

Abbreviations and Glossary AKhRR [АХРР]

Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia [Assotsiatsiia Khudozhnikov Revolutsionnoi Rossii] later known as Association of Artists of the Revolution was a group of artists in the Soviet Union in 1922-1933. Cheka [ЧК] Abbreviation of Vecheka, itself an acronym for ‘All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage’ [VseRossiiskii Komitet po Bor’be s Kontr-Revolutsiei i Sabotazhem] of the Russian SFSR, the secret police from 1917 to 1922. FOTO-KINO Section of Photography and Cinema at Narkompros [Otdel Foto-Kino [Фото-Кино] Narkomprosa]. GINKhUK State Institute of Artistic Culture [Gosudarsvennyi Institut Khudozh[Гинхук] estvennoi Kul’tury], Petrograd. GlavpolitMain Political-Educational Committee [Glavnyi Politikoprosvet Obrazovatel’nyi Komitet]. [Главполитпросвет] GPU [ГПУ] State Political Directorate [Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie] under Felix Dzerzhinsky. On 6 February 1922 Cheka was transformed into the GPU, a department of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) of the Russian SFSR. On 15 November 1923 GPU left the NKVD and became the All-Union OGPU under the direct control of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR. KomFut An acronym from ‘Communist Futurist’ [Kommunisticheskii Futur[КомФут] ism]; Russian, short-lived (January-April 1919) avant-garde group which aimed to unify art and politics and to create a new Communist cultural ideology. KPSS [КПСС] The Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soyuza] was the sole governing political party in the Soviet Union. IZO Visual Arts Section of Narkompros [Otdel Izobrazitel’nykh Iskusstv Narkompros Narkomprosa], founded in January 1918 with the painter David Shteren[ИЗО berg as the first director, who was replaced by Nikolai Punin after Наркомпрос] Shterenberg’s move to Moscow Narkompros. Narkompros The People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narodnyi Komissariat [НаркомProsveshcheniia], the Soviet agency charged with the administration прос] of public education and most issues related to culture. In 1946, it was transformed into the Ministry of Education. Its first head was Anatoly Lunacharsky.

xxii NEP [НЭП]

Abbreviations and Glossary

The New Economic Policy [Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika]. It was planned at the Tenth Party Conference but launched in 1921 to replace the failed policy of War Communism. Okhrana The Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order [Охрана] [Departament Zaschity Obshchestvennogo Poriadka]; the secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the late nineteenth century, aided by the Special Corps of Gendarmes. OGPU [ОГПУ] The Joint State Political Directorate (also translated as the All-Union State Political Administration) [Obyedinyonnoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie] was the secret police service of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1934. Orgburo Organisational Bureau [Organizatsionnoe Buro]. [Оргбюро] Proletkult Abbreviation of Proletarian Culture [Proletarskaia Kul’tura], an experi[Пролетmental organisation established in the new Soviet state in 1917 in conкульт] junction with the October Revolution, to provide the foundations for the development of proletarian art. RKP(b) Bolshevik Party of Workers and Peasants [Bol’shevistskaia Partiia [РКП(б)] Rabochikh i Krest’an]. RSDRP The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party [Rossiiskaia Sotsial[РСДРП] Demokraticheskaia Rabochaia Partiia], also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a revolutionary socialist Russian political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organisations into one party. Sovnarkom The Council of the People’s Commissars [Sovet Narodnykh Komis[Совнарком] sarov] was the highest government authority under the Bolshevik system after the success of the Socialist Revolution. Vesenkha The Supreme Soviet of the People’s Economy [Vysshii Sovet Narodnogo [ВСНХ] Khoziaistva]. VTsIK The All-Russian Central Executive Committee [Vserossiyskii Centralnyi [ВЦИК] Ispolnitelnyi Komitet].

Introduction The twentieth century brought several waves of revolution that swept across Russia, each greater and more substantial than the last. Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 exposed military corruption and the widening gap between conservative and progressive forces in the Russian administration. The first revolution had occurred already in January 1905 when on 9 January a peaceful demonstration of between 50,000 and 100,000 workers were fired upon by troops while taking a petition to Tsar Nicholas II at the Winter Palace. But although several reforms were introduced following the uprising, including the establishment of a more liberal system of government and the opening of the first Duma in January 1906, these changes did not bring democracy to Russia. The massacre of striking workers at the Lena goldfields in April 1912 (which subsequently inspired Vladimir Ulianov’s pseudonym – Lenin), the destructive influence of Grigorii Rasputin on the imperial family and, consequently, on Russian military and foreign policy during World War I, all inspired first the February and then the October Revolutions of 1917. The declaration of press freedom by the October Manifesto and the subsequent relaxation of censorship regulations by the new press laws of 24 November 1905, established the long-awaited (although short-lived) legal liberation of the Russian press. Satirical journals that proliferated during the 1905 Revolution reached phenomenal distribution levels, estimated at close to thirty million copies and became the main vehicles for widely spread political propaganda. At the time, such leading Russian artists as Boris Kustodiev, Ivan Bilibin, Konstantin Somov, Sergei Chekhonin, Isaak Brodsky and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (many of whom were involved in the production of festive decorations for Petrograd in 1917-1920) were using caricature to express their dissatisfaction with and contempt for the political situation in Russia. In these journals artists commented on the political developments of the revolutionary period as a nightmare of demons, vampires, monsters, skeletons, executions, rapes and assassinations. Works such as Dobuzhinsky’s Pacification (depicting the Kremlin immersed in a sea of blood) and October Idyll (showing a blood stain and an abandoned doll as the only things left from a child who was killed and which appeared in the journal Bugbear [Zhupel]) are clear examples of the political commitment of one of the leaders of the World of Art [Mir Iskusstva] movement. The motifs of such illustrations as Kustodiev’s Moscow I. Entry (1905, Zhupel), which de-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_002

2

Figure I.1

Introduction

Boris Kustodiev, Moscow I. Entry. Illustration for the magazine Zhupel, no. 2, 1905, p. 4.

picted a giant skeleton advancing upon government troops from the workers’ barricades (fig. I.1), were used again in street decorations after the Bolshevik Revolution. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution aimed to destroy the old bourgeois society and to build a new homogenous socialist state. Like Fascist Italy or Germany, the new Bolshevik state needed a new foundation, and with it a corresponding founding mythology. In his book on totalitarian art, the art-historian Igor Golomstock observed that: ‘In a totalitarian system art performs the function of transforming the

Introduction

3

raw material of dry ideology into the fuel of images and myths intended for general consumption.’1 This book uses festive decorations as illustrations of the Soviet cultural policies and political changes that took place in Russia in 1917-1920; in this way, theoretical discourse is confronted by evidence of creative activity. For full analysis of both theory and practice, archival and published sources have been deployed, and an additional diverse range of critical viewpoints examined – in particular, an analysis of the writings of Gustave Le Bon, Alexander Bogdanov, Nikolai Punin and Anatoly Lunacharsky runs through each stage of the development of my arguments. Their theoretical and critical texts form a spectrum of opinions from Le Bon’s internationally acclaimed handbook for the control and manipulation of crowds – first published in Russia in 1896 – widely read and highly influential in Russia, to Bogdanov’s and Lunacharsky’s writings on the development of proletarian culture in Russia before and after the Revolution and finally, Punin’s views on the importance of avant-garde art in the development of the proletariat. The idea of popular and proletarian art which runs through their writings is critically examined in this book. One of the main distinguishing features of the newly proposed proletarian art was that its new forms of expression would be seen fundamentally as collective, on the principle that working-class identity was rooted in the collective experience of labour. This required new forms of artistic practice promoting and shaping the experience of socialist life as a collective activity, developed in contrast to the individualistic artistic practice of conventional and contemporary ‘bourgeois’ art. The conscious exploitation of the potential power of the proletariat first by the ruling classes and then by revolutionary leaders was not a new idea – and already in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe the use of the educational properties of art was considered to be essential. The revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries inspired dreams of a new culture, which would be distinct from that of the previous ruling classes. The French Revolution (which was used by the Bolsheviks as a precedent), according to Marie-Hélène Huet ‘meant to stage both the erasure of the old regime and the emergence of the new order, using what the Révolutions de Paris called

1 Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China, trans. from Russian by Robert Chandler (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), p. xii.

4

Introduction

“the powerful language of images”.’2 Despite Robespierre’s attempts to impose a cult devoid of all visual representations, the caricatures and decorations of the Festival of the Supreme Being had been used as a powerful tool of communication with the masses. After the French Revolution, visions of a new revolutionary culture became common in Europe. In his book Positive Philosophy, published in 1855, Auguste Comte wrote: ‘When a stable, homogeneous and at the same time progressive state of society shall have been established under a positive philosophy, the fine arts will flourish more than they ever did under polytheism, finding new scope and prerogatives under the new intellectual regime.’3 Comte described how art could flourish in France as a product of a revolution. However, the question of the use of art for the achievement of revolutionary goals was soon raised. In the end of the nineteenth century the connection between art and politics was idealised by Austrian writers Arthur Schnitzler4 and Hugo von Hofmannstahl,5 who proposed an art-inspired form of social order that revolved around the idea of harmony.6 Hofmannstahl argued that modern society lacked cohesion with new ‘irrational’ masses asserting their voices. He saw the solution to this problem in poetry and believed that it was the poet’s task to bind together the various parts of society into a harmonic whole. Hofmannstahl also believed that ‘only art could respond to the presence of the irrational in modern politics.’7 In Germany, the art historian and philosopher, Julius Langbehn referred to art as ‘Kunstpolitik’, or aesthetic politics. He be-

2 Marie-Hélène Huet, ‘Performing Arts: Theatricality and the Terror’, in Representing the French Revolution. Literature, Historiography and Art, ed. by James A. W. Heffernan (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1992), p. 136. 3 See Robert C. Williams, ‘Lunacharsky and Proletarian Culture’, in Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1905-1925 (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1977), p. 32. 4 Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist known for his psychological dramas that dissect turn-of-the-century Viennese bourgeois life. 5 Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was an Austrian poet and dramatist, who became internationally famous for his collabouration with the German operatic composer Richard Strauss. 6 See Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1980). 7 Hugo von Hofmannstahl, ‘Der Dichter und diese Zeit’, in Selected Essays, ed. by Mary Gilbert (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955), pp. 120-143.

Introduction

5

lieved that politics and art should be inseparable and that politicians should care more about artistic rather than military reforms.8 At the time a ‘scientific’ interest in the crowd, its potential, and how to manipulate it, came to haunt the imagination of many intellectuals in France.9 The disruptive potential and violent energy of the crowd were, for example, described in the fiction of Émile Zola and Hippolyte Taine.10 In the nineteenth century, many intellectuals in Europe were also concerned with the explosion of the European population. From 1800 to 1914 it rose from 180 to 460 million. This concern with what was seen as overpopulation was described by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1883 in his book Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Here Zarathustra deplores overpopulation by saying: ‘Many, too many live and much too long they hang on their branches. Would that storm come and shake all this rottenness and wormeaten mess from the tree.’11 In the compilation of his articles, first published in 1901 in the volume The Will to Power, Nietzsche presciently warned his reader that ‘this tyranny of the least and the dumbest’ will be socialism – a ‘hopeless and sour affair’ which ‘negates life’.12 Educated Russians read Nietzsche in German and French but the first translations of Nietzsche into Russian appeared in 1896.13 Lenin and the Bolshevik educated elite also read Nietzsche, seemingly making his words from Nachgelassene Fragmente their national agenda: ‘I shall teach a superior kind of art, not the art of artworks, but the contriving of celebrations’.14 However, the most influential French social psychologist, who dedicated his studies to the nature and demands of the populus, was Gustave Le Bon. 8 9 10

11 12 13

14

See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961). See Roger L. Geiger, ‘Democracy and the Crowd: The Social History of an Idea in France and Italy, 1880-1914’, in Societas, Winter 1977, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 47-71. On the perception of crowds in nineteenth-century France, see Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981). Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. from German by Thomas Wayne (New York: Algora Publishing, 2003), p. 55. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. from German by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 77. See Bernice Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia (Philidelphia, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986) and Bernice Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche To Stalinism (Philidelphia, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). Quoted in Malte Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917-1991, trans. from German by Cynthia Clohr (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), p. 7.

6

Introduction

Dr Gustave Le Bon15 was not the first anthropologist to be studying crowds in the 1880’s. His fellow Frenchman, Gustave Tarde, the Italian Scipio Sighele and the German Georg Simmel were all active in this field, though the latter two were mainly interested in the criminal behaviour of crowds. Le Bon by contrast was the author with the widest and longest-lasting influence. His book, Psychologie des Foules, first published in France in 1895, immediately attracted the attention of socialists and intellectuals throughout Europe.16 Le Bon’s study of the crowd was translated into English and Russian the following year.17 Le Bon stated that ‘the age we are about to enter will be in truth the era of crowds’.18 His immediate context included the Paris Commune, the potential threat of a coup d’état by General Boulanger, the Dreyfus Affair and the German occupation of Alsace-Lorraine, but he also used numerous examples from the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. In this book, his insights will be used as a critical tool examining the control and manipulation of the masses in the twentieth century. In his book, he emphasised that every leader should master ‘the art of impressing the imagination of the crowds’ because that knowledge would endow a leader with the ability to govern them.19 He stressed the importance of art in society by saying 15

16

17 18 19

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French social psychologist best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds. After receiving a doctorate in medicine, Le Bon travelled in Europe, North Africa, and Asia and wrote several books on anthropology and archaeology. His interests later shifted to natural science and social psychology. In Les Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples (1894; The Psychology of Peoples), he developed the view that history is the product of racial or national character, with emotion, not intelligence, the dominant force in social evolution. He attributed true progress to the work of intellectual elite. Le Bon believed that modern life was increasingly characterised by crowd assemblages. In 1895, he wrote his most popular book, La psychologie des foules. Apart from France, Italy and Russia, Le Bon’s book was widely admired in Germany (especially by the leading social democrat who proposed the concept of evolutionary socialism, Eduard Bernstein, and by Rosa Luxemburg). In England, Le Bon’s book was admired by the Fabian Society. It had also been defined as one of the most influential in social psychology. See Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France. Le Bon, Psikhologiia narodov i mass, trans. into Russian by A. Fridman and E. Pimenova (St. Petersburg: A. Pavlenkov, 1896). Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Dover Publications, 2002), p. x. Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Viking, 1960); quoted in Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 20.

Introduction

7

that: ‘Crowds, being only capable of thinking in images, are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract them, and so become motives of action.’20 Le Bon believed that he had scientifically proven the irrational nature of crowds, and that political leaders should always appeal to the sentiments of the common people and ‘never to their reason’.21 He advised the leaders of modern society to play on the power of representation, adopting theatrical modes. In his studies of the crowd he wrote that: ‘Theatrical representations… always have an enormous influence on crowds.’22 This perspicacious French psychologist may have foreseen the whole extent of the crowd’s manipulation through workers’ theatrical societies, street performances and the festivals in Bolshevik Russia. In his writings, Le Bon stressed that the art of words alone was problematic in this context, due to possible misunderstanding. Instead he suggested the use of words and language in combination with images, since words ‘handled with art’ ‘can turn magic’.23 Le Bon promoted the subtle art of political manipulation developed and adopted in twentieth-century Europe, Russia and America. In his autobiography, Benito Mussolini admitted: ‘One of the books that interested me most was the Psychology of the Crowds by Gustave Le Bon – a capital work to which I frequently refer’.24 Also, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf drew largely on the propaganda techniques proposed in Le Bon’s Psychologie des Foules, translated into German in 1908 and published under the title Psychologie der Massen [Psychology of the Masses]. In his article, ‘Men of the Crowd. How Homo Sovieticus was Created’, the commentator Sergei Grabovsky has noted that, relying on the works of Le Bon, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and, somewhat later, anti-Marxist socialists like Mussolini, Hitler and Goebbels supported their ideological concepts with practical recommendations on how to manipulate the crowd. He remarked that La Psychologie des Foules lay on the desks of all of the above leaders, complete with underlinings and dog-eared pages, serving as a guideline for future actions. Grabovsky concluded that, ironically, Le Bon was staunchly opposed to social-

20 21 22 23 24

Ibid. Ibid. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Viking, 1960), p. 68. Ibid. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 207.

8

Introduction

ism in any form, but totalitarian socialist experiments would have hardly been successful without him.25 In his memoirs, a secretary of the Soviet Union’s Politburo and later a personal secretary to Joseph Stalin, Boris Bazhanov wrote: An interesting detail. I wanted to find out which books Lenin used most often. As Gliasser [one of Lenin’s secretaries] told me, one of the books in his possession was Psychology of the Crowds by Gustave Le Bon. One could only guess whether Lenin used it as an irreplaceable practical key to influence the masses and whether he took from Le Bon’s remarkable work the understanding that despite the naive theories of Rousseau, it is not easy to change the complicated century-old interconnection of life elements through decrees of fantasists and dogmatists (that is the reason why after all brilliant revolutions the wind always returns to its normal direction).26 However, in his biography of Lenin, the historian Robert Service wrote that ‘Carlyle, Freud, Kierkegaard, Le Bon, Michels, Nietzsche and Weber were ignored totally or very nearly in Lenin’s written works (although he was to keep Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra in his Kremlin book cabinet).’27 Lenin aimed to build his theory of socialism on the writings of Marx and Engels. But although he could conveniently use the writings of Karl Marx as the ‘blueprint’ for the development of his own political and economic theory, the lack of a well-defined role for art and culture in Marx and Engels’ theoretical discourse left this subject open to wide interpretation. For Marx, art was yet another form of ideology associated primarily with religious oppression.

25 26

27

See S. Grabovsky, ‘Men of the Crowd. How Homo Sovieticus was Created’, in The Ukrainian Week, international monthly edition, 23 December 2011, p. 3. Boris Bazhanov, Vospominaniia byvshego sekretaria Stalina (St. Petersburg: Vsemirnoe slovo, 1992), p. 112. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Интересная деталь. Я хотел узнать, какими книгами чаще всего пользовался Ленин. Как мне сказала Гляссер, среди этих книг была «Психология толпы» Густава Лебона. Остается гадать, пользовался ли ею Ленин как незаменимым практическим ключом к воздействию на массы или извлёк из замечательного труда Лебона понимание того, что, вопреки наивным теориям Руссо, то сложное вековое переплетение элементов жизни декретами фантазёров и догматиков изменить совсем не так легко (отчего после всех блестящих революций и возвращается всегда ветер «на круги своя»).’ See Robert Service, Lenin (London: Pan Books, 2010), p. 203.

Introduction

9

He wrote that: ‘In a communist society there are no painters, but at most men who, among other things, paint.’28 However, for the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat (first suggested by Marx), the need for new proletarian art and culture became essential for building a mythology and, as some saw it, the new communist religion of the new Russia. This book attempts to examine how the strategy of the manipulation of crowds through images was developed in Bolshevik Russia, using the festival decorations of Petrograd as a case study and making use of Le Bon’s guidelines to provide a contemporary critique. But it is equally important to mention that in nineteenth century Europe Le Bon was not alone in propagating the importance of art and images in communicating with the masses. As Peter Burke observed in his book Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, ‘it was in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when traditional popular culture was just beginning to disappear, that the ‘people’ or the ‘folk’ became a subject of interest to European intellectuals.’29 At the time, socialists all over Europe were talking about the need for a new art and new culture for a new socialist society and Britain played an important role in this. In the middle of the nineteenth century, John Ruskin and William Morris spread socialist ideas and views of art as the tool to improve the life of the working class. A socialist school for workers was established at Ruskin College in Oxford in 1899. A poet, artist, publisher, innovator of the arts and devotee of the PreRaphaelite aesthetics, William Morris developed a theory based on his conviction that advancing the decorative arts on the basis of medieval and folk traditions was a powerful tool in the struggle against the modern machine age. This belief served as Morris’s main motivation in his work towards the revival of crafts when he became the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, which was not only to play a significant role in England, but also to determine how

28 29

Quoted in O. K. Werckmeister, ‘Marx on Ideology and Art’, in New Literary History, Spring 1973, vol. 4, no. 3, p. 507. Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), p. 3. In nineteenth-century Russia, the new socialist movement Narodniki was formed. They believed that political propaganda among the peasantry would lead to the awakening of the masses and, through their influence, to the liberalization of the tsarist regime. Because Russia was a predominantly agricultural country, the peasants represented the majority of the people [narod]: hence the name of the movement, which comes from the Russian word narodnichestvo, or populism.

10

Introduction

other countries developed their own variations of the style. As Morris’s ideas spread across the world, in Russia, the Abramtsevo artists’ colony, organised by Savva Mamontov and his wife Elizaveta, offered fertile ground receptive to Morris’ ideas. The founders of the Abramtsevo artists’ colony often travelled abroad and were familiar with the work of the Arts and Crafts Movement.30 They were also inspired by the Russian ‘enlightenment’ and public service ideas of the 1860’s, so Morris’s thoughts on reviving old crafts as a way of elevating modern culture resonated with them. Along with Morris and Ruskin, Russian artists studied and integrated in their art innovative book and magazine illustrations by one of Ruskin’s diligent followers, Walter Crane. Russian press reviews of Walter Crane’s books were published in the World of Art magazine and The New Journal of Art, Literature and Science. From the early 1880’s, initially under William Morris’s influence, Crane was closely associated with the Socialist movement in Britain. Like Morris and the Russian artists in Abramtsevo, he also tried to bring art into the daily life of all classes. He worked for the Art Workers Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which he helped to found in 1888. The Russian intelligentsia strove to bring education to the people, to enrich their life with culture while preserving traditional ways of life; this characteristic pursuit took the distinctive shape of an ‘aesthetic mission’ of the community of artists in Abramtsevo – a community united by the vision of art as an inalienable part of existence and a life inconceivable without art. These Russian artists and designers were attracted by Morris’s and Crane’s ideas of reviving old folk crafts as a way of revitalising national culture, inspired by the ideas of the ‘Russian enlightenment’ that had emerged in the 1860’s and a sense of public service. But even though many European and Russian artists and philosophers had tried to create art that appealed to the working classes already in the nine-

30

The works of Ruskin and Morris were popular and influential in Russia. Ruskin’s work ‘Sesame and Lilies’ was first trans. from English by Olga Solovieva in 1900; Sesame and Lilies: Three Lectures [Sesamy i lilii: tri lektsii] (St. Petersburg: Noviy zhurnal inostrannoi literatury, 1900). Morris’s articles were translated and published for the first time in 1908 by Nikolai Rusanov (N. Kudrin’s pseudonym) in his book Socialists of the West and Russia: Fourier, Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Jules Valles, William Morris, Chernishevsky, Lavrov, Mikhailovski [Sotsialisty Zapada i Rossii: Furie, Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Jules Valles, William Morris, Chernishevsky, Lavrov, Mikhailovski] (St. Petersburg: Typography of M. M. Stasulevich, 1908.).

Introduction

Figure I.2

11

Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky) (1873-1928) in 1904. Photo: GARF, Moscow.

teenth century, the term ‘proletarian culture’ was used consciously for the first time by the early Russian revolutionary, Bogdanov (the pseudonym of Alexander Malinovsky, fig. I.2). Educated as a doctor of medicine and psychiatry, Bogdanov had been a key figure in the early history of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, being one of its co-founders and a rival to Vladimir Lenin until he was expelled in 1909. Exiled from Russia in 1905, he took part in the experimental development of a workers’ school in Capri with his brother-in-law Anatoly Lunarcharsky. In 1914, he was allowed to return under an amnesty where he worked as a doctor on the front and subsequently became a junior house surgeon at an evacuation hospital. In the first decade of post-revolutionary Russia, he was an influential opponent of the government, arguing from an idealistic Marxist perspective, and despite having no party-political involvement in the Revolution of 1917, as a non-Leninist Bolshevik, was nonetheless seen as having an influence second only to his great rival. From 1917 to 1921, Bogdanov played a key role in the organisation and propagation of Proletkult and was its leading theoretician. Bogdanov worked to

12

Introduction

determine the nature and development of the new society itself, as well as defining the role of culture in its formation. Bogdanov saw proletarian culture as both the realistic and idealistic socialist training of the proletariat.31 If Le Bon believed that ‘the crowd’ could be transformed by the power of images, Bogdanov entrusted the transformation of Russian workers to the power of proletarian culture, which would unite and lift them up to yet another level of development. Lenin saw scientific development as the route to economic change and Bogdanov believed that the flourishing of science would inspire cultural progress. This makes clear the need for simple criteria such as those endorsed by Le Bon and Bogdanov in developing the theoretical basis of post-revolutionary artistic policies in Russia. This book attempts to avoid utilising Lenin and ‘Leninism’ as the sole reference point in the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in postrevolutionary Russia, preferring instead to examine the less familiar parallel and competing cultural policies of Bogdanov’s Proletkult as well as his main opposition in Lunacharsky’s Narkompros. Building a new society and a new proletarian culture without any historical precedent could not be easy or straight-forward, although in the Soviet literature, Lenin’s plan for the development of socialism in Russia was always named as the most original and effective. It included three major directions in building socialism: industrialisation, collectivisation and cultural revolution. Already in 1924, right after the death of Lenin, the idea of the cultural revolution was attributed to him. Lenin first used the term ‘cultural revolution’ in his article ‘On Cooperation’ [‘O kooperatsii’] in 1923. However, Bogdanov was preaching the importance of a cultural revolution for the proletariat, as ‘its internal socialist revolution’ even before the Bolshevik Revolution.32 If in Lenin’s plan for the development of socialism the importance of the cultural transformation of Russia was secondary to the economic one, for Bogdanov proletarian culture was the cornerstone in building the new country with workers in the vanguard of society. For Bogdanov, the creation of a new mentality for a new type of worker was of utmost importance. He believed that in order to become true leaders of the new nation, the proletariat had to develop through a ‘cultural programme’, in which art and visual images were of the utmost importance. 31 32

See ‘“The Case” of A. A. Bogdanov’ [‘‘Delo’ A. A. Bogdanova’], in Voprosy istorii, 1994, no. 9, p. 19. See A. A. Bogdanov, Science of Social Consciousness [Nauka ob obschestvennom soznanii], 2nd edition (Moscow, 1918), p. 229.

Introduction

13

Already in 1909, Bogdanov and Lenin had become political rivals, and when Lenin turned to cultural matters, including Proletkult, after the end of the Civil War, the first criticism of Bogdanov appeared in the media.33 Following such ‘newspaper hounding’ (as he used to call it), on 18 September 1923, Bogdanov was arrested by the OGPU (the Soviet secret police) on suspicion of having inspired a recently-discovered, secret, oppositionist group ‘Worker’s Truth’, and he was detained for five weeks. Even after his release, Bogdanov’s GPU (which later merged with OGPU) and subsequent KGB file remained under investigation until 1989. After Bogdanov’s tragic death in 1928, caused by an unsuccessful blood transfusion (possibly organised by the OGPU), he was heavily criticised in Soviet literature, but his ideas penetrated into Soviet ideology through the Politburo Central Committee member and the editor-in-chief of Pravda, Nikolai Bukharin. But even Bukharin, who allied himself with Stalin after Lenin’s death, was to be brutally interrogated and executed in 1938. However, while in prison, influenced by Bogdanov’s 1924 work On Proletarian Culture [O proletarskoi kulture], Bukharin completed his book, On Socialism and Its Culture.

Methods, Approaches and Sources In approaching the period of war and Revolution, it is essential to acknowledge the development of the pre-revolutionary roots of communist cultural theory and to use chronological, historical and comparative methods of analysis. Gustave Le Bon and Alexander Bogdanov devised concepts that provide viewpoints from the time and allow an analysis of competing theories interacting in advance of the Revolution of 1917, thread through the events of 1917 and form part of the post-revolutionary cultural debate about socialist art that would be collective, politically effective and public. Within this evidently collective context the parades were both politicized and public. 33

See articles by A. Udeltsov, ‘On the Criticism of Classes According to A. A. Bogdanov’ [‘K kritike klassov u A. A. Bogdanova’], in Pod znamenem marksizma, 1922, no. 7-8; Ia. Iakovlev, ‘Menshevism in Proletkult Robes’ [‘Men’shevism v proletkul’tovskoi odezhde’], in Pravda, 4 January 1923; ‘V. Lenin and G. Plekhanov. Against Bogdanov: Three Chapters Against Bogdanov’ [V. Lenin and G. Plekhanov. Protiv Bogdanova: tri glavy protiv Bogdanova], published under the name ‘Materialist’ in Pod Znamenem marksizma, 1923, no. 8-9; G. Sergey, ‘Unenviable Happiness: Plekhanov’s Prophecy of Bogdanov’ [Nezavidnoe schastie: Prorochestvo Plekhanova o Bogdanove’], in Sputnik kommunista, Moscow, 1923, no. 24; N. Voitinski, ‘On the Vpered Group /1909-1917/’ [‘O gruppe ‘Vpered’ /1909-1917/], in Proletarskaia revolutsiia, 1929, no. 12.

14

Introduction

Hence this book expands the field of research by conducting a survey of the development of proletarian culture in post-revolutionary Russia, in particular in the first of the parades and festivals. It uses festive decorations as illustrations of Soviet cultural policies and political changes that took place in Russia in 1917-1920. In this way, theoretical discourse is confronted by evidence of creative activity. For a full analysis of both theory and practice, archival and published sources have been deployed; a diverse critical range of viewpoints has been examined, in particular, an analysis of the writings of Le Bon, Bogdanov, Punin and Lunacharsky run through each stage of the discussion here. Their theoretical and critical texts form a spectrum of opinions from Le Bon’s internationally acclaimed handbook for the control and manipulation of crowds – translated into Russian, widely read and highly influential in Russia – to Bogdanov’s and Lunacharsky’s writings on the development of proletarian culture in Russia before and after the Revolution and finally Punin’s views on the importance of Futurist art in the development of the proletariat. The idea of popular and proletarian art runs through the writings of each of these commentators, and therefore examined for its criteria and also used as a critical tool throughout this book. This book explores important threads which were developing before 1917 and which continued in practice and debate after the October Revolution; it also investigates the role of early Soviet festivals in the education of the Russian proletariat from 1917 to 1920 and explores the confrontation between Narkompros and Proletkult. Although funded by the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros), Proletkult sought autonomy from state control, a demand which brought it into conflict with the Communist Party hierarchy and Lenin himself who saw in Proletkult a gathering of bourgeois intellectuals and of potential political oppositionists. By the time of Bogdanov’s death in 1928, his Proletkult movement had become the subject of constant criticism and persecution. Thus, the critic Andrei Shcheglov in his book written in 1937 and dedicated to the philosophical differences between Lenin and Bogdanov, labelled Bogdanov’s philosophy of proletarian culture ‘Bogdanov’s nihilism’.34 This term became popular, and was used in Soviet literature until recently. In the retrospective criticism of Bogdanov in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Proletkult was criticised by Russian art historians primarily for its ‘vulgar’ aes-

34

See A. Shcheglov, Lenin’s Struggle with Bogdanov’s Revision of Marxism [Bor’ba Lenina s bogdanovskoi reviziei marksizma] (Moscow, 1937).

Introduction

15

thetic theories.35 Among many other critics, Vladimir Gorbunov was the most enthusiastic, and following numerous articles in the magazine Questions of the History of KPSS [Voprosy istorii KPSS],36 in 1974 he wrote an entire book, V. I. Lenin and Proletkult, which aimed to illustrate Lenin’s struggle with ‘Proletkult’s perversion’ of Marxist principles of socialist cultural development.37 Gorbunov viewed the Proletkult movement as a dangerous, separatist, nihilist sect that dared to offer a theory of cultural development different from the views of Lenin. In his book, Gorbunov recalled Lenin’s determination that launching a debate on ‘cultural revolution’ should in no way provide an opportunity for ‘Bogdanovism’ to revive. A year before his death – in the first months of 1923 – Lenin’s campaign to discredit Bogdanov, his longstanding rival, reached its peak when between December 1922 and March 1923 Lenin composed his last works manifestly in an attempt to provide an alternative theory of ‘cultural revolution’ to that of Bogdanov.38 It was hardly fortuitous that one of the last collections of Lenin’s writings to be published before his death (it appeared before 1 August 1923) was an anthology of works by Georgy Plekhanov and by himself which appeared under the title Against A. Bogdanov.39 His writings influenced Soviet attitudes to Bogdanov and Proletkult for many years to come.

35

36

37 38

39

For example, F. Matitsin, ‘Lenin’s Struggle Against Proletkult’s Vulgar Views on Art’ [‘Bor’ba V. I. Lenina protiv vul’garizatorskikh vozzreniy Proletkul’ta na iskusstvo’], in Voprosy philosophii, 1953, no. 1; V. Novikov, ‘To the History of Struggle for a Socialist Culture’ [‘K istorii bor’by za sotsialisticheskuu kul’turu’], in Voprosy literatury, 1967, no. 3; I. S. Smirnov, ‘Lenin’s Concept of Cultural Revolution and Criticism of Proletkult’ [‘Leninskaia kontseptsiia kul’turnoi revolutsii i kritika proletkul’ta’], in Istoricheskaia nauka i nekotorie problem sovremennosti (Moscow, 1969). V. V. Gorbunov, ‘Lenin’s Struggle with the Separatist Strivings of Proletkult’ [‘Bor’ba V. I. Lenina s separatistskimi ustremleniiamy Proletkul’ta’], in Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1958, no. 1; V. V. Gorbunov, ‘Lenin’s Criticism of Proletkult’s Theory on the Relationship with Cultural Heritage’ [‘Kritika V. I. Leninim teorii Proletkul’ta ob otnoshenii k kul’turnomu naslediu’], in Voprosi istorii KPSS, 1968, no. 5. V. V. Gorbunov, V. I. Lenin i Proletkul’t (Moscow, 1974). Lenin was prevented from writing by a stroke suffered on 22 December 1922. He dictated his last works, on the structure of government, the political succession, and the future of socialism in Russia between December 1922 and March 1923. The works which deal most directly with the question of cultural revolution, all of which were published in Pravda between January and May 1923 are, by date of composition: ‘Pages from a Diary’ (2 January 1923); ‘On Cooperation’ (4-6 January 1923); ‘Our Revolution: A Proposal of N. Sukhanov’s Notes’ (16-17 January 1923); and ‘Better Fewer, But Better’ (2 March 1923). V. Lenin and G. Plekhanov, Protiv A. Bogdanova (Moscow: Krasnaia Nov’, 1923).

16

Introduction

Only in the 1980’s did several Russian art historians attempt to re-evaluate the impact of Proletkult on the cultural development of post-revolutionary Russia. Thus, in her book The Soviet Working Class and Artistic Culture. 1917-1932 [Sovetskii rabochii klass i khudozhestvennaia kul’tura. 1917-1932], Ludmila Pinegina tried to define the positive influence of Proletkult on the artistic life of the young Bolshevik state. However, since Bogdanov was still classified as an ‘enemy of the people’, all the positive aspects of Proletkult were attributed to Lenin.40 In her view, much of Proletkult activity was inspired by Lenin’s vision, rather than Bogdanov’s. Only in the 1990’s did Bogdanov’s theories gain a clear analysis and appreciation in Russian literary sources; free from the distorting angle of Marxist ideology and the burden of Soviet stereotypes. It was mainly Bogdanov’s economic, political and philosophical theories that were scrupulously investigated by such writers as Georgy Gloveli, who dedicated a book and several articles to Bogdanov’s science, Tektologiia,41 aimed as it was at assisting in the organisation of the proletariat. Bogdanov’s book, Tektologiia,42 was re-printed in 1989 for the first time since it was first published sixty-seven years earlier.43 In 1990, Bogdanov’s writings of 1904 to 1920 were gathered in one, concise edition.44 Five years later, almost all the materials from Bogdanov’s archive – his unfinished articles, letters and speeches – were published under the title The Unknown Bogdanov [Neizvestnyi Bogdanov].45 Various aspects of Bogdanov’s writings were also analysed in the articles of V. Ermakov, N. Moiseev, V. Sadovsky and L. Chizhov.46 Recently, in 2008, the definition of ‘proletarian culture’ was examined by Natalia Andrianova, who looked at the reflection

40

41 42 43 44 45 46

See L. Pinegina, Soviet Working Class and Artistic Culture. 1917-1932 [Sovetskii rabochii klass i khudozhestvennaia kul’tura. 1917-1932] (Moscow, 1984); L. A. Pinegina, ‘Proletarian Culture Organisations of the 1920’s and Cultural Heritage’ [‘Organizatsii proletarskoi kul’tury 1920kh godov i kul’turnoe nasledie’], in Voprosy istorii, 1981, no. 7. G. Gloveli, A. A. Bogdanov i ego tektologiia (Moscow, 1990). A. Bogdanov, Tektologiia: Vseobshchaia Organizatsionnaia Nauka, 3 vols. (Berlin and Petrograd-Moscow, 1922). A. Bogdanov, Tektology: Universal organisational science [Tektologiia: Vseobshchaia Organizatsionnaia Nauka] (Moscow, 1989). A. Bogdanov, Questions of Socialism: Works from Several Years [Voprosy sotsializma: Raboty raznykh let] (Moscow, 1990). Neizvestnyi Bogdanov [Unknown Bogdanov], in 2 vols. (Moscow: RTsKhIDNI, 1995). In Russia of the XX-Century. World Historians are Arguing [Rossiia v XX veke. Istoriki mira sporiat] (Moscow, 1994).

Introduction

17

of ideological developments of Russian society between 1917 and 1927 in Bogdanov’s theories.47 However, research on the pre- and post-revolutionary development of proletarian culture in Russia and its influence on Russian art (and the influence of Russian art on it) in the first years after the Bolshevik Revolution has yet to be done. This is a gap which this book aims to fill. The small historiographical survey, Proletkult, which was published in London as early as 1921 by the English Fabian Socialists Eden and Cedar Paul, introduced Proletkult to English readers for the first time. Here they wrote: Proletkult is a compact term, a ‘portmanteau word’, for proletarian culture. Proletarians who are alive to their class interest (which is the true interest of civilisation) will insist upon doing their own thinking; they will insist upon Independent Working-Class Education, upon proletarian culture, upon Proletkult.48 They exclaimed: ‘Now Proletkult is the lamp whereby all the roads of advance are lighted!’49 After this early book on Proletkult, Bogdanov and his theory of proletarian culture were not studied in the West until the 1960s, when Dietrich Grille (1966)50 and Avraham Yassour (1968)51 first drew the attention of European readers to the importance of Bogdanov and his social theories in the history of Russian Marxism.

47

48 49 50 51

N. Andrianova, The ‘Proletarian Culture’ Concept and Monumental Leniniana as a Reflection of Ideological and Mental Precepts of the Society in the First Years of Soviet Rule (1917-1927) [Kontseptsiia ‘proletarskoi kul’tury’ i monumental’naia leniniana kak otrazhenie ideologicheskikh i mental’nykh ustanovok v obshchestve v pervye gody sovetskoi vlasti (1917-1927)] (Moscow: Triada-farm, 2008). Eden and Cedar Paul, Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) (London: Leonard Parsons, 1921), p. 19. Ibid., p. 18. See Dietrich Grille, Lenin’s Rivale: Bogdanov und seine Philosophie (Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1966). See Avraham Yassour, ‘Leçons de 1905. Parti ou Soviet’, in Le Mouvement Social, 1968, no. 62; ‘Lenin and Bogdanov: Protagonists in the Bolshevik Centre’, in Studies in Soviet Thought, 1981, no. 22; ‘Bogdanov-Malinovsky on Party and Revolutions’, in Studies in Soviet Thought, 1984, no. 27.

18

Introduction

Publication of Yassour’s bibliography of Bogdanov’s works52 has provided Western scholars with a new perspective on the development of Marxist epistemology, sociology and economic theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as well as on the nature of Bolshevism as a tendency within Russian Social Democracy and independent of Soviet analyses. It is to relatively recent German scholarship, beginning with Grille, that we are primarily indebted for our knowledge of Proletkult itself. Richard Lorenz (1969)53 was one of the first to note the contribution of Bogdanov and of Proletkult theorists to the Marxist sociology of culture. An overview of the debate on the cultural revolution was included in Karl Eimermacher’s selection of post-revolutionary Russian documents (1972).54 The translation of Bogdanov’s utopian novels Red Star and Engineer Menni into English and their publication in 1984, together with articles by Richard Stites and Loren Graham, attracted the attention of American scholars to Bogdanov’s utopian predictions and his cultural theories.55 In 1988, Zinovia Sochor produced an extensive analysis of Bogdanov’s and Lenin’s conflicting views on post-revolutionary Russian culture.56 However, the most comprehensive studies of Proletkult to date have been produced by Gabriele Gorzka (1980)57 and Lynn Mally (1990).58 Gorzka has devoted considerable attention to the practical-educational club and studio work of Proletkult, while Mally has treated Proletkult as a case study in the social history of the Russian industrial working class. The present author’s approach has been to examine the ‘rise and fall’ of Proletkult, debates with Narkompros and 52

53

54 55

56 57 58

Bogdanov and his Work: a Guide to the Published and Unpublished Works of Alexander A. Bogdanov (Malinovsky) 1873-1928, [compiled by] John Biggart, Georgii Gloveli and Avraham Yassour (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). ‘Proletarische Kulturrevolution in Sowjetrussland 1917-1921’, in Dokumente des ‘Proletkult’ herausgegeben, ed. by Richard Lorenz Ubersetzt, Uwe Brugmann and Gert Meyer (Mü nchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1969). Dokumente zur sowjetischen Literaturpolitik 1917-1932, ed. by Karl Eimermacher (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1972). Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia. Alexander Bogdanov, ed. by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, trans. by Charles Rougle (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1984). Zinovia Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1988). Gabriele Gorzka, A. Bogdanov und der russische Proletkult: Theorie und Praxis einer sozialistischen Kulturrevolution (Frankfurt: Campus, 1980). Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: the Proletkult movement in revolutionary Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

Introduction

19

participation in the first post-revolutionary discussions on the nature of proletarian art, its role in the new society and its expressions in the mass festivals and spectacles celebrated in Petrograd in the years 1917-1920. The focus of this book is on the period 1917-1920, the three years when both Proletkult and Narkompros gained a national following and became major players in cultural debates. After 1922, as a result of funding cutbacks at the end of the Civil War and the changed status of both organisations in Soviet society, they rapidly declined into a small and restricted core of members, and soon lost their influential position in the new State of Workers and Peasants. As this book concentrates on the formation and blossoming of proletarian culture in Russia, it is important to define the term ‘proletariat’, which in Russia represented the class of wage labourers (including in Russia the poorer peasants) who, having no means of production of their own, were reduced to selling their labour power in order to live: taken together, a working class. According to Marx, the proletariat was the main force which should determine the development of society. The proletariat was supposed to first initiate revolution (using its numerical superiority to force change59) and through dictatorship, by force, change the whole of society and bring it to justice and equality. Art, on the contrary, had to lead the masses in the right direction as determined by the communist party. The establishment of the new values of the new society became the main aim of art after the Revolution. Already in 1905, Lenin had proclaimed in his article, ‘Party Organisation and Party Literature’, that literature (and subsequently visual art) should serve ‘not some satiated heroine, not the ‘upper ten thousand’ suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people – the flower of the country, its strength and its failure.’60 One of the most distinctive features of the new post-revolutionary proletarian art was that its new expressions were fundamentally collective in nature, based on the principle that working-class identity was rooted in the collective experience of labour. Thus, the new forms of artistic practice that would express the experience of new socialist life as a collective activity had to be developed to replace the individualistic artistic practice of the pre-revolutionary

59 60

However, in post-revolutionary Russia, at Lenin’s death in 1924, industrial workers represented just over 10% of the population, with peasants at 75.4%. See fig. I.3. Vladimir Lenin, ‘Party Organisation and Party Literature’, first published in the newspaper Novaia zhizn’, 13 November 1905, no. 12; translation published in V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, 45 vols. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960-70), vol. 10, p. 45.

20

Introduction

Figure I.3

Structure (in %) of the Russian population. Official Soviet classification. Based on statistical tables in Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1990), p. 506.

bourgeois art. A resolution passed at the First All-Russian Conference of Proletkult declared: ‘The proletariat must have its own class art to organise its own forces in social labour, struggle and construction. The spirit of this art is that of labour collectivism.’61 As festivals celebrated the community itself, demonstrating a dramatic expression of people’s solidarity, they were an effective vehicle for transmission of the ‘new’ Russian proletariat’s collective spirit and its new art. Petrograd in 1918 may have been steeped in post-revolutionary gloom and starvation, but colourful and striking decorations in Petrograd as the most vivid expressions of proletarian art came to symbolize the whole era in Russian history to many contemporaries: …The democratic language spawned by the February Revolution was discredited by hunger, disorder, and continuing war; the Marxist idiom re-

61

Quoted in John Roberts, The Art of Interruption. Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 17.

Introduction

21

mained incomprehensible and alien to most of the population. Mass festivals helped fill the vacuum of public debate that ensued.62 In addition, this book also considers the impact of the festivals on popular memory and experience of the 1917 Revolution. It concentrates on festive decorations in Petrograd, since all three revolutions (in January 1905 and February and October 1917), as well as the first celebrations, demonstrations and festivals under the Provisional Government, took place in Petrograd. When the capital of Bolshevik Russia was transferred to Moscow in March 1918, the new capital became first of all the centre for the fulfilment of Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda, while the bravest festive decorations and mass performances of 1918-1920, which dominate this book, were executed in Petrograd. The chronological frame of this book has been dictated by the years of peak activity and independence of Proletkult and Narkompros, as well as the ultimate richness and diversity of the festive decorations of Petrograd. Many primary sources documenting the early Soviet festivals and their reception by an uneducated, starving populus have been used in research for this book. First of all, vital but neglected articles from the newspapers and magazines published in Petrograd and Moscow between 1917 and 1921, have been used. Despite a lack of pluralism from 1919 onwards and the single-minded praise of festival decorations, the contemporary press gives a good description of the festivals and the way they were perceived by contemporaries. It also illustrates that the early revolutionary leaders were not willing to limit their goals to the establishment of a new political and economic order. First and foremost they hoped to create a new cultural order, in which new art played a vital role. Visual arts, including theatre and parades, were a priority in delivering its new structures, culture and politics. For discussion of the nature of the new proletarian art, as well as major facts about the organisational side of the festivals, major archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow have been used.63 The vast collection of studies for the festival decorations of Petrograd, mainly held in the drawings archive of the State Russian Museum and the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, as well as photographic and video materials from the Archive of Cinematic

62 63

James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 3. RGALI, TsGA St. Petersburg, TsGALI St. Petersburg, OR RNB, RGIA and the Archive of the Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg.

22

Introduction

and Photographic Documents, St. Petersburg, plus a collection of banners carried by workers during demonstrations in 1917-1920, now held in the Museum of Political History of Russia, have also been examined. The archival basis of this book expands the significant re-evaluation of the role of festivals in the development of proletarian art in Russia.

Historiography Post-revolutionary festivals in Petrograd generated considerable scholarly attention in the 1920’s: the experiences of festive decorations by their contemporaries were recorded in newspapers, diaries and memoirs, but more detailed analyses of this phenomenon were recorded in the first books dedicated to the subject, which appeared as early as 1926. Much later, James von Geldern in his book, Bolshevik Festivals 1917-1920, observed that ‘almost everyone – Formalists, Marxists, advocates of proletarian culture, materialist sociologists, refined aesthetes, and cultural activists, even foreign visitors – found mass festivals and spectacles worthy of attention. All, including the most discerning, were impressed.’64 The most prominent art critics from Leningrad’s State Institute of Art History produced a series of monographs on the post-revolutionary festivals, tracing their origins in classical, medieval and Renaissance art. Evgeny Rumin’s book, Mass Festivals [Massovye prazdnestva], was published in 1927. Here the Greek festivals dedicated to Dionysius, the Roman circus, Christian mysteries, the festivals of the French Revolution and Paris Commune of 1871, sport festivals in Switzerland, German street theatre and carnivals in Italy, as well as twentieth-century spectacles in America and England were thoroughly analysed. The critic asserted the importance of learning from these historical festivals since he believed that the collective amateur and folk arts in Russia before the Revolution were suppressed by the Tsar’s regime, resulting in a lack of prerevolutionary experience in the organisation of mass festivals.65 Rumin wrote that Russia should take from the Italian carnival the ability to produce bright and colourful theatrical forms, and use it in the celebrations of the 1st of May; from the English ‘pageants’, they had to learn how to involve vast masses into a well organised act; from the Ancient Greeks, they should

64 65

James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920, p. 4. See Evgeny Rumin, Massovye prazdnestva, ed. by O. M. Beskin (M-L: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo’, 1927), p. 16.

Introduction

23

learn how to organise bright theatrical events and sports festivals. He stressed that the festivals of the French Revolution and Paris Commune were close to them in spirit and observed that despite the old Italian tradition, Mussolini forbade carnivals because of possible communist agitation in the course of festivities.66 In the introduction to Rumin’s book, another art critic, Osip Beskin, wrote that since the principle of amateur activities had become the cornerstone of political education, the question of their organisation became very important. He complained that the spirit of the ‘mechanically-produced festival’ had filtered into demonstrations and festivities, but stressed that the festivals and demonstrations remained a wonderful recruiter of the new personnel who would soon become the ‘builders of the proletariat’.67 In 1930, a series of books under the title ‘Art to the Masses’ was published by the publishing house of AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia). One of them was a pamphlet by Alexander Gushchin, Visual Art in Mass Festivals and Demonstrations [Izo-iskusstvo v massovykh prazdnestvakh i demonstratsiiakh]. Describing the first post-revolutionary festivals, Gushchin stressed that in the first years after the October Revolution, especially in 1918 and 1919, visual decoration for public festivals was in general entirely in the hands of professional artists, and that most artists were inspired by these new tasks. However, although these new, ‘mighty perspectives’, on a scale never seen before, involved the festive transformation of buildings, streets and squares, and provided a major opportunity to popularise their art, and indeed to make it more accessible for the masses, did not interest artists from all artistic movements. As a result, artists from far-left groups who were in the first years after the Revolution often grouped under the heading ‘Futurists’ took the leading positions.68 Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the cultural arena in Russia was divided between seventy-two groups of artists. On the ‘right’ in the visual arts was the all-mighty Imperial Academy of Arts with its admiration of and subservience to the royal family and almost complete absence of interest in the life of workers or peasants. At that time, the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions, also known as the Wanderers [Peredvizhniki], which was striving to show the life 66 67 68

Ibid., p. 19. See Evgeny Rumin, Massovye prazdnestva, ed. by O. Beskin (M-L: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo’, 1927), p. 3. See Alexander Gushchin, Izo-iskusstvo v massovykh prazdnestvakh i demonstratsiiakh (Moscow: Publishing house of AKhRR, 1930), p. 5.

24

Introduction

and suffering of simple people at the end of the nineteenth century, took a leading position at the Academy but forgot about the proletariat. Most members of the World of Art and the symbolists tried to distance themselves from the problems of the cruel reality of twentieth-century Russia altogether. And it is only to be expected that in the first few years after the Revolution, the avantgarde artists, who had rejected old bourgeois art already before the Revolution, would become the main ambassadors of the new art of Bolshevik Russia. But how effective could Futurism be in the education of the proletariat? The answer to this question can be found in the reception of the first street decorations painted by avant-garde artists, for the masses. In his book, Gushchin not only acknowledged the participation of left artists in the early festival decorations, but argued that all these artists brought to this new task what each thought most appropriate, in what he called ‘artistically generalised form’ – each artist expressing the ideas of the proletarian Revolution in their own way. But he stressed that it quite soon revealed that all the ‘left’ and ‘right’ decorations of the revolutionary festivals were far from what the proletariat wanted from its public art.69 As the workers finished what Gushchin described as ‘their long fight with the enemies of Soviet Russia’ and had more free time on their hands, they started to protest against the left art and to participate more actively in the artistic decoration of their festivals. In parallel, most ‘old regime’ artists were losing interest in public festivals, not least due to the criticism and rejection of their work.70 A thorough, early analysis of the post-revolutionary festivals can be found in Gushchin’s richly illustrated album with commentary, The Decoration of Mass Festivals in 15 Years of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat [Oformlenie massovykh prazdnestv za 15 let diktatury proletariata]. In the introduction to this detailed description of the first revolutionary festivals, Gushchin observed that one of the most vivid characteristics of the artistic decorations of the festivals of 1918-1920, and partially of 1921, was the use of what he calls ‘the bourgeois art of the past’ by the artists who considered its forms most suitable for the transmission of revolutionary ideas and slogans.71 On 23rd April 1932, a Party decree was passed which was to change Soviet policy on art and to re-structure literary and artistic organisations. Avant-garde

69 70 71

Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., pp. 6-7. See Alexander Gushchin, Oformlenie massovykh prazdnestv za 15 let diktatury proletariata (Moscow: Izogiz, 1932), p. 5.

Introduction

25

art was now viewed as bourgeois and thus surplus to the new Soviet society. Many of the artists who were actively involved in the street decorations of Petrograd in the first years after the October Revolution were forced to produce work that supported the Stalinist ideology, or they were prevented from working altogether, emigrated, or were sent to a gulag prison camp. Gushchin’s books were followed by the second edition of Orest Tsekhnovitser’s Festivals of the Revolution [Prazdnestva revolutsii] which was originally published by AKhRR’s main antagonist, the Visual Arts Section of Narkompros. It provided a detailed analysis of all the festivals in Russia from 1917 to 1930, their theatrical, musical and visual arts compared with European festivals (with photographs of festivals in Switzerland, Germany and France). In the introduction to this second edition of his book, Tsekhnovitser expressed his hope of transforming public festivals from spontaneous events to a crucial tool of political and artistic influence; a collective tool of agitation and propaganda, which would place festivals at the forefront of Soviet art.72 Tsekhnovitser started his chapter on the street decorations used at festivals by describing the festival organised by Peter I in Moscow in 1722. It celebrated the peace treaty of Nystad and the end of the Great Northern War, and included a model of a ship with eighty-eight canons, pulled by sixteen horses, on top of which sat Peter the Great himself with his navy generals. Tsekhnovitser considered this a truly wonderful Russian carnival which included the first allegorical model of a ship. He described it as a brightly coloured Western European carnival, which Peter I brought into cold, dark, suppressed-by-the-Tsars Russia, which was not ready for it. Tsekhnovitser wrote that in the nineteenth century, only tasteless, police-controlled peoples’ processions, which were celebrating religious or tsarist anniversaries, took place. He then remarked that this situation was changed at the time of the October Revolution when the proletariat brought out onto the streets the whole range of colours and included in its demonstrations masques and allegorical chariots.73 Tsekhnovitser stressed that the most important thing in street decorations was the planning and coordination of all the elements of the celebrations. The central committee had to make its plan for decorations, announce a competition between different artistic movements for the decoration of the city and make various groups of artists responsible for decoration of particular streets.74

72 73 74

See Orest Tsekhnovitser, Prazdnestva revolutsii, 2nd edition (Leningrad: Priboi, 1931), p. 10. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 116.

26

Introduction

He recommended the inclusion of moving figures of animals and birds in the processions, which would make them more colourful and lively. He used as an example the celebrations of 7 November 1924, when a demonstration of Leningrad zoo workers carried a cage with a real wild boar with the sign ‘Curzon’ and a real fox with the sign ‘McDonald’ as real-life caricatures of greedy imperialists.75 In conclusion, Tsekhnovitser advised the festivals’ organisers not to overregulate the programme of events and decorations, but to allow the spontaneous creative input of the masses. He wrote that Soviet authorities should avoid the mistakes of the French painter Jacques-Louis David, who meticulously described each step which the public should take at the festivals. He believed that the masses should be inspired to take more initiative themselves, and that the elements of revolutionary festivals should become a vital part of the everyday reality of proletarian life. He argued that people could not be joyful according to rules and regulations, and that artists could not create slogans without the active participation of the masses, whose role was often reduced to just carrying them about.76 By the 1930’s, early post-revolutionary festivals were already treated as part of history and often rather critically. A favourite topic in the literature on methods of celebration published at the time was that of ‘the joy of celebrating’. Thus, even more attention was attracted by mass performances that took place in Petrograd in 1919-1920. Articles by E. Bespiatov, N. Golovanov, V. Ivanov, P. Kerzhentsev, V. Kriazhin, Lunacharsky, N. Lvov, A. Piotrovsky, V. Poliansky, Lev Pumpiansky, Nikolai Punin, David Shterenberg and others express the most valuable observations on the role of mass performances in the education of the proletariat.77 75 76 77

Ibid., p. 147. Ibid., pp. 206-207. E. Bespiatov, ‘Teatr pod otkrytym nebom’, in Narodnyi teatr, 1918, no. 3-4; N. Golovanov, ‘Tolpa na stsene i v zhivopisi’, in Narodnyi teatr, 1918, no. 3-4; V. Ivanov, ‘K voprosu ob organizatsii tvorcheskikh sil narodnogo kollektiva v oblasti khudozhestvennogo deistvia’, in Vestnik teatra, 1919, no. 26; V. Kerzhentsev, ‘Kollektivnoe tvorchestvo v teatre’, in Proletarskaia kul’tura, 1919, no. 7-8; V. Kriazhin, ‘Futurizm i revolutsiia’, in Vestnik zhizni, 1919, no. 6-7; A. Lunacharsky, ‘O narodnykh prazdnestvakh’, in Vestnik teatra, 1920, no. 62; N. L’vov, ‘S’ezd po raboche-krest’ianskomu teatru’, in Vestnik teatra, 1919, no. 4; A. Piotrovsky, Peterburgskie prazdnestva (Petrograd: Zelenaia Ptichka, 1922); V. Poliansky, ‘Ocherednye voprosy’, in Proletarskaia kultura, 1919, no. 6; L. Pumpiansky, ‘Oktiabrskie torzhestva i khudozhniki Petrograda’, in Plamia, 1919, no. 35; N. Punin, ‘K itogam oktiabrskikh torzhestv’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 1918, no. 1; D. Shterenberg, ‘Otchet o deiatel’nosti IZO Narkomprosa’, in Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1919, no. 1.

Introduction

27

This early analysis and description of post-revolutionary festivals is especially important, as it was written by contemporaries: critics who witnessed these events and expressed in their writings the atmosphere and experiences of people who lived in Russia at the time of the Civil War. By the 1940’s and 1950’s, post-revolutionary festivals were attracting far less attention from writers and historians. A few mentions and brief analysis of festive decorations can be found in the books of P. Lebedev and V. Tolstoy,78 while L. Frid explored the role of the festival in the formation of the proletarian consciousness.79 However, from 1960 to 1990 a new wave of interest in festivals and mass performances was raised in Russian and Western historical and art-historical research. In the 1960’s, the memoirs of artists, producers and organisers of early festivals were published in the Soviet Union, and in 1964 the first article by one of the most profound writers on the festive decorations of Petrograd, Oleg Nemiro, appeared.80 Over the next twenty years, he published several books and articles dedicated to post-revolutionary festivals in Petrograd and their impact on the 1980’s celebrations of May Day and 7 November.81 Further important research of artist participation in the decorations of Petrograd in 1917 to 1920 was done by Irina Rostovtseva, who considered sketches for posters and decorative panels as not only useful tools in Soviet propaganda, but as important works of art in their own right.82 Her approach was developed further by Lapshin in his detailed study of the artistic life of Moscow and Petrograd in 1917.83

78

79 80 81

82 83

P. Lebedev, Sovetskoe iskusstvo v period inostrannoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny (Moscow-Leningrad, 1949); V. Tolstoy, ‘Materialy k istorii agitatsionnogo iskusstva perioda grazhdanskoi voiny’, in Soobshcheniia instituta Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 3, 1953; V. Tolstoy, Sovetskaia monumental’naia zhipovis’ (Moscow, 1958). L. Frid, Ocherki po istorii razvitiia politico-prosvetitel’noi raboty v RSFSR (1917-1929) (Leningrad, 1941). O. Nemiro, ‘Oformlenie Petrograda k pervoi godovshchine Oktiabria’, in Iskusstvo, 1964, no. 11. O. Nemiro, ‘Lenin i revolutsionnye prazdniki’, in Iskusstvo, 1965, no. 11; V gorod prishel prazdnik. Iz istorii khudozhestvennogo oformleniia sovetskikh massovykh prazdnestv (Leningrad, 1973); ‘Lunacharsky ob agitatsionnoi roli iskusstva’, in Bloknot agitatora, 1975, no. 32; Khudozhestvennoe oformlenie teatralizovannykh zrelishch v Petrograde-Leningrade v 20e gody (Leningrad, 1975); Prazdnichnyi gorod: Iskusstvo oformleniia prazdnikov. Istoriia i sovremennost’ (Leningrad, 1987). Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo pervykh let Oktiabria. Materialy i issledovaniia (Moscow, 1971). V. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1983).

28

Introduction

But the most important compilation of articles and archival documents dedicated to post-revolutionary celebrations became the book on agitational art, edited by Vladimir Tolstoy, with articles on the decoration of Moscow and Petrograd written by Irina Bibikova.84 It was this important work, translated into English in 1990 (with an introduction by Catherine Cooke),85 which inspired a series of exhibitions dedicated to the street art of the Revolution, held in Manchester in 1990,86 and which attracted interest in festive decorations of such significant writers as James von Geldern, who dedicated his book to the Bolshevik Festivals of 1917-1920.87 Based on Russian research, archival documents and articles by Richard Stites,88 James von Geldern’s book became the most important source for English-speaking readers on post-revolutionary Russian festivals. In the last twenty years, Anatoly Mazaev has become the most significant researcher in such questions as art and Bolshevism89 and the very phenomenon of festival and its role in post-revolutionary propaganda.90 The question of the relationships between art and the Soviet state was first explored by Vladimir Aksenov, who in 1974 published for the first time archival materials from the Leningrad Bolshevik Party archive (LPA) that proved that festivals were always seen as an important tool in Bolshevik propaganda.91 This important research has also been developed in Vitalii Manin’s books, which were written in the 1960’s but prohibited by censorship and only published after 1999.92 84

85 86

87 88 89 90 91

92

Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo. Oformlenie prazdnestv: Materialy i dokumenty. 1917-1932. (Moscow, 1984); also, Sovetskoe dekorativnoe iskusstvo: Ocherki istorii. 1917-1945 (Moscow, 1984). Vladimir Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova, and Catherine Cooke, Street Art of the Revolution. Festivals and Celebrations in Russia. 1918-1933 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). See the catalogue for all seven exhibitions, which were held in several galleries in Manchester in June-July 1990: Tradition and Revolution in Russian Art (Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications, 1990). James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). A. Mazaev, Iskusstvo i Bolshevism. 1920-1930: Problemno-tematicheskie ocherki i portrety (Moscow: URSS, 2007). A. Mazaev, Prazdnik kak sotsial’no-khudozhestvennoe iavlenie (Moscow, 1978). V. Aksenov, Organizatsiia massovykh prazdnikov trudiashchikhsia (1918-1920) (Leningrad, 1974); Massovye prazdniki kak sredstvo agitatsionno-propagandistskogo vozdeistviia (Leningrad, 1975). V. Manin, Iskusstvo v rezervatsii. Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii. 1917-1941 (Moscow: URSS, 1999); Iskusstvo i vlast’. Bor’ba techenii v sovetskom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve 1917-1941 godov (St. Petersburg: Avrora, 2008).

Introduction

29

The question of the reception of art by workers was explored by Pinegina93 and Il’ina,94 who made an important link between the activities of various political organisations responsible for artistic developments in Russia between 1917 and 1932 and the artistic movements which existed at the time. Interesting parallels between the festivals of the French Revolution and Soviet Russia were made by Il’ina95 and developed by Limonov.96 In these insightful articles, various forms of organising the festivals and decorations of Paris, Petrograd and Moscow were compared and conclusions about similarities in approaches and execution were made. In the West, the artistic life of St. Petersburg and Petrograd was explored by Katerina Clark in her book Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution.97 Until 2013, James von Geldern’s book remained the main source of information on early Soviet festivals, but his research was extended by Malte Rolf, whose book, Soviet Mass Festivals of 1917-1991, had originally been published in German and translated in 2013 into English by Cynthia Clohr.98 This important work examines the creation of large-scale celebrations throughout the Soviet era. In his book, Rolf described the overt political agendas, public displays of power, forced participation, and widespread use of these events in the Soviet propaganda machine. Focusing in particular on festivals of 1917-1941, Rolf showed how the new Red Calendar became an essential tool in redefining celebrations in the Soviet Union. This book situates itself within this body of scholarship by proposing a new mode of inquiry which considers the role of festival decorations of Petrograd in the social and political education of the proletariat. From the celebrations under the Provisional Government and, following the Bolshevik Revolution, the festivals that were dominated by avant-garde explosions of bright colours and cubist forms, to the more sober and restrained decorations of Petrograd in

93 94

95 96 97 98

L. Pinegina, Sovetskii raboshii klass i khudozhestvennaia kul’tura. 1917-1932 (Moscow, 1984). G. Ilina, Kul’turnoe stroitel’stvo v Petrograde (oktiabr’ 1917-1920) (Leningrad, 1974); ‘Khudozhestvennye ob’edineniia Petrograda v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti (oktiabr’ 1917-1920)’, in Dobrovol’nye obshchestva v Petrograde-Leningrade v 1917-1937 gg. (Leningrad, 1989). G. Ilina, ‘Obraz evropeiskikh revolutsii i russkaia kul’tura’, in Anatomiia revolutsii. 1917 god v Rossii: massy, partii, vlast’ (St. Petersburg, 1994). Yu. Limonov, ‘Prazdnestva Velikoi Frantsuskoi Revolutsii v 1789-1793 gg. i masovye prazdniki sovetskoi Rossii’, in Velikaia frantsuskaia revolutsiia i Rossiia (Moscow, 1989). Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). Malte Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917-1991, trans. from German by Cynthia Clohr (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).

30

Introduction

1920 and the emergence of mass performances in 1919-1920, this book examines festival decorations as the most vivid expression of the new ideological messages used by Soviet leaders to communicate with the masses, many of whom were uneducated and illiterate. The first State commission after the October Revolution revealed the heart of the debate about what should be the new proletarian art. In this book, these debates and their expression in the street art of Petrograd in 1917-1920 have been explored in special holdings from thirty sections in four archives in St. Petersburg and the Russian State Archive of Art and Literature (RGALI) in Moscow, articles in newspapers published at the time, memoirs of participants of these events99 and the published sources mentioned above. Party decrees and resolutions published retrospectively in the last thirty years have also been used.100

Structure The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter explores the roots of proletarian culture, the nature and structure of the working class in Russia at the turn of the nineteenth – beginning of twentieth century, and the first attempts of the intelligentsia to educate workers through art. It also describes diverse theories of Proletarian Art that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century. The second chapter provides a theoretical framework for the second section which looks at the historic place of festivals in tsarist Russia and introduces the new and important role of the public festival under the Provisional Government. The third chapter of the book explores the first manifestation of Statesponsored festivities after the October 1917 Revolution in Petrograd, held to mark the Day of International Solidarity of Workers, 1 May 1918, and the first anniversary of the Revolution, 7 November 1918, which went to the core of the

99

100

See N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revolutsii (Moscow, 1991); M. Paleolog, Tsarskaia Rossiia nakanune revolutsii (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923); F. Shaliapin, Maska i dusha (Moscow, 1990); M. Andreeva, Perepiska. Vospominaniia. Dokumenty (Moscow, 1961); Yu. Annenkov, Dnevnik moikh vstrech. Tsikl tragedii (Leninrad, 1991). See Petrogradskii Sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v 1917 g. vol. 1: 17 February31 March 1917 (Leningrad, 1991); vol. 2: 1 April-5 May 1917 (St. Petersburg, 1995); Dekrety Sovetskoi Vlasti o Petrograde. 25 October 1917-29 October 1918 (Leningrad, 1986).

Introduction

31

debate about what should be the new proletarian culture and the new proletarian art, one of the most pressing issues in October 1917. The debates between two major players in the cultural arena in Bolshevik Russia – Proletkult and Narkompros – provide two viewpoints on the nature and expressions of proletarian art. As chair of the organising bureau for the national Proletkult, Pavel Lebedev-Poliansky argued that Narkompros, as a state organ, had responsibilities for the whole of society, whereas Proletkult asserted its autonomy as an organisation set up specifically for workers. The fourth chapter highlights the turn from the early avant-garde inventiveness and experiment towards comprehensive and realistic agitation and propaganda, which became dominant already at the celebrations of May Day 1919. In this context, the Futurist newspaper Art of the Commune is examined throughout its run from December 1918 to April 1919 when it provided the main forum for debate on the essence of proletarian art. The book considers the changing nature of the public festival in the context of the Civil War and War Communism. The final chapter of this book looks at the tightening of artistic freedom in Russia evident already in 1919-1920 and the loss of Proletkult’s autonomous status at the National Congress of Proletkult in Moscow from 5 to 12 October 1920, when the Central Committee’s decision to integrate Proletkult directly into Narkompros was announced officially. It also examines in detail the first mass performances and spectacles, their roots and their role in the propaganda of Bolshevik ideas.

Chapter 1

Roots of Proletarian Culture Interaction between Workers and Members of the Intelligentsia: the Origins of Workers’ Schools Before the 1917 Revolution The blossoming of proletarian art will be one of the best and most beautiful expressions of the maturity of the proletariat. It will decorate proletarian life and struggle, organising the soul of the proletariat. Since beauty, comrades, is – organisation (orderliness). It is also called in science the truth, and in everyday struggle and labour – the strength. With it our Victory will be inevitable. Alexander Bogdanov, 19241 In the beginning of the twentieth century, two main groups of revolutionaries were active in Russia: the liberal intelligentsia, who were hoping to transform Russia into a democratic republic, and the Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who believed the imperialist regime was a failure and who wished to transform Russia’s economy and social structures as a first step towards a world proletarian revolution. To understand the nature, as well as social and demographic structures of both parties, one needs to address historical documents and statistics. By the time the Social-Democratic movement started its agitation campaign in 1894-1895, it mainly consisted of workers. Before 1905 there were 800 Social Democrats in St. Petersburg, 550 of whom were workers.2 Many of them acted independently of the St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committee (also known as PK) and the Mensheviks.3 By 1905, the Social-Democratic party (RSDRP) in Russia 1 Alexander Bogdanov, O Proletarskoi kul’ture. 1904-1924 (L.-M.: Kniga, 1924), p. 124. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Расцвет пролетарского искусства будет одним из лучших, прекраснейших выражений зрелости пролетариата. Оно украсит пролетарскую жизнь и борьбу, организуя душу пролетариата. Ибо красота, товарищи, это – организованность. И она же называется в науке истиной, в жизненной борьбе и труде – силою. Где есть она, там необходимо и неизбежно будет и победа.’ 2 T. Bondarevskaia, Peterburgskii komitet RSDRP v revolutsii 1905-1907 gg (Leningrad, 1975), p. 75. 3 The names ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Menshevik’ emerged in 1904 after a dispute in the the Russian Social-Democratic Party’s (RSDRP) Second Congress; at a crucial vote, Lenins’s opponents were in a minority voting on the question of party membership; although still in a minority on most other issues, Lenin adopted from this point on the term ‘Bolshevik’, or ‘majority’.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_003

Roots of Proletarian Culture

33

managed to attract 5,000 workers. This number constituted a mere 0.2 per cent of all factory and industrial workers.4 The RSDRP had grown during the 1905 Revolution, and by the end of 1905 there were around 3,000 Social Democrats in St. Petersburg. The Mensheviks managed to attract more workers than the Bolsheviks did and until 1907 the PK consisted of members of both factions, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.5 The workers’ movement acquired a much larger scale after 9 January 1905, known as Bloody Sunday, which was perceived as a psychological shock, not only by the Bolsheviks from the PK, but also by the leaders of the Menshevik faction. As Lidia Dan, sister to Yuliy Martov, the leader of the Mensheviks, and wife of the famous early revolutionary, Fedor Dan, admitted in an interview recorded by Leopold Haimson in the mid-1960s, for the first time in their experience they had observed political processes on a huge scale, compared with which they seemed like a very small party. Before 1905, they imagined that they were the ‘source’ of the party, and all others (including the workers’ movement) were just the ‘material’. Now this ‘material’ had grown and had become an independent being.6 Although the percentage of workers in the St. Petersburg faction of the RSDRP was always quite high, it took some time before they became a majority in the party. Thus in 1905-07 there were 33 workers out of 99 members of the Committee of RSDRP’s St. Petersburg section. Members of the intelligentsia were still a majority and 55 out of 99 members had university degrees.7

4 See Yu. Kir’ianov, ‘Mentalitet rabochikh Rossii na rubezhe XIX-XX v.’, in the materials of the international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917 (St. Petersburg: RAN, 1997), p. 68. 5 Ibid. 6 See Leopold Haimson, ‘On the Question of Russian Workers’ Political and Social Identification in the Late Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries: the Role of Public Perceptions in the Relationships Between Members of the Workers’ Movement and the Social-Democratic Intelligentsia’ [‘K voprosu o politicheskoi i sotsial’noi identifikatsii rabochikh Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX v.: rol’ obschestvennykh predstavlenii v otnosheniiakh uchastnikov rabochego dvizheniia s sotsial-demokraticheskoi intelligentsiei’], p. 38. 7 S. Smith, ‘Rabochie, intelligentsiia i markssistskie partii: St. Petersburg, 1895-1914 gg. i Shanghai, 1921-1927 gg.’ in Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, p. 558.

34

Chapter 1

However, at the time of Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms, the ‘Period of Stolypin Reaction’,8 the RSDRP lost more than 90 per cent of its members (predominantly members of the intelligentsia).9 The defection of the intelligentsia had left Party work in the hands of workers who were themselves in need of education. The 1905 Revolution had shown that only the ‘revolutionary-democratic’ content of Party propaganda had been assimilated by the masses. An increased effort to spread Socialist ideas amongst the most educated workers was necessary. A stable apparatus for agitation and propaganda had to be established, based upon ‘study groups’. Tutors for these study groups had to be trained in a new type of Party school or workers’ university. One of the PK’s head organisers, A. Buiko, wrote that ‘due to the absence of intellectuals, all the agitational, propagational and organisational work fell on the shoulders of the workers. Occasionally, in provincial towns, newspapers and leaflets were written entirely by workers without any participation by members of the intelligentsia.’10 In July 1902, the PK had declared that there should be no division between members of the intelligentsia and workers in the party, that the leading positions should be taken by the most responsible and knowledgeable members, and that it should not matter whether they came from a worker background or any other class.11 The historian Steven Smith pointed out that ‘in practice, differences between members of the intelligentsia and workers were deeply rooted due to their completely different social and cultural backgrounds and surroundings, and remained the invariable characteristic of the inner life of Russian Social Democracy until 1917’.12 In fact, the gap between the two classes was so pronounced that soon workers started to complain about the advantage held by members of intelligentsia over workers in the party’s leading positions. Al8

9 10 11 12

The Revolution of 1905-1907 did not solve the basic problems of political and socioeconomic development of Russia. 1908-1912 is known in Russia as the ‘Period of Stolypin Reaction’, which marked industrial growth after the stagnation of 1905-1907. Ibid., p. 557. Ibid., p. 558. See Peterburgskii komitet RSDRP: protokoly i materialy zasedanii (iul’ 1902-fevral’ 1917) (Moscow, 1986), p. 18. S. Smith, Rabochie, intelligentsiia i markssistskie partii: St. Petersburg, 1895-1914, p. 559. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘На практике, однако, различия между интеллигентами и рабочими, глубоко укорененные благодаря их совершенно различному социальному и культурному фону, окружению, оставались неизменной чертой внутренней жизни социал – демократии вплоть до 1917 г.’

Roots of Proletarian Culture

35

though lacking the essential skills and necessary knowledge to be leaders of the RSDRP, workers still felt that they should be in charge of their own party. But already in 1902, Lenin had stated in his article ‘What is To Be Done?’ [‘Chto delat’?’] that social consciousness should be brought to the workers’ movement by the members of the intelligentsia. He stressed the role of professional revolutionaries, whose background should not be taken into account. The Bolshevik leader felt that the workers did not have sufficient experience of working under cover.13 The answer to this dilemma was the establishment of a new caste of politically educated workers who would participate actively in agitation and the propagation of the ideas and aims of the RSDRP. The theory of combining art, creativity and propaganda emerged as a key method of proletarian education and found its first expressions in the so-called party schools which were founded on the Italian island of Capri and in Bologna by Maxim Gorky and Alexander Bogdanov, and later by Lenin in Paris (all in exile from Russia), and aimed to provide a manageable solution to this immediate need.

Early Experiments in Cultural Education for Workers The idea of a school which would educate workers in order to turn them into true leaders of the RSDRP was discussed for the first time by the group of emigrant Social Democrats in Geneva in September 1908. The proposal for the creation of a party school for workers abroad was compiled by the prominent Bolshevik, Grigory Aleksinsky, and sent to the main journal of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, Proletarii. However, Aleksinsky and his comrades did not receive any financial or moral support from the Bolshevik Centre. However, in August 1909, Bogdanov managed to realise Aleksinsky’s idea of creating the ‘First Higher Social Democratic Propagandist and Agitator School’ on the Italian island of Capri. Their choice of this small and relatively unknown island (the shoreline is only 17 km. long) was determined by the fact that one of the most prominent proletarian writers, Gorky, lived there in exile from Russia from 1906 to 1913 (fig. 1.1). In this beautiful place, far from the dirty Russian factories, Gorky, Lunacharsky and Bogdanov began their first experiments in proletarian culture by organising a school to educate and train workers for propaganda inside Russia; it was only to be expected that one of the first courses taught in this school was called ‘Proletarian Culture’. 13

Quoted in ibid., p. 560.

36

Figure 1.1

Chapter 1

Island of Capri and Villa Behring where Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva lived from March 1909 until February 1911. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, accessed on 11.11.2012

The leading organiser of the Capri school was Nikifor Vilonov (party nickname Mikhail or Mikhail Zavodsky (after the Russian word for factory, zavod) (1883-1910), a worker from the Urals who first came to Geneva at the end of 1908 at Bogdanov’s invitation. A self-taught admirer of Bogdanov’s ideas, Vilonov was especially inspired by Bogdanov’s theory of ‘comrades’ unity’, which would lead workers to progress and to embracement of culture. Bogdanov believed that the working class’ solidarity in the revolutionary struggle would unite the entire life experience of the proletariat and would eventually lead them to the creation of ‘proletarian art’, ‘proletarian philosophy’, ‘proletarian science’ and ‘proletarian morals’. In 1908, Vilonov offered to translate Bogdanov’s sophisticated ideas into a more accessible workers’ language, and Bogdanov suggested to Vilonov that he write the article ‘What Do We Demand from Philosophy?’ [Chto my trebuem ot filosofii?], and soon invited him to come to Geneva in order to write another article together. The key point is that Vilonov believed that only new, intelligent workers could become true leaders of the proletariat. He wrote to Trotsky that as a

Roots of Proletarian Culture

Figure 1.2

37

Vladimir Lenin plays chess with Alexander Bogdanov during a visit to Maxim Gorky. Capri, Italy (10 (23) April-17 (30) April 1908). Photo: Wikimedia Commons, accessed 10.11.2012.

social class, the proletariat must have its own intelligentsia.14 Vilonov also sent Trotsky a detailed report on the necessity of party schools for workers, hoping that he would publish it in Pravda; at the time a Social-Democratic paper, aimed at Russian workers that Trotsky was printing in Vienna from October 1908 and smuggling into Russia to avoid censorship. The idea of using Trotsky’s Pravda as the main medium for transferring ideas about proletarian culture to Russian workers was originated by Bogdanov, who was looking for a new newspaper after leaving Proletarii. But Trotsky, who called for the unity of the RSDRP, did not want to support either Lenin or Bogdanov. In his (unpublished) letter to the organisers of the Capri school, he called for the creation of a school which would express the ideas of the whole Social-Democratic party rather than just one faction of it.15 Later, Trotsky did agree to teach a practical course on agitation and propaganda at a subsequent school in Bologna, although he still disagreed with the school programme as a whole. He explained that party schools could func14 15

Quoted in Yutta Scherrer ‘Otnosheniia mezhdu intelligentsiei i rabochimi na primere partiinych shkol na Kapri i v Bolonie’, p. 550. See ibid.

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tion only when the experience of the theoretician could be combined with the experience of the practitioner.16 Trotsky believed that members of the intelligentsia should learn the methods of teaching the proletariat from the workers, and not the other way around. In January 1909, Vilonov and his wife arrived at Capri and started recruiting workers for the workers’ school. However, there were disagreements about how many and from where they should recruit, and for how long they should keep them at the school. Gorky wanted to have real workers from Russia and nothing could persuade him to compromise. He argued that the school would be organised with ease. By autumn they would have a minimum of twenty comrades, whose influence in their factories was not in doubt. When they would return home, they would be able from there – from Russia – to make the proper impact. Gorky also wrote to Bogdanov that Vilonov found laughable his (Bogdanov’s) remark that they would not gather 20 people.17 He saw this number as tiny and, according to him, it would be extremely difficult to be limited by this number. To finance his venture, Gorky obtained considerable funds from his own royalties, as well as from Lev Krasin, Maria Andreeva, Feodor Chaliapin (who gave twenty-five thousand roubles), and a Nizhnii Novgorod steamship owner, Kamensky. Gorky believed that the main purpose of the school was to ‘strengthen the intellectual energy of the party’ and to ‘create overseas courses for training organizers and propagandists.’18 On Capri, Russian workers encountered an impressive faculty – Bogdanov, Gorky, Lunacharsky, the Moscow historian Mikhail Pokrovsky, the lone Bolshevik Duma delegate Aleksinsky, among others – and courses ranging from the history of Russian literature and European socialism to political theory and the practice of agitation. Georgy Plekhanov refused to teach in Bogdanov’s school, so Lunacharsky (fig. 1.3) started giving lectures on art history to Russian workers in one of the most picturesque grottos on the island (fig. 1.4). His course also included site visits to Pompeii and Rome. By 1909, art was already seen as an important part of Bogdanov’s theory of proletarian culture. It was considered to be one of the main tools of agitation and propaganda, and the leaders of the new working class had to base their artistic experiments on the knowledge of the best achievements of ancient 16 17 18

Ibid. See Bogdanov’s letter to Gorky of 6 March 1909, sent from Paris, in which he wrote: ‘You won’t recruit 20 people for the school – it is not so easy.’ – Ibid., p. 47. Ibid.

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Figure 1.3

39

Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933) in 1915. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg.

Greece and Rome. Classical heroes were presented as prototypes of exemplary workers, displaying fortitude in the face of the forthcoming challenges and imposing order on revolutionary chaos. Given the prestige of ancient Greece and Rome as Europe’s moral and political foundation, classical rather than Christian virtues were studied by Russian workers. Lynn Mally summarised this in this way: Most important, the left Bolsheviks were deeply committed to a reinterpretation of Marxist theory that would give ideology and culture a more creative and central role. Opposed to the rigid materialism of Lenin and Plekhanov, they believed that the ideological superstructure was more than a reflection of society’s economic base. Lunarcharsky had long been fascinated by the power of art to inspire political action.19 By April 1909, the Okhrana was well informed about the school, though they preferred to close their eyes to the activities of the school since even they did 19

Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, pp. 4-5.

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Figure 1.4

Grottos on Capri, where Lunacharsky gave lectures on the history of art to Russian workers in 1909. Photo: Natalia Murray, 2011.

not believe that any of the workers would return to Russia; they were almost exactly right, since only one worker from the Capri school, Feodor Kalinin, returned to Russia to become an important leader in the Bolshevik Party. In the autumn of 1909, Lunacharsky left Capri, following the death of his son and the disagreements between his wife and Gorky’s common-law wife, Maria Andreeva, and settled for a time in Naples. Having lost one of its major supporters, the Capri school closed down in November 1909. A year later, in November 1910, Lunacharsky and Aleksinsky established their own party school in Bologna, where they had 17 students recruited mainly among the young workers from the Urals area. The Bologna school had a small faculty headed by Lunacharsky (who was teaching art history), Bogdanov, and Gorky. Since only Lunacharsky could speak Italian fluently, he served as the school’s director. The school was formed around Bogdanov’s idea of ‘proletarian universities’, open to the most sophisticated representatives of the working class, who were to form the new proletarian intelligentsia, ready to organise the broad mass of workers.20 However, the school in Bologna only survived for a few months during the winter of 1910-1911. 20

See A. A. Bogdanov, Kul’turnye zadachi nashego vremeni (Moscow, 1911), pp. 23, 54.

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In the meantime, a group of students remaining on Capri formed, together with their lecturers, the anti-Bolshevik party group Forward [Vpered]. The idea for such a group was first expressed by Bogdanov after he was defeated at the June 1909 Paris conference. He claimed that the editors of Proletarii had not properly understood the intellectual development of workers; the lack of any ‘theoretical and historical’ elaboration of the people’s armed struggle against autocracy meant the absence of ‘conscious leaders’ in workers’ organisations. The intelligentsia was necessary to train workers as conscious leaders, and for such training art history was given an important role in raising the social consciousness of workers. Lenin and other Bolsheviks disagreed with Bogdanov on the importance of the intelligentsia, and expelled him from the Bolshevik faction. The uncompromising Bogdanov had founded Forward and soon Gorky, Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Grigory Aleksinsky, Stanislav Volsky, the publicist, economist and writer on atheism Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, and the merchant Lev Krasin, a well-known economist. Feodor Bazarov and Martin Liadov all joined him and started publishing their own journal (also called Forward [Vpered]). In this, they proclaimed their goals of creating and spreading among the masses a new proletarian culture, a new proletarian philosophy, and developing proletarian education. In the manifesto of the Forward group, Bogdanov and his followers argued that the party had to concentrate on the ideological preparation for the coming revolution, stating that there was only one conclusion: to use, analyse and criticise the old bourgeois culture to create a new proletarian one opposed to the old, and to spread it to the masses. They needed to develop a proletarian science, strengthen authentic comradely relations in the proletarian milieu, devise a proletarian philosophy, and in practice as well as in theory turn art in the direction of proletarian aspirations and experience.21 By that time, Forward had broken all its ties with the Bolshevik centre, and Lenin and his allies decided to open a rival school for workers outside Paris. Both schools for workers in Capri and Bologna had failed as practical experiments in proletarian culture. Lenin’s initiative in Paris offered new opportunities, and in 1911 Lunacharsky joined this new school for workers hoping that there his attempts to educate workers through art would finally come to fruition. Initially Lenin suggested a cycle of lectures for the students of the school in Bologna; but when the leaders of Forward tried to sabotage his idea, he 21

See ‘Platforma gruppy ‘Vpered’: Sovremennoe polozhenie i zadachi partii’ in V. Lenin, Sochineniia, 3rd edition (Moscow, 1936), vol. 14, p. 455.

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decided to open a school for the improvement of workers’ ideology at the proletarian centres in Russia. Incidentally, in his conversation with Gorky in Paris in the spring of 1911, Lenin predicted an all-European war, for which the proletariat was not yet ready.22 However, since Lenin still could not safely return to Russia, in the summer of 1911 he opened yet another party school remote from Russia, in a rural suburb of Paris, Longjumeau, a small community beyond the suburbs, eleven miles from the centre of Paris. At the time, Longjumeau had only a tanning factory, where the workers were also peasants. Longjumeau was connected with Paris by one short train, which had one service a day. This remote place provided a perfect hide-away. On 17 Grande Rue, Lenin found an abandoned workshop, well hidden behind a 15-metre long building. Inside it had a large square room with just a few windows, which Lenin’s close accomplice and lover, Inessa Armand, managed to turn into a class room with the help of a few comrades. Lenin chose 18 workers for the school, from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Sormov, Ekaterinoslav, Nikolaev, Baku, Tiflis and even Poland. Some of them were Bolsheviks, a few Mensheviks and one Recallist23 (Vilonov). Six students from the Capri school also joined Lenin’s new venture. All the students had to stay separately in private houses in order not to raise suspicions among the locals, pretending to be Russian village teachers, although the citizens of Longjumeau were intrigued by the arrival of so many Russian teachers before the beginning of the school holidays.24 Lectures were given by Grigory Zinoviev,25 Lev Kamenev,26 Lunacharsky, Nikolai Semashko,27 22 23

24 25

26

27

See Jean Fréville, Lenin v Parizhe, transl. from French by P. Vishniakov (Moscow: Progress, 1969), p. 223. Recallists [Otzovists] were a group of radical Bolsheviks who demanded that all participation of the RSDLP in legal state establishments cease, in particular, to recall the RSDLP representatives from the State Duma, hence the name (‘to recall’ is ‘otozvat’ in Russian). Among the prominent Recallists were Alexander Bogdanov, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Anatolii Lunacharsky, and Andrei Bubnov. Jean Fréville, Lenin v Parizhe, p. 230. Grigory Zinoviev (1883-1936), born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. In 1918, he was put in charge of the Petrograd city and regional governments. Lev Kamenev (1883-1936), born Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He served briefly as the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, and from 1923-24, the acting premier in the last year of Vladimir Lenin’s life. Nikolai Semashko (1874-1949), was a Russian statesman who became People’s Commissar of Public Health in 1918 and served in that role until 1930; he was one of the organisers

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David Riazanov28 and Vladimir Steklov29 (who lived in Paris at the time). All the lecturers were chosen by Lenin himself, who also delivered a series of lectures on political economy, the agrarian question, and the theory and practice of socialism. Gorky was also invited to lecture in Lenin’s school, but the writer refused, using poor health as an excuse. Zinoviev, Kamenev, Riazanov, Carl Rappaport and Semashko gave lectures on different aspects of the movement, and Inessa Armand on the history of the workers’ movement in Belgium, and Vladimir Steklov on state laws. Drawing on his unswerving belief in the importance of art as one of the major tools in propaganda, Lunacharsky gave lectures on literature and art and took workers on several excursions around the Louvre. He also founded his own circle for proletarian culture in Paris, which consisted of exiled workerwriters, many of whom went on to play important roles in post-revolutionary Russia. In Paris, they organised a new journal, again named Forward, which became a popular workers’ journal. Here, Lunacharsky wrote about his vision of a future proletarian culture, a ‘culture of social revolution, but not socialism’, which would produce ‘proletarian art, proletarian science, and proletarian philosophy’.30 In 1911, Russian art in Paris was represented by the revolutionary impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his third Ballet Russes season. As Robert Williams wrote ‘for many, Paris in 1911 meant art, and art conjured visions of revolution’31 and 1911 Paris provided Lunacharsky with the opportunity to observe and participate in spectacular public and political events in art, which in turn inspired his new vision of proletarian art and culture. Here, he attended the trade union festivals and concerts, May Day parades and workers’ choral concerts at the Trocadero Museum that inspired him to build proletarian culture in Russia using similar means. While Cubism was all the rage in Paris at the time, for

28

29 30 31

of the health system in the USSR, an academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1944) and of the RSFSR (1945). David Riazanov (1870-1938), born Goldendakh, was a political revolutionary, Marxist theoretician, and archivist. Riazanov is best remembered as the founder of the Marx-Engels Institute and editor of the first large-scale effort to publish the collected works of these two founders of the modern socialist movement. Vladimir Steklov (1864-1926) was a Soviet/Russian mathematician, engineer and physicist. Quoted in Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde. 1905-1925, p. 53. Ibid., p. 52.

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Lunacharsky, proletarian culture had to be realistic, rather than avant-garde, appealing to workers more than to art critics. Here, Lunacharsky had discovered a circle of like-minded workers and artists who shared his interest in creating a revolution as much cultural and ideological as economic and political. Here he first formed a model for proletarian culture that would unite politically educated workers with radical avantgarde artists, a model that would ultimately be realized in post-revolutionary Russia. However, back in 1911, despite all the precautions, the Okhrana managed to send one of its agents to Lenin’s school as a student, leading to the school’s closure. On 15 September 1911, Lenin wrote to Gorky that two months had lapsed since he last wrote, when the school had just begun, and that it was now closed and the students had gone away.32 But in spite of its short existence, the outcome of Lenin’s party school was more satisfactory than either the school on Capri or in Bologna, since most students returned to Russia, and became revolutionary leaders: Shvarts became the head of the Union of Miners, Ordzhonikidze a member of the Central Committee, Prisiagin a union leader in Barnaul during the Civil War, subsequently shot by Kolchak, and Zevin remembered as one of the 26 commissars who were later shot in Baku.33 With the start of the First World War, the journal Forward was reinstated in Geneva by Lebedev-Poliansky, who would later serve as Proletkult’s first president: With Lunacharsky’s aid, Lebedev-Poliansky used the concept of proletarian culture to explain why most European socialists had given their support to the war effort. Their patriotism revealed that the socialists’ ideological development was weak. The only way to end workers’ dependence on the bourgeoisie was to develop proletarian culture and make scientific and socialist education the central task of social democracy.34 The need to educate the working class for revolution was the Forwardists’ central message. Culture, art, science, literature, and philosophy became the main weapons needed to prepare a proletarian victory. At the same time as schools for Russian workers were opened in Europe, back in Russia members of the intelligentsia organised numerous adult educa32 33 34

See ‘Lenin and Gorky. Letters. Reminiscences. Articles’, p. 74. See Jean Fréville, Lenin v Parizhe, p. 238. Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 10.

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tion courses, people’s universities, educational societies, libraries, and theatres that multiplied in cities and villages between 1906 and 1914. The involvement of the intelligentsia in workers’ education had begun in the mid-nineteenth century, but after 1905, Sunday and evening schools for the urban lower classes were opened in major cities across Russia,35 providing a rich and complex network of educational establishments for the lower classes.36 The 1905 Revolution had given an enormous boost to the efforts of the intelligentsia to educate workers, and soon new schools opened in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as over twenty other cities across the Russian Empire, including Ufa, Baku, Warsaw, and Tomsk. These institutions, called People’s Universities, were sponsored by a variety of local groups and relied on the services of the local intelligentsia. Although the curriculum in these schools for workers varied, many of them had libraries and even museums. For instance, the Museum of the Kharkov School for Workers organised by Christina Alchevskaia37 included eighty paintings with views of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Biblical subjects, and it had a special section dedicated to the image of woman in Russian literature and art.38 Like Lunacharsky, who used to take workers from the Capri school to the art galleries of Naples and from Longjumeau to the Louvre, teachers of the People’s Universities would show their students around museums in Russia. Paintings and sculptures which provided vivid illustrations to history and literature became an important tool in the creation of a working-class intelligentsia. Along with the popular universities there were also new art and music schools open to the general population, including the People’s Conservatory in Moscow, founded in 1906, richly endowed with an excellent musical staff. Among the teachers were Alexander Kastalsky and Arseny Avraamov, who would become important organisers of Proletkult musical training. 35

36 37 38

The first Sunday school was opened in Poltava in 1858. In St. Petersburg, by January 1861, there were 14 Sunday schools for men and five for women. In the first ten years after 1861, 7,293 people (mostly workers) graduated from the Shlissenburg schools in St. Petersburg. See E. Ol’khovsky, ’Formirovanie rabochei intelligenttsiia v Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka’, in the materials of the international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reforma i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917 (St. Petersburg: RAN, 1997), p. 83. In 1903, the Ministry of Peoples’ Education registered 749 Sunday schools; in 1905, 782 schools and 549 courses for workers. See ibid., p. 84. Christina Alchevskaia (1841-1920) was a Ukrainian teacher and reformer married to the wealthy businessman and philanthropist, Aleksei Alchevsky. Ibid., p. 85.

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Another type of educational forum was the so-called People’s Houses [Narodnye Doma]. The most famous of these institutions was the Ligovsky People’s House, run by the Countess Panina in St. Petersburg. Opened in 1891 as a cafeteria for students, it was taken over by the Imperial Technical Society and transformed into a night school. In 1903, when Countess Panina took control, the centre greatly expanded its activities, adding a theatre, museum, art classes, and much more extensive educational programs. Several worker activists involved in the Petrograd Proletkult had had contact with this cultural centre. But unlike the schools for Russian workers in Italy or France, the People’s Houses aimed to reach the common people of all ranks, from workers to peasants and poor townspeople.39 The 1905 Revolution also inspired workers’ clubs and educational societies run by workers themselves. Such groups as ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Source of Knowledge and Light’ and ‘Knowledge’ aspired to the promotion of self-education [samoobrazovanie]. These societies and groups of workers aimed to encourage reading, discussion of Russian classics, and the staging of theatre performances. However, these societies and groups aimed to exclude the intelligentsia entirely; the leaders of these groups, such as the prominent Mensheviks Alexander Potresov and Valerian Pletnev (who later became the president of Proletkult), believed that clubs, evening schools and theatres enabled the proletariat to create its own culture without interference from members of the bourgeoisie.40 Along with rejecting bourgeois culture, they tried to deny the art of the past, to which Lunacharsky replied that workers should learn from the art of the past in order to learn to apply that knowledge for their own ends. They should discover how to use art as a weapon in the struggle for socialism.41 Lunacharsky would maintain his faith in the importance of ‘old art’ throughout his life, using similar arguments in his endless quarrels with the Futurists after the 1917 October Revolution. The outbreak of the First World War and repression by the government halted the expansion of workers’ cultural groups. People’s Universities and

39

40 41

In 1903-1904, 123,477 people (mainly workers) attended People’s Houses. See E. Ol’khovskii, ‘Formirovanie rabochei intelligenttsii v Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka’, pp. 89-90. See V. Pletnev, ‘K voprosu o proletarskoi kul’ture’, in Nasha zaria, 1913, no. 10-11, pp. 35-41. See A. Lunacharsky, ‘What is Proletarian Literature and is it possible?’ [‘Chto takoe proletarskaia literatura i vozmozhna li ona?’], in Bor’ba, no. 1 (1914), quoted in Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, pp. 19-20.

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People’s Houses still thrived during the war, but their main role was to prepare the foundations for a major political change in Russia. The activists in these diverse workers’ groups disagreed on the most fundamental issues, but they all agreed that cultural training was necessary for a lasting transformation of Russian society. Although the real impact of workers’ schools on the preparation of workers for a new life in post-revolutionary Russia is arguable, their theoretical and practical role in laying the foundations of proletarian culture cannot not be overlooked.

Definition of the Proletariat: Workers and Peasants in Russia in 1905-1917 In Russia, for example, three major problems that beset society and state were the peasant question, the national question, and the labour question. But on Mars there were no peasants. Farming had been industriali[s]ed, the rustic life – which Marx had called idiotic – no longer existed. Richard Stites42 Despite rapid industrialisation, between 1905 and 1917, Russia was still overwhelmingly a traditional peasant society. Peasants constituted 80 per cent of the entire population and less than a quarter of them were literate. They represented a dangerously individualistic and backward-facing group in a society aspiring for a proletarian revolution. At the same time, an urban proletariat was a recent phenomenon in Russia. It emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as a result of rapid industrialisation and the famous serfdom reform of 1861 that freed the serfs but left most of them without land or any means of existence. Thousands of peasants were forced to move to the cities, and at the end of 1900, the industrial proletariat in Russia constituted more than two million people.43 42

43

Richard Stites, ‘Fantasy and Revolution: Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Bolshevik Science Fiction’ in Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, trans. by Charles Rougle (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1984), p. 7. See E. Ol’khovskii, ‘Formirovanie rabochei intelligenttsiia v Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka’, in the materials of international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, p. 77.

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In 1900, over two-thirds of St. Petersburg’s citizens had been born outside the city, and over 80 percent of its workforce were former peasants. They came from all over the Empire: hungry, penniless peasants, desperately seeking work. Most of them entered the big metal factories.44 Well over half the workers of St. Petersburg were employed in big factories of 500 or more, while nearly two-fifths worked in giant works of over 1,000.45 As the proletariat developed as a class, the gap between factory workers and peasants widened. In his article, ‘A Criticism of Proletarian Art’ [‘Kritika proletarskovo iskusstva’], Bogdanov wrote: First of all, proletarian art is often not distinguished from peasant art. Undoubtedly, the working class, especially in Russia, comes from peasants, and the two are closely related: peasants are mostly also labourers and they are also exploited; that is why we achieved quite a long-standing political unity between these two classes. But there are principal differences in the ideology and the main ways of thinking and acting of these two classes. The spirit of the proletariat, its organisational essence, lies in collectivism, cooperation between comrades; since these qualities are developed throughout his life, feeding its very essence. Peasants, small landlords, are in the majority still striving towards individualism, personal interests and posessions; they form ‘peti-bourgeoisie’.46

44 45 46

The decisive sector in St. Petersburg was the metal industry, whereas in Moscow, textiles predominated. See Alan Woods, Bolshevism – The Road to Revolution: A History of the Bolshevik Party (London: Wellread Publications, 1999). Alexander Bogdanov, Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva in Alexander Bogdanov, O Proletarskoi kul’ture. 1904-1924 (L.-M.: Kniga, 1924), p. 159. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Во-первых, пролетарское искусство обычно не отличают от крестьянского. Без сомнения, рабочий класс, особенно наш русский, вышел из крестьянства, и точек соприкосновения не мало: крестьяне в своей массе тоже трудовой и тоже эксплуатируемый элемент общества; не даром у нас мог создаться довольно длительный политический союз тех и других. Но в сотрудничестве и в идеалогии, в основных способах действовать и мыслить различия имеются глубокие, принципиальные. Душа пролетариата, его организационное начало, это коллективизм, товарищеское сотрудничество; поскольку это начало развивается в его жизни, проникает и пропитывает её. Крестьяне, мелкие хозяева, в своей массе тяготеют к индивидуализму, к духу личного интереса и частной собстенности; это «мелкая буржуазия.’

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Bogdanov concluded that since peasants have a strong religious spirit and are very narrow-minded, one should not mix peasant art and poetry with proletarian art.47 An important aspect of the development of social democracy in prerevolutionary Russia was the concept of opposing political cultures and aspirations of the city and the village, of workers and peasants. This contradiction was one of the main elements in the arguments of Marxist publicists with the Populists,48 who believed that the workers were only mediators between members of the intelligentsia and the peasants, and thus had to prepare the ground for revolutionary propaganda in villages. On the contrary, Marxists believed in workers as the vanguard force of proletarian society, and inspired them back in the 1890’s to recruit peasants into their circles. The historian Leopold Haimson observed that leaders of both factions [Bolsheviks and Mensheviks] explained that the misfortunes which they experienced in their struggle for the leadership of the workers’ movement was due to the negative role played by the peasant ‘newcomers’ (‘aliens’) in the workers’ circles. This concept had deep roots in the ideological traditions shared by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, despite all the differences in the interpretations of their common heritage.49 The inventor of the concept of Proletarian Culture, Bogdanov, who had close connections with the workers and knew that the urban lower classes were far more interested in tales of adventure than in polemical propaganda, promoted the victory of workers over peasants already in his utopian science fiction novel, Red Star.50 In this book, his imaginative predictions for utopia

47 48

49

50

See ibid., p. 160. The Populists, or Narodniki in Russian, believed that political propaganda among the peasantry would lead to the awakening of the masses and, through their influence, to the liberalisation of the tsarist regime. Because Russia was a predominantly agricultural country, the peasants represented the majority of the people (narod). See Encyclopaedia Brittanica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/403562/Narodnik. See Leopold Haimson, ‘K voprosu o politicheskoi i sotsial’noi identifikatsii rabochikh Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX v.: rol’ obshchestvennykh predstavlenii v otnosheniiakh uchastnikov rabochego dvizheniia s sotsial-demokraticheskoi intelligenttsiiei’ in the materials of the international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, pp. 45-46. The first edition of Red Star was published in St. Petersburg in 1908. It was reprinted in St. Petersburg and in Moscow in 1918, and again in Moscow in 1922. A stage version was produced by Proletkult Theatre in 1920. In 1928, after Bogdanov’s death, it was published as a supplement to ‘Around the World’. It was not again reissued in the Soviet Union for

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were both technological and social. Set in Russia during the 1905 Revolution and then on socialist Mars, the novel tells the story of Leonid, a scientistrevolutionary who travels to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system. One particular aspect of their life which Leonid admires is that ‘on Mars there were no peasants.’51 However, not all utopian writers promoted industrialisation. Thus, Afanasiev’s novel Journey to Mars (1901) was a warning against industrialisation per se, whether capitalist or socialist. Using Martian society as a vehicle, the author related how the appearance of cities, roads, and factories turned the simple, primitive, trusting, rural Martians (read: the peasants of Russia) into greedy, competitive, cannibalistic brutes and egoists – into what Afanasiev called ‘the nervous society’.52 Bogdanov abandoned active political work in 1911 and devoted his time exclusively to proletarian culture. But what did Bogdanov’s Proletarian Culture mean for common workers who were already actively involved in their own educational societies and theatre groups? Were they ready to trust a member of the intelligentsia to form their culture?

Proletarian Art: the Problem of Diverse and Contradictory Theories of Proletarian Art amongst the Political Leadership Bolshevism had originated in 1904 and worked, at least for a time, to overcome the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP) that had been threatening to destroy the recently attained unity of Social Democracy. It had also been a protest against the tendency of Party leaders to cling to positions of authority. The Bolsheviks had always maintained that the RSDRP was above all the Party of the conscious revolutionary proletariat and that the task of the

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almost 50 years, until 1979, when it appeared in the collection ‘The Eternal Sun: Russian Social Utopia and Science Fiction’. It appeared in a German translation in 1923, and was reprinted in 1972. For an English translation, see Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, trans. by Charles Rougle (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1984). Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, trans. by Charles Rougle (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1984), p. 7. See Stites, ‘Fantasy and Revolution: Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Bolshevik Science Fiction’ in Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, p. 5.

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Party was to raise the working masses to a higher level of socialist consciousness. Bolshevism therefore involved not only political reforms, it was also a cultural movement, which among other things involved the artistic education of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks were keen to support the proletariat as it pursued its emancipation and political hegemony within a bourgeois society. However, politics formed an organic whole with other aspects of the ideological life of society. In order to achieve political hegemony, the proletariat also had to acquire capacity for a general cultural hegemony. This was one of the purposes of Bolshevism: the idea of the creation of a great proletarian culture, stronger and more structured than the culture of the declining bourgeois classes. The most basic principle shared between the promoters of proletarian art was the belief in the importance of cultural change. But what kind of culture and what kind of change would be necessary to turn Russian society from the values of a backward-looking, predominantly rural population to a modern socialist society? The answers to these questions which were circulating in Russian society at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth were varied and often contradictory. As we have seen, in the early days in the development of ideas on proletarian culture, the conflict between Bogdanov and Lenin had already begun, with the former arguing that the proletariat had ‘its own type of thinking’ and thus should be trusted with the creation of proletarian art, and the latter stressing that the masses needed instructing ‘from above’. These different approaches divided the Bolsheviks into left and right factions, and when in 1909, Bogdanov was expelled from the editorial board of the journal Proletarii (the voice of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party), Lunacharsky followed his brother-in-law and also left the Party, to be recalled in 1917. Another active participant in the disputes on the nature of proletarian art was the founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and the first socialist to identify himself as a Marxist, Georgi Plekhanov. Already in 1903, he had accused Lenin of ‘bonapartism’, confusing dictatorship of the proletariat (as proclaimed by Marx) with dictatorship over the proletariat. In his article ‘On the Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats during the Famine in Russia’ (1892), Plekhanov gave the classic Marxist definition of the difference between propaganda and agitation: ‘A sect can be satisfied with propaganda in the narrow sense of the word: a political party never… A propagandist gives many ideas to one or a few people… Yet history is made by the masses… Thanks to agitation, the necessary link between the ‘heroes’

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and the ‘crowd’, between ‘the masses’ and ‘their leaders’ is forged and tempered.’53 A few years after Plekhanov published this article, Le Bon proclaimed: ‘the age we are about to enter will be in truth the era of crowds.’54 As mentioned earlier, their immediate context included the Paris Commune, the potential threat of a coup d’état by General Boulanger, the Dreyfus Affair, and the German occupation of Alsace-Lorraine. The era of the crowd reflected the complete shift in power from small, often unelected minorities (kings, aristocrats, the Church) to the influence of the masses, and eventually a shift to control by the masses. As Le Bon wrote, ‘the divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.’55 Crowds became one of the ways by which the masses demonstrated their power and indeed, evolved and consolidated their opinions. Le Bon saw this as an ongoing phenomenon. He argued that: All great historical facts, the rise of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Islam, the Reformation, the French Revolution and, in our own time, the threatening invasion of Socialism are the direct or indirect consequences of strong impressions produced on the imagination of the crowd.56 Plekhanov stressed the urgent necessity for the Marxists to penetrate the broadest layers of the masses with agitational slogans, beginning with the most immediate economic demands, such as the eight-hour day. He explained that this way all, even the most backward, workers would be clearly convinced that the carrying out of at least some socialist measures was of value to the working class. He believed that such economic reforms as the shortening of the working day were good if only because they could bring direct benefits to the workers.57 When Lunacharsky invited Plekhanov to give lectures on the history of art at the school for workers on Capri, he refused since he did not like Bogdanov and did not support his views. Plekhanov argued that while he was talking about his work, Empiriomonism, Lunacharsky started preaching a new religion, which might have had a much bigger practical impact than propagation of his philosophical ideas. He, like Engels, believed that all the possibilities 53 54 55 56 57

Quoted in V. Akimov, On the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903, ed. and trans. from Russian by Jonathan Frankel (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 17. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the popular mind, p. x. Ibid., p. xi. Ibid., p. 36. See V. Akimov, On the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903, p. 17.

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of religion had already been exhausted [alle Möglichkeiten der Religion sind erschöpft]. But he still considered that such possibilities were exhausted only for the conscious members of the proletariat. Apart from them, there were also semi-conscious and completely unintelligent members of the proletariat, so in the process of the latter’s development, such a religious sermon could have a significant, negative impact.58 In his work, Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy, published in three volumes between 1904 and 1906, Bogdanov also argued that Socialism had to reconsider the important role of art.59 He believed that the aim of Socialist art was to enlighten the proletariat, but unlike Lunacharsky, Bogdanov felt that the proletariat should be in charge of all artistic developments in Russia. In 1905, Plekhanov wrote a review of the sixth international art exhibition in Venice entitled ‘The Proletarian Movement and Bourgeois Art’ [‘Proletarskoe dvizhenie i burzhuaznoe iskusstvo’], in which he agreed with Bogdanov that proletarian art should be created by the workers. He concluded that one can see from the example of the Venice exhibition how modern art remains onesided and how deaf it is to the aims of the working class. He argued that life defines consciousness, and not the other way around and that the higher classes could only express feelings of pity towards those who were hurt and humiliated.60 Plekhanov concluded that the best representatives of the higher classes who may not be able to join the proletariat yet should know that ‘their watches were too slow: the night was about to finish; the “true day” was about to come…’61 Lunacharsky had started writing about proletarian art back in 1907, when he explained for the first time that such art would be realistic in style and would be created by proletarian artists. He had written then that proletarian art should be positive, optimistic, and comprehensible to the masses. Later, Leon Trotsky dedicated an entire chapter of his book Literature and Revolution [Literatura i Revolutsiia] to ‘Proletarian Culture and Proletarian

58 59 60

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See G. Plekhanov, ‘Protiv Empiriomonisma i bogoiskatel’stva’ in Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1924), vol. XVII, p. 6. See Aleksands Bogdanov, Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy [Empiriomonizm: Stat’i po Filosofii], 3 vols. (Moscow, 1904-1906). See G. Plekhanov, Proletarskoe dvizhenie i burzhuaznoe iskusstvo (Shestaia mezhdunarodnaia khudozhestvennaia vystavka v Venetsii) (St. Petersburg: Izdanie Marii Malikh, 1905), p. 28. See ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘[…] их часы отставали: ночь подходила к концу; «настоящий день» приближался…’

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Art’.62 He believed that the proletariat had to create its own culture and its own art, but due to a lack of experience, the proletariat had to learn from its enemies: members of the intelligentsia. Trotsky wrote that ‘the problem of a proletariat which has conquered power consists, first of all, of taking into its own hands the apparatus of culture – the industries, schools, publications, press, theatres, etc. – which did not serve it before, and thus to open up the path of culture for itself.’63 At the same time he stressed that ‘it is impossible to create a class culture behind the class’ back.’64 Like Lenin, Trotsky believed that ‘the essence of the new culture will be not an aristocratic one for a privileged minority, but a mass culture, a universal and popular one.’65 But he also felt that ‘before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat’.66 Perhaps Trotsky’s conclusion that proletarian art could never be a reality, since the proletariat had to outgrow its proletarian status in order to relate to art or create it, became one of the reasons why Trotsky’s book Literature and Revolution was banned in the Soviet Union, and for many decades kept under lock and key. In her book, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia, Sheila Fitzpatrick has written: ‘All Marxist intellectuals agreed, without even thinking about it, that proletarian culture had little or nothing to do with observable popular lower-class habits and cultural tastes.’67 A new means of agitation and propaganda, such as festivals, had to be developed in order to educate and elevate the workers. However, when Nicholas II came to power,

62 63

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66 67

Lev Trotsky, Literatura i Revolutsiia (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991). Originally published in 1923. Lev Trotsky, ‘Proletarskaia kul’tura i proletarskoe iskusstvo’, in Literatura i Revolutsiia, p. 146. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Задача пролетариата, завоевавшего власть, состоит прежде всего в том, чтобы прибрать к рукам не ему ранее служивший аппарат культуры – промышленность, школы, издательства, прессу, театры и пр. – и через это открыть себе путь к культуре.’ Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Нельзя создать классовую культуру за спиной класса.’ Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Новая культура будет ведь по самому существу своему не аристократической, для привилегированного меньшинства, а массовой, всеобщей, народной.’ Ibid., p. 147. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…прежде чем пролетариат выйдет из стадии культурного ученичества, он перестанет быть пролетариатом.’ Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 21.

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the number of festivals, balls and masquerades was reduced and in the period between the war with Japan and 1914, all mass outdoor festivals, including celebrations of religious holidays, were suspended.

The First World War The First World War, which broke out in August 1914, was marked in Russia by the devaluation of individual life to that of a means of mass destruction. Aggravating the situation was the emergence of forces of powerful political repression and means of communication that were easily utilised for mass propaganda. Amid mass mobilisation, trench misery and millions of fatalities, not surprisingly, festivals ground to a halt. During the First World War, all celebrations were officially prohibited in St. Petersburg.68 Between 1914 and 1918, most People’s and Workers’ Theatres as well as People’s Universities, were closed down and theatre performances were mainly moved to the front. At the time, agitation and propaganda followed workers and peasants to the front. In order to convince the populace of the humanitarian mission of Russia’s participation in the war, Russia developed an efficient propaganda machine, employing both high and low art intended to reach all classes of society, especially the peasants and industrial workers who provided the fighting forces for the army.69 So, during the First World War, propaganda played a key role in Russian culture. It was most commonly deployed through a state-controlled artistic production that had to glorify the homeland and demonise the enemy. On the eastern front, opera, film, spy fiction, theatre, spectacles, war novels and graphic arts were used in order to raise the soldiers’ morale. 68

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S. Isakov who worked as an assistant curator at the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Art wrote in 1917: ‘With the outbreak of imperial war, all the activities of the Academy of Arts slowed down. Everything was drawing to a halt. Celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Academy were cancelled.’ [C началом империалистической войны деятельность Академии Художеств совсем затихла. Подготовлявшееся празднование 150-летия существования Академии было отменено.] in S. Isakov, Akademiia Khudozhestv v period s 1907 po 1917 gg, in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, 11/1-218. See John E. Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler, ‘Playing with Fire’, in A Game in Hell/The Great War in Russia/Graphic Art and Photography from the Collection of Sergey Shastakov, ed. by John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler and Elena Sudakova (London: GRAD Publishing, 2014), p. 50.

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And although the reaction of artists to the war was rather fragmentary and inconsistent, such establishments as the Modern Lubok Corporation, founded in Moscow in August 1914 and supported by such artists as Mikhail Larionov, Aristarch Lentulov, Kazimir Malevich and Ilia Mashkov, published twentythree neo-primitivist prints captioned by Vladimir Mayakovsky and sent to the front as post-cards, which greatly appealed to the soldiers. During this period of enforced isolation, surrounded by the horrors of ongoing war, Moscow and Petrograd witnessed concentrated activity among avantgarde artists. In this hostile and apparently senseless period, when cultural taboos were shattered, Russian Cubo-Futurists aimed to reject reality and step into the non-figurative world. John Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler noted in their essay, ‘Playing with Fire’, that during the First World War: …much of beau monde and the intelligentsia continued their lives almost oblivious to the loss of nearly four million Russian troops within one year of the outbreak of war, and of approximately seven million by the time of its conclusion. Vladimir Mayakovsky continued to publish his radical verse, Kazimir Malevich developed his abstract system and cabarets such as The Stray Dog and The Comedians’ Halt flourished, and Léon Bakst designed gowns, hats and other de-luxe accessories. It often seemed that the cruel tragedy of the front line, with its Big Berthas, machine guns, bombs, trenches, diarrhoea and gas warfare, scarcely impinged upon the home fires.70 In 1914, Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote: ‘As a Russian, I hold sacred every effort of the soldier to wrench a piece of territory away from the enemy; as a man of art, however, I am obliged to think that perhaps the entire war was invented merely so that someone could write a single good poem.’71 For many avantgarde artists who stayed in Moscow and Petrograd the war was nothing but an abstraction. In 1915-1916, the most progressive Russian artists, poets and musicians would gather once a week at Apartment No. 5 in Petrograd, which belonged to the step-father of the young artist Lev Bruni. Later, in his unpublished memoir Art and Revolution [Iskusstvo i Revolutsia], Punin, who had been exempt from military service due to short-sightedness and a nervous tic, described these meetings: 70 71

Ibid., p. 43. Quoted in Nina Gugianova, The Aethetics of Anarchy. Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 166.

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In 1915, it seemed to me, and probably to most of us, that in Apartment No. 5 life was lived more fully and more intensely than anywhere else. We gathered there, shared our work, and reflected on it; we followed up the developments in literature: we read articles, listened to poems; hurried up the lazy ones, brought down the arrogant ones, looked after each other; studied art. We had a truly intensive life there, and if we were given another turn in history, perhaps, our meetings in Apartment No. 5 would have remained in our memory as the period of the utmost completeness.72 As the critic Iakov Tugendkhold commented at the time: ‘the longer the war drags on, the more art exhibitions there are in Moscow.’73 But while avant-garde exhibitions and artistic exchanges were thriving in Petrograd and Moscow, the outdoor festivals had to wait for another explosion after the 1917 Revolutions. 72

73

N. Punin, ‘Kvartira nomer 5. Glava iz vospominanii’, in Panorama iskusstv, no. 12 (MoscowLeningrad, 1989), p. 173. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В пятнадцатом году мне и, вероятно, многим из нас казалось, что в квартире № 5 жизнь идет интенсивней и полнее, чем где-либо в другом месте. Там мы собирались, делились работами и по поводу работ, следили за литературой: читали статьи, слушали стихи, подгоняли ленивых, осаживали тех, которые закидывались; заботились друг о друге, учились искусству. Мы, действительно, жили там интенсивно, и, если бы нам был дан другой кусок истории, возможно, что наши встречи в квартире № 5 сохранились бы в памяти как период времени наибольшей полноты.’ Quoted in Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler, ‘Playing with Fire’, p. 43.

Chapter 2

Festivals and Proletarian Art under the Tsars and the Provisional Government Festivals in Imperial St. Petersburg I love the warlike animation On the playing-fields of Mars; to see The troops of foot and horse in station, And their superb monotony; Their ordered, undulating muster; Flags, tattered on the glorious day: Those brazen helmets in their luster Shot through and riddled in the fray. Alexander Pushkin, 18331 Throughout history, European cities were often used as theatrical stages to display the power and greatness of the state. St. Petersburg was famous for spectacular festive decorations long before the October Revolution. The founder of the city himself favoured celebrations on a grand scale, and already on 20 December 1699, Peter the Great issued a decree about the establishment of the first secular festival, New Year’s Day, which was to be celebrated on 1 January. Along with new reforms and numerous military victories, even grander festivals were organised and the new traditions of secular city celebrations were established. Indeed, only six weeks after the foundation of St. Petersburg, St. Peter’s Day (29 June 1703) was commemorated by the firing of cannons. Since then it became the city’s tradition to start every festival with the firing of cannons (usually from the Peter and Paul Fortress).2 The opening of navigation on the Neva River was lavishly celebrated every spring with a Venetian-style carnival, which lasted for a week.

1 Alexander Pushkin, ‘The Bronze Horseman’, in The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, trans. from Russian by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 93. 2 During the reign of Peter I, even Easter celebrations were accompanied by cannons, which were fired after the midnight liturgy and during the readings.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_004

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Such events included people in masks, which played an important part in temporarily erasing titles and classes in St. Petersburg society. Catherine the Great believed that ‘people who dance and sing, do not have evil thoughts’.3 She introduced new masquerades, organised every winter, at the Winter Palace, and she gave a number of free tickets to commoners. Apart from bringing different ranks of society together, masquerades were often educational (Peter I used to educate city dwellers in the costumes and traditions of Ancient Rome and Greece through themed masquerades). They also served the role of propaganda for imperial ideas. Thus, one of the attendees of the masquerade that was held at the Summer Palace in Peterhof in 1777 described how most people were wearing dominos, and that none of the other people who were dressed up appeared to be rich or famous. Many of them were dressed in the costumes of far-away parts of the Russian Empire, and it felt like they had adopted their costumes from the wardrobe of the Academy of Science.4 Through public festivals and masquerades, St. Petersburg was declaring its role as the new capital of the whole of the Russian Empire. Already in the eighteenth century, it had become the centre of secular festivals, which were aimed at demonstrating the power and might of the whole of Russia. Celebrations in the capital were intended to raise patriotic feelings in common citizens. And even the famous fireworks that played an important role in every festival, had a special programme, which aimed to glorify tsars, reflect the political ambitions of the Empire and educate illiterate citizens. Often festivals were accompanied by written descriptions and engravings, which explained and illustrated the main events. Military and naval elements always played a distinctive part in St. Petersburg’s festivals. During the celebratory processions, every regiment used to carry its own banner (although in rainy weather, banners were carried in slipcovers in order to preserve the fragile silk). Every regiment received one ‘White’ banner and several ‘Colour’ banners decorated with the cross, a monogram of the Emperor and the imperial eagle (an almost exact copy of the Prussian eagle). Often banners included ‘regimental icons’, i.e. images of patron saints. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the cavalry standard pattern remained basically the same (slightly modified in 1894 and 1897), but instead of regimental icons, banners had the image of Christ the Saviour and the words

3 In Prazdnichnyi Peterburg, ed. by A. Nekrylova (St. Petersburg: Art-Deko, 2003), p. 55. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Народ, который поёт и пляшет, зла не думает.’ 4 Ibid.

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‘Not Made by Hand’ woven into the silk fabric on a golden rectangle in the middle of the flag. They also had the inscription ‘God Is with Us’ [‘S nami Bog’]. The reverse had Nicholas II’s embroidered monogram and embroided eagles in each corner. However, the real diversity of banners was introduced after the February Revolution, when every factory commissioned artists to produce its own banner that would be proudly carried by workers during the demonstrations. Although the number of public festivals was significally reduced during the reign of Nicholas II, the last pre-revolutionary celebrations on a grand scale were dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, celebrated on 21 February 1913. On this special day, Nicholas II and his family moved in triumphal procession from the Winter Palace along Nevsky Prospect to the Kazan Cathedral, where a celebratory mass was conducted. The processional route was decorated with flags and portraits of tsars from the Romanov dynasty. The most grandiose decorations, depicting huge double-headed eagles, adorned the Winter Palace and the Admiralty. The side facade of the Admiralty was draped in imperial purple with the coat of arms of the Romanov dynasty covering its entire length, topped by a crown almost fourteen feet in diameter. But even though all the decorations were completed by nine o’clock the night before the procession, a fierce wind had destroyed all those on the Admiralty by ten o’clock. For many, it felt like an ominous wind of revolution, blowing away the symbols of imperial absolutism.5 However lavishly early imperial and religious processions were decorated, their educational element was never seen as the main purpose of the festival in this period. In 1921, one of the leaders of Proletkult, Nikolai Liashko, reflected in a speech that festivals under the tsars were never nationwide events. He believed that real workers, who were in the position of slaves, could not participate in these colourful events. He finished his speech by saying: Wars and the proletarisation of peasants killed the remaining popular festivals and mixed people of different traditions and tastes. Then the falsification of festivals began. It was mainly influenced by the unstable mentality of the masses. Part of them was torn away from

5 For a description of the Tercentenary decorations see ‘Na ulitsakh’ in Rech’, 22 February 1913, p. 4; ‘21e fevralia v Petrogdade’ in Birzhevye vedomosti, 21 February 1913 (evening edition), pp. 2-4.

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the land, dreaming of returning to it, but living in the old world of material goods which corrupted all the virtues of subsistent agriculture.6 The unstable state of the masses was explained by Le Bon, who had stated that the anonymity of individuals in the crowd provides a sense of loss of responsibility and a feeling of invincibility. With the loss of autonomy, an individual becomes unreasoning, emotional and primitive. Le Bon saw ‘suggestibility’ as the mechanism through which the contagion can be achieved. As the crowd coalesces into a singular mind, suggestions made by strong voices in the crowd create a space for a ‘racial unconscious’ to come to the forefront and guide its behaviour.7 The main aim of the festivals in imperial Russia was to re-instate national pride and faith in autocratic power; under the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks, the festivals would implement Le Bon’s rules and would be used to guide and teach the crowds.

Proletarian Art and Festivals Under the Provisional Government In tsarist Russia, festivals were a prerogative of the church and the government. They always had to be sanctioned and financed by the state and so were strictly regulated. Since the eighteenth century, every year the head of the city administration would report to the mayor of St. Petersburg which festivals and mass celebrations were permitted by the Tsar, and which temporary buildings 6 Report by N. Liashko, ‘Rabochie prazdnestva Proletkulta’, written for Gorn magazine, June 1921, RGALI, f. 1230, оp. 1, ed. 458. The quotation in Russian reads: «Так называемых всенародных соборных празднесв, торжеств, поскольку речь идёт об участии в них целиком какого-либо народа, не было. Празднества и действа прошлого получили название всенародных и соборных случайно. Описанные и воспетые классические празднества не были всенародными. В них не принимали и не могли принимать участие труженики – рабы. Празднества были групповыми, кастовыми, сословными. Их массовость, широта, пышность и живость питались тем, что членов господствующих каст, групп объединяло относительно одинаковое экономическое положение. Войны, а впоследствии и пролетаризация крестьянских масс – добили остатки широких празднеств и смешали людей различных обычаев и вкусов. Тогда началась фальсификация празднеств. Этому в значительной мере способствовала неустойчивость психологии масс. Часть последних была оторвана от земли, грезила о возврате к ней, но жила в разлогающем добродетели натурального хозяйства товарном, неновом мире.» 7 Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 4.

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and theatre booths could be built. Demonstrations were illegal, and May Day processions were often dispersed and outlawed. The only legal processions were funerals, which often served as an excuse for political manifestations. May Day was legalised for the first time and turned into an official festival by the Provisional Government following the February 1917 Revolution. The February Revolution was centred on Petrograd, then still the capital. It broke out on International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February (23 February in the Julian calendar; 8 March in the Gregorian calendar). International Women’s Day was first celebrated in Russia in 1913, on the last Sunday in February (by the Julian calendar then used in Russia). Although there were some women-led strikes, marches, and other protests in the years leading up to 1917, none of them happened on International Women’s Day. Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandera Kollontai persuaded Vladimir Lenin to make it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, and it was established but remained a working day until 1965. On 8 May 1965, by a decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, International Women’s Day was declared a non-working day in the USSR. In February 1917, women from several factories across the capital went on strike that day for ‘Bread and Peace’, demanding the end of World War I and the end to Russian food shortages. Leon Trotsky wrote: The 23 February was International Women’s Day. The social democratic circles had intended to mark this day in a general manner: by meetings, speeches, leaflets. It had not occured to anyone that it might become the first day of the revolution. […] A mass of women, not all of them workers, flocked to the municipal Duma demanding bread. It was like demanding milk from a he-goat. Red banners appeared in different parts of the city, and inscriptions on them showed that the workers wanted bread, but neither autocracy nor war. Women’s Day passed successfully, with enthusiasm, and without victims. But what it concealed in itself, no one had guessed even by nightfall.8 The strike lasted less than a week, but involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and the gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the Russian monarchy. In the last days, mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. This revolution – seemingly a chaotic affair – appeared

8 Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, transl. by Max Eastman (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008), pp. 75-76.

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to break out spontaneously, without any real leadership or formal planning. Russia had already been suffering from economic and social problems, compounded by the impact of World War I. Bread rioters and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the city’s garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with the more loyal troops away at the front, the city fell into the state of chaos that led finally to the overthrow of the Tsar. The transition to a Provisional Government was not smooth, and in reality, fertilised the ground for the revolution in October. It was already an uneasy alliance between liberals and socialists wanting different types of political reform, but agreeing on setting up a democratically-elected executive and constituent assembly. However, at the same time, the socialists also formed the Petrograd Soviet, which made it clear that they regarded themselves as the leading element in government, now by what became known as ‘Dual Power’.9 Unlike the Tsars, the Provisional Government did not pay much attention to mass spectacles. The Arts Commission [Komissiia po delam iskusstva], which was established on 4 March 1917 and included the renowned author Gorky and famous World of Art artists Alexandre Benois (Alexander Benua), Nikolai Roerich, and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, focused on the more pressing need to save palaces and works of art from the threats of war and revolution. However, unlike its predecessors in imperial Russia, which never had a special art ministry (although the Imperial Academy of Arts attempted to determine all artistic developments in Russia), the Provisional Government made the first attempt to establish state control over the arts. As early as 1912, Benois expressed the extreme opinion that good taste in art had to be imposed by the state.10 And in March 1917, professors of Count Zubov’s Institute of the History of Art decided to send a petition to the government for the establishment of a Ministry of Arts. They even suggested a candidate for the head of this ministry: Sergei Diaghilev, who was in Rome at the time.11 Most of the members of the ministry were World of Art artists.12 The young critic Punin described these events in his article ‘Academy of Arts in 1917’:

9 10 11 12

‘Dual Power’ was a term first used by Lenin, who regarded its ability to hamper the Provisional Government as an ideal opportunity to overthrow it. See V. Manin, Iskusstvo v rezervatsii (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999), p. 7. Petrogradskaia Gazeta, 9 March 1917, no. 58. See also V. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1983), p. 88. Ibid.

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Chapter 2 …The question of the establishment of the Ministry of Arts was naturally dictated by the historic developments; it followed the fall of the tsars’ regime which practically eliminated the Ministry of the Imperial Court, which almost entirely controlled all artistic institutions and workshops in Imperial Russia. …The report on the establishment of the Ministry of Fine Arts has shaken ‘to the roots of their nerves’, as one journalist put it, the whole artistic world of St. Petersburg and Moscow.13

But despite Punin’s fears, the Ministry of Fine Arts never materialised. Artists actively voted for the separation of art from the state, and soon Punin, Nathan Altman, Lev Bruni, Alexander Rodchenko, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Vladimir Tatlin, Sergei Isakov and others founded a new union, the Freedom of Arts [Svoboda Iskusstv]. On 12 March 1917, they joined, along with no less than 182 artistic movements and individual artists, the All-Arts Union [Souz Deiatelei Vsekh Iskusstv]. This over-arching organisation united most Russian artists, from realists to Futurists.14 It was a prototype of the Union of Artists, but it aimed to be independent from the state. On 10 April 1917, the Union issued a petition to the Provisional Government which stated that the development of art in Russia could not be in the hands of a bureaucratic machine (the Ministry of Fine Arts) but needed to be done by the artists themselves.15 This was an unprecedented step that put artists in charge of the whole structure. The Provisional Government accepted their petition and commissioned the artists from the Union, together with the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ 13

14

15

Nikolai Punin, Akademiia Khudozhestv v 1917 godu, The Archive of the Academy of Arts, 11/1-263, pp. 2-3. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘…Вопрос об образовании министерства искусства, вопрос, естественно поставленный ходом событий, так как падение царского режима фактически вычеркнуло из списка ведомств министерство императорского двора, которое почти полностью объединяло художественные учреждения и предприятия царской России. …Сообщение о создании министерства изящных искусств «до нервной дрожи», как писал тогда один журналист, взволновало весь «художественный мир».’ In Petrograd, the Union included 90 artistic movements and institutions, such as Count Zubov’s Institute of Art, the Wanderers, the Union of Youth, the Association of World Futurists, the Ladies’ Art Circle, the Society of Drawing Teachers, the Society of Icon Painters from Mstera, the Imperial Academy of Arts, the Russian Museum, the Hermitage Museum, the magazine Apollon, the Meyerhold Theatre Studio, and Andreev’s Orchestra. See TSGIA, f. 794, op. 1-44. See V. Manin, Iskusstvo v rezervatsii (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999), p. 9.

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Deputies, to create for the first time ever three very different mass festivals: Funerals of the Victims of the Revolution (23 March), May Day (celebrated on 18 April) and Liberty Bond Day (May 26). Paradoxically, the first ceremonial festival of the victorious revolutionaries took the form of funerals, which were turned into a celebration of the victory over the tsarist regime. And it was only logical that the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies agreed to bury the victims of the February Revolution in the centre of the Palace Square: the very epicentre of the life of the imperial court and where the victims of the first revolutionary uprising in January 1905 were shot by the Tsar’s army.16 However, this decision was met with a negative reaction from the intelligentsia, who were against the destruction of the most beautiful square of the city. Even one of the members of the committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Nikolai Sukhanov, exclaimed: ‘How can we possibly disfigure one of the best diamonds in the crown of our northern capital? The Palace Square is a wonderful monolith, which denies any additions or destructions.’17 Sukhanov warned Gorky about this barbarian attempt to destroy Palace Square, and the writer together with the newly formed Arts Commission urgently issued an appeal against the disruption of the iconic Square that was printed and spread across the city. Gorky and Feodor Chaliapin paid a special visit to the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Nikolai Chkheidze, but he told them that he could not change the decision of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Only the head of the Provisional Government himself, Prince Georgy Lvov, managed to change the place of the burial from the Palace Square to the Field of Mars. 16

17

The protocol of the meeting of Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies stated: ‘Several speakers delivered emotional speeches dedicated to the heroes of the uprising against tyranny. It has been decided to hold on 10 March the funerals of the victims of the revolution. We chose the Palace Square as the place of their burial, since it is the place where the victims fell on 9 January 1905 and a symbol of the fall of the very place where the Romanovs’ hydra sat.’ [Ряд ораторов произнес прочувственные речи, посвященные героям восстания против тирании. Решено устроить 10 марта похороны жертв революции. Местом погребения их избрана Дворцовая площадь, как то место, где пали жертвы 9 января 1905 г., как символ крушения того места, где сидела гидра Романовых], in Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, 6 March 1917. N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revolutsii (Moscow, 1991), vol. 1, p. 223. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Разве можно изуродовать один из лучших алмазов в венце нашей северной столицы? Дворцовая площадь – это замечательнейший монолит, который кажется не допускает ни прибавки, ни изъятия, ни перемещения хотя бы одного камня.’

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Chapter 2 The Burial Procession on 23 March 1917

The Petrograd Soviet decided to turn the day of the funerals into a day of rememberance of all the victims of the Tsar’s regime and so to hold the first free demonstration. If in imperial Russia funerals were used as an excuse for political manifestation, after the February Revolution, funerals were transformed into a celebration accompanied by a peaceful demonstration. A special committee under the leadership of I. Ramishvili18 was created to prepare this important, spectacular and now slightly postponed event. The committee spread leaflets around the city asking people to be vigilant and ensure that nobody is killed during the demonstration and pleading with the bakers and everyone involved in producing food to remain at work on the day.19 Their careful preparations paid off. On 23 March 1917, the burial procession – the first legal demonstration in post-tsarist Russia – attracted more than one million participants (the population of Petrograd in 1917 was 2,300,000 people). Several columns of demonstrators marched in from the working-class districts through the centre of town (as they had done during the days of February); about a million people moving constantly for twelve hours in order and solemnity (fig. 2.1). Remembering that it took place under the Provisional Government (though organised by the Petrograd Soviet), it surprised even the ambassadors of France and Britain, Maurice Paléologue and Sir George Buchanan, who wrote in their memoirs that Europe had never seen such a ceremony ever before.20 Richard Stites has remarked on the character of this remarkable procession: Revolutionary festival, ritual, and symbolism, the inseparable companions of every self-conscious revolution, provided in gesture, movement, performance, and art the new cultural apparel of the innovative order that was being born. This experiment in myth-making and adornment generated conflicting visions from the very outset. The demonstration thus resembled a parade in form, in its graphic message of solidarity, and in the ‘tangible impression of its own power,’

18 19 20

See TsGAKFFD SPb, D1877, D3863, E3445. See Petrogradskii Sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v 1917 g. 27 fevralia-31 marta 1917 goda (Leningrad, 1991), vol. 1, p. 462. See N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revolutsii, vol. 1, p. 312; M. Paléologue, Tsarskaia Rossiia nakanune Revolutsii (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), p. 412.

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Figure 2.1

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Postcards with depictions of a demonstration dedicated to the funerals of the victims of the Revolution. 23 March 1917, Petrograd. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

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Figure 2.2

Postcard with a depiction of the burial of the victims of the Revolution. 23 March 1917, Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

to use the words of Hendrik de Man. But in its emotional shape and show of pathos, it also resembled the religious procession.21 Gorky wrote: ‘In this festive parade of hundreds of thousands of people for the first time one could almost tangibly feel – yes, the Russian people made the Revolution, it was resurrected from the dead and now it joins the great peace mission – the creation of a new, freer, way of life.’22 Participants of the demonstration carried 180 red coffins along the main streets of Petrograd to the Field of Mars where they were placed in the burial ground, which was later adorned with a special monument by Lev Rudnev (fig. 2.2).

21 22

Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, pp. 79-80. See magazine Letopis, 1917, no. 2-4, p. 308. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘В этом парадном шествии сотен тысяч людей впервые и почти осязательно чувствовалось, – да, русский народ совершил революцию, он воскрес из мертвых и ныне приобщается к великому делу мира, – строению новых и все более свободных форм жизни.’

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Figure 2.3

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Lev Rudnev. Monument to the victims of the Revolution. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

In Petrograd, Lev Rudnev,23 the architect of the Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, was in charge of the city decorations. He also won first prize in the competition for the monument to the victims of the Revolution on the Field of Mars (fig. 2.3). His monument was called Ready-made Stones (it looked like a pyramid with steps, and it was made of old granite stones left over from the re-building of the Neva Embankment). Formerly a place for popular fêtes and military manoeuvres, after the February Revolution, the Field of Mars had gained a new symbolic meaning: now it became the successor of the Field of Mars in Paris, which had played a central part in the celebrations of the Festival of the Supreme Being after the French Revolution. The members of the demonstration walked solemnly around the Field of Mars to the accompaniment of the ‘Workers’ Marseillaise’ and the traditional firing of the canons from the Peter and Paul Fortress. The major feature of this procession was the banners, commissioned by factories and army troops, and

23

Under Stalin, Rudnev became one of the most popular and successful architects and designed the Moscow State University in 1949 followed by the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw in 1952-55.

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Figure 2.4

The burial procession on 23 March 1917. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Д1880.

proudly carried by workers and soldiers (fig. 2.4). And it is an extraordinary fact that these banners were often inspired by British trade union banners that had been seen by well-travelled Russian revolutionary leaders on the streets of London and Manchester.

The Influence of British Political Iconography on Russian Banners As early as 1825, trade societies in Britain marched through the streets carrying brightly decorated banners, and by 1850 these societies were evolving into skilled workers’ New Model Unions. Their banners retained many of the same elements of the earlier trade societies, such as the tools and processes of the trade. When the 1889 Great Dock Strike brought about a surge in union membership from unskilled workers, there was an increased demand for selfexplanatory banners. Throughout this period, these banners developed a specific iconography of mines, mills and factories, but also visions of the future, showing a land where children and adults were well-fed and living in decent, brick-built houses. During the 1840s, union banners began to be made in a common format that re-

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mained in favour for a hundred years: lavishly illustrated on both sides of silk panels, highly ornamented and trimmed, up to 4.9 by 3.7 metres in size. This uniformity in designs as well as materials was due largely to George Tutill’s banner-making business founded in 1837. Over the next fifty years, he developed a virtual commercial monopoly for his business. In the 1880s, trade union banners in Britain became more diversified in style and subject-matter. The British element of the International Socialist Movement displayed a strong graphic identity and emotion-inducing use of symbolism, defined by the socialist Walter Crane, a highly skilled professional artist and designer who gave his services to the socialist cause without charge. Numerous trade union banners produced in professional workshops from Crane’s original cartoons constituted his most enduring artistic contribution. In this way, Crane shaped the first imagery of socialism among the unions that appeared and reappeared in banner after banner until the Great War. As discussed in the introduction, these designs were well known in Russia already by 1897 when the International Exhibition of Art Posters was held in St. Petersburg. This also marked the first appearance in Russia of new types of political posters.24 Out of 700 posters represented at the exhibition, 100 came from Britain. This exhibition played an important part in the development of graphic images, with sharp political criticism that appeared a few years later in the journals Bugbear and Letters from Hell [Adskaia Pochta] (see Introduction). As Nikolai Shkolnyi remarked: The graphic art of 1905-07 had been fiercely critical of authority, but it had referred to sophisticated nineteenth-century West European traditions of magazine illustration, whose use of Symbolist and other complex imagery might not be accessible or make a direct appeal to a wide range of people.25 In the same way, images on the Russian banners were often connected with political caricature, which was especially popular after the February Revolution.26 Thus, one of the banners produced by the artists from the Freedom of Arts Union depicted a huge muscular figure of a worker, strangling the doubleheaded eagle; the main element of the coat of arms of the Russian Empire. 24

25 26

See Nikolai Shkolnyi, ‘Persuading the People: Posters of the First Soviet Years’, in Tradition and Revolution in Russian Art, the catalogue of the Leningrad in Manchester exhibitions (Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications, 1990), p. 98. Ibid., p. 99. See V. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu, pp. 102-108.

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Interest in British graphic designs in Russia was developed even further following an exhibition of British wartime posters and postcards that was held at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Petrograd on 1 May 1916.27 This iconographic language transferred well to the Socialist banners in Russian parades, displayed in demonstrations and published as postcards. One of the most popular images was derived from Walter Crane’s illustration of Hercules and the Old Man of the Sea.28 It portrayed a Herculean worker wrestling with the ‘serpent of capitalism’ and was repeated in banners both in Britain and in Russia, where it was empowered with new meaning. Thus, Crane’s design was used in the Docker’s Union Export Branch banner produced by George Tutill in 1890s. A serpent also appeared on the banner produced by an unknown artist for the piping workshop of Izhorskii Factory in 1917 Russia. Here, a defeated serpent still holding onto a golden orb with a sceptre and a crown lying next to it symbolises the death of the Russian monarchy, while a young woman with broken chains reaching out for the sun symbolises the new, free Russia. A worker and soldier were depicted shaking hands over the beheaded monster, another motif popular in nineteenth-century British Trade Union banners and in British First World War posters that also appeared in Russian factory banners of 1917. Crane’s ‘serpent of capitalism’ was adopted by an anonymous artist in his design for the decoration of Petrograd for the first anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (fig. 2.5). And in 1920, it was revived by Aleksei Marenkov in his poster Sons of Workers and Peasants: Red Warriors!, in which a Red Army soldier dressed as a medieval warrior prepares to strike a serpent, and by Dmitrii Moor in his poster Death to World Imperialism, in which workers, soldiers and sailors poke the serpent’s white eyes and red mouth with bayonets and red flags. Viktor Deni went even further and portrayed Leon Trotsky as St. George slaying Walter Crane’s ‘serpent of capitalism’, representing here the forces of counter-revolution. In a similar way, banners in Britain and Russia adapted Walter Crane’s Angel of Freedom, derived from his original oil painting Freedom first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885, and subsequently adapted in Russian banners

27

28

See exhibition catalogue Vystavka angliiskikh plakatov Velikoi Voiny. Katalog vystavki angliiskikh plakatov Velikoi voiny v Imperatorskoi akademii Khudozhestv, otkrytaia 1 maia 1916 g. (Petrograd, 1916) Walter Crane’s illustration of Hercules and the Old Man of the Sea was created by Walter Crane for A Wonder Book, published in 1892.

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Figure 2.5

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Unknown artist. Sketch for decorations of Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. СРБ-964, 965.

featuring female figures in white tunics holding a crown of thorns and a palm branch, images of martyrdom and victory. In Crane’s cover design for the socialist publication The Clarion (1 May 1895), ‘A Garland for May Day’, the goddess of spring Persephone was personified as ‘Socialism’, reborn for the workers’ celebration on May Day. The renewal of hope for society’s transition to socialism, represented by spring-time and symbolised by the Greek goddess, became a leitmotif in Crane’s work. The art-critic Morna O’Neill observed that ‘by the late 1880s, this interweaving of narrative, decoration and politics would create the visual culture of English socialism’.29 In the panel for the decorations of the cotton factory in Petrograd for the second anniversary of the Revolution, an unknown artist used Crane’s motif of enlacing the female figure with an inscribed ribbon and presenting her as Persephone with broken chains of slavery (fig. 2.6). The second poster on the factory’s façade (painted by the same artist) showed a woman in a long, white tunic with a red banner in her hand, shaking hands with a female worker dressed in a checked dress and a kerchief around her neck.30 29 30

Morna O’Neill, Walter Crane. The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 51. See TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 188, 189.

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Figure 2.6

Unknown artist. Poster on the corner of the cotton factory on Bolshaia Morskaia Street in Petrograd. 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 188.

Most banners and many posters produced in Russia in 1917 featured workers with hammers standing by an anvil with peasants ploughing in front of the rising sun. The worker with an anvil first appeared in Russia in the revolutionary satirical journals of 1905-1906 and echoed the imagery used by Crane in many trade union banners and on the membership cards of the British Socialist League. In her book The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, Annie Ravenhill-Johnson discussed the origins of the image of the worker by an anvil (fig. 2.7), which recalled ‘Marx’s recognition that the Industrial Revolution called upon workers to manage machines of terrifying power and to tame the technological forces of factory production’.31

31

Annie Ravenhill-Johnson, The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem (London: Anthem Press, 2014), p. 4. Here Annie Ravenhill-Johnson remarked that the iconography of the emblem of a worker depicted as a blacksmith originated from James Sharples’ painting The Forge (1840), which ‘ennobled the toilers and altered the perception of the

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Figure 2.7

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Banner depicting worker by an anvil. Demonstration on 1 May 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 7734/52017.

Thus, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of factory banners and political posters was largely unfamiliar in Russia, but artistic and political exchanges between British and Russian artists and socialists at the turn of the century, as well as exhibitions of British posters organised in St. Petersburg in 1897 and Petrograd in 1916, contributed to the rapid emergence of this new iconography context for political images, made public by satirical journals, banners and street decorations. Like in Britain, until 1920, there was no defined protocol for the decoration of banners in Russia, resulting in a great variety of subjects, artistic styles and in the quality of execution.32 Occasionally images on banners were made in the popular lubok style painted by amateur artists. Thus, the members of the Petrograd Soviet [Pet-

32

workplace as a fiery furnace, a purgatorial place or a gateway to hell, by portraying the white heat of the factory as a bright and heavenly portal.’ Sharples’ design for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Machinists, Millrights, Smiths and Pattern Makers won the union competition for an official certificate of membership and paved the way to numerous designs by artists and engravers (including Crane), who were later commissioned to create new emblems for trade union local branches. At the end of the Civil War, a new Honourary Revolutionary Red Banner was asserted, and all banners had to follow patterns prescribed by Soviet law.

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rosovet] carried a banner with a drawing depicting a worker, peasant and soldier, painted in the simplified style typical for lubok, shaking hands under the slogan ‘Land and Freedom’ [Zemlia i Volia].33 Such images were supported and encouraged by Proletkult, which often rejected images by professional artists whom they associated with alien classes. In the works by soldiers, sailors, proofreaders, and house painters, they saw elements of naturalism, Impressionism, and the lubok tradition of Russian art. The only element of the grand procession on 23 March 1917 that surprised foreign diplomats was the absence of priests and icons at the funerals. Paléologue wrote: ‘There were no priests, no icons, no crosses. Only one song: the worker’s Marseillaise.’34 Before the funerals, the Russian Orthodox Church asked the Workers’ Soviet to give them permission to participate in the funerals, but their request was declined. The Church was also close to the Tsar’s regime in Russia, and the Revolutionaries wanted to stress the civilian character of their funerals. Only the Cossacks challenged this decision of the Workers Soviet and proclaimed that their conscience would not allow them to participate in the funerals without a single image of Christ. On the day of the funerals, they refused to participate in the demonstration and remained in their barracks.35 When other military regiments stated their support of the Cossacks’ decision, the Provisional Government allowed the Russian Orthodox priests to conduct a special funeral service at the burial of the victims of the Revolution, but only the day after the main ceremony and demonstration.36 The burial procession of 23 March 1917 was the first major non-oppositional and all-class secular ceremony in the lifetime of the Provisional Government, and the only one without a central figure as its focus. The funerals were turned into a celebration of the Revolution that united the citizens of Petrograd with hope and a vision for a new bright future. Two days later, on 25 March, a concert in memory of the victims of the Revolution was organised at the Mariinsky Theatre. Together with the members of the Provisional Government, diplomats from England, France and Italy and Revolutionaries recently released from prison, were invited. Following the orchestral performance of the Marseillaise, Kerensky made a speech. After the 33 34

35 36

See TsGAKFFD SPb, D 1880, G 15246. M. Paléologue, Tsarskaia Rossiia nakanune Revolutsii, p. 413. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Ни одного священника, ни одной иконы, ни одной молитвы, ни одного креста. Одна только песня: рабочая Марсельеза.’ See ibid., p. 418. See M. Paléologue, Tsarskaia Rossiia nakanune Revolutsii, p. 419.

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funeral march, Chkheidze made a speech about war, which provoked a discussion. Thus, the concert was turned into a political meeting. Under the Provisional Government, theatres were often used for political meetings and manifestations. Art was replaced by politics, and the imperial theatres, which symbolised the determined efforts of Russian tsars to develop the arts, became places for political gatherings. On the day when the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre was renamed the State Theatre, the performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night was turned into a declaration of the new political symbolism. All the tsars’ coats of arms were covered with cloth and members of the Provisional Government occupied the Royal Box. Not satisfied with a classical repertoire, the excited public demanded the Marseillaise and worker’s songs. During the interval, members of the government gave speeches agitating for the continuation of the war (World War I) until its victorious end and called on all the actors and musicians to join the Revolution, because when the workers have gained freedom, they would have more time for art.37 By Spring 1917, most theatrical performances were combined with political meetings. The newspaper Rampa i Zhizn’ stated that this phenomenon demonstrated the harmonious union between the people’s life and art: ‘Theatre is no longer the place of empty amusement. Theatre entered life and life entered theatre.’38 But in reality, the union between theatre and politics was not as harmonious as the media tried to present it. Often, performances were interrupted by political speeches from members of the public, or by demands to play revolutionary songs instead of classical music, and soon theatres were seen by many as rather dangerous places, with political disputes and even fights.

1 May 191739 The spirit of people’s unity and a joyful fête (albeit on the theme of a funeral) could be best expressed in street celebration, which came to be epitomised by the next official festival under the Provisional Government: the Day of International Solidarity of Workers. Instead of 1 May, it was still celebrated on 18 April, 37 38 39

See Rech, 14 March 1917 and ‘Teatr v revolutsionnye dni’, in Teatr i iskusstvo, 1917, no. 10, pp. 209-210. ‘Teatr i miting’, in Rampa i zhizn’, 1917, no. 20, pp. 4-5. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Театр перестал быть местом пустой забавы. Театр вошел в жизнь, и жизнь вошла в театр.’ Celebrated on 18 April (Julian calender).

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as the Old Russian calendar was 13 days behind the European one. On this day, the workers decided to demonstrate their unity with the proletariat around the world40 and show their protest against the continuation of the war.41 In 1917, May Day was no longer perceived just as an excuse for a demonstration against the autocracy, and a new celebratory style was demanded. The planning of this festival started already on 1 April, and on 9 April, the father of Proletarian Art theory himself, Bogdanov, lectured on the history and significance of May Day. He finished by announcing that the workers’ section of the Soviet declared that it would be a national holiday, but due to the ongoing war and as the workers did not wish to weaken the fighting capacity of the front, May Day would be a working day instead.42 Workers also intended to donate their wages for this day to the needs of the Revolution. Fundraising for the May Day celebrations and the creation of banners were announced at most factories in Petrograd. At the famous Putilov Factory, the collection of funds for the purchase of red cloth for banners and posters and for artists’ payments raised even more money than was needed.43 To make sure that the Day of International Solidarity of Workers was celebrated with enough vigor, the working section of the Soviet organised a special committee responsible for this important festival. The planners felt that May Day should celebrate the fresh Revolution, and to reflect its optimism and unity, they suggested a great, social mystery-play, which could have become the first mass street-performance in Russia. However, in the end a more traditional street procession was chosen. Every factory, soldiers’ committee and city district made their own platforms for speakers using lorries and even horse-drawn carts. The architect Lev Rudnev, the engraver Pavel Shillingovsky44 and the artist Iakov Chernikhov45 40 41 42 43 44

45

Although at the beginning of the First World War, the II International cancelled celebrations of 1 May. See Pravda, 6 April 1917. See Petrogradskii Sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v 1917 godu, vol. 2: 1 April-5 May 1917 (St. Petersburg, 1995), p. 111. See N. Paialin, ‘Putilovskii zavod v 1917 g.’ in Krasnaia letopis’, 1932, no. 3 (48), p. 187. Pavel Shillingovsky (1881-1942) holds a special place in the history of twentieth-century Russian engraving. In 1914, he graduated from the graphical workshop of Vasily Mate and became an extremely versatile graphic artist who left his mark on all significant engraving techniques. Russian Constructivist artist, writer, architect and graphic designer, Iakov Chernikhov (1889-1951) was known as the ‘Soviet Piranesi’ for his skill as a draughtsman. Thwarted by Stalin in the 1930’s for his Futuristic architectural ideas, Chernikhov resorted to design typography striving to resurrect historical typefaces.

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Figure 2.8

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Palace Square on May Day 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 231/14172.

were put in charge of the special artists’ committee responsible for the decorations of the city.46 Fifty artists (including A. Baransky, S. Voznitsky, M. Golikman, M. Kalashnikov, A. Press, I. Miasnikov, A. Sokol, L. Shvarts47) were working day and night on the commissions for the factories’ banners and posters. For the first time, all the buildings on Palace Square, including the Winter Palace, were decorated with white drapes with red edgings and revolutionary slogans (fig. 2.8). All the buildings in the main squares of the city were adorned with large banners with slogans such as ‘Long Live the International’, ‘Long Live Free Russia and Working People’. Just as the old church icons had communicated religious messages, banners were intended to communicate revolutionary messages in an intelligible way. According to Le Bon’s study of the crowd ‘the power of words is bound up with the images they create’48 and ‘the crowds are not to be influenced by rea46 47 48

See TSGA St. Petersburg, f. 7384, op. 9, d. 302, pp. 35, 47. For the full list of artists see ibid., p. 54. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 61.

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soning, and can only comprehend a rough-and-ready association of ideas’.49 He advised future leaders: When studying the imagination of crowds we saw that it is particularly open to the impressions produced by images. These images do not always lie ready to hand, but it is possible to evoke them by judicious employment of words and formulas.50 In his book, Le Bon had used the case of the slogan ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ as an example: few knew what they were specifically committing to by shouting it on the way to the Bastille, but it touched on longheld frustrations and emotions, became a rallying cry and gave permission for the mass murder committed in its name. In post-revolutionary Russia, new slogans were intended to play the same role. Just as later ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer’ repeated by crowds of everyday Germans created a sort of collective ecstasy that permitted even greater catastrophes in its name. On May Day 1917, some houses were also decorated with garlands made out of fir tree branches that were even lit up at night with electric bulbs.51 As one journalist, Mikhail Levidov, remarked in his article ‘On the Day of Red Festival’ [‘V den’ Krasnogo Prazdnika’]: ‘These decorations were the only bright spots on the dull yellow background.’52 The newspapers noted with surprise that the festival became for the first time truly universal, and even government buildings were decorated with posters and slogans, ‘quite out of character with these respectable institutions’, including ‘Long live the International!’ and ‘Proletariat of all countries, unite!’. Every official building was decorated with a red flag.53 On 18 April 1917 (May Day), thousands of people turned out for the parade (fig. 2.9), which became ‘an unrestrained public exhibition of cheer and good feelings’, an all-Russian holiday of solidarity of joy.54

49 50 51 52

53 54

Ibid., p. 69. Ibid., p. 61. See TsGAKFFD, G 15942. M. Levidov, ‘V den’ Krasnogo Prazdnika’, in Novaia Zhizn, 20 April 1917, no. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Эти декорации были единственными яркими пятнами на скучном жёлтом фоне.’ See I. G., ‘1 maia 1917 g.’, ibid. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 81.

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Postcard with depictions of demonstrators on Palace and St. Isaac’s Squares in Petrograd. May Day 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

Similarily to the procession on 23 March 1917, the main elements of the parade for the celebrations of May Day 1917 were especially large banners (some were almost five meters high) carried by the workers of each factory in the city (fig. 2.10). In imperial Russia, every military regiment had its banner; now not only every troop but every workshop at every factory (rather like the trade unions in Britain) had its own banner, which was treasured and carried to every festival. In 1917 Russia, the communicative power of the emblems on the factory banners became especially important. On these banners, a new allegorical language was introduced in Russia for the first time. Thus, the image of a worker in a Russian shirt, leather apron and boots became one of the most popular symbols used by the Bolsheviks (fig. 2.11). He was usually depicted as a young man with a moustache (since a beard was an attribute of the orthodox peasants), although the diversity of representations of workers in 1917-1918 indicates that the standard image of a worker had only been established in 1919.55 More familiar religious symbols were also widely used, especially St. George, and also angels. As Victoria Bonnell observed in her book Iconography of 55

See Viktoria Bonnell, Iconography of Power. Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 26-27.

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Figure 2.10

Members of the Union of Metal Workers and the Central Union at the demonstration on May Day 1917 in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН В 16447/50000.

Figure 2.11

Members of trade unions after the May Day 1917 demonstration with banners depicting various images of workers. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Б1109.

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Power: ‘the most central image, which provided a “cultural frame” for organising political narratives under the old regime, was that of St. George.’56 During the First World War, the tsarist government had repeatedly employed the image of St. George for its political propaganda. And on 1 May 1917, workers from the tannery factory produced a banner with the image of St. George killing the dragon. Like the image of a worker, this motif remained popular under the Bolsheviks and for the second anniversary of the Revolution, the painter and illustrator Boris Zvorykin created the poster Fight of the Red Knight with the Dark Force [Bor’ba krasnogo rytsaria s temnoi siloiu]. Here, a worker on horseback was holding a shield inscribed with a hammer and sickle instead of a double-headed imperial eagle. He was now seen as a new warrior fighting for the new Russia (rather than a medieval bogatyr on the poster). Between 1917 and 1919, both May Day and 7 November celebrations exploited multiple symbols and allegories drawn from Greek, Roman and French histories: chariots, altars, torches and winged horses. Popular and elite culture had overlapped. Images inherited from antiquity symbolised order and classical virtues. With great ingenuity, artists constructed a positive visual narrative around industrial toil through the use of classical figures and motifs. In 1917, many banners were decorated with female figures dressed in antique tunics. Similar to Crane’s Angel of Freedom (which was discussed earlier), they embodied such noble qualities as Virtue, Justice and Truth, and aimed not only to ‘lend nobility to the emblems’ but also to ‘spice up their visual sermons on the benefits of unity, transparency and truth in the labouring classes’ collectives.’57 The idealised females depicted on the banners aimed to reinstate the supposed eternally noble ethics of the working classes. Thus, the rail workshop of the Putilov factory commissioned a banner depicting a woman in a white tunic with a bare breast. She is standing on a globe with a palm branch (the Christian symbol of triumph and victory, which was frequently used on banners) in one hand and a torch in the other. The torch symbolised the triumphal light of the Revolution, which would light the way to the people of the Earth and the slogan on the banner proclaimed ‘Long Live the International’. A major source of inspiration for allegorical figures was the neoclassical tradition transmitted by the French Revolution. If the Bolsheviks struggled with the ideas of the French Revolution due to its bourgeois nature, Kerensky’s gov-

56 57

Ibid., p. 70. Annie Ravenhill-Johnson, The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, p. 5.

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ernment adopted them whole-heartedly. They used the Marseillaise as their anthem, and in August 1917 they even suggested: …a grandiose carnival-spectacle honouring the epoch of the French Revolution to be organi[s]ed in the Summer Garden to aid Russian prisoners-of-war. …A prop city will be built depicting the Paris of that time. Actors will portray the artistic and theatrical bohemia of the late eighteenth century.58 The Provisional Government proposed the radical theatre director Nikolai Evreinov to direct it and Yurii Annenkov to make all the stage designs. Although this rather challenging idea never materialised, Evreinov and Annenkov worked together on the most spectacular mass performances in 1920. On May Day 1917, a procession in Petrograd included, along with dressed-up people who re-enacted the February Revolution and the 1905 uprising, those who portrayed the Tsar’s family, as well as a woman portraying freedom. She stood on Nevsky Prospect in front of the State Duma building, dressed in a classical tunic and holding a broken chain in her hands. Both the classical and religious emblems used on banners and reenactments of historical, mythological and biblical scenes aimed to encourage viewers to become active players in a distant past: ‘it reinforced a sense of belonging, a personal identification with a collective and its history.’59 However, even though Russian workers and peasants could relate to religious images, they were less likely to be able to ‘read’ neoclassical images. The literary critic and historian, Viacheslav Polonskii wrote in the 1920’s that the prevalence of allegories and symbols was a consequence of the ‘bourgeois consciousness of those artists who came from the bourgeois class, bringing with them, together with technical skills, an alien approach to the interpretation of agitational lithography.’60 Between 1917 and 1919, amateur artists and even icon painters worked on banners, although most festival decorations and banners were still painted by professional artists. Thus, a famous Soviet artist, Alexander Samokhvalov, who in 1917 was a student at the Academy of Arts in Petrograd, wrote about May 1917:

58 59 60

See James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920, p. 23. Annie Ravenhill-Johnson, The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, p. 3. Quoted in Victoria Bonnell, p. 74.

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Revolution demanded slogans, symbols and posters. They were necessary for those who felt that the Socialist Revolution was inevitable. Workers from factories would bring to us at the Academy texts for the slogans and red fabric. We would write their slogans, trying to illustrate them with industrial symbols: anvils, hammers, sickles and so on.61 May Day celebrations introduced new allegories and images which would be carried on from one festival to another. Photographs from the demonstration were published as a series of postcards and sent to all corners of Russia. Memories of this remarkable day were recorded in numerous memoirs. Thus, one of the Menshevik leaders, Sukhanov, described May Day 1917: The whole city, from young to old who were not at a party meeting came out onto the streets… The whole of Nevskii, right across, was filled with crowds of people… Nobody was in any rush; no one was here on their own business. But everyone was celebrating, and everyone came out for the first time – to be part of the crowd on the streets of their own city – celebrating their very own festival… It was a brand new Nevskii, never seen before, conquered by the people and turned into a hearthstone… The crowd was simply celebrating, taking a deep breath of air, rejoicing in the new festival…It could not just be pre-arranged. What we saw on Nevskii was beyond any organisation. It was a truly bright, all-people’s festival. And its brilliant organisation together with previously unseen decorations faded in comparison with the live, high-spirited participation of hundreds of thousands of people in celebrations of May Day.62

61

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Quoted in V. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu, p. 122. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Революция потребовала лозунгов, знаков, плакатов. Потребовала та подлинно революционная часть масс, которая считала необходимым свершение социалистической революции. К нам в Академию являлись рабочие с заводов и фабрик и приносили тексты лозунгов и красную материю. Мы писали эти лозунги, стараясь украсить их эмблемами производства: наковальнями, шестернями, молотами, серпами и так далее.’ N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revolutsii, vol. 2, pp. 96-97. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Вообще весь город от мала до велика, если был не на митингах, то был на улицах …Весь Невский, на всем протяжении, был запружен толпой… Никто никуда не спешил; никто не вышел сюда ни за делом, ни для официального торжества. Но все праздновали, и все впервые вышли сюда – на люди, в толпу, на улицу своего города – со своим праздником… Это был совсем новый, еще не виданный Невский, завоеванный народом и превращенный им в свой домашний очаг…

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The All-Arts Union and its famous members had also been responsible for Liberty Bond Day [Den’ Zaima Svobody], held on 25 May 1917, with the aim of collecting money for the Russian army. By early 1917, the Russian economy was finally approaching collapse under the strain of the war effort. Paradoxically, the equipment of the Russian army was actually improving in quality, due to the expansion of the war industry, but the food shortages in the major urban centres had brought about civil unrest. So, in May 1917, when the State was impoverished by the ongoing war, the All-Arts Union organised a festival to sell bonds and collect money. This amazing festival included a parade, speeches, and theatrical performances. It took place both in Moscow and Petrograd, but if in Moscow it was looked at as ‘the festival of the Revolution’, in Petrograd it was perceived as ‘the artists’ day’.63 Here, members of the Arts Union proclaimed: ‘We were given a great opportunity to show that we, Russian artists, are still capable of lively and bright creative output in the middle of the despondency and breakdown that embraced the whole of Russia.’64 In Petrograd, this holiday was organised by Fedor Sologub, the symbolist poet and the head of the Union’s Section of Verbal Art, and by two members of the Theatre Section: its director, Pavel Gaideburov, and Alexander Mgebrov. Members ranging from imperial actors to avant-garde artists were responsible for the adornment of agitational cars. The newspaper Speech [Rech’] described how, on this day in Petrograd, around 2:00 pm, all the groups of artists united together in one procession and paraded past the Mariinsky Palace where the Provisional Government was based, followed by cars and carriages. That of Ilia Repin was richly decorated with flowers; it was followed by the cars of Leonid Andreev and Sologub. At the end of the procession were the cars of

63 64

Толпа просто праздновала праздник и дышала полной грудью, радуясь новому празднику…Организовать все это было нельзя. Что мы видели на Невском, это было сверх всякой организации. Это был поистине светлый всенародный праздник. И вся блестящая его организация, вместе с невиданным еще убранством столицы, меркла перед этим живым, одухотворенным, активным, осязаемым участием в Первом мая всех этих сотен тысяч людей.’ See V. Lapshin, Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy i Petrograda v 1917 godu, p. 125. Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Нам был дан прекрасный повод показать, что мы, художники России, ещё способны на живое яркое творчество, среди того уныния и развала, которые обнимают всю Россию.’

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Figure 2.12

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Boy scouts selling liberty bonds in Petrograd. 25 May 1917. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg.

the members of the different groups of artists: World of Art, Futurists, Cubists etc.65 As cars travelled the parade route, speeches were improvised, and music, usually the Marseillaise, was played. The holiday was a great success (judging from accounts in the newspapers Speech [Rech’] and Russian Freedom [Russkaia volia]); spectators threw money and even jewellery to the Boy Scouts assigned to each car (fig. 2.12). The first live street theatre performance also took place during this festival. It was a production of Le vendeur de soleil by one of the most complex French writers of the turn of the century, Rachilde,66 performed by Gaideburo’’s Mobile-Popular Theatre in front of the Winter Palace (fig. 2.13). James von Geldern described this performance in his book Bolshevik Festivals: The script hardly conformed to our modern notion of street theatre, and the actors, who had no relevant experience, had to find a new style al65 66

See Rech’, 25 May 1917, no. 120. Rachilde was the pen name of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860-1953), a French author who was dubbed ‘Mademoiselle Baudelaire’ by Maurice Barres and was one of the most complex literary figures to emerge at the end of the nineteenth-beginning of the twentieth centuries.

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Figure 2.13

Production of Le vendeur de soleil written by Rachilde and performed by Gaideburov’s Mobile-Popular Theatre in front of the Winter Palace. 25 May 1917. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

most spontaneously. They spoke of a temptation to improvise, to address the audience directly, to adapt a monumental style, broad, economic gestures, omission of details, and highlighting of essentials – all of which would have seemed artificial indoors. An anecdote that must have been striking at the time was prophetic for the future: ‘After the show, played directly on the pavement in the middle of a crowd of soldiers, one of them, deeply moved, approached an actor and asked: ‘OK, but who should we vote for?’67 There were street installations as well: a large wooden stand decorated with posters and paintings was erected in front of the Mariinsky Theatre, while on Nevsky Prospect the students from the Academy of Arts placed three huge statues on top of a lorry in front of the Kazan Cathedral. They were made out of temporary materials: plaster on a wooden base, and were supposed to symbolise Russia as a running woman holding on tightly to her baby – a symbol of freedom. The third sculpture depicted a German soldier trying to tear a baby out of a woman’s arms. However, during the transfer, the statue of the German

67

James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, p. 21.

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soldier fell apart, and the meaning of the group became impossible for anyone to understand. Soon the sculptures had to be removed, and there were plans to reproduce them in better materials (which never materialised).68 But could professional artists or Academic students create new proletarian art comprehensible to the masses? The leader of the World of Art movement, Benois, in his article ‘Art and the Street’ remarked: ‘…When high art stayed away from the street, the street still had a vibrant artistic life. But now high art came out onto the street – and everything became rather confusing.’69

Funeral of the Seven Cossacks, 15 July 1917 This was vividly illustrated in the Provisional Government’s last major attempt to mount a public outdoor ceremony: the 15 July funeral of the seven Cossacks killed during the July Days. It took place after seven Cossacks who had defended the Government were killed by an armed demonstration which aimed to replace the Provisional Government by Soviet power. The Government, after suppressing the uprising, decided to use these casualties for a political statement. The Cossacks were buried with full military regalia. The service was embellished by all the resources of the Orthodox Church in Petrograd: St. Isaac’s Cathedral for the Requiem mass, choirs from the major churches, high prelates of the capital, and the full repertoire of icons, crosses, censers, and vestments – a striking contrast to the secular funeral of 23 March.70 During this funeral, there was no ‘Workers’ Marseillaise’, no revolutionary or anti-war banners. The all-day ceremony terminated at the sacred Alexander Nevsky Cemetery, where all the elements of the procession continued to celebrate the spirit of traditional Orthodox, patriotic Russia. As Richard Stites observed: But in the funeral of the Cossacks, we have it on full and open display. It is the sharpest and clearest ‘document’ that we possess on the actual as68 69

70

See Vechernee vremia, 1 June 1917, no. 1835. Teatral’naia gazeta, 11 June 1917, no. 24, p. 8; also in Lapshin, p. 127. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Когда высокое художество воздержалось от улицы, улица всё же жила художественной жизнью. А вот теперь высокое художество вышло на улицу – и получился конфуз.’ See Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 83.

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Welcomed by the majority in February, by July 1917, the Provisional Government was rapidly losing support. On 1 September 1917, art critic Punin wrote in his diary: ‘Here it is – the revolutionary city in the year of disasters – hungry, corrupt, frightened, sprawled out, mighty and absurd. Some (Fedor Sologub) confirm that now it strangely reminds one of Paris.’72 The Provisional Government never truly exercised complete power, and ended in iniquity after an attempt to bolster power by including the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, Lavr Kornilov, in the ruling élite. It was reversed by Kerensky, who branded Kornilov’s troops counterrevolutionaries as they approached Petrograd; the army saw this as a betrayal of Kornilov, removing what small loyalty they still had to the Provisional Government. Kornilov’s troops were arrested by the armed Red Guard, who now presented themselves as the saviours of Russia from military dictatorship. On 25 October, the Bolsheviks’ Red Guard forces launched their final offensive on the Provisional Government, ending in the clear-out of the Winter Palace on the night of the 26th. In its short life (eight months), several major initiatives of the Provisional Government were witnessed in Petrograd, involving four very different mass festivals: Funerals of the Victims of the Revolution (23 March), May Day (18 April), Liberty Bond Day (26 May) and the contrasting formal burial in July of the seven Cossacks killed (by the Provisional Government) during the July Days. It is fair to say that many of the processes used after the October Revolution were pioneered under the Provisional Government. May Day 1917 was a very large-scale event, with art works commissioned from different artists’ movements and institutions, and included the first street 71 72

Ibid. N. Punin, diary note of 1 September 1917, in N. Punin, Mir Svetel Luboviu. Dnevniki, pis’ma, ed. by Leonid Zykov (Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr, 2000), p. 112. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Вот он, революционный город в годину бедствий – голодный, развратный, испуганный, выползший, могучий и нелепый. Некоторые (Федор Сологуб) утверждают, что теперь он странно напоминает Париж.’

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theatre performances. Many types of symbols from the tsarist era parades were utilised, adapted to the new socialist imagery, but notably with no involvement of the Church. The one-day Liberty Bond Day also seems to have been enjoyed by many, but in July 1917, at the formal burial of the seven Cossacks, much of the above was fully reversed. Here, the Government automatically drew on the symbols and rituals that were rich in the imagery of patriotism and social order: the army and the Church. But the newly-formed Proletarian Art was gathering pace, and on 16 October 1917, Lunacharsky, who at the time was the president of the culturaleducational commission of the Petrograd Committee, called the first conference of proletarian cultural and educational organisations. 208 voting delegates representing the Petrograd Party Committee, soviets, trade unions, factory committees, youth, army and peasant organisations, as well as city and regional Dumas, gathered at this historic conference. Here, the Petrograd Proletkult, the association of proletarian cultural organisations, was formed.

Chapter 3

Narkompros versus Proletkult: Festivals and Proletarian Art after the Bolshevik Revolution Narkompros versus Proletkult If revolution can give art its soul, then art can give revolution its mouthpiece. Anatoly Lunacharsky, 19201 On 24-25 November 1917, the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets had given authority to the Bolsheviks to organise a Council of Peoples’ Commissars as its executive body. The already-scheduled elections nonetheless took place, and the Bolsheviks still represented only a minority (about 24 per cent, with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries being the majority), so Lenin had to move to replace this democratic form of government. When the assembly convened on 5 January 1918, non-Bolshevik delegates faced intimidation by Red Guards. However, they still turned down many of Lenin’s proposals, so the Bolsheviks walked out. Later that day, delegates were forcibly evicted by the Red Guards, and the Bolsheviks formally dissolved the Constituent Assembly the next day. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat had begun, but an important point here is that it would be a major task and an urgent need to convince the Russian people that the Revolution had been a mass movement, achieved by constitutional means and driven by a sound and relevant ideology, and not just a cadre seeking power by any means. The Bolshevik leaders recognised that culture of all forms should play a critical part in achieving at once comprehension, solidarity and advancement via education, persuasion and propaganda. But a new society could hardly be presented with old art. The new and radical nature of this society had to be reflected and promoted in its art deliberately and politically from the start. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the Provisional Government had in fact contributed to the growth of new cultural programmes by its parades

1 Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art’, trans. from Russian in Russian Art of the Avantgarde. Theory and Criticism, ed. by John Bowlt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 191.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_005

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as well as by its inactivity, although Kerensky and his government did support the democratization of education and the expansion of institutions open to the lower classes. And it only had to be expected that Countess Panina, whose People’s House had played such an important part in the lives of many Petersburg workers, was named Assistant Minister of Education after the February Revolution. However, the government had neither the time nor the funds to develop bold educational policies that promised significant change or a new approach to cultural affairs. In the meantime, alternative cultural programmes were springing up. Unions and factory committees founded their own educational sectors, as did political parties and soviets. In Petrograd alone, workers’ groups claimed some 150 clubs with one hundred thousand members.2 Participants in these programmes condemned the Provisional Government for its lack of concern for public education, which in turn paved the way for the introduction of new educational policies under the Bolshevik government. In her book of 1990, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, Lynn Mally observed: Cultural policy became yet another contested arena between the Provisional Government and the opposition. At the national union conference in June 1917 the Menshevik Ivan Maiskii argued eloquently for unions to assume responsibility for cultural training. ‘The workers’ movement is, among other things, also a cultural movement. Only a worker who is consciously concerned with his surroundings can be a convinced socialist and an active participant in the union movement.’3 Building the new society and the new proletarian culture without any historical precedent could not be easy or straight-forward, although in Soviet literature, Lenin’s plan for the development of socialism in Russia was always named as the most original and effective. This plan included three major directions in building socialism: industrialisation, collectivisation and cultural revolution. In April 1917, Lunacharsky, future Commissar of Enlightenment, Art and Education, arrived in Petrograd following Lenin from Switzerland in a second sealed train. He soon started writing articles in Gorky’s newspaper, New 2 See G. Bylin, ‘Iz istorii kul’turno-prosvetitel’noi deiatel’nosti profsoiuzov Petrograda v period podgotovki Oktiabs’skogo vooruzhennogo vosstaniia’, in Uchenye zapiski VPSh VTsSPS, 1969, vol. 1, p. 115. 3 Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, pp. 23-24.

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Life [Novaia zhizn’], using it as a platform to popularise his views on cultural transformation. Lunacharsky proclaimed that cultural organisation should be the ‘fourth form’ of the working-class movement alongside political parties, unions, and cooperatives.4 Combining the theoretical positions of Bogdanov’s Forward group with the growing network of proletarian cultural groups, Lunacharsky propagated the creation of a central structure for workers’ cultural societies that would reinstate culture as a central focus of revolutionary changes in society. At a gathering of factory committees in Petrograd in August 1917, he argued against those who believed that culture was just ‘a treat to be enjoyed when the political situation had stabilised’.5 Lunacharsky announced: Cultural-educational work is just as essential as the other forms of the workers’ movement. In our understanding of it, this does not mean just adult education and literacy classes. It is the development of a sensible, harmonious world view.6 Lunacharsky argued that workers had to form their own cultural administration in order to ensure that it suited their demands. Convinced by his arguments, the delegates proposed to create a new body to unify and direct the proletarian’s cultural work. They declared that they would found a centralised cultural institution that would assume control of all cultural activities among workers, first in Petrograd and then throughout Russia. On 16 October 1917, Lunacharsky, by then the president of the cultural and educational commission of the Petrograd Party Committee, called the first conference of proletarian cultural-educational organisations, at which the Petrograd Proletkult – the association of proletarian cultural organisations – was formed. Proletkult strove to build culture for itself and for the masses in general; it supported realistic, easy-to-relate-to artistic production. It would be outraged by Punin’s words that ‘realists and the ungifted are synonymous’ or of Osip Brik that ‘if one can easily understand a work of art, it will be boring’. One of the biggest issues dividing Proletkult was professionalism: whether workers could separate themselves from the factory, become ‘artists’ and still retain their working-class identity. 4 See A. Lunacharsky, ‘Kul’tura sotsializma torzhestvuiushchego i sotsializma boriushchegosia’, in Novaia zhizn’, 21 June 1917. 5 Quoted in Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 26. 6 Ibid.

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In Moscow, Bogdanov became the head of Proletkult. In his lectures and articles, he called for the total destruction of the ‘old bourgeois culture’ in favour of a ‘pure proletarian culture’ of the future. Proletkult was formed as a loose coalition of clubs, factory committees, workers’ theatres, and educational societies, all devoted to the cultural needs of the working class. But by 1918, it had expanded into a national movement with a much more ambitious purpose: to define a unique proletarian culture that would inform and inspire the new society. Proletkult participants believed that rapid and radical cultural transformation was crucial to the survival of the Bolshevik Revolution. The organisation’s national leaders, and many of its local followers, demanded that culture, however defined, be given the same weight as politics and economics. Despite the military insecurity of the new regime, its political instability, and the rapid economic disintegration caused by the Revolution and Civil War, Proletkult’s leaders wanted the state to place considerable resources at their disposal. Without due attention to culture, they warned, the state’s political and economic accomplishments would be built on shaky ground.7 The Bolshevik leaders accepted that culture, in all its manifestations, should play a critical part in achieving at once solidarity and advancement in this new society, but what that culture should comprise was still under debate. When, following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik government decided that art was of utmost importance for the education of the proletariat, they entrusted Lunacharsky with determining the direction of artistic policies of the new Russia. He was appointed Commissar of Enlightenment and the head of Narkompros. Lunacharsky had started writing about proletarian art already by 1907. He stated then his belief that such art should be positive, optimistic, and comprehensible to the masses. But despite his interest in the nature of proletarian art, Lunacharsky was not a natural candidate for this challenging position, since he had never lived for long in Petrograd and had returned from a decade of emigration only six months before the October Revolution. When he became a commissar, he had only a slight acquaintance with the Petrograd artistic world. Before Lunacharsky was selected, at least two long-established leaders of the Petrograd artistic elite, Diaghilev and Benois, were offered this honourary position. In his diary, Benois described how on 11 November 1917, Lenin asked him ‘to take on the portfolio of Minister of Fine Arts’, but he refused. Since

7 See Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. xix.

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Diaghilev was already living in Paris and did not plan to return to Bolshevik Russia, Lunacharsky was ‘pushed forward’.8 Three weeks later, Benois was already regretting his decision, although he still doubted that he would have been capable of leading Soviet culture: Now if Seryozha Diaghilev had been there, things would have gone differently. He wouldn’t have been scared of the public, and I would have taught him how to act as I always did. And he would have sorted out all those bungling idiots, and I wouldn’t have shrunk from getting rid of a few of them. The machine would have got going and there’d have been a really good performance. But Seryozha, who in March turned down the honour we offered him of coming to head the arts in a renewed Russia, is hardly going to want to come back to us. The sly old sage – his time clearly hasn’t come yet; let’s hope he’s not too late.9 On 12 November 1917, Lunacharsky made his first declaration on the subject of new artistic policies as Commissar for Education (or Public Enlightenment). In it, he proclaimed the major step of an abdication of the powers of Soviet governmental institutions in the direction of cultural affairs. After this declaration, the majority of the artistic institutions which had formerly been under the jurisdiction of the Palace Ministry had come under Narkompros, which soon became a complex bureaucratic structure with no less than seventeen different divisions. It was given the authority to control state schools and universities, as well as concert halls, theatres, and museums. The Supreme Soviet of the People’s Economy (Vesenkha) hoped to control technical education, and the trade unions devised their own cultural divisions. City soviets financed and influenced local schools and artistic centres. In addition, a whole complex of educational societies and circles flourished under the loose collective control of several state bureaucracies. Because the responsibilities of these new groups were not clearly defined, they quickly came into conflict.10 Most artists and writers ignored Narkompros’ leadership, treating it with hostility and suspicion as a Bolshevik government organ. The only cultural organisation to which Lunacharsky could turn after the October Revolution

8 9 10

Quoted in Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev. A Life, trans. from Russian by Jane Hedley-Prole and S. J. Leinbach (London: Profile Books, 2009), p. 331. Ibid., p. 332. See Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 34.

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Figure 3.1

97

The presidium of the national Proletkult organization elected at the first national conference, September 1918. Sitting from left to right in the first row – Fedor Kalinin, Vladimir Faidysh, Pavel Lebedev-Poliansky, Aleksei MashirovSamobytnik, Ivan Nikitin, Vasily Ignatov; second row: Stefan Krivtsov, Karl OzolPrednek, Anna Dodonova, Nikolai Vasilevsky, Vladimir Kirillov. 1918. Photo: RGALI, f. 1230, op. 2, ed. khr. 27.

was the newly-formed Petrograd Proletkult (fig. 3.1). But the Proletkultists had no influence or standing among the Petrograd intelligentsia: In this contest for cultural influence the Proletkult started in a strong position. The regime needed allies, and Proletkultists were partisans of the new order. For this they were rewarded with funds, physical resources, and the benevolent protection of the cultural commissar, Lunacharsky. Yet as soon as the organi[s]ation began to act, this early alliance was threatened because the Proletkult laid claim to areas of responsibility that other cultural organi[s]ations wanted for themselves.11 Criticizing Proletkult’s monopolisation of art, the head of the Visual Arts Section of Narkompros, Shterenberg wrote: 11

Ibid., p. 36.

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Chapter 3 You shout about proletarian culture. You have taken a monopoly on yourselves. But what have you done for all this time, when you have had every chance to act? … Nothing. You are an empty place. And if we, a group of young artists, created schools in which each proletarian could receive technical skill and show his face, we have the right to say we have done something. If we, destroying old forms of human culture, created new forms appropriate to new content, we have the right to state that we are doing great revolutionary work. And you? You are pouring new wine into old, tattered wine-skins.12

Proletkult was indeed backward-looking and had rather old-fashioned views on art, but as previously said, a new society could hardly be presented with old art; the new and radical nature of this society had to be reflected in its art deliberately and politically from the start. In Petrograd, Proletkult was distinct from Narkompros, and even though it was sponsored and subsidised by it, it chose to remain an independent body. Lebedev-Poliansky, as chair of the organising bureau for the national Proletkult, argued that Narkompros, as a state organ, had responsibilities for the whole of society, whereas Proletkult asserted its autonomy as an organisation set up specifically for workers. Proletkult was initially well supplied by the new government. In the first half of 1918, Narkompros gave it a budget of over 9,200,000 roubles, compared with 32,500,000 for the entire Adult Education Division.13 The Petrograd organisation received a large and luxurious building, located on a street off Nevsky Prospect, which had formerly been a club for nobles. It was soon called the Palace of Proletarian Culture, and the street renamed Proletkult Street [Ulitsa Proletkul’ta], a name that remained long after the organisation’s demise. The Petrograd Proletkult had been shaped before the October Revolution in opposition to the Kerensky regime’s perceived cultural inadequacies. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the Petrograd Proletkult refused to give up its autonomy, much to the surprise of many advocates of the Soviet state. Its partisans insisted that an independent Proletkult would enhance the proletariat’s 12

13

D. Shterenberg, ‘To the critics from Proletkult’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 1919, no. 10, p. 3, quoted in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 123. See Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 44.

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position in the new political order. The government via Narkompros had to take the needs of non-proletarian classes into account, a concept which Proletkult refused to acknowledge. In her book The Commissariat of Enlightenment, Sheila Fitzpatrick concluded: In dealing with the arts, Narkompros confronted a world which was both hostile and amorphous. There were few institutional channels by which it could be approached, and almost all its members – writers, actors, artists and musicians – were determined to boycott the new government.14 It was soon suggested that a separate Commissariat for the Arts should be established outside the Commissariat for Education, with Lunacharsky at the head of both, Petr Malinovsky as his deputy for the arts and Mikhail Pokrovsky as the deputy for education. But Lunacharsky, together with the other key figures of Narkompros, opposed this suggestion, arguing that a Ministry of the Arts was an old-fashioned idea, resembling the time when all artistic affairs were under the control of the Palace. The head of the theatre section of Narkompros, Olga Kameneva announced: ‘While art is in the Commissariat for Education, the government has one aim: an educative one, to demonstrate and explain. Russia is in the stage of development when it has to be educated in art.’15 The Union of Art Workers, which spent most of its time arguing about minor issues, and then lost almost all its influence in art circles, refused to cooperate with the government, inspiring Lunacharsky to organise an alternative body to replace the old-fashioned Union and deal with artistic matters more efficiently. So it had only to be expected that when the young art critic Punin and his friend, the Futurist composer Arthur Lourie, came to see Lunacharsky in his small office in the Winter Palace one cold morning in December 1917, their conversation quickly moved on from the question of the commissar’s permission to use the Hermitage Theatre for the production of Death’s Mistake [Oshibka Smerti] (written by Velimir Khlebnikov and staged by Tatlin), to that of the creation of a new proletarian culture, and the participation of the members of intelligentsia in it. In his article ‘V dni Krasnogo Oktiabria’ [In the days

14 15

Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 110. Quoted in ibid., p. 113.

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Figure 3.2

Members of the IZO Narkompros. Left to right: Aleksei Karev, Olga Rozanova (?), Iosif Shkolnik, Sergei Chekhonin, Mikhail Ilin, David Shterenberg, Nikolai Punin, Petr Vaulin, Kirik Levin, and Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, 1918. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg.

of Red October], Punin described how Lunacharsky willingly and at length talked to them about art, of the tasks of the Communist Party and the position of the intelligentsia. Soon their little project of staging in the Hermitage theatre was left far behind. Instead the question under discussion was of organisation of a new administrative apparatus in all fields of art.16 This conversation was followed by a string of meetings between Lunacharsky and Punin. In January 1918, the Visual Arts Section (known as IZO), formed within Narkompros, was established in Petrograd with its main headquarters first in the Winter Palace and later in the Miatlev house on St. Isaac’s Square (fig. 3.2). Representatives of the more radical, left artistic groups gathered around IZO. They were not all Futurists, but ‘from the time when Futurism first

16

See N. Punin, ‘V dni Krasnogo Oktiabria’, in Zhizn’ iskusstva, 8 November 1921, no. 816, p. 1.

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emerged in Russia, this concept had quite a wide meaning, and incorporated aesthetics of the left art instead of some specific artistic principles.’17 After the capital moved to Moscow on 5 March 1918, Lunacharsky (who remained in Petrograd until early 1919) set up another branch of IZO Narkompros in the new capital. In April 1918, he appointed Tatlin head of Moscow IZO while David Shterenberg was put in charge of Petrograd IZO. Not as radical as Tatlin, Shterenberg obtained the leading position in Narkompros due to his friendship with Lunacharsky, whom he had met in 1914 in Paris after he wrote a favourable review of his paintings. After receiving news about the February Revolution, Shterenberg and his family rushed back to Russia, where he met again with his old acquaintance who saw him as the ideal head of IZO. In 1920, Lunacharsky wrote that Shterenberg was ‘undoubtedly devoted to Soviet power’ and ‘only refrained from joining the Communist Party because it somehow sickened him to join it in the hour of its victory.’18 The IZO Narkompros consisted of two parts: the collegium (deliberative organ) and the executive organ. The first collegium in Petrograd included, apart from Shterenberg, Altman, Punin, Petr Vaulin, Aleksei Karev, Alexander Matveev, Chekhonin and Grigory Iatmanov. In Moscow, the collegium included Tatlin, as well as his rival Malevich, Mashkov, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova, Rodchenko and Vasily Kandinsky. Both branches of IZO Narkompros were involved in the reformation of art education, as well as the fulfilment of Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda. On 18 June 1918, Tatlin reported to Lunacharsky that haste must not endanger the quality of the monuments erected as part of the plan.19 In May 1918, Narkompros issued its first declaration, in which the principles of the new art were drawn up. This declaration was published in an article by Boris Kushner called ‘The Socialisation of Art’ [‘Sotsializatsiia iskusstva’], which appeared in the newspaper of the left socialists, Banner of Labour [Znamia Truda] on 3 May 1918. Kushner’s article called for the ‘socialisation of art’ and welcomed a new art ‘code’, which consisted of eleven main principles: 17

18 19

T. Goriacheva, ‘‘Tsarstvo dukha’ i ‘Tsarstvo Kesaria’: Sud’ba futuristicheskoi utopii v 1920-1930h godah’, in Iskusstvoznanie, 1999, no. 1, p. 286. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘С самого момента своего появления в русской культуре понятие футуризм имело достаточно расширенный смысл и маркировало скорее социо-эстетическую «левизну», нежели совокупность конкретных художественных принципов.’ Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissartiat of Enlightenment, p. 122. See Norbert Lynton, Tatlin’s Tower. Monument to Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 54.

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Art and creativity are free. Art is public and political. Socialist art is the art of the proletarian masses. The forms of socialist art should not be predetermined. A revolution in art has started. Its development opens new forms in art, which will mature in the process of social rebirth. 6. Proletarian dilettantism is not proletarian art. 7. Subject and theme do not determine anything in art. 8. Establishment of a certain form in socialist art is up to the artist himself. 9. The distinctive quality of socialist art is its mass character. 10.The mass nature of socialist art demands changes in the principles of material expression in art. 11. The mass character of socialist art demands organisation of artistic forces.20 Futurists or not, after the October Revolution, left-wing artists moved to the foreground of the new Soviet Russia. They supported the Revolution because it promised to incorporate them into a new system of artistic culture. In effect, they created the first official art, a merit which probably saved many of them from later repression in Stalinist times. In 1918-1919, Mayakovsky, Brik and other members of IZO (in their attempt to be even closer to the proletariat) organised a series of talks and poetry readings in working-class suburbs of Petrograd. As a result of their close collaboration with the workers, in January 1919, Komfut21 was founded. Two members 20

21

Boris Kushner, ‘Sotsializatsiia iskusstva’, in Znamia Truda, 3 May 1918, no. 194, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘1. Искусство-творчество свободно 2. Искусство-общественность политично 3. Социалистическое искусство есть искусство пролетарских масс 4. Формы социалистического искусства не подлежат предварительному установлению 5. Революция в искусстве началась. Её развитие раскрывает новые формы, уже созревающие в процессе социального перерождения 6. Пролетарский дилетантизм не есть пролетарское искусство 7. Сюжет и тема ничего не определяют в искусстве 8. Установление форм социалистического искусство есть дело рук художников 9. Определяющей чертой социалистического искусства является массовый его характер 10. Массовый характер социалистического искусства требует изменения принципов материальной выразительности в искусстве 11. Массовый характер социалистического искусства требует организации художественных сил.’ Russian avant-garde group that sought to unify art and politics.

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of IZO Narkompros, Brik and Kushner – joined. Mayakovsky was supportive of Komfut, but could not join as he was not a member of the Communist Party. They claimed that the Cultural Revolution was still lagging behind the political and economic reforms and that a new Communist cultural ideology was necessary. The manifesto of Komfut was published in the Futurist newspaper Art of the Commune, but already in April 1919 Komfut was rejected by the Party and by which time the newspaper had closed down. Ten years after the October Revolution, Lunacharsky would explain that this union with the left artists was never desirable or ideal: ‘…even though a proletarian revolution was brewing for a long time in the bowels of the old Russia, it had not been prepared for its cultural expression, especially in art.’22 The Bolsheviks, reflecting Lenin’s extremely conservative tastes in art, would have preferred to work with academic artists with a more traditional leaning, rather than the more radical left-wing innovators, but established academicians were not ready to step down from their pedestal and start speaking to the masses. Lunacharsky’s views on art were much more broad-minded than Lenin’s, but even he wrote of Kandinsky back in 1911 as a man ‘obviously in the final stage of psychic degeneration’, who ‘scrawls some lines with the first paints that come to hand and signs them, the wretch – ‘Moscow’, ‘Winter’, and even ‘St. George’.23 Lunacharsky could not understand how Kandinsky was ever allowed to exhibit. In November 1919, Lunacharsky, the Commissar for Education, announced (in a speech at a meeting of the Moscow Proletkult) that: …the journeys of Futurism and proletarian art do not coincide – the proletariat has to be careful of such revolutionary individualists, which does not mean that they should be kept away from the proletariat; using its class instinct, the proletariat will be able to sort them out.24

22

23 24

A. Lunacharsky, Ob Izobrazitelnom Iskusstve (Moscow, 1967), vol. 2, p. 340. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘… хотя пролетарская революция в течении довольно продолжительного времени готовилась в недрах старой России, но к культурному своему выражению, в особенности в форме искусства, она, тем не менее, совершенно не была подготовлена.’ Quoted Solomon Volkov, The Magical Chorus. A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, trans. from Russian by A. Bouis (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), p. 56. A. Lunacharsky, ‘Speech at the dispute in Moscow Proletkult on 23 November 1919’, quoted in M. Dedinkin, ‘Tovarishchestvo Proletarskogo Iskusstva’ Fridrikha Brassa: Kolletsziia nemezkogo avangarda v Sovetskoi Rossii, exhibition catalogue (St. Petersburg: The

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But how could the workers and peasants be expected to have strong enough instincts to distinguish good art from bad, if even Lenin, when asked to express his opinion about a work of art, would usually reply: ‘I don’t understand anything here, ask Lunacharsky.’25 The Commissar for Education was not the worst person to ask. He had received a doctorate from Zurich University and as a young man had even worked part-time at the Louvre as a guide for Russian tourists. Between 1905 and 1922, Lunacharsky published 122 books, including two volumes on fine art, called About Visual Art [Ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve]. He would probably have preferred to put more established and professional artists at the head of the new Soviet culture, but as he admitted in 1927, ‘many of them fled abroad and the others felt like fish out of water for quite some time.’26 Lunacharsky had realised by then that any union of the left artists with the new political regime was more pragmatic than natural; it felt rather like a ‘marriage of convenience’, but they were keen and democratic, and that was what mattered at the time: During the Civil War, the avant-garde was tolerated by the regime and dominated all the areas of activity. Many of the more conservative artists had left Russia, were refusing to co-operate with the government or were busy working to preserve works of art. The new political leaders, although clearly preferring more realistic styles themselves as a means of indoctrinating the masses, were too preoccupied with winning the war to supervise artistic affairs very closely or to develop and implement their own artistic policy.27 In 1920, Lunacharsky told VTsIK (the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Soviet state): ‘I never was a Futurist, am not a Futurist, and will not be a Futurist.’28 But even as recently as in 1918, he felt that the

25 26 27 28

State Hermitage Publishers, 2009), p. 35. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пути футуризма и пролетарского искусства не совпадают. Пролетариат должен остерегаться таких революционных индивидуалистов, но это не значит, что их не нужно подпускать к пролетариату; благодаря своему классовому инстинкту пролетариат сумеет сам разобраться в них.’ A. Lunacharsky, Vospominaniia i Vpechatleniia (Moscow, 1968), p. 192. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Я в этом ничего не понимаю, спросите Луначарского.’ Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 56. Christina Lodder and Martin Hammer, Constructing Modernity. The Art and Career of Naum Gabo (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 57. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 124.

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future belonged to ‘left’ artists, since ‘they are young, and youth is revolutionary.’29 In 1919, Lunacharsky believed that if one cannot speak of avant-garde as proletarian art, one can refer to individual artists of Futurist persuasion as artists close to the proletariat. He felt that this young art was rapidly winning its place in the proletarian artistic ideology.30 But the main reason for Lunacharsky’s patronage of the avant-garde artists was that they were the first artistic group to join Narkompros in its efforts to create the new art necessary for the new society. From the artists’ perspective, with the old art institutions gone, they had to find a new patron: the Bolshevik state, as represented by Narkompros. The radical and critical Russian writer, Evgeny Zamiatin, wrote in his article ‘I Am Afraid’ [Ia bous’], which was published in the magazine House of Arts [Dom Iskusstv] in 1920: The Futurists turned out to be the nimblest of the lot: not wasting a minute, they announced that the official school of painting is – of course – them. And for more than a year we have not heard anything but their yellow, green and crimson celebratory calls. But the combination of the red hubcap with the yellow jacket and a blue flower on a chick, still remaining from yesterday – was hurting the eyes of even the unpretentious ones too blasphemously: those, on whose false heralds Futurists were riding, showed them the door.31 Left unchallenged, there could be an implication in this that the avant-garde’s significance came mainly from being in the right place at the right time. The opposite conclusion is convincingly argued by Boris Groys in his 1992 book The Total Art of Stalinism, Avant Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond, where he argued that ‘it is in the avant-garde that we find a direct connection be-

29 30 31

Ibid. See A. Lunacharsky, ‘Lenin and Art (Reminiscences)’, in Ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve (Moscow, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 301-2. E. Zamiatin, ‘Ia bous’’, in Dom Iskusstv, 1920, no. 1, p. 15. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Наиюрчайшими оказались футуристы: не медля ни минуты – они объявили, что придворная школа – это, конечно, они. И в течение года мы ничего не слышали, кроме их желтых, зеленых и малиновых торжествующих кликов. Но сочетание красного санкюлотского колпака с желтой кофтой и с не стертым еще вчерашним голубым цветочком на щеке – слишком кощунственно резало глаза даже неприхотливым: футуристам любезно показали на дверь те, чьими самозваными герольдами скакали футуристы.’

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tween the will to power and the artistic will to master the material and organise it according to laws dictated by the artists themselves.’32 Groys explained: In this unique historical situation the Russian avant-garde perceived not only an undeniable confirmation of its theoretical constructs and aesthetic intuition, but also a singular opportunity for translating them into reality. A majority of avant-garde artists and writers immediately declared their full support for the new Bolshevik state.33 In reflecting on the dominant role of the avant-garde after the October Revolution, it has been argued that a totally new form of society could hardly be offered ‘old’ art. This reality, and the fact that most established representational artists would be seen as belonging to the bourgeois intelligentsia, allowed the avant-garde (including those branded as ‘Futurists’) free rein after the October Revolution. For the first few years after 1917, all forms of art flourished in Russia: ‘Revolution bred innovation. For a time all barriers were down, all ways open, anything possible. The breaking of rules became legitimate.’34 Proletkult never accepted avant-garde as the official art of the new Russia. On the contrary, from the very beginning, it was at war with Lunacharsky’s Narkompros. A study of anti-intellectualism among workers in the 1917 revealed that workers were often antagonistic to ‘pure’ intellectuals and artists who were removed from ‘life’; a particular target were the Futurists ‘who place the ego above all else.’35 Intellectuals were accused of trying ‘to fasten onto the proletariat’ by infiltrating and trying to control Proletkult and thus poisoning the class purity of the movement. A member of the Central Committee of Proletkult, Kalinin warned that the intellectuals possessed a different worldview from the working class and that regardless of how sympathetic they were, they still would draw workers away from proletarian forms of expression.36 Punin however refused to be defeated. He believed quite fundamentally that only the avant-garde artists were able to satisfy the demands of the revolutionary movement. He felt that ‘if the proletariat still does not understand 32 33 34 35 36

Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, Avant Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 7. Ibid., p. 20. Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905-1925, p. 32. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 71. See Fedor Kalinin, ‘Proletariat i iskusstvo’, in Proletarskaia kul’tura, 1918, no. 3, pp. 15-16.

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the art of the Futurists, it does not mean that it would not be able to relate to them in the future.’37 Punin finished his speech at the Second Meeting of Artists, which took place on 18 October 1918 and was dedicated to the minority in art, by saying that in the same way as they do not understand modern art, ‘workers never understood Marx, but now for the proletariat, Marx is the great teacher and leader.’38 Proletkult argued that in order for the coming revolution to be successful, the working class would have to generate its own elite before it attempted to take power. But the solution they had proposed, the slow and painstaking education of a working-class intelligentsia before the revolution, was now of little relevance after 1917. Proletkultists, like government leaders and Party officials, had to devise new schemes to solve the problem of revolutionary leadership: Proletkult fought Futurism on almost every issue: on style, content, vocabulary, method. Futurism was after all another new wave in art – a brilliant one – but one of a cycle of avant-gardes and Bohemias that arise almost every generation or two. Though they fought tradition, they were in fact part of a tradition. Proletkult was a genuinely novel experiment designed to arm and teach an entire class in quick time to construct wholly new culture in a still very much illiterate society and to do so with minimum guidance from the past.39 Conflicts between Proletkult and Narkompros began soon after the organisation started operation. Already in the beginning of 1918, leaders of the Petrograd Proletkult refused to cooperate with Narkompros in their attempts to create a city-wide theatre consortium, insisting that they would not align themselves with non-proletarian groups.40 In April 1918, one of the leaders of the Proletkult, Lebedev-Poliansky, at the time commissar of the Literature and Publishing Department of Narkompros,

37

38 39 40

From the speech by N. Punin at the 2nd Artistic Mass Meeting on 18 October 1918, cited in P. Zhilin’s article, ‘Vtoroi khudozhestvennyi miting’, in Krasnaia Gazeta, 21 October 1918, no. 201, evening issue, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Если пролетариат ещё не понимает искусства футуристов, то это не значит, что он не поймёт его в будущем.’ Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Никогда рабочий не понимал К. Маркса, теперь же для пролетариата Маркс – великий учитель и вождь.’ Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, pp. 71-72. See Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, pp. 92-93.

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suggested that Proletkult would more willingly accept subordination to the party than to Narkompros.41 In a more recent publication, Lynn Mally has observed that: Proletkult art critics saved their most vicious attacks for ‘Futurism,’ a blanket term indiscriminately (and inaccurately) applied to Impressionism, Cubism, nonfigurative artistic forms, and various types of literary and theatrical experiments. These styles were rejected not because they were new but because they were old; they had begun before the revolution and were promoted by ‘bourgeois artists,’ which made them unsuitable forms for the proletariat.42 A recurrent theme in Proletkult criticism was that Futuristic forms were too difficult for workers to comprehend. ‘First and foremost, as the positive sum of collective sensibilities, feelings, and experiences,’ wrote a member of Proletkult, Ilia Trainin, ‘proletarian art is clear and understandable to everyone.’43 Art could not claim to be collective if the collective could not understand it.

41 42

43

The minutes of the 8 April 1918 meeting of the government educational commission are reprinted in I. Smirnov, ‘K istorii Proletkul’ta’, in Voprosy literatury, 1968, no. 1, p. 121. Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 146. Also see F. Kalinin, ‘O futurizme’, in Proletarskaia kul’tura, 1919, no. 7/8, pp. 41-43; P. Bessal’ko, ‘Futurizm i proletarskaia kul’tura’, in Griadushchee, 1918, no. 10, pp. 10-12; S. Kluben, ‘Proletkul’t i komfut’, in Griadushchaia kul’tura, 1919, no. 4/5, pp. 14-17; I. Trainin, ‘Proletarskoe iskusstvo i futurizm’, in Zarevo zavodov, 1919, no. 2, pp. 29-37; S. Spasskii, ‘Itogi futurizma’, in ibid., pp. 42-45; K. Mikhailov, ‘Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo i futurizm’, in ibid., pp. 52-54; Karl Ozol’-Prednek, ‘Proletarskoe iskusstvo – revoliutsionnoe iskusstvo’, in Proletkul’t (Tver), 1919, no. 1, pp. 26-29; L. T[oom], ‘Eshche slovo o futurizme’, in Vzmakhi, 1919, no. 1, p. 115; O. Olenev, ‘Nakonets-to’, in Gudki, 1919, no. 1, pp. 17-19; Vak, ‘Teatr Moskovskogo soveta’, in Gudki, 1919, no. 2, pp. 19-20; and Vladimir Chumarev, ‘O prirode futurizma’, in Zori griadushchego, 1922, no. 5, pp. 117-24. The articles by Sergei Spasskii and Lidiia Toom were guarded defenses of Futurism. For further discussions of this debate, see Bengt Jangfeldt, Majakovskij and Futurism, 1917-1921 (Stockholm, 1976), pp. 74-84 and Gerd Wilbert, ‘‘Linke’ Kunst und Proletkul’t in Sovetrussland, 1918-1919’, in Von der Revolution zum Scriftstellerkongress: Entwicklungsstrukturen und Funktionsbestimmungen der russischen Literatur und Kultur zwischen 1917 und 1934, ed. by G. Erler et al. (Berlin, 1979), pp. 230-47. I. Trainin, ‘Proletarskoe iskusstvo i futurizm’, in Zarevo zavodov, 1919, no. 2, p. 36. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пролетарское искусство ясно и понятно всем.’

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One of the founding members of IZO Narkompros, the artist, poet and designer Altman, argued that: ‘…Futurism is revolutionary art, which breaks all the old foundations – this quality brings it closer to the Proletariat.’44 At its first conference, the members of Proletkult announced: … all culture of the past might be called bourgeois, that within it – except for natural science and technical skills … there was nothing worthy of life, and that the proletariat would begin the work of destroying the old culture and creating the new immediately after the revolution.45 But by rejecting the art of the past, Proletkult did not suggest any alternative culture for the future, and the major question of what the new art should comprise reached the core of the debate about what should be the most acceptable artistic style of proletarian art. ‘Blood is being shed for the sake of a better future’, said the Martian to the hero of Bogdanov’s prolific novel Red Star as they were ascending to Mars. ‘But in order to wage the struggle, one must know that future.’46 The Futurist artists seemed to ‘know the future’ and were more willing than the members of Proletkult to create new art for the future. After the October Revolution, they assumed the right to develop art for the newly-formed Communist state, and the commission to decorate Petrograd for May Day 1918 was indeed awarded to avant-garde artists. It was the first big state commission after the October Revolution, and it was entrusted to the left artists who gathered around IZO Narkompros: Altman, the suprematist Ivan Puni, Cubo-Futurist artist and inventor Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, the illustrator and painter Vladimir Lebedev and others. The leading art-critic and the main propagator of the left art, Punin, explained in his article ‘Art and the Proletariat’ [‘Iskusstvo i Proletariat’]: Such a widespread opinion that only art which illustrates the life and temperament of the proletariat, can be called proletarian art, is seriously 44

45 46

Nathan Altman, ‘Futurism i Proletarskoe Iskusstvo’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Футуризм – революционное искусство, которое подрывает старое основание – это качество делает его ближе для Пролетариата.’ Quoted in Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 71. Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star. The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites, trans. by Charles Rougle (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 1984), p. 47.

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Chapter 3 wrong. […] Since art is in understanding of the material, used to create it, rather than in using a particular form of art in the class war, it does not contain an obligatory condition to show anything. […] Art of the proletariat…is not only in opposition to church icons and noble portraits, but it is also against any form of illustration or representation.47

Describing the goals which artists had to fulfil after the October Revolution, Lunacharsky stated that it was necessary to connect art with life; prerevolutionary art that was elitist and inaccessible to the uninitiated, had to descend from its pedestal and start speaking to the masses. Art had to come out of the museums and temples and splash out onto the streets. Lunacharsky stressed that the main goal of the new art was to connect art with life. He explained that despite all the poverty of life in Russia, a flourishing of the arts was approaching fast. He proclaimed: Festivities dedicated to the first anniversary of the October Revolution are promising to demonstrate unprecedented grandiose scenes of a peoples’ festival… It is such a huge commission that all the talented artists will find demand for their skills here, even at the time of starvation. And in the future, when times are better, artists will probably create an even more magnificent city than the Petrograd of the tsars – the workers’ Petrograd.48

47

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N. Punin, ‘Iskusstvo i Proletariat’, in Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo, 1919, no. 1, p. 24. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Столь в наше время распростроненное мнение, в силу которого пролетарским искусством может называться всякое искусство, если только оно изображает, иллюстрирует быт и нравы пролетариата, с нашей точки зрения, глубоко ошибочно. […] Поскольку искусство есть познание материала, а не приложение художественных средств к классовой борьбе или к классовой деятельности, оно не содержит в себе обязательного условия что-либо изображать. […] Искусство пролетариата…не только по ту сторону церковных икон и барских портретов, но и по ту сторонувсякой иллюстрации, всякого изображения.’ A. Lunacharsky, ‘Speech at the opening of the State Free Artists’ Workshops’, published in the newspaper Severnaia Kommuna, 17 October 1918, no. 132. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Октябрьские торжества обещают показать небывало грандиозную картину народного празднества…Заказ настолько гигантский, что все талантливые художники найдут тут применение своему творчеству, несмотря на голод. И в будущем, когда настанут лучшие времена, художники вероятно создадут ещё более великолепный город, чем уарский Петроград – Петроград рабочих.’

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As an assertion of their new art, the Futurists covered the facades of the most historic buildings in the centre of Petrograd in bright, avant-garde panels and canvases with Communist slogans.

Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda Everything that happens in Russia today happens for the sake of the masses; every action is subordinated to it. Art, literature, music and philosophy serve only to extol its impersonal splendour, and, gradually, on all sides everything is being transformed to the new world of the ‘mass man’ who is the sole ruler. René Fulöp-Miller49 The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution aimed to destroy the old bourgeois society and to build a new homogenous socialist state, a task which was unprecedented and it needed a new founding myth, if not several myths. When the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, although they had supporters in many of the key soviets and workers’ committees, it was hardly a mass movement; the party contained at best 350,000 people in a country of 140 million. If the Bolshevik victory in Petrograd was to be more than an urban coup, it needed to assume the mantle of sovereign legitimacy, previously claimed by the Provisional Government. Once in power, the new Bolshevik government faced a major dilemma: a fundamental tenet had been that art formed a major weapon to define and communicate the new order, and help bond this still diverse society into a new mass one. Art was seen as a major component of this strategy, and it was frequently used for street propaganda. Turned overnight into the ruling party, the Bolsheviks aimed to use the power of mass propaganda in order to establish their founding mythology and disseminate their ideas to an overwhelmingly rural and illiterate population. It was a new beginning and a new history had to be written. In the first few years after the October Revolution, lessons on history were excluded from the schools’ curriculum. After the 1917 October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, as leader of the new Bolshevik state, proclaimed that culture should support political needs, which 49

René Fulöp-Miller (1891-1963) was an Austrian cultural historian and writer who visited Moscow in the 1920’s. Fulöp-Miller, René, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia (London: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1927), p. 4.

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effectively meant that all culture was now viewed as propaganda. Shortly after the Revolution, he set up a number of commissions to regulate Soviet art and culture. Lunacharsky explained: Who is not aware of the full force of agitation? But what is agitation, how is it distinguished from clear, cold, objective propaganda in the sense of elucidating facts and logical constructions germane to our world view? Agitation can be distinguished from propaganda by the fact that it excites the feelings of the audience and readers and has a direct influence on their will. It, so to say, brings the whole content of propaganda to white heat and makes it glow in all colours. Yes, propagators – we, of course, are all propagators. Propaganda and agitation are simply the ceaseless propagation of a new faith, a propagation springing from profound knowledge.50 In April 1918, Lenin announced the Plan for Monumental Propaganda, a strategy which employed visual monumental art (revolutionary slogans and monumental sculpture) as an important means for propagating revolutionary and communist ideas. ‘The Plan’ had the significance of creating a large demand for monumental sculpture and festival decorations on a state level, and consisted of two main projects: decorating old buildings with revolutionary banners and posters, as well as memorial relief plaques, and the erection of temporary, plaster-cast monuments in honour of great revolutionary leaders. The combination of statues, plaques affixed to buildings, festive unveilings and musical accompaniment ‘advocated and embodied an idea of a synthesis of the arts of painting, architecture, sculpture and music on the streets of the city’,51 which was developed even further in the revolutionary festivals. As Lunacharsky explained in his speech at the opening of the State Free Artistic Studios (SVOMAS) in October 1918: ‘To link art with life – this is the task of the new art’.52 With the proposed establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917, the need for new proletarian art and culture became essential. At the same time, street festivals and performances became cornerstones in building the 50 51

52

Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art’ (1920-22), in Russian Art of the Avant-garde. Theory and Criticism, pp. 191-192. Christina Lodder, ‘Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’, in Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State. 1917-1932, ed. by Matthew Cullerne Bown and Brandon Taylor (Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 22. Quoted in ibid.

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new mythology of Bolshevik Russia. The new myths and their images aimed to redefine life, reinvent social relations and rejuvenate cults and traditions. Writers and poets, artists and sculptors, film and theatre directors, actors, composers and musicians were mobilised for the development of new state emblems. Lenin considered the work on his Plan for Monumental Propaganda sufficiently urgent and important to release art workers from other schemes and concentrate instead on the ‘state’s artistic work in connection with the erection of agitational monuments, the October festivities etc.’53 Lunacharsky announced: Can it be doubted that the more artistic such propagation, the more powerful its effect? Don’t we know that the artistic public speaker or journalist finds his way to people’s hearts more quickly than those lacking in artistic strength? But the collective propagandist is the collective propagator of our age; the Communist Party, from this point of view, should arm itself with all the organs of art, which in this way will prove itself to be of great use to agitation. Not only the poster, but also the picture, the statue – in less volatile forms and with more profound ideas, stronger feelings – can emerge as graphic aids to the assimilation of Communist truth.54 But before the new monuments, street signs and emblems of the Bolshevik state could be displayed, numerous old symbols of imperial Russia had to be destroyed or overwritten. In Petrograd, shortly after the October coup, crowns and eagles were torn from gates and fences; eagles at the Alexander Theatre were defaced; at the Mariinsky Theatre, all Romanov coats of arms were removed and, as an added touch, ushers deliberately wore dirty jackets instead of immaculate uniforms and the imperial box was filled with recent political prisoners. Piles of imperial arms and regalia were burnt on giant bonfires, even though the official decree ordering the removal of imperial arms, portraits, and crowns from all buildings was not issued until August 1918.55 Buildings were a special problem in this iconoclastic war. Especially in the imperial capital, many of them bore names and contained icons and symbols considered unacceptable by the revolutionaries. But they were also much 53 54 55

Quoted in ibid., p. 19. Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art’ (1920-22), in Russian Art of the Avant-garde. Theory and Criticism, p. 192. See Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 67.

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harder to destroy than coats of arms or portraits. Since February 1917, all historic buildings had been protected by the state and were now used to house the new Bolshevik authorities. The only buildings which were destroyed at the time of the February Revolution were jails, but even among prisons, the historical buildings were preserved. The socialist revolutionary terrorist, Maria Spiridonova, who had initiated the burning of the prison at Chita, in 1918 returned to Petrograd in a triumphal procession. After the October Revolution, she requested the blowing up of the Peter and Paul Fortress: ‘Her hatred of what a Decembrist had called “a hideous monument of absolutism” was immense: it was the central symbol of martyrdom and oppression.’56 But her request was denied and this major example of the Petrine Baroque still adorns the centre of St. Petersburg. The buildings taken by political groups were used rather than destroyed. Both the Mariinsky and the Winter Palaces had housed the Provisional Government and were later used by the Bolsheviks, who also seized the mansion of the Tsar’s former mistress, Matilda Kseshinskaia, and made the Smolny Institute their headquarters. Along with palaces, streets had to be re-named: thus, in Petrograd, Nevsky Prospect became for a while the Prospect of 25 October (in honour of the day of the October Revolution), though during the 1920’s it was often called ‘NEPsky Prospect’ in reference to the New Economic Policy. Streets were named after the Russian and French revolutionaries Mikhael Bakunin and Jean-Paul Marat, old street names like ‘Senate’ and ‘Resurrection’ gave way to ‘Decembrist’ and ‘Insurrection.’ Ironically, Millionaia Street, adjacent to the Winter Palace where historically the most expensive aristocratic palaces were built, after the Revolution was given the name of the terrorist who had tried in 1880 to blow up the palace and the royal family: Stepan Khalturin. Two short streets north of the Nevsky, near the site of Alexander II’s assassination, were renamed after other terrorists: Andrei Zheliabov and Sofia Perovskaia. On 12 April 1918, Sovnarkom decreed that all remaining monuments and similar artefacts from the tsarist period not demolished during the Revolution should be replaced by sculptures reflecting the new cultural and political aims. According to Lunacharsky, Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda was inspired by the famous utopian book by Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun.57 56 57

Ibid. The City of the Sun was originally written in Italian in 1602; published in Latin in Frankfurt (1623) and later in Paris (1638). The first Russian translation of Campanella’s work

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Campanella’s book described murals on the walls of the houses in his imaginary socialist city, painted to teach young people about history and awaken noble feelings in them. Lenin chose monuments as the main tool in educating Soviet young people. In his article ‘Russian Sculpture and Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’, Bowlt wrote that Lenin had formed the idea of decorating metropolitan streets with statues of revolutionary and popular heroes as early as Winter of 1917-1918.58 In January 1918 after his meeting with Lenin, Lunacharsky announced to painters and sculptors: …He [Lenin] intends to have the squares of Moscow decorated with statues and monuments in honour of revolutionaries, great fighters for Socialism. This denotes both agitation for Socialism and a wide field for our sculptural talents to manifest themselves.59 IZO Narkompros was entrusted by Sovnarkom to organise competitions for the monuments to the new heroes of proletarian society, and on 24 June 1918 the Moscow branch of IZO declared: Monuments must be placed on streets and squares in all the districts of Moscow. They must be accompanied by the quotes engraved on the plinth or on a sign placed nearby in order to make these monuments ‘street pulpits’, from which fresh messages would flow to people and inspire the consciousness of the masses.60

58

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appeared in 1906. It was republished by the Petrograd Soviet in 1918 as part of a series of Utopian novels. For a reference of Lunacharsky’s account of Lenin’s conception of the Plan for Monumental Propaganda, see Lodder, ‘Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’, in Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State. 1917-1932, p. 22. See J. Bowlt, ‘Russian Sculpture and Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda’, in Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, ed. by H. A. Millon and L. Nochlin (London: MIT Press, 1978), p. 183. Ibid., p. 184. Izvestiia VTSIK, 24 June 1918, p. 4. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Памятники должны быть поставлены на бульварах, скверах и т. п. во всех районах г. Москвы с высеченными выписками или изречениями га постаментах и антуражах, чтобы памятники эти явились как бы уличными кафедрами, с которых в массу людей летели свежие слова, будирующие сознание масс.’

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Figure 3.3

Unveiling of the Monument to Alexander III by Paolo Troubetzkoy, 1909, Znamenskaia Square (after 1918 – Uprising Square), St. Petersburg. Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

Like the leaders of the French Revolution and Paris Commune, Lenin believed that monumental art provided the most powerful means for political propaganda. Russian interest in the French experience was fired up by articles in popular magazines and translations of French books on the history of revolutionary festivals and monuments.61 Also both Lenin and Lunacharsky who had lived in Paris before 1917, knew Dalou’s sculpture well. Many monuments to the tsars were destroyed and replaced by monuments to the new revolutionary heroes, although a few (which were considered to be important works of art) survived. The Bolsheviks did keep the famous oversized monument to Tsar Alexander III created in 1909 by the sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy and placed in the middle of Znamenskaia Square, re-named as Uprising Square [Ploshchad’ Vosstaniia] in 1918 (fig. 3.3). However, after the Revolution this statue had to serve an anti-tsarist agenda (although in popular lore it was already associated with criticism of autocratic power). In 1918-1921, during the post-revolutionary festivals, this monument was covered by various structures. Typographic panels with Futurist slogans hid this monument during the celebrations of the first anniversary of the October Revolution (fig. 3.4); on May Day 1919, it was covered with a rostrum inscribed ‘Greetings to the true leaders of the socialist revolution’ (fig. 3.5) and for the second anniversary of the Revolution, a tribune resembling a medieval

61

For example, J. Tiersot’s Les fétes et les chants de la Revolution francaise was translated into Russian in 1918 and published in Moscow as Prazdnestva i pesni Frantsuzskoi Revolutsii.

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Figure 3.4

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Typographical veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1918. The top sign reads, ‘Art is one of the means to unite humanity’. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5448.

keep with figures of fighting proletarians breaking through it, was built over it (fig. 3.6). For May Day 1920, it was covered by yet another plywood structure decorated with spruce branches and a temporary sculpture, Trumpeter of the World Revolution, in front of it (fig. 3.7), and for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution on 7 November 1927, it was symbolically ‘imprisoned’ in a cage and called Scarecrow in a Cage (architect Ilia Fomin) (fig. 3.8). Thus, when the avant-garde dominated the art scene in 1918, the traditions of Futurist books were deployed and the text of a slogan was used in the graphic composition of a monument cover. Both verbal and visual languages were used to construct a vibrant rhythm in the decoration of the wooden box and the square around it. As the visual language of festival decorations developed, the covering gained a geometrical shape and the slogans became a main part of the composition. The monument to Alexander III also played a significant role in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1927 film Last Days of St. Petersburg [Konets Peterburga], where it appeared as the background to the opening title and throughout the film. When it disappeared from the screen, it was immediately replaced by a mounted Bolshevik gendarme.

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Figure 3.5

Monument to Alexander III covered with a plywood structure. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5468.

As Fomin chose to leave the monument itself on display, it was left untouched for ten years except for the new title, Scarecrow [Pugalo], carved in large block capitals on the base of the monument together with four lines of anti-monarchist verse by the revolutionary poet Demian Bedny. The new inscription aimed to overwrite, that is, to alter the meaning of the monument altogether.62

62

In 1937, the monument to Alexander III was removed from public view. In her article ‘Monument without Honor: Paolo Troubetzkoy’s Alexander III and Its Critics’, Janet Kennedy suggests that ‘twenty years after the October Revolution Trubetskoy’s monument had outlived its usefulness as a history lesson.’ (Janet Kennedy, ‘Monument Without Honor: Paolo Troubetzkoy’s Alexander III and Its Critics’, in Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2012), vol. 18, p. 111.) The Leningrad City Soviet decreed that the sculpture had ‘neither artistic nor historical value’ and that it had to be removed since it was obstructing a tram line. Thanks to the intervention of the municipal council for the preservation of landmarks, Trubetskoy’s monument to Alexsandr III was preserved and transferred to the Russian Museum, where it was kept in the museum’s courtyard, visible to the public, but unlabelled and easily missed. Only after Perestroika was its status re-

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Figure 3.6

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Veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2541.

The equally important monument to Nicholas I, erected by the Tsar’s favourite sculptor, Baron Pyotr Klodt, in 1859 in the middle of Mariinsky Square, was covered on May Day 1918 by red ribbons to imitate a burning fire; a symbol of freedom and revolution (fig. 3.9). At the same time, an imperial obelisk in the centre of Petrograd was transformed into a revolutionary monument by the addition of an interesting collection of names: Campanella, Winstanley, Thomas Moore, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Bakunin and Plekhanov.63 Thus, through a simple replacement of the previous dedication, this monument was transformed into a monument of the Revolution. In fact, by the first anniversary of the Revolution, IZO Narkompros (entrusted with the fulfilment of Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda) erected only nine instead of the forty monuments initially promised.64 Due

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instated and it took an honourable position in the courtyard of the Marble Palace (but now properly inscribed). See Lodder, ‘Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’, in Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State. 1917-1932, p. 23. Ibid.

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Figure 3.7

Monument to Alexander III covered with spruce branches with the temporary sculpture Trumpeter of the World Revolution in front of it. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1266/10479.

to a lack of funds and time, they proved more effective in concealing and removing tsarist monuments than producing new revolutionary ones. Zinaida Gippius, writer, co-founder of Russian Symbolism and one of the most enigmatic and intelligent women of her time in Russia, remarked in her diary: On Wednesday during Holy Week [Strastnaia Nedelia] – 1st May New Style the Rulers announced “a holiday for all people”. Lunacharsky – this hair-dresser, who became a habitual liar – pledged to organise “the best festival ever”, the most beautiful holiday. […] The Futurists got all excited, eagerly painting posters. Lunacharsky also promised an overthrow of idols – old monuments. They are already aiming to demolish the sculpture by Baron Klodt on Mariinsky Square [Monument to Nicholas I, now on St. Isaac’s Square]. (They did not manage to erect a monument to Karl Marx; overthrowing is easier – so decided to destroy old sculptures instead). They also placed several machine guns around – just in

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Figure 3.8

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Ilia Fomin, Scarecrow in a Cage; ‘imprisoned’ monument to Alexander III. 7 November 1927. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

case. What if jobless masses come to the festival with faces not radiant enough?’65 After Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda was declared, the new monuments glorifying the heroes of the Revolution and leaders of the new society had to be erected in a very short period of time. Artists from all the artistic movements were mobilised. Professional sculptors such as Nikolai Andreev and Matveev were working next to art students. ‘We tried to fulfil Lenin’s goal

65

Zinaida Gippius, Dnevniki (Moscow: Zakharov, 2002), p. 236. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В среду на Страстной – 1 мая по новому стилю, владыки объявили «праздник всему народу». Луначарский, этот изолгавшийся парикмахер, клянется, что устроит «из праздников праздник», красоту из красот. […] Футуристы воспламенились, жадно мажут плакаты. Луначарский обещает ещё свержение болванов – старых памятников. Уже целятся на скульптуру бар. Клодта на Мариинской площади. (Из «Карла Маркса» ничего не вышло, «свергать» легчу – посвергаем!) На всякий случай и пулемётов понаставили. Вдруг безработные придут на праздник не с достаточно сияющими лицами?’

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Figure 3.9

Monument to Nicholas I covered with red ribbons on May Day 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 112.

with great enthusiasm, with all our strength and skills,’66 wrote one of the leading Soviet sculptors, Leonid Shervud. Lunarcharsky was concerned with the cost of Lenin’s Plan, in view of the chronic state of Russia’s finances over this period. Gross industrial production in 1917 had fallen by over 36 per cent since 1916. In Autumn, as much as 50 per cent of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbass, and other industrial centres, leading to mass unemployment. At the same time, the cost of living increased sharply and the real wages of workers fell about 50 per cent from 1913 levels. Russia’s national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion roubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion roubles.67 The country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In parallel, civil war broke out on 7 November 1917 and continued until October 1922. Although its main developments took place away from Petrograd, the city also came to be threatened. 66 67

Bowlt, ‘Russian Sculpture and Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda’, in Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics, p. 184. See Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1990), pp. 120-121.

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However, when Lunacharsky questioned Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda on the basis of high cost, Lenin, ever the pragmatic, replied: ‘Please, do not think that I imagine marble, granite and golden letters. At present we have to do everything modestly. Let everything be made of concrete with clear signs on it. At the moment I cannot afford to think about eternity.’68 Lunacharsky agreed with Lenin and announced that the monuments had to be set up ‘in suitable corners of the capital’ in order to ‘serve the aim of extensive propaganda, rather than the aim of immortali[s]ation.’69 Due to the lack of funds and the urgency of this state commission, most monuments were made out of gypsum and wood, and deteriorated rapidly. The twenty-one Russians on the list of approved ‘fighters for socialism’ included assassins or would-be assassins of royalty – not the category usually commemorated by national regimes. There were nineteen non-Russians, half of them French, among them a cluster of French revolutionary heroes: Georges Danton, Marat and Louis-Auguste Blanqui; later, Maximilien de Robespierre was added. Cultural figures were among the ‘revolutionaries’, including Heinrich Heine and Frédéric Chopin. Even Paul Cézanne’s name was seriously considered. The first monument in the fulfilment of Lenin’s plan was a bust of the eighteenth-century Russian author and social critic, Alexander Radishchev (fig. 3.10), who had been arrested and exiled at the time of Catherine II. This monument was put in the symbolic hole made by revolutionaries in the fence around the Winter Palace in Petrograd and opened on 22 September 1918. The sculpture was designed by the sculptor Shervud. The copy of this monument, also made of gypsum, was placed on the Triumphal Square in Moscow a few months later. At the opening of the monument in Petrograd, Lunacharsky announced: ‘Radishchev belongs to us now. Keep your hands away from him, members of the Mensheviks! He was a true revolutionary, who did not compromise with tyrants. To him – the first present from the Russian Revolution!’70

68 69 70

Ibid. Quoted in Lodder, ‘Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’, in Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State. 1917-1932, p. 21. A. Lunacharsky, Speech at the opening of the monument to radischev, Petrogradskaia Pravda, 22 September 1918. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Радищев принадлежит нам. Прочь от него руки, правые с.-р. и меньшевики! Это был революционер во весь рост, не знавший компромиссов с крепостниками и тиранами. И ему первый дар русской революции.’

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Figure 3.10

The first monument in fulfilment of Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda; Leonid Shervud, Monument to Alexander Radishchev, opened on 22 September 1918 in Petrograd (a copy was erected on 6 October 1918 on Triumphant (now Maiakovskogo) Square in Moscow). Photos: State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

But already by 19 January 1919, a Red Guard looking after the Radishchev bust reported to the superintendent ‘that today, during my duty at 5 am, the monument to the comrade Radishchev on the corner of the former Winter Palace, fell down and broke into pieces.’71 In September 1918, Lenin wrote in fury to Lunacharsky complaining that there was still not a single outdoor bust to Marx.72 Lunacharsky’s response was swift, and within two months the first monuments devoted to the founder of communism had been put in place. On 7 November 1918, the new plaster monument to Marx, designed by the well-known academic sculptor Matveev, was officially unveiled in front of the new headquarters of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd, the Smolny Institute (fig. 3.11) during the celebrations of the first 71

72

See M. Dedinkin, ‘Tovarishchestvo Proletarskogo Iskusstva Fridrikha Brassa: Kollektsiia nemetskogo avangarda v Sovetskoi Rossii’, p. 20. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Довожу до сведения коменданта, что сего числа во время моего дежурства в 5 часов утра памятник, поставленный на углу у бывшего Зимнего дворца товарищу Радищеву, упал и разбился.’ Ibid., p. 21.

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Figure 3.11

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Opening of the monument to Karl Marx (sculptor Alexander Matveev), Petrograd, 7 November 1918. Photo: State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

anniversary of the Revolution. One of the founding members of IZO, Punin, had the honour of ‘revealing’ this sculpture to the world for the first time: …As early as 8 o’clock in the morning, long lines of people coming from all over the city, stretched along the streets, empty of all traffic, towards the place where the celebrations were to take place. The celebrations started at the Smolny Institute. Here, wrapped in red material, stood a monument to the great leader Karl Marx. At 10 o’clock, delegations from the Red Army, the Navy and the city’s districts began arriving at the Smolny Institute with banners and standards. Sometime after 11 o’clock the Second City District arrived. A band played the ‘Internationale’ and

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Chapter 3 Comrade Lunacharsky appeared on the rostrum and addressed everyone with a few brief words of welcome… To the sounds of the ‘Internationale’, Comrade Punin, Commissar for the Fine Arts, pulled the cover from the statue. There were shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Long live the world social revolution!’ Then, on behalf of the Fine Arts Section, Comrade Punin presented Lunacharsky with a china statue of Karl Marx, made at the State Porcelain Factory…73

At the same time, a monument to Marx and Engels, designed by the less wellknown sculptor Sergei Mezentsev, was unveiled in Theatre Square in Moscow. Both sculptures only survived a few Russian winters, and soon had to be replaced. Between 1918 and 1920, twenty-five monuments were erected in Moscow, and fifteen monuments in Petrograd. Apart from easily accessible, realistic monuments, a few sculptures by left artists were made as part of the same Plan for Monumental Propaganda. Thus, Boris Korolev, a colleague of Altman, Mayakovsky and Punin, and a propagator of Futurism, produced a monument to the nineteenth-century revolutionary and anarchist, Bakunin (fig. 3.12), using a geometrical rendition of the volumes of the human body inspired by Umberto Boccioni’s brave experiments with the inter-penetration of planes. As a result, the monument consisted of simplified, acutely angular forms, but due to the public protests against it, it was soon removed and destroyed. A similar geometrical rendition was employed by the Italian Futurist sculptor Italo Griselli in a monument to the famous assassin of Tsar Alexander II, Perovskaia. Approved by Lunacharsky, who had lived in Italy and was familiar with Italian Futurism, this monument combined ‘the baroque curves of Bernini’74 and dynamic fragmentation of Boccioni’s sculptures. However, since Lenin and his followers preferred a conventional, realistic style, this monument did not survive long, either. The most effective use of geometry was expressed in Nikolai Kolli’s abstract monument, the Red Wedge, which was erected in Revolution Square in Moscow in 1918. It comprised a white block, which represented the forces of counter-revolution, fractured by a red wedge: the victorious Red Army. The white block consisted of a plywood box structure, which had a door in the 73

74

Report from Izvestiia, 9 November 1918, no. 244, trans. from Russian in Street Art of the Revolution. Festivals and Celebrations in Russia. 1918-1933, ed. by V. Tolstoy, I. Bibikova and C. Cooke (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 71. John Milner, A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2007), p. 37.

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Figure 3.12

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Boris Korolev, Monument to Mikhail Bakunin, June 1919, Turgenevskaia Square, Moscow. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg.

back and could double up as a store room for the local street cleaners’ brooms and shovels. According to the architect Berthold Lubetkin, a fellow student in Moscow secretly lived inside the sculpture during the particularly cold Winter of 1918. Kolli’s monument did not survive more than one Winter, but its simple symbolism proved to be very successful with the masses and in 1920, it was used by El Lissitzky for his most iconic poster, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. In March 1919, Punin published an article about the new monuments, stressing that: ‘…the artist must forget sculpture in the narrow sense of the word; the form of the human body can henceforth no longer serve as an artistic form; form must be invented anew.’75 Punin argued that figurative monuments

75

Nikolai Punin, ‘O pamiatnikakh’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 9 March 1919, no. 14, pp. 2-3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…художник должен забыть о скульптуре, в тесном смысле этого слова; форма человеческого тела не может отныне служить художественной формой; форма должна быть изобретена заново.’

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could no longer change the city environment, instead they should demonstrate ‘a synthesis of the different types of art’, and employ the geometrical forms modernity called for.76 If we now consider the contrasting position of Proletkult, a different criterion is evident. In 1918, many artists inspired by Proletkult tried to discover a simple, realistic style based on working-class themes. They believed that the ideal of the future sculpture lay in the body of the working man.77 At the same time, one instructor in a Saratov art studio defined workers’ art as the expression of monumental content through clear and simple forms. In his view, such an approach grew organically from the workers’ life experiences: Each worker’s broad hand decisively and energetically draws the charcoal across the paper; it powerfully and boldly kneads and shreds the clay. The reason for [the workers’] special traits is not hard to explain. Since childhood these joiners, turners, and carpenters have made things out of wood or iron and have shaped them into the necessary forms.78 No wonder that when the Proletkult banner was discussed, its presidium chose a clear, realistic sketch by the artist Stepan Kolesnikov and asked him to make sure that the figure of the worker on the banner is muscular, ‘thoughtful but happy at the same time’. It had to be depicted on a green background ‘covered with flowers’ and surrounded with castles; everything had to create the impression of the ‘worker-creator’ and the sign underneath had to say ‘AllRussian Proletkult’.79 Proletkult not only made posters and banners, but also played an important role in revolutionary festivals. On 6 March 1918, the new ‘Red Calendar’ 76 77 78 79

Ibid. See ‘Khronika Proletkul’ta’, in Proletarskaia kul’tura, 1918, no. 6, p. 31. Quoted in Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, pp. 143-144. Zhurnal zasedaniia prezidiuma TsK Proletkul’ta, 29 October 1918, no. 2, RGALI, f. 1230, op. no. 1, ed. 1 (14 October-28 December 1918), p. 3. The full text in Russian reads: ‘Утвердить. Просить т. Колесникова изготовить для Ц. К. Пролеткульта знамя согласно выработанного им эскиза, со следующими изменениями. 1. Фигура в треугольнике должна быть мощная, мускулистая, сосредоточеннорадостная, не размашистая, чтобы было впечатление творца-созидателя. 2. Фон зелени в треугольнике должен быть покрыт цветами. 3. Постройки замков должны иметь окна от крыши до земли так, чтобы здание казалось лёгким и светлым. 4. Надпись на знамени должна быть следующая: ‘Всероссийский Пролеткульт’.

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replaced the old Russian Orthodox one, and the new revolutionary holidays replaced the old-fashioned religious ones.

1 May 1918 The Proletkult workshops were integrally involved in staging the first celebrations of 1918. On 1 May (celebrated as the Day of International Solidarity of Workers) in Petrograd, Proletkultists took charge of the Smolny Institute and the surrounding square, which were the focal points of the day’s festivities. They also planned the opening of their Palace of Proletarian Culture, to coincide with the holiday. However, Narkompros also invited artists to leave their studios and to participate actively in the decoration of streets, squares and public buildings for the celebration of May Day 1918. Decorations for Petrograd for this festival attracted artists from all artistic movements, left and right. In his conversation with Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, the chairman of the Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin remarked that he envisaged the decoration of the city as a series of images illustrating the history of revolutionary struggle.80 But when the avant-garde artists received the most commissions for the decoration of Petrograd, they scarcely prioritised Lenin’s recommendations and adorned the city with imaginative and diverse banners. It must be stressed that this first Bolshevik festival was celebrated at a time when, as described, the whole country and especially Petrograd were threatened by internal counter-revolution and external intervention. The threat of the occupation of Petrograd by the German army forced the Bolshevik government on 11 March 1918 to transfer the Party headquarters to Moscow, and make it the new capital of Russia. Petrograd was turned overnight from the capital city into the provincial centre of the Northern administrative district, the ‘Petrograd Labour Commune’, which was based on the model of the Paris Commune. Its executive body was a council of the commissars with Grigory Zinoviev as its chair. Following the October Bolshevik coup, several nationalised industries, as well as private shops and most banks, were closed down. Food and fuel supplies were rapidly running out. In January 1918, electricity was cut off and the trams stopped. The sewage system was not working, which led to a growing epidemic of stomach diseases. The State monetary system collapsed and

80

See V. S. Manin, Iskusstvo v Rezervatsii. Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii 1917-1941, p. 36.

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strictly rationed food coupons replaced money. Political posters filled the empty shop windows. To make these matters worse, starving, desperate people were not allowed to leave Petrograd. The only chance to ‘run from the drowning ship’ was to join the Red Army (mobilisation started in February 1918). On 1 May 1918, one of the Moscow-based newspapers, The New Way [Novyi Put’] – still not censored at this point – described Petrograd as a city broken by starvation: Originally workers in Petrograd welcomed the October coup. Since then Bolsheviks in five and a half months have had a chance to fully demonstrate their programme to workers and to fulfil all their promises without any resistance. But here are the results of their activities. Petrograd is a dying city. And it is dying not only in the political and state sense but literally. Petrograd is starving. Petrograd is under threat of German occupation. Petrograd is dying – it is dying betrayed by the Bolsheviks.81 In the middle of this intensely difficult political situation, complicated even further by starvation, the Bolshevik government decided at the VTsIK meeting of 18 April 1918 to celebrate May Day all over Russia and ‘to replace by 1 May all the old signs, emblems and names of streets with the new ones, which would reflect the ideas and feelings of the new revolutionary Russia of workers’.82 The Chairman of the VTsIK, Iakov Sverdlov, was entrusted with choosing the right slogans for the festival. In his decree of 26 April 1918, Sverdlov shortlisted slogans for the celebrations across Russia. Among them were ‘Long Live Soviet Power – The Dictatorship of Workers and Peasants over the Bourgeoisie’,

81

82

V. Lebedev, ‘Volneniia v Petrograde’, in Novyi Put’, 1 May 1918, no. 7, p. 1. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Петроградские рабочие в своё время приветствовали октябрьский переворот. С той поры большевики в течении пяти с половиной месяцев имели возможность полностью развернуть перед ними свою программу и, не встречая никакого сопротивления, осуществить её. И вот плоды деятельности на-лицо. Петроград – умирающий город. Умирающий не только в политическом и государственном смысле слова, но в буквальном значении его. Петроград голодает. Петроград под угрозой немецкого врага. Петроград умирает – умирает преданный большевизмом.’ Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 95-96. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Уже к первому революционному празднику 1 Мая 1918 г. надлежало подготовить декорирование городов: замену надписей, эмблем, названий улиц, гербов и т.п. новыми, отражающими идеи и чувства революционной трудовой России.’

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‘Against the Imperialist Oppressors for the Military Defence of Socialism’, ‘The Defence of the Soviet Republic with Weapons in Your Hands – is the Holy Duty of Every Worker and Peasant’ etc.83 Slogans such as ‘Who Does Not Work – Does Not Eat’ were direct quotations from the Bible. On 19 April in Petrograd, a Central Committee for the organisation of the 1 May celebrations was created at a meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. A member of the Petrograd Central Committee, Naum Antselovich, was elected as the head of the organisational committee for May Day decorations. Members of the committee included union and party members, as well as representatives of the Petrograd division of Narkompros, such as Gorky’s wife Andreeva (who, as previously noted, in 1909 had helped Gorky to manage the First School for Workers on Capri, and between 1918 and 1921 was Commissar of Theatres and Public Shows in Petrograd), Viacheslav Ivanov, Nikolai Tolmachev and others.84 The organisational committee included a special group in the Petrograd Soviet and Committee responsible for the decoration of the city, which was part of IZO Narkompros and was headed by Yatmanov. There were also committees responsible for building tribunes, publishing leaflets and determining the route of the public procession.85 This organisational committee had to fulfil an almost impossible task: to develop the whole series of festive processions, to prepare public speakers, make stands for them and decorate the city in just ten days before May Day. A decree was issued by the government which stated that: ‘Special subsidies of 100,000 roubles have been allocated in order to organise Easter and May Day Festivals.’86 83

84 85 86

The full list of slogans: «Да здравствует Советская власть – диктатура рабочих и крестьян над буржуазией», «Против империалистической бойни за мир и братский союз трудящихся всех наций», «Против империалистических насильников за вооруженную оборону социализма», «Защита Советской Республики с оружием в руках – священный долг каждого рабочего и крестьянина», «Кто не трудится, тот не ест», «Да здравствует нерулпимый союз рабочих, бедняков деревни и трудового казачества», «Долой соглашателей – предателей революции. Коммунизм – знамя мирового восстания рабочих», «Победив капиталистов, мы должны победить собственную неорганизованность – только в этом спасение от голода и безработицы», «Сознательные рабочие железной рукой отстоят трудовой порядок и революционную дисциплину», in Dekrety Sovetskoi Vlasti o Petrograde, 25 October (7 November) 1917-29 December 1918 (Leningrad, 1986), p. 161. For the full list see TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 2, d. 200, p. 6. For the full list of committees responsible for celebrations of 1 May 1918 see TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 6276, op. 3, d. 26, p. 5. TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 143, op. 1, d. 31, p. 113. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Из постановления Совета Народных Комиссаров Петроградской Трудовой Коммуны

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But this sum was not big enough even for May Day alone. On 23 April, Yatmanov and Shterenberg complained in their letter to Lunacharsky that they still had not received any funds for the decoration of the city and since they had only a week left, they would like to step down from their positions of responsibility for the decorations of Petrograd.87 On 29 April 1918, Commissar Yatmanov wrote a letter to the head of the Central Committee responsible for the organisation of festivals: At the Winter Palace thirty people are working non-stop on this urgent commission… It is necessary to send a small amount of bread, canned meat, sausage and crackers which would give some energy to these people for the next two days (29 and 30 April). Otherwise they may leave some work unfinished, since they are starving.88 Grigorii Yatmanov was very good at finding all the materials necessary for the decorations – red flags, robes, logs, nails and canvas – at the military division of the Red Army, at the Navy Collegium, at the Mariinsky Theatre and at the city bureau for the distribution of fabric.89 A sawmill provided planks of wood and rods, and the sewing workshop of the Military Division was making all the banners and decorations.90 Due to a lack of fabric, the old theatre decorations and pre-revolutionary banners were often used, dyed bright red.91

87

88

89 90 91

‘Об упорядочении культурного дела’: «Из сумм специально принадлежащих Совету Комиссаров Коммуны ассигнуется единовременно на организацию образцовых празднеств и гуляний Пасхальных и Майских сто тысяч рублей». See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 2551, op. 6, d. 9, p. 57. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…до сего времени не получаем ни средств, ни материалов, и все требования в этом направлении остаются невыполненными. Принимая во внимание – какой короткий срок нам остается для выполнения возложенных на нас задач, мы решили сложить с себя всякую ответственность за выполнение по намеченному плану декоративных задач.’ TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 2551, op. 6, d. 9, p. 202. Quotation in Russian reads: «Письмо Г. Ятмонова от 29 апреля председателю Центральной комиссии по организации празднеств: «В Зимнем дворце 30 человек производят спешнуто и беспрерывную работу… Необходимо для поддержания сил работаюш; их на эти 2 дня (29 и З0.04) небольшое количество хлеба, консервов, колбасы, галет. В противном случае нам грозит неоконченность некоторых работ, т.к. рабочие чувствутот себя вконец истощенными.» See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 2551, op. 1, d. 9, pp. 1, 2, 4, 10, 12, 15, 16. Ibid., pp. 33, 42. Ibid., pp. 1-43, 64, 67, 69, 84, 93, 107, 147.

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Figure 3.13

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May Day demonstration on the Field of Mars. Petrograd. 1918. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 7727/52017.

Shortly before the May Day festival, it was decided to organise a workers’ demonstration that would include soldiers from the Red Army (fig. 3.13). The Petrograd Bolshevik Party Committee declared that as May Day was being celebrated for the first time since the October Revolution, it was important to show upon which powers the victorious proletariat could rely.92 May Day 1918 saw the first military parade under the Bolsheviks. Artillery troops proudly carried their weapons decorated with flowers and red bows. Decorated and illuminated ships were lying at anchor along the Neva. The air show was less successful, though, as one of the planes hit the roof of a house just off Nevsky Prospect (fig. 3.14). An article in the newspaper Izvestiia provides a full reminiscence of the May Day events: Already at 9 am divisions of the Red Army started gathering on Lafonskaia Square in front of the Smolny with banners and orchestras. Later,

92

See Agitatsionno-Massovoe Iskusstvo Pervykh Let Oktiabria. Materialy i issledovaniia (Moscow, 1971).

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Figure 3.14

The sad outcome of the air show on 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 120.

when all the troops had arrived from their barracks, they gathered for the ceremonial march and paraded past their revolutionary centre – the Smolny, saluting the very place where the victory of the proletariat was forged… Then everyone proceeded to Palace Square, to their headquarters. Here all the military divisions met: the infantry marched rattling their rifles, the artillery joyfully shot their guns in the air, lorries moved along shining projectors… the whole square was filled with divisions of the Red Army. And everywhere was exemplary order and perfect discipline. As if the whole army was transformed, as if a different higher spirit was burning in every heart.93

93

‘Pervoe maia. Vpechatleniia ochevidtsa’, in Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, 4 May 1918. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘На Лафонской площади у Смольного уже в 9 часов утра начали собираться красноармейские отряды со знаменами и оркестрами. Потом, когда из прилегающих казарм собрались все части, они построились для церемониального марша и прошли мимо своего революционного центра – Смольного, отдав честь этому зданию, где выковывалась победа пролетариата… Потом все шли дальше к Дворцовой площади, к своему штабу. Здесь стекались воинские части всех родов оружия: пехота мерно шагала, позвякивая винтовками, артиллерия весело грохотала, двигались грузовые автомобили с прожекторами…, вся площадь заполнилась отрядами революционной Красной

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Figure 3.15

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Viktor Bulla. May Day 1918 demonstration in Petrograd. Photo: The State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 7734/52017.

Workers’ demonstrations (which constituted the most important part in the celebrations) gathered in their districts by 8 am, and walked with the accompaniment of bands to Palace Square via the Field of Mars, where speakers were promoting the new, socialist doctrines from the rostrums. Such photographers as Bulla, Iakob Steinberg and Pavel Shukov were entrusted with documenting every column and every banner all along the route of the festive procession.94 The resulting photographs constitute the only remaining evidence of the decorations for Petrograd on May Day 1918 and possess both artistic and documentary significance (fig. 3.15). Lenin often stressed the importance of documentary photography; shortly after the October Revolution, he remarked that ‘history can be written very well by the lens.’95

94

95

Армии. И всюду царил образцовый порядок и прекрасная дисциплина. Точно вся армия преобразилась, точно иной, высокий дух горел во всех сердцах.’ For documenting the next celebration of the first anniversary of the Revolution, a special Photo Department of the Cinematographic Section of the Central Bureau for the Organisation of the Festivities of the October Revolution was created in Petrograd. Bulla was director of the department. Quoted in Peter Herzog, ‘‘October’ – The New Icons’, in Ivan Puni and Photographs of the Russian Revolution (Basel, 2003), p. 81.

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Fine art and photography were engaged in a battle for priority under the Bolsheviks. Photography could easily be duplicated, published, recognised, made and consumed by the masses. One of the most famous Soviet artists and photographers, Rodchenko ‘repeatedly pointed to the immense significance of reportage photography’ and its decisive influence on his work.96 Under the influence of Walter Benjamin, the screenplay writer and photographer Sergei Tretyakov, the famous Soviet critic Viktor Shklovskii and the pioneer film and newsreel director, Dziga Vertov, tried to popularise the idea of ‘factography’: the idea that new technologies such as photography and film should be utilised by the working class for the production of ‘factographi’ works. Photographs by Bulla often crossed the border between documentary evidence and works of art. It was not a coincidence that the most famous Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein also used some of Bulla’s photographs in his 1927 film, October.97 Since none of the decorations for Petrograd of 1917-1920 have survived, documentary photographs provide invaluable evidence of the way festive processions were conducted and how the root of demonstrations have been decorated. Thus, some of Bulla’s documentary photographs of 1 May 1918 procession show German and Austrian prisoners of war marching along with the Russian workers (fig. 3.16), as well as representatives of Baltic nationalities (fig. 3.17). Unlike the pre-orchestrated parades of 1930s, these processions were still rather relaxed; instead of marching in step, participants of the 1918 demonstrations were much more spontaneous; people walking with their comrades along Nevsky Prospect. Just a few years later, the very character and the body language of these demonstrations changed fundamentally. Bright banners, decorated cars and lorries created a joyful atmosphere, while the panels that covered most of the facades of the former palaces and imperial institutions (fig. 3.18) aimed to educate demonstrators in the new Bolshevik beliefs and rituals. However, the newspaper Nash Vek reported that May Day 1918 was not as popular as 1 May 1917: A year ago streets and squares of Petrograd were filled with joyful excited masses of Petrograd workers. Everyone lived then believing in the bright future of united great free Russia.

96 97

Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., p. 77.

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Figure 3.16

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Viktor Bulla. German and Austrian prisoners of war at a May Day demonstration. 1918. Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2360.

This year’s May Day illustrated a hard reality of contemporary Russia. Shops were closed down, trams stopped and the houses following the high command were decorated with red flags. But…‘people were silent’. Part of the population of the city has hidden in their houses in fear of opposition, a small part participated in the official celebrations, but the majority, including workers, took 1 May with complete indifference.98 Despite all the criticism, these unique city decorations and their reception by hungry, impoverished people, recorded in the still uncensored media of 1918, were powerful examples of the first steps towards a new art in Bolshevik Russia. One of the leading artists of the World of Art movement, Dobuzhinsky, opened a debate on the impact of May Day decorations in his article ‘A Bomb or a Firecracker: a Conversation Between Two Artists’. The first artist in this article was very enthusiastic:

98

‘Pervoe maia. Na ulitsakh’, in Nash Vek, 3 May 1918, no. 88 (112), p. 3.

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Figure 3.17

Viktor Bulla. Representatives of Baltic nationalities at a May Day demonstration. 1918. Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 40846.

…Well, you must admit we have witnessed the birth of a new era: on 1st May we, artists, finally took our revolutionary banners out onto the streets and just look how delightfully the creations of new art adorned the city. At last, we have declared war on the despotism of architectural lines which have imprisoned the artist’s free eye for long enough! Don’t you see how creative artists have finally moved off in step with the progressive proletariat…99 The second artist was less excited about avant-garde decorations: First of all, I did not find at all delightful the new ‘beauty’ which you pasted up all over the city and which you welcome so much. You can surround Michelandgelo’s David with the finest Raphaels and Rembrandts but you will not produce a new artistic delight. I can see that you have indeed declared war on, or rather your contempt for, architecture… But 99

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, ‘Bomba ili khlopushka: razgovor dvukh khudozhnikov’, in Novaia zhizn’, 4 May 1918. Trans. from Russian by Vladimir Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova and Catherine Cooke in Street Art of the Revolution. Festivals and Celebrations in Russia. 1918-1933, p. 51.

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Figure 3.18

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Panel on the façade of the National Library. Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2347.

I hardly think that by randomly sticking up patches and plasters, albeit in the form of more brilliant paintings and posters, on buildings which you have declared ‘outlawed’, you can triumph over the latter. Alas, they continue to stand as unshakeable and magnificent as before, while your posters perish in the unequal fight and hang torn by the counterrevolutionary wind. Just take a look at Alexander’s Column: how pathetically those feeble matchstick-like poles, with one bold poster attached to the side, huddle round the base. What a futile assault, like a frog attacking an ox!100 The decision to cover the facades of the palaces with these bold examples of left art was wiser than the more obvious solution of blowing them up as symbols of the old regime. The old symbols of autocracy were transformed into signs of victory and bearers of freedom’s message. But the educational impact of these panels was still debatable. In the beginning of the twentieth century, about 83 per cent of the rural population and about 55 per cent of the urban

100

Ibid., p. 52.

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population in Russia were illiterate.101 By spending large sums of money on this festival at a time of starvation and ongoing war, the Bolsheviks were hoping that they would be able to educate the illiterate workers and peasants in Marxism and socialism quickly and efficiently. But could the Futurists’ decorations fulfil this task? Most contemporaries (even the more educated ones) could not understand these controversial city decorations. Thus, one of the reporters of the newspaper Nashe Slovo, the voice of the All-Russian League for the Equality of Women, Zinaida Zhuravskaia described her impressions of the Petrograd street decorations for 1 May 1918 in the article ‘The Stale Name-Day’. She wrote: …My God! How tasteless and untalented are all the posters! Do they have anything of the Spring mood, anything cheerful, which people can relate to, anything “proletarian” – not to speak of any artistic quality? Yellow, red, green spots – they resemble an artist’s palette with traces of different paints. And they want to present it as young, fresh proletarian art?!102 The desire of festival planners to celebrate the Revolution in harmonious style was often frustrated by the cities themselves, particularly by Petrograd, the former imperial capital. Petrograd’s ceremonial centre was dominated by the tsar’s palaces, which symbolized the old regime and thus had to be transformed, rather than destroyed, pretty much overnight. Another popular newspaper, Novaia Petrogradskaia Gazeta, published a negative description of the Futurists’ impact on the May Day celebrations: All the government buildings, occupied by the Commune were decorated with flags and colourful fabric with drawings. These images were not of high artistic quality. They were mainly unsuccessful Futurist works, whose meaning and symbolism was very difficult to understand.

101 102

See Viktoria Bonnell, p. 4. Z. Zhuravskaia, ‘Cherstvye imeniny. (Iz pervomaiskikh vpechtlenii)’, in Nashe Slovo, 1 May 1918, no. 24, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Но Боже мой! До чего безвкусны и бездарны все плакаты! Что в них весеннего, бодрящего, что в них народного и «пролетарского» – не говоря уже о художественности? Жёлтые, красные, зелёные пятна – точно палитра со следами разных красок. И это хотят выдать за молодое, свежее, пролетарское искусство?!’

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[…] The Winter Palace was full of people, who for the first time had a chance to see the forbidden palace. At the Winter Palace concert-rallies were organised, which also attracted lots of people. […] In the evening a portrait of Nicholas II which was painted by the Futurists, was burnt on Nikolaevskaia Embankment. On it Nicholas was shown wearing a blooded cloak and with the crown which has fallen from his head. This portrait was displayed at the Winter Palace during the day, and the public had a chance to look at it in detail.103 The same newspaper published an article by the Russian Orthodox cleric, Foma Railian: Yesterday in Petrograd became truly the festival of all festivals which demonstrated not only the physical but also the spiritual power of Russia. […] If you look at this festival from the point of view of those who criticized the way 1 May was celebrated during Holy Week, I would just say that what was always unnecessary and excessive, remained so on this day. And it is not the government’s fault, but of those talentless people who would try anything without the necessary talent, knowledge and experience. The utter poverty of yesterday’s decorations is hard to describe. Of course one could not expect any artistic conception or decorative beauty from not very educated artists who stuck to the government. But in all this indecency these was something especially nasty. It was the very style of the city decorations, which was a parody of the old Russian

103

‘Pervoe maia v Petrograde’, in Novaia Petrogradskaia Gazeta, 3 May 1918, no. 87, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Все правительственные здания, занятые учреждениями коммуны с вечера уже были украшены флагами и декорированы цветной материей с рисунками. Рисунки эти не отличались высокой художественностью. Это были большей частью неудавшиеся футуристические произведения, разобраться в смысле и символизме которых было очень трудно. […] В Зимнем дворце толпилось много публики, имевшей впервые возможность осмотреть запретный до сих пор дворец. В Зимнем дворце были устроены концерты-митинги, собравшие также много народу. […] Вечером на Николаевской набережной был сожжён портрет Николая II, рисованный футуристами. Николай II был изображён в окровавленной мантии и с свалившейся с головы короною. Портрет этот находился в течении дня в Зимнем дворце, и публике представлялась возможность рассматривать это произведение.’

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A few surviving photographs and descriptions of these decorations show a primitive image of an orange soldier and a red peasant woman holding a purple baby in her arms, which adorned the classical facade of the General Staff Building on Palace Square; another panel depicted a naked purple warrior on a green horse, painted in Cubo-Futurist style and used to decorate Mariinsky Palace (fig. 3.19): On the façade of the hotel Astoria is a poster depicting a knight on a green horse, striking someone’s light-brown leg with a spear. The slogan says “Defend Petrograd”. / On the Mariinsky Palace there are three posters: 1) a man and a woman are loading guns, between them are two lonely tulip buds; it is signed “Build the Red Army”; 2) cubes, triangles and rolls of all the colours of the rainbow alternately scattered around. The letters ‘Fial…’ and ‘ki’ are mixed among the cubes [Russian fialki – violets], underneath for those who did not understand is written ‘flowers’; 3) the same cubes, triangles and rolls with the words “First of May” are scattered around the next panel. / The General Staff Building was adorned by several mysterious pictures… Participants of the demonstrations especially enjoyed seeing a blacksmith on one of the posters with one right hand and four left hands; his right eye was flying somewhere in the clouds. / By the Alexander Column facing the Konnogvardeiskii Boulevard was a large painted panel showing dancing peasants – a woman and two men – one in a red and other one in a green shirt, all 104

Foma Railian, ‘Prazdnik Blagoslovennykh. 1 maia v Petrograde’, in Novaia Petrogradskaia Gazeta, 3 May 1918, no. 87, p. 1. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Вчерашний день в Петрограде воистину явился праздником праздников не только физической, но и духовной мощи России. […] Рассматривая праздниство с точки зрения осуждавших самые формы празднования1 мая в дни страстной недели, можем сказать, что то, что было лишним и ненужным, ненужным и осталось. Виновато в этом не правительство, а те бездарные люди, что за всё берутся без таланта, без знаний, без опыта. Убожество вчерашних декораций – неописуемо. Ни художественного замысла, ни масштабов, а тем паче декоративной красоты от примазывшихся к правительству художников недоучек ждать, конечно, нельзя было. Но во всём скверном было и особенно скверное, нечто кощунственное. Это стиль живописных украшений, который парадировал древнее национальное русское искусство, русскую фреску. Толпа их не поняла, но святые подлинники оскорблены невеждами.’

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Figure 3.19

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The former Mariinsky Palace, where the main painted panel proclaims ‘Build the Red Army!’. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 123.

dancing “Kamarinskaia”; it is signed “First of May”. On the façade of the Winter Palace is a canvas with two figures, shaking hands in the middle of the green field; between them is a tree without any leaves but with two red cones; the sign says “Power to the Soviets”.105 105

‘Torzhestva 1 maia. Plakaty’, in Vechernie Ogni, 2 May 1918, no. 35, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘На гостинице «Астория» плакат: всадник на зелёной лошади с копьём, которым поражает чью-то светло-коричневую ногу. Подпись: «Защитим Петроград». / На Мариинском дворце три плаката: 1) мужик и баба заряжают ружья, между ними два сиротливых бутона; подпись «Стройте красную армию»; 2) вперемежку кубики, треугольники и свитки всех цветов радуги. Подпись «Фиал…», буквы «ки» тонут среди кубиков, внизу для вящего вразумления написано «цветы»; 3) те же кубики, треугольники и свитки с надписью «первое мая». / На здании Главного штаба висело несколько загадочных картинок… Демонстрантам особенно понравился изображённый на одном из плакатов кузнец с одной правой и четырьмя левыми руками; правый глаз у кузнеца парил где-то в облаках. / У Александровской колоннылицом к Коногвардейскому бульвару на большом полотнище изображены деревенская баба и два мужика, один в красной, а другой в зелёной рубашке, все пляшут «Камаринскую»; надпись: «первое мая». / На здании Зимнего дворца полотнище с двумя фигурами, пожимающими друг другу руки среди зеленого поля; между ними – какое-то дерево без листьев с двумя красными шишками; надпись: «Власть Советам».’

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Figure 3.20

Decorative panel on the Duma building on Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2348.

Facades of buildings along the festive procession had often been decorated already in the days of tsarist Russia, but these decorations never aimed to proclaim the victory of the new art and new regime over classic architecture. After the October Revolution, together with the avant-garde and primitive influences, one of the main sources of inspiration for the artists remained the neoclassical tradition transmitted by the French Revolution and the Paris Commune. Thus, a large panel depicting a skeletal reaper in a helmet as worn by German soldiers decorated the building of the Duma on Nevsky Prospect (fig. 3.20). Although skeletons were often depicted in Russian folk art and popular prints (or lubki) symbolising death, this particular image was inspired by Daumier’s lithographs from the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. But the humour usually expressed in a lubok inspired the artist to place the skeleton in a flowery field and draw a hammer (which usually symbolised the worker) above his head (fig. 3.21). The newspaper Nash Vek described these decorations: Special attention was paid to the decoration of the building of the State Duma. By the entrance, two artificial trees were placed. The façade was decorated by a large poster which depicted a peasant who is hammer-

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Figure 3.21

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Decorative panels on the Duma building on Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd. 1 May 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

ing Death, who is trying to come out of the cannon. [Death] is cutting bright red flowers with a scythe and does not notice the hammer over her head. Under the roof of the Duma there was a poster with the image of ploughing peasants with a slogan: ‘Long Live the Petrograd Workers Commune’.106 The sculptor Shervud was commissioned to make eight allegorical chariots, which were meant to symbolise the old and new worlds. In her book, Iconography of Power. Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin, Bonnell wrote:

106

‘Pervoe maia. Na ulitsakh’, in Nash Vek, 3 May 1918, no. 88 (112), p. 3.

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‘The Bolsheviks paid close attention to French revolutionary history; it served as the key element in their master narrative of the world historical struggle for liberation and a source of symbols and images for expressing new political ideas.’107 The May Day festival of 1918, which now represented Bolshevik rule, also included a woman in a Roman tunic carrying a torch in her right hand and standing on a chariot drawn by horses. There were two main floats: one was modelled on a Roman float with a statue of the goddess Freedom in a white tunic, a torch in her upraised hand, standing against a background of the slogan ‘Having proudly made it through the centuries of oppression, we celebrate the worldwide May holiday.’ On a smaller float, labour was depicted allegorically by the figure of a woman dressed in a Greek tunic with a torch in her right hand. In later years, the figure of Lady Liberty [Zhenshchina Svoboda] was transformed in the new spirit, receiving the dress of a female peasant or worker. This allegory was repeated in May Day and November celebrations in 1918 and 1919. Although May Day decorations received more criticism than praise, the Minister of Public Enlightenment himself seemed to be pleased with the overall effect: …from Cubism and Futurism there remained only the clarity and power of forms and bright colours necessary for paintings displayed under the open sky, made for a giant spectator with hundreds of thousands of heads. […] Here we could undoubtedly see the combination of the quest of young talent with everything that the crowd was looking for.108 Painted in just two weeks before the Festival, these brave panels constituted only a small part of the grand plan of the celebrations. The Committee envisaged illuminated fountains in the middle of the main river in Petrograd, the Neva. Using projectors, the artists were supposed to write revolutionary slogans of the free Russian proletariat in the sky above the city centre and to illuminate the Peter and Paul Fortress. In 1919, this aspiration was also picked 107 108

Viktoria Bonnell, Iconography of Power. Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin, p. 67. A. Lunacharsky, Vospominaniia i vpechatleniia (Moscow, 1968), pp. 208-209. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘От кубизма и футуризма оставались только четкость и мощность общей формы да яркоцветность, столь необходимая для живописи под открытым небом, рассчитанной на гиганта-зрителя с сотнями тысяч голов. […] Тут несомненно произопшо слияние молодых исканий и исканий толпы.’

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Figure 3.22

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Performance of the comedy by Antimanov, Vova Korolevich, which was staged by the Theatre Section of Narkompros on 1 May 1918 at the Musical Comedy Theatre in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

up by Tatlin, who envisioned a Monument to the Third International with a battery of searchlights that would project lit-up letters onto the sky above the Neva. In the evening, several free concerts were organised at the Winter Palace,109 the Mariinsky Theatre and the Musical Comedy Theatre (fig. 3.22). Free films were shown in the cinemas; all of this in a city stricken by hunger, and for people who were surviving without electricity in cold flats. On 22 April, Commissar Yatmanov wrote to the head of the celebration committee with the request to give 2,000 poods110 of coal. He said that he wanted to show workers the Winter Palace ‘in all its splendour’.111

109

110 111

In the Winter Palace, the choir performed Mozart’s Requiem, which ‘moved impressive workers to tears’ and made one boy kneel down and pray. See full report in Krasnaia Gazeta, 1 May 1918, no. 80, p. 2. Pood: a Russian unit of weight equivalent to about 16.4 kilograms (36.1 pounds). TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 2551, op. 6, d. 9, p. 37. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Записка Г. Ятманова от 22 апреля к председателю комиссии по организации празднования

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In ‘dying Petrograd’, May Day became the bright spot in the dark, everyday reality, and despite all the criticism, the bright avant-garde decorations gave hope and colour to a desperate people. Lunacharsky remarked: In Narkompros politics we had to rely on the serious collective of artistic forces. I found them almost exclusively here – among so called left artists… Futurism has one beautiful quality – it is a young and brave movement. And since its best representatives are moving towards the communist Revolution, they can more easily become masterful drummers of our red culture.112 The new decorations for Petrograd for the first anniversary of the October Revolution encapsulated debates between Lunacharsky, Punin and Bogdanov on the nature of the new proletarian art.

The First Anniversary of the October Revolution in Petrograd: Planning and Realisation The next big festival in post-revolutionary Russia was the first anniversary of the October Revolution, and this time commissions to decorate Petrograd were given to artists from both ‘right’ and ‘left’ movements. One of the main lessons learnt from the May Day celebrations was that more time and resources were necessary for the organisation of a successful festival. Already on 2 May, Yatmanov had written to Lunacharsky: I would like to attract your attention to the shortcomings in organisation of our holidays, which we always leave to the last minute – days

112

с просьбой выдать 2000 пудов угля: «Имеющимися же при Зимнем дворце дровами электрическая станция может дать неполное освещение, чего хотелось бы избегнуть и дать возможность представить для народа Зимний Дворец в полном блеске».’ A. V. Lunacharsky ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve (Moscow, 1967), vol. 2, p. 116. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В общей политике Наркомпроса нам необходимо было опереться на серьезный коллектив творческих художественных сил. Их я нашел почти исключительно здесь, среди так называемых «левых» художников. …В футуризме есть одна прекрасная черта – это молодое и смелое направление. И поскольку лучшие его представители идут навстречу коммунистической революции, постольку они легче могут стать виртуозными барабанщиками нашей красной культуры.’

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before the festival itself; as a result we can’t do it to the best of our efforts, abilities and knowledge…since we also do not have a managing body in charge…113 Following this complaint, a new ‘Group for the Organisation of Festivities’ [Gruppa po organizatsii gulianii] was created in August 1918 within the Theatre Section of Narkompros.114 By 15 September 1918, all the members of the group responsible for the organisation of celebrations of the first anniversary of the October Revolution were selected by the Central Committee. Members of this new group included Bolsheviks Antselovich, Ilia Ionov, Oksuz and Ivanov, as well as representatives of Narkompros, Proletkult and professional unions. Gorky’s wife, Andreeva, was elected the president of the group.115 On 19 October 1918, a list of 71 buildings in Petrograd that had to be decorated by artists from all the artistic movements active in Russia in 1918 was published. Soon this list was extended even further. The organisers aimed to stress the importance of ‘Red Petrograd’ – the cradle of all the revolutions – over the new capital Moscow. It had been decided to invite representatives of all the local centres of the Northern District, so that they could ‘spread the news about this beautiful festival across the region’ and to publish brochures that would include the testimonies of the participants of the October Coup, in order to keep the record of these important events for future generations.116 A special decree, signed by the head of the Petrograd city and regional government, Grigory Zinoviev, authorised the group responsible for organising the celebrations to ask for anything necessary to ensure successful celebrations. Thus, the Agricultural Soviet was obliged to give the group responsible 113

114

115 116

TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 143, op. 1, d. 125, p. 31. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Обращаю Ваше внимание на ненормальность устроения наших празднеств, приготовление к которым всегда происходят наспех, почти накануне самих празднеств, что всегда ведет к тому, что мы не можем развернуть всех наших сил, умения и знаний…из-за отсутствия руководящего центра…’ Sister of Trotsky, Olga Kameneva, was head of TEO (the Theatre Section of Narkompros). Meyerhold was the vice-director. In Petrograd, TEO was headed by Gorky’s wife, actress Andreeva. See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 2, d. 200, p. 9; f. 6276, op. 3, d. 27, pp. 1-2. TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 2, d. 10, pp. 10-11. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…каждый из участников Октябрьского движения сможет рассказать нечто такое, что будет неувядаемым по своему интересу для наших будулцих поколений. …Все это мы должны собрать как ценные исторические документы. Мы обязаны сейчас все взяться за перо’.

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for organising the festival a credit of twenty-five million roubles.117 All the commissariats, merchandisers and factories had to fulfil any demands of the group straightaway. Armed with almost unlimited power, the group investigated the contents of all the places of storage and provided the artists with canvasses and paints.118 Portraits of the members of the Russian royal family and the aristocracy were also used for canvasses for street decorations. An important special decree of Narkompros asked ‘all the institutions, schools and hospices which have portraits of tsars and officials of the old regime painted on canvas, to provide Narkompros with all the information about the quantity of such paintings within a week.’ The decree explained that after a special check of these works by the experts’ committee, they will be painted over and used for posters for the celebrations of the first anniversary of the October Revolution. The reluctance to provide such paintings in time was seen as ‘a sabotage of Soviet Festival’.119 Thus, the new revolutionary art had overwitten not only the classic facades, but old academic portraits as well. All the portraits of the members of the old bourgeoisie had to be replaced before the day of the Anniversary of the October Revolution with photographs of the new heroes of 1917-1918 and images connected with the Bolshevik Revolution. All the professional photographers were obliged to bring urgently two copies of such photographs to the publishing house of the Petrograd Soviet.120 117

118 119

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Dekrety Sovetskoi Vlasti o Petrograde. 15 Oktiabria (7 noiabria) 1917-29 dekabria 1918 g., p. 229. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘На заседании 12 октября 1918 г. СНК постановил: «Ассигновать Комиссариату внутренних дел из средств Государственного казначейства 25 миллионов рублей на субсидирование местных Совдепов на организацию октябрьского празднества». See O. Nemiro, V gorod prishel prazdnik. Iz istorii khudozhestvennogo oformleniia sovetskikh massovykh prazdnestv (Leningrad, 1973), p. 7. TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 142, op. 1, d. 28, p. 307. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Специальным распоряжением Комиссариата Народного Просвещения Союза Коммун Северной области предлагалось «всем учреждениям, школам, приютам, в коих имеются писанные на холсте портреты царей и деятелей старого порядка, представить в недельный срок письменные сведения Отделу Изобразительных Искусств о количестве таковых. Холст, на котором писали указанные портреты, после соответствующей экспертизы, будет использован для плакатов в годовщину Октябрьской революции… Несвоевременное представление сведений будет рассматриваться как саботаж Советского праздника». See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 2, d. 200, p. 20.

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The first anniversary of the October Revolution was seen as the most important festival in terms of agitation and propaganda. In Autumn 1918, the Central Committee declared that this holiday would be celebrated for three days. In Petrograd, the first day was used for political demonstrations, which were centred around the Field of Mars and the Smolny and the unveiling of the monuments to the heroes of the Revolution; the second day was formed around the opening of the Palace of Labour121 and was supposed to be ‘the day of nationwide gaiety’; the third day was a day of private celebrations by each citizen, when people could attend theatres, cinemas and museums.122 Most newspapers (such as Severnaia Kommuna and Vestnik Kommuny) informed citizens on a regular basis about the organisation of the festival from the beginning of October. Special attention was paid to the decorations for the city, which Lunacharsky stressed in his speech dedicated to the opening of the Free Artists Workshops (SVOMAS, which replaced the Imperial Academy of Arts): ‘The October celebrations promise to demonstrate a grandiose picture of the people’s holiday as never seen before. This commission is so enormous that all talented artists will find use for their creativity.’123 In her diary, Lubov Shaporina, the artist who later created the first official puppet theatre in Russia, wrote: Before the Festival of the first anniversary of the October Coup (in 1918) all the artists were called to decorate the city, and were looking forward to some earnings. Timorevy worked in Dobuzhinsky’s team; Elizaveta Sergeevna Kruglikova, Elizaveta Petrovna Iakunina and I were writ-

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Originally called Nikolaevsky Palace, it was built in 1853-1861 by Andrei Stakenschneider near the English Embankment. After the death of its owner, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the palace was bought by the Treasury in 1894 to accommodate Ksenia Institute for Noble Girls, a school named after Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna, daughter of Alexander III. After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik government handed the building to the trade unions, who made it their local headquarters and renamed it the Palace of Labour. It still fulfills this role today, although some parts of the palace have been rented out to private enterprises. See ‘Organizatsiia Oktiabr’skikh Torzhestv’, in Severnaia Kommuna, 21 September 1918. A. Lunacharsky, ‘Rech’, proiznesennaia na otkrytii Petrogradskikh gosudarsvennykh svobodnykh khudozhestvennykh masterskikh’, Severnaia Kommuna, 17 October 1918. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Октябрьские торжества обещают показать небывало грандиозную картину народного празднества. Заказ настолько гигантский, что все талантливые художники найдут тут применение своему творчеству.’

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Chapter 3 ing slogans on red fabric and painting posters using Nathan Altman’s sketches, lying on the floor at the Winter Palace and screaming with laughter.124

For the artists, involvement in street decorations meant financial compensation and expanded food rations. It also gave artists an opportunity to extend their art from studios and museums into the street. Each artist was free to express himself without any restrictions or censorship, as the work was divided into ninety individual projects. All together 170 artists, draftsmen, sculptors and architects from all the artistic movements active at the time, participated in the decorations for Petrograd. Apart from professional artists, students from the Free Artistic Workshops and amateur artists from Proletkult worked on posters and decorative panels. In her article ‘Art Breaks the Walls’, Ludmila Vostretsova observed: Newspaper articles rightly compared festive Petrograd in November 1918 with a street exhibition of contemporary art. The whole compass of artistic groupings, from academic to avant-garde, was represented in this major commission offered to the creative intelligentsia of all generations by the young Soviet State. In the first years of revolution the art that erupted onto the streets of Petrograd, Moscow and other Russian cities was unprecedented. It addressed itself directly to the people, invading everyday life and adopting monumental decorative forms; new art genres were born that openly and spontaneously reflected the triumph of a people who had made the revolution and believed in the future.125 The decorations for revolutionary Petrograd have not survived (at times of shortages, they were used for workers’ clothes and soldiers’ foot bindings), but the colourful and energetic original designs by painters and printmakers engaged in these street and parade decorations have been preserved along

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L. Shaporina, Dnevnik (Moskva: NLO, 2011), vol. 1, p. 72. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Перед празднованием первой годовщины октябрьского переворота (18-й год) все художники были призваны украшать город, предвиделся заработок. Тиморевы работали в бригаде Добужинского; Елизавета Сергеевна Кругликова, Елизавета Петровна Якунина и я, мы писали на красных полотнищах какие-то лозунги и плакаты по эскизам Н. Альтмана в Зимнем дворце, ползая на животе и хохоча до упаду.’ L. Vostrotsova, ‘Art breaks the Walls’, in Tradition and Revolution in Russian Art (Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications, 1990), p. 141.

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Figure 3.23

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Nikolai Tyrsa. Sketches for decorations of Nevsky Prospect (corner of Liteiny Prospect). Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-956, 963.

with accompanying notes that describe the size, scale, materials and vibrant colours of the panels. After the celebrations, these designs were first exhibited at the Palace of Labour, stored by the Fine Art Section of Narkompros and later moved to the archive of the Museum of the Revolution. In 1939, they were transferred to the State Russian Museum where they have been meticulously catalogued and preserved. They complement the black and white photographs of Petrograd’s decorations to provide vivid evidence of this collective, politicised and public art. Like 1917 factory banners, these commissions established the new language: the new iconoclastic images in post-revolutionary Russian art. The images of workers and peasants were widely explored (fig. 3.23-3.25). Several of these images were implemented by Kseniia Boguslavskaia, who together with her artist-husband Puni, in 1915 financed the most radical exhibitions in Petrograd: Tram V: The First Futurist Exhibition and 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Boguslavskaia and Puni produced

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Figure 3.24

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Sketches for decorative panels on Theatre Square, Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-874, 875.

Cubo-Futurist paintings and reliefs. In their manifesto, which accompanied the 0.10 exhibition, they declared that ‘a painting presents abstractions of reality, stripped of meaning’.126 But how could art deprived of meaning be employed in the services of agitational propaganda and the development of new images of workers, soldiers and peasants? These images were first developed by Puni, Boguslavskaia and Vladimir Kozlinsky when in 1918, they illustrated Vladimir Mayakovsky’s book Heroes and Victims of the Revolution [Geroi i Zhertvy Revolutsii]. Striving to juxtapose images of the members of bourgeoisie and the proletariat, this book employed the artist’s brave pictorial language, which combined a neo-primitivist style, depicting workers as traditional Russian warriors [bogatyrs] using simplified forms and thick black outlines that evoke traditional Russian woodblock prints, lubki. Leaving their previous experiments with non-figuration behind, the artists strived to employ the language of people’s woodcuts, which for the workers was more familiar and thus easier to relate to. Widely employed images of workers depicted as warriors evoked memories of Russian medieval epic songs, legends and fairy tales, as well as the satirical journal illustrations of 1905-1908 (fig. 3.26) and World War I posters. The

126

See John E. Bowlt, ‘Transcending Reason’, in Ivan Puni and Photographs of the Russian Revolution, catalogue of the exhibition, Museum Jean Tinguely (Basel, 2003), p. 37.

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Figure 3.25

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Kseniia Boguslavskaia. Sketch for a panel for Okhtenskii Bridge, Petrograd. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-913.

Bogatyr embodied ‘the ethos of medieval Russia, embracing both pagan and Christian rituals’.127 After the Bolshevik Revolution, workers were presented once again as mythical warriors: strong heroes ready to fight for the new Russia. Mayakovsky’s book, Heroes and Victims of the Revolution, was commissioned and published by IZO Narkompros, which was also actively involved in the street decorations for the first anniversary of the Revolution (7 November 1918), which in turn gave these young artists an opportunity to enrich their earlier images with colour. For Kozlinsky, who later became a famous poster designer and theatre artist, early post-revolutionary festivals provided an opportunity to develop large images of workers, peasants and soldiers depicted in neo-primitivist style against images of factories which look like backdrops in the theatre (fig. 3.27). For Kozlinsky, the streets of Petrograd became the stage and demonstrators, the au-

127

Helena Goscilo, ‘Viktor Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs: Mythic Heroes and Sacrosanct Borders Go to Market’, in Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture, ed. by Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 248.

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Figure 3.26

‘For God, Tsar and Fatherland’ in the satirical illustrated newspaper Pliuvium, 23 June 1907 (St. Petersburg), no. 38, p. 2. Photo: reproduced in Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013), vol. 19, p. 89.

dience. They were also his first experiments with satirical propaganda posters produced by him for Rosta windows in 1921.128 Like his earlier images of 1918,

128

From 1920, Kozlinsky was a head of the Petrograd division of Rosta Windows [Okna Rosta]. Rosta windows were stencil-replicated propaganda posters created by artists and poets within the Rosta system, under the supervision of the Chief Committee of Political Education during 1919-21. Inheriting the Russian design traditions of lubok, the main

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Figure 3.27

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Vladimir Kozlinsky. Sketches for panels The Worker and ‘Long Live the Red Navy’. Decorations for Okhta and Liteiny Prospect, Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-862, 857.

these lubok-styled posters featured graphic simplicity and bright colours visible from from a distance. On 7 November 1918, specific themes such as the victory of the October Revolution, the glorification of labour, and the union of workers and peasants, were determined by the Petrograd Party Soviet and implemented by both left painters (such as Nikolai Tyrsa), artists of the right (like Alfred Eberling) and amateur painters: members of the Proletkult (fig. 3.28-3.30). Thus, the subject of the union of peasants and workers received a rather academic interpretation in the decoration panel by Eberling (fig. 3.29). Graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts and the founder of the Kuindzhi Society.129 He first tried his hand at political propaganda during the First World

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themes were current political events. They were usually displayed in the windows of Rosta, the state news agency in Soviet Russia, hence the name. Kuindzhi Society [Obschestvo imeni A. Kuindzhi] was founded by Alfred Eberling in 1900 and officially opened in St. Petersburg in February 1908. It pledged to render ‘both material and moral support to all art societies, groups and also individual artists; to cooperate with them, to organi[s]e exhibitions in St. Petersburg, other cities and abroad; to provide continuous support by purchasing the best works of them so as to organi[s]e a national gallery of art’. Quoted in Russian Art. 1875-1975: A Collection of Essays, ed. by John E. Bowlt (New York: MSS, 1976), p. 16.

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Figure 3.28

Nikolai Tyrsa. Union of workers, peasants and intellectuals. Sketch for decorations of Nevsky Prospect (corner of Liteiny Prospect). Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-957.

War when in 1916, he produced the poster Sign up to War Bonds – Make Way to Victory. After the October Revolution, Eberling taught at the Drawing School of the Pedagogical College. But despite his professional background, in his sketch for a decoration panel, the artist almost deliberately simplified the images of worker and peasant. Perhaps in his designs for the Petrograd decorations for the first anniversary of the Revolution, he strived to find simple, laconic language that could easily appeal to a majority of viewers. He also omitted the use of slogans and only used the new abbreviation ‘RSFSR’ in the centre of a wreath proudly held by the new leaders of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic. Another professional artist, Tikhon Chernyshev, became after 1918, chairman of the Community of Artists’ Society [Obshchina Khudozhnikov],130 which organised exhibitions in the workers’ quarters and strived to educate 130

The ‘Community of Artists’ was founded in 1910 by graduates of the Academy of Arts, including S. Vlasov, D. Okroiants, N. Kharitonov, and I. Schlugleit, with the participation of I. Repin. They arranged exhibitions, promoted sales, and popularised fine arts. The society also organised art competitions and was involved in publishing. Its first large exhibition was held at the Palace of Arts (today, the Benois Building of the State Russian Museum), and was devoted to the 45th anniversary of Repin’s creative life. The society held seven exhibitions between 1921 and 1928, and included over 200 artists such as

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.29

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On the left: Alfred Eberling (professional artist, graduated from the Academy of Arts). Sketches for decoration panels. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-996. On the right: Shleifer (amateur artist, member of Proletkult). Sketch for a factory banner. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-979.

members of the proletariat. Chernyshev also addressed the recurrent subject of the union of workers and peasants (fig. 3.30). In one of his decorative panels, Chernyshev used the classical composition, framing the main heroes with red banners. But his visual language was lacking the simplicity necessary for the monumental propaganda, which Eberling achieved more successfully. The avant-garde artist Tyrsa, who was a very skilful draftsman and chidren’s book illustrator, produced a banner which decorated Nevsky Prospect and depicted a more unusual subject of the union between the worker, peasant and an intellectual (fig. 3.28). Tyrsa placed the heroes of new Russia in the centre of his panel: executed in a monochrome palette, they proudly march around the globe. Tyrsa’s sketch Young Man Sowing Seed (fig. 3.23), evoked the same motif depicted by Millet, Courbet, Daumier and Van Gogh, who dedicated some of their most celebratory paintings to the close association of peasants with the cycles of nature and saw ploughing, sowing and harvesting symbolic to man’s efforts to overcome the cycles of nature. O. Braz, P. Buchkin, G. Vereysky, V. Zamiraylo, V. Konashevich, B. Kustodiev, D. Mitrokhin, T. Chernyshev, S. Chekhonin, P. Shillingovsky, and S. Yaremich. It was dissolved in 1930.

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Figure 3.30

Tikhon Chernyshev. Union of workers and peasants and union of workers, soldiers and peasants. Sketches for decorations of the Metal Factory in Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-853, 854.

Most of Tyrsa’s sketches for decorations of the corner of Nevsky and Liteiny Prospects included dynamic compositions filled with bold forms drawn with bright colours on the red-orange background. In his pre-revolutionary article ‘The Drawings of Several Young Artists’ [Risunki neskolkikh molodykh], Punin observed that for Tyrsa ‘eternal form became the main idea and meaning of his art. He consistently clarified it from any layers, any compromises’.131 Already in 1916, Punin called Tyrsa’s drawings ‘organic, powerful and steady art; art, which we have been long waiting for, which we called for – the way to the art of the future.’132 He admired Tyrsa for his ‘simple, noble artistic language, calm and confident taste.’133 Tyrsa’s confident ‘strong and exact’ form, his ‘art hollowed out in space’ and his ‘metal-

131

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N. Punin, ‘Risunki neskol’kikh ‘molodykh’’ (N. Altman, P. L’vov, P. Miturich, N. Tyrsa, L. Bruni, M. Sokolov), in Apollon, no. 4-5, 1916, p. 6. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…вечная форма стала как бы идеей искусства, смыслом творчества. Он очищает её последовательно и проникновенно от всех наслоений, от всех компромисов.’ Ibid., p. 8. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Искусство органическое, мощное и устойчивое; искусство, которого мы ждали, которое звали – путь к искусству будущего.’ Ibid., p. 12. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘благородная сдержанность, спокойный уверенный вкус.’

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bronze style’134 found strong reflection in his beautiful and lyrical, but at the same time minimalist panels which decorated Petrograd in November 1918. However, some artists, Tyrsa included, often remained misunderstood by the Festival Bureau. Already at the meeting of the workers’ deputies which took place on 24 September 1918, the head of the Festival Bureau, Andreeva proclaimed: The October Revolution was the most important event in world history – victory and celebration of the proletariat, joy and firm conviction in the final triumph. But the fighting is not over yet…The festival should be serious and severe. The festival should be coloured with red. This holiday will demonstrate our power and might, it will become our appraisal.135 Andreeva, given her traditional view on visual art, did not want Futurists to ‘review’ the October Revolution. Like many academic artists, she believed that their decorations were unsuitable for Petrograd’s classical architecture. Narkompros was still predominantly influenced by the left artists and their supporters, which secured Futurists a few major commissions. The heart of the city – Palace Square (re-named after the October Revolution Uritsky Square) was decorated by one of the Futurists, Altman, who was still under thirty, but back in 1917, had cancelled his trip to America when he was asked by Lunacharsky to work with Shterenberg of IZO Narkompros. Altman knew both Shterenberg and Lunacharsky from his year spent in Paris (1910-1911), where he started his first experiments with form. Possibly as a result of this friendship, in 1918, Altman was given this most important commission and transformed this epiphany of classical architecture with cubist forms. In his memoirs, the artist explained: I set myself the task of changing the appearance of the square as created by history and transforming it into a place to which the revolutionary 134 135

Ibid., p. 14. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘выдолбленное в пространстве искусство, метало-бронзовый стиль.’ TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 2, d. 10, p. 1. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Доклад председателя Центрального бюро по организации празднества М.Ф. Андреевой, сделанный на заседании Петроградского Совета депутатов трудящихся 24 сентября 1918 г.: «Революция октябрьская величайшее в мире событие – победа и праздник пролетариата, радость и твердая, светлая уверенность в своем окончательном торжестве. Но бои еще не кончены… Праздник должен носить серьезный и строгий характер. Праздник должен носить красный цвет… Праздник этот явится подсчетом сил, он выявит нашу мощь, он явится нашим смотром».

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Chapter 3 people had come to celebrate its victory. I decided not to decorate it. The creations of Rastrelli and Rossi required no decoration. I wanted to set against the beauty of imperial Russia the new beauty of the victorious people. I was seeking not harmony with the old but a contrast with it.136

In the 1950s, Altman wrote in his autobiography: In his designs for the decorations of the Palace Square the artist Altman ‘closed his eyes’ on the architecture for the sake of creation of festive, cheerful rebellious and revolutionary mood. Unusual colours, which were introduced to the city decoration by Altman for the first time were haunting imagination and inspired an emotional boost.137 In his unpublished memoirs, which were written for his exhibition in 1969, Altman confessed that he had to fight for the right to use in his decorations ‘all the colours of the spectrum’ rather than just red.138 In this brave project, a speaker’s tribune with tongues of orange, yellow and red flame flaring up from it was erected in the middle of the square (fig. 3.31-3.32). The street lights on its four corners were incorporated in large red cubes which would light up at night. The buildings surrounding the square were connected with structures made out of plywood (fig. 3.33) which could

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OR RNB, f. 1126, ed. khr. 66, p. 6. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В воспоминаниях «О моей работе на Дворцовой площади к празднованию первой годовщины Октябрьской революции» Н. Альтман писал: «Я поставил себе задачу изменить исторически сложившийся облик площади, превратить ее в место, куда революционный народ пришел праздновать свою победу. Я не стал украшать ее. Творения Растрелли и Росси не нуждались в этом. Красоте императорской России я хотел проти вопоставить новую красоту победившего народа. Не гармонию со старым я искал, а контраст, противоположность ему».’ Nathan Altman, Avtobiografiia, 1951-1969 гг. In OR RNB, f. 1126, op. 1, d. 54, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Художник Альтман при оформлении Дворцовой площади в первую годовщину Октября «закрыл глаза» на архитектуру во имя создания праздничного, ликующего революционно-бунтарского настроения. Впервые введённые в практику оформления праздника Альтманом непривычные цвета будоражили воображение, вызывали определённый эмоциональный подъём.’ Nathan Altman, O moei rabote na Dvortsovoi ploshchadi k prazdnovaniu pervoi godovshchiny Oktiabr’skoi revolutsii, in OR RNB, f. 1126, ed. khr. 66, p. 8. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Мне пришлось повоевать прежде чем мне удалось сломать монополию красного цвета и добиться возможности пользоваться на праздниках всеми цветами спектра.’

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Figure 3.31

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The Alexander Column on Uritsky ( former Palace) Square decorated by Nathan Altman; children from Petrograd ophanages in front of Alexander Column on 7 November 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

have been inspired by the studies for the decorations of the square in front of the Odeon Theatre in Paris for the Festival of the Supreme Being, which Altman could have seen during his studies in Paris. Since the leaves had already fallen from the trees in the adjoining Alexander Gardens, Altman designed plywood geometrical shapes and covered them with bright green fabric in order to conceal the dark bare branches. Across these trees the slogan ‘Proletariat of all countries unite’ was written (fig. 3.34). In his memoirs, Altman stressed that he wrote all the slogans himself. Apart from the slogan on the trees, he covered the facades of the Winter Palace and other buildings around the square with large posters which depicted workers and peasants with slogans ‘He Who Was Nothing Will be Everything’, ‘Art to the Workers’, ‘Palaces to the Working People’, ‘Land to the Working People’ and ‘Factories to the Working People’ (fig. 3.35). In his designs for the decorations of the Palace Square, Altman combined simplified cubist forms with bold and striking figures of workers holding slo-

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Figure 3.32

Nathan Altman. Design for the decoration of Uritsky Square, Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1371.

gans. Back in 1916, Punin wrote that in Altman’s drawings, shape dictates the colour and forms the composition.139 Judging by the sketches for the Palace Square decorations, one can see that here Altman was interested not only in the relationships between the textures of different materials (plywood temporary structures surrounding a granite column); he also investigated the colour relations of the materials: each plane, painted in a certain colour and interacting with the surrounding space, intensified the classical shapes of the architectural composition of the square. In 1921, the critic Shklovsky wrote in his article about Altman: He contributed relatively little: several cubes and planes at the bottom of Alexander Column, several planes by the General Staff Building, but what he has done completely transformed the meaning of the architectural ensemble; it changed it more than if he had moved the column to

139

See Nikolai Punin, ‘Risunki neskol’kikh ‘molodykh’’ (N. Altman, P. L’vov, P. Miturich, N. Tyrsa, L. Bruni, M. Sokolov), in Apollon, no. 4-5, 1916.

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.33

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Nathan Altman. Design for the decoration of the General Staff Building, Uritsky Square, Petrograd. 7 November 1918. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1370.

the corner of the square and turned it upside-down. The column overcame its static state – it was breaking up and it looked like it was moving. It was not a mere decoration, but a true architectural revolution.140 In 1920, Anatoly Lunacharsky explained that in 1918 they were ‘not in the position to make use of architecture on a wide scale for propaganda purposes, […] for an ultimate, maximum, and extremely powerful way of influencing the social soul.’141 Temporary, brave Futurist constructions could change the focal point of the Palace Square and provide a vision of the future for hungry workers. However, Punin refused to accept any arguments for the necessity of temporary city decorations at a time of shortages and starvation. In December 1918, he wrote:

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OR RNB, f. 1126, ed. kh. 50, p. 13. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Он внес сравнительно немного: несколько кубов и плоскостей у подножия Александровской колонны, несколько плоскостей у здания штаба, но то, что он внес совершенно изменило весь смысл архитектурного построения, больше изменило, чем если бы он отодвинул колонну в утол площади и там перевернул ее цоколем вверх. Колонна вышла из статического состояния, переламывалась и, казалось, двигалась. Это не было украшением, но это была подлинная архитектурная революция.’ Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art’, in Russian Art of the Avant-garde. Theory and Criticism, ed. by John Bowlt, p. 192.

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Figure 3.34

Viktor Bulla. Crowd of spectators in front of Altman’s plywood panel designed to hide bare trees. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5515.

The October festivities differed little from what the worldwide bourgeoisie did in its own time. The same streets were decorated with material, wooden arches, garlands, electric and even just coloured lanterns, somehow dully reminiscent of the notorious ‘days of the tsars,’ with their gas lit designs and stars … This happened only because the organisers themselves did not think much about the idea of ‘celebration’ and performed their assignment offhandedly, ‘with whatever fits’…To blow up, demolish, wipe off the face of the earth the old artistic forms – that’s the dream of the new artist, the proletarian artist, the new man. … If you can’t destroy, build stage props, pretend to demolish, but do not decorate. Do not decorate, since nobody needs these decorations. Not just me but everyone who has eyes and some common sense, was sorry to see such a huge amount of fabric, spoilt by often very low quality posters; in our time when we all do not have any trousers or skirts, it is the same as hanging bread on the streets just for fun. … We did not need

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.35

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Nathan Altman. Design for decorations of the General Staff Building. Slogans on the two large panels read: ‘Factories to the working people’ and ‘He, who was nothing will be everything’. Photos: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-1370, 1372.

these painted cloths – wet, faded and torn; life was not merry in those days.142 And it did not help that Altman’s decorations were not understood by the majority of workers. The newspapers reported that Altman’s decorations seemed ‘foreign’ to the columns of workers marching through Palace Square.143 Unlike the Futurists, who aimed to destroy the imperial splendour of imperial St. Petersburg, the World of Art artists, who also participated in the decoration of Petrograd, tried to stress the imperial grandeur and the harmonious 142 143

N. Punin, ‘K itogam Oktiabr’skikh Torzhestv’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1. See this quotation in Russian and the full article in appendix no. 5. See A. Piotrovskii, Za Sovetskii Teatr (Leningrad, 1925), p. 51.

168

Figure 3.36

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Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. Spheres in front of the Admiralty decorated with a ribbon bearing the signs of the zodiac. 7 November 1918. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 441.

beauty of the city. Next to Altman’s cubist masterpiece, Dobuzhinsky (who had also criticised the Futurists’ decorations for 1 May 1918) decorated the Admiralty, using the building’s neoclassical architecture for inspiration. Staying within the facade’s stylistic limits, he draped the cornices with red flags and garlands. Naval code was used as a motif, including a ship decorated with sea horses. Obelisks and spheres were placed in front of the Admiralty and decorated with a ribbon bearing the signs of the zodiac (fig. 3.36). The triumphal pyramids on the Admiralty’s Neva frontage were reminiscent of rather similar celebratory towers that were built on the Neva Embankment for celebrations of the victory of Russian troops in Grengham on 27 June 1720. Only five years earlier for celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty on 21st February 1913, the most grandiose decorations, depicting huge double-headed eagles, had adorned the Admiralty. The side facade of the Admiralty was draped in imperial purple with the coat of arms of the Romanov dynasty covering its entire length, topped by a crown almost fourteen feet in diameter. Dobuzhinsky replaced purple with red, and the crown with the controversial double-headed eagle with a hammer and sickle in its claws.

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These old-fashioned decorations were more familiar and thus easier to relate to by the average onlooker: familiarity was an important consideration at the time when most participants of the demonstrations were still illiterate. Thus, Kustodiev’s Oruzheinaia Square decorations, which included masts and flagpoles linked by garlands of scarlet flags and greenery and positioned around the square, were very well received by the workers. Between the masts were six panels with the images of easily recognisable specialist workers, a baker, a shoemaker, a carpenter, a tailor, a reaper and a market girl with a large banner dedicated to ‘Labour’ as a centrepiece. These panels ‘looked more like commercial images for upscale boutiques’144 than ‘rough and ready’ propaganda, but nevertheless, they impressed Lunacharsky when he wrote in his memoirs: ‘I recall to this day seeing before me Kustodiev’s precise, stern, beautifully composed panels, celebrating all forms of labour…which resembled some sort of large coloured engravings.’145 Another famous representative of the World of Art movement, Boris Grigoriev, who took an active part in the creation of the first Professional Labour Union of Artists in Petrograd in 1918, decorated the English Embankment in the centre of Petrograd with a rather unexpected composition which he called Socialism (fig. 3.37). This composition included a portrait of the American egalitarian poet Walt Whitman and stanzas from his famous poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which in the nineteenth century was already viewed as obscene for its overt sexuality. Translated into Russian (as Pobegi Travy) in 1911, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was admired by the avant-garde poet Khlebnikov, who called the poet ‘Old Walt’ and whom he regarded as one of his visionary forebears.146 Revolutionary photographer Rodchenko and film-director Vertov often mentioned Whitman in their writings, with Vertov claiming that in his own poems he always tried to imitate Russian Futurist poetry and Russian translations from Walt Whitman.147 Rather like the demon in Mikhail Vrubel’s famous drawing of 1890, Walt Whitman’s face in Grigoriev’s panel was shifted towards the lower edge of the 144 145

146 147

Bowlt, ‘Transcending Reason’, in Ivan Puni and Photographs of the Russian Revolution, p. 46. V. Toslstoy, I. Bibikova and N. Levchenko (eds.), Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo: Oformlenie prazdnestv. 1917-32 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1984), vol. 1, p. 48. See translation in Tolstoy, Bibikova and Cooke (eds.), Street Art of the Revolution. See Ronald Vroon (ed.), Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov (Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 249. See Yuri Tsivian, Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties (Bloomington and London: University of Indiana Press, 2004), p. 3.

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Figure 3.37

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Boris Grigoriev. Portrait of Walt Whitman. Sketches for the composition Socialism for the decoration of the English Embankment in Petrograd. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-742-746.

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Figure 3.38

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Boris Grigoriev. Sketches for the composition Socialism for the decoration of the English Embankment in Petrograd. Inscribed: ‘Bridge decorated with lanterns, some decorated with signs and flowers, some with heads of workers, lit from inside by an electric bulb. Lanterns are red, some are covered with fabric with painted flowers.’ Signs on the lanterns read: ‘My password: democracy!’; ‘All things are equal’; ‘My great comrade whom I am missing’, etc. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-742-746.

picture plane. The grandeur is pronounced in the very representation of this famous poet and the large scale of the face is supported by the flowing folds of his light blue robe as if he were God with planet Earth in the background. Although it is doubtful that many passers-by knew of Walt Whitman or read his poems, Grigoriev’s panel proved to be quite popular and in his review of the Petrograd decorations for the first anniversary of the Revolution, critic Pumpianskii noted the originality of thought and spiritual freedom in Grigoriev’s work.148 148

See L. Pumpianskii, ‘The October Artistic Works and Artists of Petrograd’, in Plamia, 1919, no. 35, p. 14.

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Figure 3.39

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Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Sketches for decorations of Teatralnaia (Theatre) Square in Petrograd. The two panels above illustrate the exploits of Stepan Razin. Below: the design of a free-standing panel (also by Petrov-Vodkin, seen at the sides of the Square in the sketch above). Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-876.

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Figure 3.40

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V. Shcherbakov. Sketch for the banner Scales of justice. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-1005.

Verses from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (such as ‘My password: democracy!’; ‘All things are equal’; ‘My great comrade whom I am missing’) were written on the lanterns that had been described by Grigoriev in his note on his design (now at the Russian Museum): ‘Bridge decorated with lanterns, some decorated with signs and flowers, some with heads of workers, lit from inside by the electric bulb. Lanterns are red, some are covered with fabric with painted flowers.’ (fig. 3.38). Another popular panel depicted one of the most popular historical figures at the time, Stepan Razin, the leader of a seventeenth-century peasants’ revolt on the Volga, and was painted by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. On an enormous fitteen-metre-wide panel, which adorned Theatre Square, the rebel leader was shown as a man of dignity, preoccupied and full of presentiment, among his feasting men (fig. 3.39). Later Petrov-Vodkin wrote about this panel: It was an important and interesting work which, according to a resolution of the Art Workers’ Trade Union, was to have been preserved, but it somehow found its way into the backyard of some local soviet and was

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Figure 3.41

Tikhon Chernyshev. The Call. Sketch for decorations of the Metal Factory in Petrograd. Photo: State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg. СРБ-1009.

Figure 3.42

Mikhail Rundaltsov. Sketches for decorations of the Catherine Canal Embankment (in front of St. Nicholas Cathedral). Inscribed ‘Triumph of the Revolution’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-923, 924.

later used for foot-bindings, because the canvas was relatively good. I did it with a group of 13 of my students, and we worked on it day and night, as they say. You must remember that at this time nothing was available and we had to resort to such measures as hijacking horses and cabs and driving around the city confiscating whatever we could… When I saw the

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Figure 3.43

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Decorations of the Catherine Canal Embankment (in front of St. Nicholas Cathedral). Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

parades passing in front of Sten’ka Razin, I felt for the first time that I was in my place, that my work was where it should be.149 This panel includes all the main elements of Petrov-Vodkin’s unique style which was formed under a wide range of influences, often seemingly incompatible: nineteenth-century realistic Russian painters, the artists of the Munich Secession, as well as, Maurice Denis, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, the painting of Giovanni Bellini, early Russian frescoes and icons and Russian folklore and even popular songs. In this work, he expressed his pictorial and philosophical system, which was characterised by a ‘three-colour’ principle and built on the contrasts of the primary colours: yellow, red and blue. The difference in characters is revealed in the painterly expression of the bodies and the rhythm of the lines – both elastic and energetic as well as circular and soft, amplified by sharp colour contrasts. Sharp-eyed Lunacharsky remarked: ‘I re-

149

Tolstoy, Bibikova and Cooke (eds.), Street Art of the Revolution, document 23.

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Figure 3.44

Arnold Lakhovsky, Iakov Bluvshtein. Sketch for a decorative arch, ‘Glory to Labour’, which had to be erected at the crossing of Simeonovskaia Street and Liteiny Prospect. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-850.

member Petrov-Vodkin’s large panel with its wonderful range of yellow, orange and blue tones.’150 In 1918, together with the new allegories that involved images of workers and peasants, even religious images were still widely used. Among them were depictions of a worker leaping onto a winged horse (the classical Pegasus) (fig. 3.40), angels blowing their trumpets (fig. 3.41), classical heroes wreathed in laurel, or warriors in helmets and with swords. There were triumphal arches with columns, sacrificial altars and towers, as well as coats of arms with complete heraldic detail: crests and mantles. In front of St. Nicholas Cathedral, Mikhail Rundaltsov erected a panel called Triumph of the Revolution, in which God and an angel give a blessing to the workers (fig. 3.42, 3.43). Regarded as one of the leading Russian engravers

150

V. Tolstoy, I. Bibikova and N. Levchenko (eds.), Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo: Oformlenie prazdnestv. 1917-32, vol. I, p. 48. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Я помню большую панель Петрова-Водкина с великолепным спектром жёлтых, оранжевых и синих тонов.’

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Figure 3.45

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Konstantin Bikshe. Temporary arch at the entrance to Pestel ( former Panteleimonovskii) Bridge (linked to the Summer Gardens) in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, IB-5448.

before the Revolution, Rundaltsov created one of the most famous portraits of Nicholas II along with the portraits of famous writers. In 1917, he quickly adapted to the new regime and engraved a portrait of Kerensky followed by Lenin (1919). In his panel for the decorations of the Catherine Canal Embankment, Rundaltsov adopted a classic composition and combined new and old allegories in one design. The famous words of St. Paul ‘He Who Does Not Work Will Not Eat!’ were quoted on the banner that was placed on the facade of the Commissariat for Agriculture, and were changed in Boguslavskaia’s banner into ‘The One Who Works – Eats.’ The two columns by the entrance to the Proletkult offices were decorated with depictions of an artist with a palette and brushes in his hands and an author holding a scroll in his arms like a baby. Depicted in the pose of those awaiting with attributes typical for their professions, they resemble the apostles in Russian Orthodox icons. Numerous temporary arches were erected around the city (fig. 3.44, 3.45). These had constituted the core of most city decorations from the time of Pe-

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Figure 3.46

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Lev Rudnev. Sketches for banners. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-940.

ter the Great and originated in the Russian Orthodox tradition of the Tsar’s Gates, which separate the altar from the rest of the church, as well as Roman triumphant arches. The artist and architect Rudnev went further and used the famous design of the Russian Orthodox Ripida, which traditionally was a symbol of a six-winged seraph and was used by priests to scare flies from the holy relics during religious ceremonies. Rudnev replaced the image of the seraph with the word ‘Marx’ and burning flames (fig. 3.46). Typical motifs such as laurel wreaths, sacrificial altars and triumphal chariots were still being borrowed from classical antiquity and the festivals of the French Revolution: they well suited Petrograd’s classic architecture. They reflected the inheritance of the values of the French Revolution and the implied long, historical continuity as opposed to recent historical reality. Lu-

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.47

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Alexander Klein. Sketch for a panel for the former Synod Building with the theme ‘The old world has collapsed; a new world is imminent’. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-851.

nacharsky felt that such decorations were most appropriate for the expression of the spirit of the Revolution. He wrote: ‘This is what the French Revolution dreamed of, what it aspired to; this is what passed by the finest people of that most cultured of democracies – Athens; this is what are approaching already.’151 The interpretation of these motifs ranged from direct classical references (fig. 3.47) to Baranov-Rossiné’s chariot-borne revolutionary soldier. Rudnev, who designed the memorial to the victims of the Revolution on the Field of Mars, decorated it for the October celebrations with painted panels, including a depiction of glory, symbolised by an angel with a trumpet. Other examples depicting glory included an unknown artist’s sketches, which were built on the contrasts of dark red and gold and imbued with triumphal energy and exultant joy. On the second day of the celebrations, the Palace of Labour was opened and the Monument to Labour (sculptor Mikhail Blokh, fig. 3.48) was unveiled. Af-

151

Anatoly Lunacharsky, ‘Revolution and Art’, in Russian Art of the Avant-garde. Theory and Criticism, ed. by John Bowlt, p. 193.

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Figure 3.48

Chapter 3

Mikhail Blokh. The Metalworker, Petrograd. November 1918. Photo: The State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

ter the orchestra played The Internationale, the choir performed several songs calling for the unity of workers throughout the world. The appearance of a half-naked speaker impersonating a leader of the French Revolution was met with applause and brought back memories of May Day 1917, which also included numerous references to the French Revolution. Such performances and references to classical tradition were easier to relate to than the brave experiments of the avant-garde artists. The Futurists argued that the creation of the new mass-agitational art would be the beginning of a new proletarian culture. Decoration of the routes along which the processions would march – the Nevskii and Liteiny prospects, the Okhta and the Palace Embankment – was

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.49

181

Vladimir Lebedev. Competition entry for Palace Square decorations. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-717.

given to left radical artists. Apart from Altman, the head of IZO Narkompros Shterenberg decorated the bridge over the Winter Canal with a panel, which depicted a stylised ‘sun of freedom’ with rays penetrating clouds to warm an unfolding flower; the emblem of the new life. In his design, the artist employed

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Figure 3.50

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Vladimir Lebedev. Sketches for two panels for Narodny Bridge ‘Long Live the Red Army’ and ‘Long Live the International’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-828, 829.

geometric structures and simplified imagery in saturated colours. Here the ornament directs, rather than supports, a total visual effect. By adopting the creative principles of the traditional Russian decorative arts, Shterenberg gave each ornamental detail in this composition a structural rather than auxiliary role. Lebedev, who was hoping to decorate the Palace Square (fig. 3.49) but lost the competition to Altman, decorated Narodny Bridge (which crosses the

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.51

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Lebedev’s panel on Narodny Bridge. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5451.

Moika River on the Nevsky Prospect, a main parade route) with Futurist designs and slogans ‘Long Live the Red Army’ and ‘Long Live the International’ (fig. 3.50, 3.51). For Lebedev, dynamic form was the most essential element of the composition. Rectangular organising structures located near the panel’s edge created with their accurate but interrupted lines a system of coordinates with a symmetrical axis. The static arrangement of these planes was destroyed, however, by the diagonally situated shapes and slogans. The energy with which the artist organised the composition created a feeling of movement and constant change of perspective. In these panels, Lebedev utilised both verbal and visual language to construct the most dynamic rhythm. In 1928, Punin wrote an essay about Lebedev, who was one of his favourite artists. The article was to accompany his exhibition at the Russian Museum. Punin compared Lebedev to Matisse, for the richness of emotional expression even in his cubist paintings and posters: … Everything which is painted by the artist [Lebedev] is so truthful, so spontaneously pulled from the innermost depth of life itself, that no one

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Figure 3.52

Chapter 3

Ivan Puni. Sketches for decorations of Okhtenskii Bridge and Liteiny Prospect. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-906-909.

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.53

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Ivan Puni. Panel for decoration of the former Army and Navy Hall on Liteiny Prospect. Photo on the left: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-910. Photo on the right: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б5447.

can possibly deny the role of lively perception in the formation of these works.152 Puni’s panels for Okhtenskii Bridge (fig. 3.52) incorporated primitive tendencies: in the conventionality of forms, the division of the panel’s surface into squares, and bright colours, they corresponded perfectly to the lubok prints as well as children’s drawings. The intersection of a rotating, circular composition with a dynamically open framework of diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines was the dominant theme of his panel for the decoration of the former Army and Navy Hall on Liteiny Prospect (fig. 3.53). 152

N. Punin, ‘V. V. Lebedev’, in N. N. Punin, Russkoe i sovetskoe iskusstvo. Mastera russkogo iskusstva XIV-nachala XX veka. Sovetskie khudozhniki. Izbrannye trudy o russkom i sovetskom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve, ed. by Irina Punina (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1976), p. 226. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…всё, что изображено художником [Лебедевым], до такой степени правдиво, так непосредственно вырвано из самых недр жизни, что вряд ли кто-либо станет отрицать роль живого восприятия в формировании этих работ.’

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Figure 3.54

Chapter 3

Vladimir Kozlinsky. Panel for decorations of Okhta. Photo on the left: State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg. СРБ-911. Photo on the right: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5448.

But unlike Boguslavskaia, who decorated several buildings along the procession route with huge non-objective boards, Puni resorted to more accessible symbols of the Revolution: workers, soldiers, factories and rifles. His panel Armed Workers in a Car shows black silhouettes of armed figures with red flags rushing diagonally across the composition in an automobile. Kozlinsky’s anniversary panel RSFSR (fig. 3.54) presented white letters on a red plane super-imposed on a black diagonal with demonstrators carrying red flags underneath. With its integration of text and image, this panel had the same function as a traditional Russian signboard or a lubok, using radically simplified visual image and verbal abbreviation to convey its message. In Chekhonin’s designs (fig. 3.55), calligraphy, the use of garlands, bouquets and other classic decorative elements take a prominent place. His sketches were inspired by the rich and inventive Russian decorative art. The artist’s pro-

Narkompros versus Proletkult

Figure 3.55

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Sergei Chekhonin. Sketches for decorations of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The text on the poster on the right reads: ‘Death to oppressors’. Photos: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, СРБ-1011, 1013.

found knowledge of traditional folk art and impeccable sense of design mixed with a deep exploration of colours made these city decorations unique. In his posters produced for 7 November 1918, Chekhonin widely employed Crane’s method of combining decoration with politics by surrounding portraits of Lenin with decorative bouquets of flowers. But although in October 1918, the new Futurist art claimed to be the artistic vanguard, it proved unreliable in communicating with the proletariat, who were, after all, officially the most important class after the Bolshevik Revolution. Public art had to surrender to more self-explanatory realism. After several complaints from leaders of the professional unions of workers about the incomprehensibility of avant-garde art to the workers, in April 1919, the Petrograd Soviet declared that the Futurists would be barred from the festive decorations for May Day 1919.153 On 10 April 1919, the newspaper Petrogradskaia Pravda published a decree of the Petrograd Soviet that stated:

153

See Severnaia Kommuna, 10 April 1919.

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Chapter 3 Dealing with the question of decorations for 1 May and taking into consideration complaints from several districts of the city about the Futurist dominance in all our previous celebrations, the Committee of the Petrograd Soviet declared: whatever happens avoid interference by the Futurists from IZO Narkompros.154

As a result of this decree, the brave and colourful decorations of Petrograd that adorned the city in 1918 all along the route of the demonstration were soon replaced by more traditional parades that excluded imagination and were meant to glorify the new Bolshevik regime, but now were using a more traditional, academic language. 154

Petrogradskaia Pravda, 10 April 1919. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пересмотрев вопрос об организации празднования 1 Мая и ознакомившись с жалобами из районов на футуристическое засилье во всех наших предыдущих празднествах, исполком Петроградского Совета постановил: ни в коем случае не передавать организацию первомайского празднества в руки футуристов из отдела изобразительных искусств.’

Chapter 4

The Victory of Figuration over Futurism: from Cultural Diversity to Military Parade Art of the Commune at the Centre of the Debate on the Nature of Proletarian Art ‘The revolution is most wonderful for its lack of logic,’ – wrote the art critic Punin in his diary in November 1919.1 In this challenging year in the history of Russia, the art critic still believed that art (and especially left art) was to play a crucial role in the definition and advancement of the new Bolshevik society, despite the lack of public understanding and diminishing support from the government. This thorny subject, the definition of the new proletarian art (at the heart of Bogdanov’s work, and that of Lunarcharsky and Narkompros) and subsequently its organisation, was taken up by Punin (fig. 4.1) in the first months after the October Revolution and taken to yet another level at the end of 1918. From his position as the head of the Petrograd branch of IZO (following Shterenberg’s move to Moscow), Punin set about cajoling the new Bolshevik government to support avant-garde artists in Petrograd as well as in Moscow. Punin was so successful that the avant-garde could not only survive, but promote their radical views in the newly-emerged media, and even publish books at a time of catastrophic paper shortage. In December 1918, a new weekly newspaper was launched, mainly expressing the views of the left artists, and edited by Punin. Called Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo kommuny] (fig. 4.2), it probably drew its name from the avantgarde society, Commune des Arts, which arose during the French Revolution. Financed by IZO, the new weekly journal aimed to reduce the gap between the Futurists and the average Soviet citizen, but soon it was declared to be ‘a haven for the avant-garde rather than a service to the revolution.’2 The publication ran from 7 December 1918 to 13 April 1919. In this brief period, only 19 issues of this brave newspaper appeared, but despite its short life, 1 The Diaries of Nikolai Punin: 1904-1953, ed. by Sidney Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, trans. by Jennifer Greene Kupala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), diary entry of 14 November 1919, p. 61. 2 Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905-1925, p. 139.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_006

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Figure 4.1

Nikolai Punin in 1919. Photo: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg.

Figure 4.2

Front page of Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo kommuny], 5 January 1919.

Art of the Commune survives as a valuable document in the history of Russian Futurism. The Soviet writer Kornei Zelinsky remarked about this Futurist medium after it closed down: ‘Its format was small, its contents astonishing.’3

3 Quoted in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, trans. from Polish by Boleslaw Taborski (London: Viktor Gollancz Ltd, 1972), p. 246.

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Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 1: 7 December 1918 The first issue contained articles by the writer Brik, editor and critic Punin and painter Malevich, together with poet Mayakovsky’s poem ‘Orders for the Army of Art’ [Prikaz po Armii Iskusstv]. At a meeting of the Committee for Visual Arts on 5 December 1918, Punin had said that the first issue of this journal had been prepared within a week, and 10,000 copies would already have been printed. He remarked that it had to be published ‘as a matter of urgency’.4 So, on 7 December 1918, the first issue of the Art of the Commune appeared. It was the best medium for writers, artists and art critics to express their views and observations on new art and on all the processes in it, as well as to announce all the exhibitions of new artists. Being part of the IZO Narkompros, Art of the Commune mainly focused on visual arts, becoming more and more a propagator of primarily Futurist aesthetics, but due to the involvement of Mayakovsky, the newspaper also had a section for literature (though dominated by the Futurists as well). So, when Mayakovsky proclaimed in one of the issues of the journal that ‘the streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes’, by ‘our’ he meant nobody else but Futurists. Chagall, Brik, Kushner, Malevich, Altman and Puni would publish their articles alongside the official statements from Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, Head of IZO Shterenberg and the agenda for the meetings of IZO. At the time, Iskusstvo kommuny was a weekly reporting witness to the art of post-revolutionary Russia. Its first issue proclaimed: ‘Our paper is for everyone interested in the creation of the coming (future) art.’ In this issue Punin published his article ‘To the Outcome of the October Celebrations’ [K itogam oktiabr’skikh torzhestv] focusing on the criticism of the celebrations of the first anniversary of October Revolution. He declared: ‘In our times there is nothing that is not important – even the smallest movement and the least significant word has historical significance. Now it is unacceptable to do anything just half-way.’5 Punin wrote that instead of decorating old buildings, the new proletarian artists had to build new ones; instead of producing mediocre old-fashioned posters, they had to make avant-garde placards.6 In his next article ‘Attempts of Restoration’ [Popytki Restavratsii] published in the same issue of the Art of the Commune, Punin proclaimed: 4 Ibid., p. 245. 5 N. Punin, ‘K itogam oktiabr’skikh torzhestv’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1, p. 2. 6 See N. Punin, ‘Vstrecha ob iskusstve’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 18, no. 1, p. 4.

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Chapter 4 Revolution does not just break old forms of public and social structure – but it also destroys outmoded culture, old outlook, old ideology. Since art is the expression of this culture and spiritual values – there is revolution and reaction in it as well.7

In words later echoed by the German Bauhaus, Punin stated that creative work should be functional rather than decorative, producing objects for living and working, rather than art for the sake of pure enjoyment. Punin asserted that the goal of ‘autonomous proletarian art… is not a matter of decoration but of the creation of new artistic objects.’ In particular, he felt that Tatlin, whom he admired more than any other Russian artist, and his use of materials provided ‘the only creative force free enough to lead art out of the trenches of its old positions.’8 Tatlin was striving to ‘combine purely artistic forms with utilitarian goals’9 and many ideas that were later developed by the Constructivists were first articulated within the pages of Art of the Commune.10 As Viktor Pertsov observed in 1925, ‘the theory of production art was developed in 1918-19 and formulated in the pages of the newspaper Art of the Commune.’11 In his article ‘A Drain for Art’ [Drenazh Iskusstv] Brik proclaimed: ‘Do not disturb, but create…art is like any other means of production…not ideas, but a real object is the aim of all true creativity’.12 He declared that the existing division between art and production was a relic from the past and that proletarian art should combine industrial production with art. The theory of production art found further development in a small collection of essays entitled Art in Production, written in 1920 and published by the 7

8

9 10 11 12

N. Punin, ‘Popytki Restavratsii’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Революция не ломает только формы общественного и социального строя – но разрушает также отжившую культуру, старый дух, старую идеологию. Поскольку искусство является выразителем этой культуры и того духа – для него также существует и революция, и реакция.’ See H. Gassner, ‘The Constructivists: Modernism on the Way to Modernization’, in The Great Utopia. The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 (New York: The Guggenheim Museum, 1992), pp. 305-306. Quoted in Christina Lodder, Constructive Strands in Russian Art. 1914-1937 (London: The Pindar Press, 2005), p. 304. Ibid., p. 302. Viktor Pertsov, For the New Art [Za novoe iskusstvo] (Moscow, Vserossiiskii proletkul’t, 1925), quoted in Lodder, Constructive Strands in Russian Art, p. 302. Osip Brik, ‘Drenazh Iskusstv’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1, p. 1, quoted in Lodder, Constructive Strands in Russian Art, p. 302.

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Art and Production section of Narkompros in 1921.13 Here Shterenberg stressed the important role of art in improvement of the quality of factory-made objects. However already in May 1922, a member of Moscow Proletkult, Pertsov, published an article, in which he rejected the link between art and production and stressed that art should not be abolished or suppressed by industrial production.14 Back in 1918, the first issue of Art of the Commune also contained a full report of discussions on the role of art in the new proletarian society and the nature of the new art. These discussions were held at the Palace of Arts (the renamed Winter Palace). It was the first account of these debates ever published in Russia. By then four meetings had taken place: the first three, at the former Academy of Arts, were aimed mainly at students; but the fourth meeting on 24 November 1918 held at the Armorial Hall of the former Winter Palace was sought to attract ‘the wide working masses.’ Its theme was ‘Temple or Factory’ [Khram ili Zavod]. The debate was opened by the editor of the Art of the Commune himself, Punin, who remarked in his speech: Bourgeois art is for those who can observe it calmly and passively. […] When the bourgeoisie started treating art as a temple, the artistic activity became…a sacred act. […] The Proletariat… does not share such a point of view on art. It is hungry, and it cannot just calmly contemplate art.15 Punin admitted that proletarian art did not exist yet, but would be soon created by the proletariat, who create material things every day, and know the very essence of their creations. He finished his speech by saying that: ‘Art for the proletariat is not a temple, where everyone contemplates lazily, but labour, the factory, which produces artistic works for everyone.’16 13 14 15

16

See Lodder, Constructive Strands in Russian Art. 1914-1937, p. 303. Viktor Pertsov, ‘At the Junction of Art and Production’, quoted in Lynton, Tatlin’s Tower, p. 128. ‘Miting ob iskusstve’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 7 December 1918, no. 1, pp. 3-4. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Буржуазное искусство рассчитано для тех, кто может его спокойно и пассивно созерцать. […] Буржуазия стала считать искусство храмом, художественное творчество стало… священнодействоем. […] Пролетариат… не может иметь такой точки зрения на искусство. Голодному, ему не было дано спокойно созерцать произведения искусства.’ Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Искусство для пролетариата не храм, где лениво только созерцают, а труд, завод, который выпускает всем художественные предметы.’

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In the newspaper, Punin’s passionate speech was followed by Brik’s article, in which he urged the proletariat to take over posts currently occupied by members of the bourgeoisie in order to change the whole life around them. He suggested that workers should take over the apartments and houses of the bourgeoisie and fill them up with the spirit of the Revolution. The final word in this discussion was given to Mayakovsky, who proclaimed that ‘art should concentrate not in dead temple-museums, but everywhere – on the streets, trams, factories, workshops and workers’ flats.’17 It is unclear from the report of this meeting published in the Art of the Commune whether members of the general public were given a chance to express their opinion. But the prime importance of this subject was evident judging by the numerous articles on proletarian art in all the subsequent issues of the newspaper.

Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 2: 15 December 1918 Another issue discussed ten days later on the pages of the Art of the Commune was the conflict between the leaders of Petrosoviet (Petrograd Union), Zinoviev and Ionov and IZO Narkompros. For the second issue of the newspaper, published on 15 December 1918, Brik wrote an article on the subject ‘artistproletariat’, once again asserting that the old art was dead, and proclaiming: ‘Art of the future – is proletarian art. Art will be proletarian or it won’t exist at all.’18 Following this bold statement, Brik explained that such organisations as Proletkult wrongly believed that the new art should be constructed by members of the proletariat itself, assuming that everything that is produced by workers automatically becomes proletarian art, since talent is universal and is given to everyone. He stated that: Proletarian art – is the art created by proletarian artists. The proletarian artist – is the person, who combines both creative gift and proletarian

17

18

Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Искусство должно быть сосредоточено не в мёртвых храмах-музеях, а повсюду – на улицах, в трамваях, на фабриках, в мастерских и в рабочих квартирах.’ O. Brik, ‘Khudozhnik-Proletarii’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 15 December 1918, no. 2, p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Искусство будущего – пролетарское искусство. Искусство будет пролетарским, или его не будет вовсе.’

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consciousness. […] His talent belongs to the collective. He creates in order to fulfil his public duty. He does not care about his own benefit, he does not try to ingratiate himself with the crowd; instead he fights its indolence and leads it along the path of continuously moving forward art. He always creates new art, fulfilling his social purpose.19 For Bogdanov, the founder of Proletkult, proletarian creation had to arise from the labour process and express the workers’ collective ethos; it had to serve as a means to organise and articulate the proletariat’s unique vision of the world. But these principles offered few guidelines for either form or content. On the front page of the second issue of Art of the Commune, Mayakovsky published his poem ‘Too Early to Rejoice’ [Radovat’sia Rano], in which the poet criticised people for holding onto old values in the name of art. This poem was followed by Lunacharsky’s comments, which aimed at mellowing Mayakovsky’s Futurist rejection of Pushkin’s poetry, Raphael’s paintings and Rastrelli’s architecture. But the Futurists refused to compromise, and Punin became their loyal ambassador. In the second issue of Art of the Commune, Punin published an article ‘Bomb-Throwing and Organisation’ [Bombometanie i Organizatsiia], in which he called the Futurists ‘heralds of the new culture and professional innovators’ and stated that ‘for the healthy and well thought-out Futurist outlook, demolition of the old times is just a method of fighting for existence’, although in the same article he stressed that ‘artistic terror’ should not be the only method of fighting for new art. Perhaps in contradiction of his Futurist stance, Punin said that new art should organise old values and forms, rather than deny them completely.20 He finished his article by concluding that: To insist on artistic terrorism as the only means of struggle now – means to confirm the stagnant deadliness of your consciousness, and thus leave 19

20

Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пролетарское искусство – это искусство художников-пролетариев. Художник-пролетарий – это человек, в котором сочетается воедино: творческий дар и пролетарское сознание. […] Его талант принадлежит коллективу. Он творит, чтобы выполнить общественно важное дело. Он не знает личной выгоды, не заискивает перед толпой, а борется с её косностью и ведёт её за собой путями непрерывно движущегося вперёд искусства. Он всегда творит новое, ибо в этом его общественное назначение.’ N. Punin, ‘Bombometanie i organizatsiia’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 15 December 1918, no. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘вестники новой культуры и профессиональные новаторы’; ‘…для здорового и продуманного футуристического мировоззрения разрушение старины только метод борьбы за свое существование.’

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Chapter 4 the path of truly creative youth. New times give new life, new consciousness and new methods. Bomb throwing is old and mouldy, we do not need it: we are looking for more organised methods.21

This article was probably Punin’s reply to the earlier allegations by Rodchenko published in the Anarchy [Anarkhiia] newspaper22 in April 1918: Enough! The art patrons oppressed us, they forced us to fulfill their whims, the authorities, the critics did the same; now the political parties are oppressing us. The new rulers put on us new chains: the Ministry of Art, Commissars of Art, Art Sections [as parts of Lunacharsky’s People’s Commissariat of Education]. Again, the unmissable bureaucratic commissars of art and their attendants are everywhere. […] I address you, oppressed proletarians of the brush: come to the battle from your undergrounds and lofts! Let us unite the “Free association of oppressed artists-painters”!23 Apart from Rodchenko, there were also extremists in Proletkult who strove to reject the accumulated knowledge of pre-revolutionary society. ‘In the name of our tomorrow we will burn the Raphaels, destroy the museums, and trample on the flowers of art,’ wrote Vladimir Kirillov in We, the most famous poem associated with Proletkult. However, this mood of destruction did not capture the movement’s agenda as a whole. Bogdanov urged the workers to study their 21

22

23

Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Настаивать теперь как на единственном средстве борьбы на художественном терроре – значит обнаружить косную мертвенность своего сознания, и таким образом покинуть путь истинно творческой молодости. Новые времена дают новую жизнь, новое сознание и новые методы. Бомбометание устарело и покрылось плесенью, нам оно не нужно: мы ищем методов организующих.’ The daily newspaper of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups published from September 1917 until July 1918 by the brothers Aba and Zeev Gordin. Its major contributors were Malevich and Rodchenko (who also used the pen names Anti and Alexander). Rodchenko published about twenty articles in Anarchy; Malevich contributed to more than twenty issues and supported the paper financially. Alexander Rodchenko, ‘Khudozhnikam-Proletariiam’, in The Aethetics of Anarchy. Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde, trans. from Russian by Nina Gurianova (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), pp. 223-224.

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cultural heritage in order to discover what was important to them and what was not. The programmes he helped to structure in Capri, Bologna, and later in Proletkult had substantial historical components designed to introduce students to cultural tradition and criticism.24 The same issue of Art of the Commune also contained an article by the Party bureaucrat, Alexander Mushtakov, who tried to inspire the workers to participate in disputes about the new art and to support left artists: ‘The proletariat needs art born out of the noise of factories, industrial plants, streets; which in its spirit should be the thunderous art of struggle. Such art already exists. It is called Futurism.’25 According to Mushtakov, only the working class could put Futurism into life, and prove to ‘the rotten intelligentsia’ that it has every right to exist.

Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 3: 22 December 1918 In the third issue on 22 December 1918, Punin published his article ‘Left-Right’ [Levye-Pravye], in which he supported the dictatorship by the creative minority, the artists-Bolsheviks, over the old-fashioned artists. He proclaimed: ‘Only those artists whose creative forces equal the strength of the working class can remain with the proletariat …The ones who create – live, others can die.’26 In this article, Punin opposed the artificial division into left and right art: For us it was clear, and always will be clear, that art cannot be divided into left and right, rather that there are artists in art – masters, creators of new values, inventors of new methods and new ways, and there are craftsmen, imitators, expropriators, exploiters and so on and so forth – the army of slackers, who use art only as their means of existence. Since the October Revolution gave us the opportunity to select true creators out of the artistic masses, we do not any longer need this old-fashioned terminology. Furthermore, the very division into left and right gives one

24 25

26

See Mally, Culture of the Future, p. 131. A. Mushtakov, ‘Oktiabr’ v Iskusstve’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 15 December 1918, no. 2, pp. 1-2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пролетариату нужно искусство, которое родилось из шума фабрик, заводов, улиц, которое по своему духу должно быть громовым искусством борьбы. Оно есть. Это футуризм.’ N. Punin, ‘Levye-Pravye’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 22 December 1918, no. 3, p. 1.

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Chapter 4 an impression of the existence of some sort of Constituent Assembly. No, we do not want it and we would not allow it to come into being.27

In another article in the same issue of the newspaper, ‘Our Aims and the Professional Unions of Artists’ [Nashi Zadachi i Professional’nye Souzy Khudozhnikov], Punin described the new artist as a maker of useful objects, and concluded that the new communist state should provide such artists with everything they need. However, the conflict between the left wing of IZO and the Petrograd Bolshevik Party had reached its peak, and in the same third issue of the Art of the Commune, Brik had to admit that both workers and their proletarian leaders were ‘aesthetically undeveloped’ and unable to relate to left art.28

Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 4: 29 December 1918 In the fourth issue, dated 29 December 1918, Brik sounded negative, but Mayakovsky went much further in his poem, which proclaimed that the Futurists were ready to set fire to all old art and use it for street illumination.29 In the same issue of the newspaper, Punin denied that Futurism was trying to take over power in Russia. He declared in his article ‘Futurism – the State Art’ [Futurism – Gosudarstvennoe Iskusstvo] that Futurism does not depend upon the state: ‘Futurism has not become the state art, but the hour of the triumph of the new ideas has come.’30 Punin’s claims that Futurism was ‘the only right way’ for the development of the new art was soon criticised in the Proletkult newspaper Future [Griadushchee], which castigated the Futurists as members of the intelligentsia, not the working class, concluding that even on their own terms they could not possibly build the art of the new Russia: ‘We should not allow Futurists to dress up the body of the working culture into the Futurists’ cloth.’31

27 28 29 30 31

Ibid. See O. Brik, ‘Vy pravy, tovarishch Mushtakov!’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 22 December 1918, no. 3, p. 2. See V. Mayakovsky, ‘Po tu storonu’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 29 December 1918, no. 4, p. 3. N. Punin, ‘Futurizm – Gosudarstvennoe Iskusstvo’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 29 December 1918, no. 4, p. 2. P. Bessal’ko, ‘Futurizm i Proletarskaia Kul’tura’, in Griadushchee, 1918, no. 10, pp. 10-12. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Ни в коем случае нельзя позволить футуристам тело рабочей культуры одеть в футуристическую одежду.’

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Initially supportive of Art of the Commune, Lunacharsky criticised the paper for speaking simultaneously in the name of a particular school (Futurism) and in the name of the state, as well as the paper’s destructive tendencies in relation to the past.32

Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 5: 5 January 1919 However, the right-hand of Lunacharsky and a member of IZO Narkompros, Punin, remained convinced that they were fighting for a new culture that would ultimately be beyond social class. Addressing a meeting dedicated to new and old art, reported in the fifth issue of Art of the Commune, Punin explained that ‘young artists are fighting against old art not because it is bad or cannot be used as historic material, but because it is still trying to impose its influence on new art.’ He appealed to all those who would like to create a new proletarian culture ‘to renounce the favoured attitude to the monuments of the past and give young artists the chance to create, together with the proletariat, the great artistic culture of the future.’ He wrote: ‘We want new life and new culture…. We are the polar opposite of the whole old world. We came in order not to renew it, but to destroy it, in order to create our new world.’33 Disputes about the new art continued at the Palace of Arts, and Art of the Commune covered them all. On 22 and 29 December 1918, two more meetings debated the question ‘Proletariat and Art’ at the Palace of Arts, and a full report of these meetings appeared in the fourth (29 December 1918) and fifth (5 January 1919) issues of Art of the Commune. At the time of these debates and articles, artists were still considered members of the bourgeoisie, which significantly reduced their bread ration and could be a matter of life and death. On 21 November 1918, Sovnarkom had forbidden all private food trade, and put into operation a rationed distribution of food in accordance with a person’s class. The first category consisted of workers and officials, who were allowed half a pound of bread per day; the second category – public servants – a quarter pound of bread; the third – bourgeoisie – one eighth of a pound of bread; and the last, fourth category of dependents

32 33

See A. Lunacharsky, ‘Lozhka protivoiadiia’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 29 December 1918, no. 4, p. 2. N. Punin, ‘Staroe i Novoe Iskusstvo’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 5 January 1919, no. 5, p. 2.

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– only half of this per day.34 Artists were selling their works, were considered to be small businessmen, and so qualified as the third category of bourgeoisie. In the fourth issue of Art of the Commune, Brik published an article called ‘Artists of the 3rd Category’ [Khudozhniki Tret’ei Kategorii], in which he called on artists to start working for the state, become members of the proletariat, and so more than double the amount of bread they would be getting.

Iskusstvo Kommuny no. 6: 12 January 1919 By January 1919, conflict was developing between the left artists under the banner of Futurism and the Bolshevik authorities. In issue six of the newspaper, Punin published ‘Revolutionary Wisdom’ [Revolutsionnaia Mudrost], an article full of despair: …we know that everything that is said at these meetings, conferences, in these books, articles and words – is so incompetent, so creatively weak. Enough doubts and politicising! As long as the revolution is not dead, we won’t be dead as well – we, its children. And if it dies, we may as well die with it!35 Feeling that the earth was rapidly disappearing from under their feet, Punin and Brik continued to promote Futurism despite the growing opposition from the government. In the sixteenth issue of the Art of the Commune, dated 23 March 1919, Punin proclaimed: ‘To destroy means to create, since we overcome our past by destroying it.’36

Demise of Iskusstvo Kommuny: Last Issue – 13 April 1919 But after losing one of its most influential supporters, Lunacharsky, in Spring 1919, Art of the Commune, the voice of Russian Futurism, was suddenly discontinued in April 1919.

34 35 36

See ‘O poriadke vydachi khleba i produktov po khlebnym kategoriinym kartochkam’, in Petrogradskaia pravda, 20 October 1918, no. 230, p. 3, quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 29. N. Punin, ‘Revolutsionnaia Mudrost’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, 12 January 1919, no. 6, p. 2. N. Punin, Iskusstvo kommuny, 23 March 1919, no. 16, p. 1. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Разрушать это и значит создавать, ибо, разрушая, мы преодолеваем свое прошлое.’

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In spite of its great popularity and the fact that ‘one had to hunt for every issue’ of it, attacks from the right in government and from Proletkult encouraged the closure of this outspoken newspaper after nineteen issues. Fear that Art of the Commune ‘proclaims slogans of modern art’ and ‘Futurism wants to conquer the country’37 silenced this loud voice of the Russian avant-garde. Such criticism, as in the article ‘At Last’, written by O. Oleniev and published in issue no. 1 of the weekly Factory Whistle [Gudki] in January 1919, marked the dawn of the slow strangulation of left art in Socialist Russia. In this selfrighteous newspaper, Oleniev proclaimed: We are convinced that the Great Revolution, while destroying the foundations of the bourgeois system, would have eliminated Futurism, which is an act of the ultimate decomposition of that system, but for the fact that the People’s Commissar for Education [A. Lunacharsky] gathered the rotten straws of Futurist imposition in the first days of the October Revolution and tried to weave from them a life belt of revolutionary art. …The Futurists, with the practical sense characteristic of them, used that false step of the Commissar to their advantage and flocked to occupy all responsible positions in the art departments… Directing the section for the Visual Arts as Punin and Tatlin did, defining the line of literary tastes as Mayakovsky, Ivniev, and Mariengof [Marienhof], heading the literary publishing department for the military like the ‘excellent’ Vassili Kamensky, swelling their ranks with obviously talentless people and less obvious cheats, Messrs Futurists exploit the organs of Soviet authority to recommend their rotten bourgeois art as proletarian art. There is no room here for ideological discussion. The Futurists, who are mechanically attached to the proletarian revolution, must just as mechanically be driven away from the warm places they now occupy…38 But Punin would not give up. The last issue of the Art of the Commune, published on 13 April 1919 to coincide with the opening of the First State Free Exhibition of Works of Art, organised (not surprisingly) by the commissar of the Hermitage Museum himself, Punin, in the beautiful rooms of the Palace of Arts. Punin’s gigantic exhibition included 1,826 works of art from 359 contributors, and it became Punin’s next attempt (after Art of the Commune) in

37 38

Viktor Shklovsky, quoted in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, trans. from Polish by Boleslaw Taborski (London: Viktor Gollancz Ltd, 1972), p. 247. Ibid., p. 259.

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his efforts to educate workers in art. Less than six months later, however, the former Winter Palace was occupied by the exponents of another new entity, the Museum of the Revolution.

May Day and 7 November 1919: the Turn Towards Comprehensive and Realistic Agitation and Propaganda By 1919, the Civil War was in full flow, and dominated most developments. The War had sprung from several originating elements, principal amongst these was the rapid gathering of a large, disillusioned opposition to the Bolsheviks. Diverse though this opposition was, it had been consolidated following Lenin’s refusal to involve any of the other parties, even, or especially the socialists, in the new government, or even to negotiate with them. Thus, they had no other way of enforcing their opposition but by war. In parallel, disillusionment grew over the Bolsheviks’ ‘dishonour’ in Russia’s withdrawal from the World War, and their major territorial losses at Brest-Litovsk. Coupled with this was the possible allied intervention (if only under the reasonable pretext that the massive quantities of equipment supplied by them might fall into the hands of the Germans), which should have greatly helped the opposition forces. The influence of the Civil War period in the context of this book is really three interlocking elements. The first is the dire economic situation, in large part the effects of losing production stimulated by the World War and now having to finance a major new internal war. The second, related to this, is the effect of the war on social structures and social attitudes. The third, again related, is the change in the nature and structure of the Bolshevik government and in the relationship of the people with it and it with the people. The economic situation was extreme, and the economy actually collapsed over the period. It was estimated that 70 per cent of factory output had related to World War work, and by 1919, heavy industrial output fell to about 20 per cent of its pre-war level. Some 60 per cent of Petrograd workers had been laid off, and the total number of factory workers fell from 3.5 million to barely 1 million in a massive de-urbanisation process (Appendix no. 1).39 Fuel was scarce (coal production had fallen by 60 per cent), food prices were rising, while a large reserve of unemployed men ensured that wages remained low. Taken together, these led to very difficult conditions, especially for those in the major cities, including starvation and the spread of disease. Zamiatin evoked

39

Quoted in Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, p. 71.

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Petrograd in the winter: ‘Glaciers, mammoths, wastes. Black nocturnal cliffs, somehow resembling houses; in the cliffs, caves…Cave men wrapped in hides, blankets, wraps, retreated from cave to cave’.40 In January 1918, factory committees (often the successors to the soviets) had been turned into local branches of the trade unions, and these in turn were subordinated to the central government organ, VSNKh, the Council of the National Economy. Workers no longer felt themselves to be the heroes of the Revolution or knew what their role was in the new so-called proletarian state, and it is fair to say that the government needed to redefine what type of person actually constituted the proletariat, which was supposed to be the dominant force in society. Another factor was the change in the nature and structure of the Bolshevik government, and in its relationship with the population. Once the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved in January 1918, a programme of centralisation of all power into the Bolshevik government accelerated, to an extent permitted by the conditions imposed by the Civil War. In March 1919, at the 8th Party Congress, the Central Committee or Politburo (to centralise decision-making) and the Orgburo (to centralise administration) were set up. One of the Politburo’s first decrees was a directive on Proletkult in December 1919, which followed the first national conference of adult education workers (in May 1919), where Nadezhda Krupskaia, head of the Adult Education Division and, later, Glavpolitprosvet, announced that since Proletkult was in essence an adult education organisation, it belonged under the aegis of Narkompros. With her encouragement, the delegates voted overwhelmingly to tie Proletkult to her division. At the same time, the composition of the Communist Party was changing: working class members of Communist Party were to fall from 60 per cent in 1917 to 40 per cent by 1921,41 in turn reflecting the recruitment of bureaucrats into the Party and hence into the government to help administer its now essentially totally centralised functions. In Spring of 1919, artistic freedom in Russia was significantly reduced compared with the first post-revolutionary year. Following multiple negative reviews of the Futurist decorations of Petrograd on 1 May and 7 November 1918,42 the Bolshevik authorities started to turn away from the left artists towards a more comprehensible and realistic art. 40 41 42

Ibid., p. 74. Ibid., p. 86. See L. Pumpianskii, ‘Oktiabr’skie torzhestva i khudozhniki Petrograda’, in Plamia, 1919, no. 35, pp. 11-14; V. Kerzhentsev, ‘Uprek khudozhnikam’, in Iskusstvo, 1918, no. 6, p. 3; A. Akimov, ‘Revolutsiia i khudozhniki’, in Krasnaia Gazeta, 1 May 1919.

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Due to the increasingly catastrophic economic situation in Petrograd, at the end of November 1918, the group responsible for the organisation of festival celebrations published a notification, which stated that all the fabric and canvas that were used for the city decorations on 7 November 1918 should be preserved and re-used.43 In April 1919, VTsIK declared that all the fabrics, as well as the electric illumination used for the decorations of Petrograd on May Day 1919 should be strictly rationed.44 However, despite all the economic difficulties, festivals were still considered to be an important part of the Bolshevik propaganda campaign, and in February 1919, all the workers’ committees and city soviets had already started work on the Petrograd May Day decorations.45 As in 1918, a special committee responsible for the development of decorations for the streets and squares of the city was formed at IZO Narkompros and was headed by Altman. The first meeting of this committee took place on 7 March. Apart from the members of IZO Narkompros, members of the Collegium for Matters of Art and Artistic Industry, Karev, Rudnev, Iosif Shkol’nik, Petr Matveev and Baranov-Rossiné, took part in the meeting. The newspaper Iskusstvo kommuny reported the main outcomes of the meeting: One artistic plan, which won’t allow the lack of system and fragmentation which were obvious in November decorations, should be followed in all the decorations of the city; only those places where rallies and demonstrations are due to take place, should be decorated and several competitions should be announced for selection of the artists.46 This meeting was followed by a second one which took place on 5 April 1919 and included representatives of the Theatre and Visual Art Sections of Narkompros and the Artistic Section of the Trades Unions Soviet. Delegates at

43 44 45 46

See O. Nemiro, V gorod prishel prazdnik. Iz istorii khudozhestvennogo oformleniia Sovetskikh massovykh prazdnestv (Leningrad, 1973), p. 32. See Pravda, 25 April 1919. See Krasnaia Gazeta, 1 March 1919. Iskusstvo kommuny, 23 March 1919, no. 16. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В основу украшений должен быть положен единый художественный план, не допускающий бессистемности и раздробленности украшений, как было в ноябре минувшего года по случаю Октябрьских торжеств; следует украсить лишь те пункты, где будут проходить митинги и колонны демонстоантов, для чего необходимо объявить несколько конкурсов.’

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this meeting decided that in order to discuss all the questions of the organisation of May Day in Petrograd, a conference had to be organised urgently.47 But before the conference was opened at the Palace of Labour on 10 April, two contradictory decrees were issued: the first one (signed by Lunacharsky) declared that IZO Narkompros would be responsible for the decoration of Petrograd; the second one was issued by the committee of the Petrograd Soviet and Workers and Red Army Deputies and ruled that ‘Futurists’ from IZO Narkompros should be kept away from all the city festive decorations.48 The conference was supposed to deal with these contradictions. Apart from the representatives of Narkompros and Proletkult, it included delegates from seven district councils of Petrograd, thirty-six professional unions, fiftyone factory committees, five workers’ cooperatives, thirteen workers’ clubs, thirty-six military divisions, five district party committees, two young people’s unions, the military commissariat and numerous journalists. The chairman of the conference was the head of the Petrograd Soviet of Trade Unions, Naum Antselovich. In his opening remarks, he announced that: …nowadays 1 May should be celebrated under the recently held III International and should become the festival of the solidarity of international proletarian authority, which should win all over the world… This festival should demonstrate clearly its fighting spirit against world imperialism – for the dictatorship of the proletariat.49 Altman refused to speak at the conference. His refusal followed the Petrograd Soviet’s decree ordering the removal of the IZO Narkompros representatives from May Day city decoration was announced on 10 April 1919 ‘following complaints from all parts of the city about the Futurist dominance in the previous festivals’.50

47 48 49

50

See TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 283, op. 2, d. 44, p. 13. See Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov, 10 April 1919. TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 283, op. 2, d. 44, pp. 3-11. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…ныне 1 Мая должен проходить под знаком возникшего действенного III Интернационала и …стать праздником солидарности международной пролетарской власти, которая должна победить во всем мире… Праздник должен быть организован так, чтобы был ясно виден его боевой характер, направленный против всемирного империализма и в защиту диктатуфы пролетариата.’ The decree stated: ‘Under any circumstances not to hand over the organisation of 1 May celebrations to Futurists from IZO’ – see the full text of decree in the newspaper Petrogradskaia Pravda, 11 April 1919, no. 80, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Оформление

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Following hours of rugged debates, the delegates of the conference declared that the celebration of 1 May 1919 would be organised on a more modest scale than the first anniversary of the Revolution; that decorations would be less ‘clamorous’ than on 7 November 1918; that houses and former palaces would be adorned with flags and garlands instead of posters and that the demonstration would follow a specific route which would include Nevsky Prospect, since ‘there are still enough Nevsky bourgeois to whom it is necessary to demonstrate the power of proletariat’.51 The new committee responsible for the organisation of May Day celebrations in Petrograd included thirty-five members (twelve of them were delegates from the conference) and was headed by Antselovich. Thus, in April 1919 a rapid shift took place from the authority of IZO Narkompros, dominated by the left artists and led by Altman, to the leadership of the Bolshevik Party bureaucrats and workers’ deputies. In May 1919, the character of the city decorations changed forever – from the brave experiments of young artists and the participation of representatives of all the artistic groups towards comprehensive and realistic agitation and propaganda, and indicating a subordination of artistic freedom to party mediocrity. City decorations were sensitive indicators of the Bolshevik artistic policies and in 1919 they became the first signs of the new approach of authorities towards the control of artistic freedom. The festival committee now reported to Zinoviev, who was the head of the city and the regional government, and had authority to give the new committee one million roubles for the decorations of the May Day festival (out of ten million fund allocated for the strengthening of Soviet authority in Russia).52 At the end of April 1919 at the meeting of Petrograd Soviet, it was decided to allow the artists from IZO Narkompros to make chariots which would become part of the demonstration, and organise fireworks above the Neva at night.53 On 25 April 1919, the Petrogradskaia Pravda newspaper reported:

51 52 53

первомайских праздников ни в коем случае нельзя передавать в руки «футуристов» из отдела изобразительных искусств Наркомпроса.’ Ibid. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘…на Невском еще достаточно буржуев, перед которыми нужно демонстрировать силу пролетариата.’ See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 113, pp. 8-9. See a full description of resolutions of this meeting in Petrogradskaia Pravda, 25 April 1919.

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…there will be a magnificent procession of floats, constructed by the Arts Committee of the Commissariat for Education. These floats will represent ‘the old and the new world’. In front will be four floats depicting life under the old system. This will be a dragon intended to personify the capitalist system, a two-headed eagle, and a float portraying the classes, nobility and all the paraphernalia of the old regime. A border post will separate these from the floats of ‘the new world’, a labour float and floats presenting a general picture. A striking evening spectacle is also to be organised on the Neva River.54 May Day celebrations were widely reviewed in all newspapers, which described the fireworks that announced the beginning of the festival at 8 am, and were followed by decorated automobiles that carried trumpeters heralding the start of the parade. The new slogans on the banners carried by the demonstrators included ‘Death to Kolchak!’; ‘Long Live the Communist International!’ and ‘Long Live the Leader of the III International Lenin!’. The growing faith in the impending victory of the proletariat throughout the world was expressed in the city decorations and several subscription booths for courses in Esperanto, which was proclaimed to be ‘the single language of the proletariat’ (fig. 4.3). In 1919, the theatrical element in the festive parades was much more pronounced than it had been a year earlier. Ahead of the festive procession was a horse and cart carrying the plaster cast of a woman with a torch in her hand, which symbolised victory (fig. 4.4). In the ‘Old World’ float, a car was turned into a Viking ship carrying ‘Hydra of the Counterrevolution’ (fig. 4.5). Floats of the New World consciously avoided allegory and consisted of automobiles decorated by the fir-tree branches or turned into military ships (fig. 4.6) and a motorcar draped in branches and decorated with posters depicting Kolchak and members of the International: worker, peasant and soldier (fig. 4.7). Painted in caricature style, these posters were humorous and easily accessible for the workers. One automobile was adorned with a huge globe decorated with the slogan ‘Labour will be the Ruler of the World’ [Vladykoi mira budet trud] (fig. 4.8) another lorry commissioned by the Baltiiskii factory, was adorned with a globe tied with a blue ribbon with the inscription ‘Internationale’ (fig. 4.9). Perhaps

54

Quoted in Vladimir Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova, and Catherine Cooke, Street Art of the Revolution, p. 86.

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Figure 4.3

Subscription booth for courses in Esperanto. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 168.

the artists of these installations were familiar with Crane’s cartoon of the 1890’s dedicated to Labour’s May Day, in which the globe was belted by the sign ‘Solidarity of Labour’. Crane’s design was also reproduced on the cover of William Morris’s book News from Nowhere, which was translated and published in Russia in 1906 and 1909.55 In 1919 Petrograd, the centre of the celebrations was once again the Field of Mars, where Zinoviev made a passionate speech, and where some new trees were planted (fig. 4.10). Most houses along the processional route were decorated by red flags and only a few panels were placed on the factory buildings. There are no known photographs of the decorations of the Smolny (only one photograph of the road in front of the Smolny on May Day 1919 has survived – fig. 4.11), but several archival documents describe a whole team of artists headed by A. Andreev, who worked day and night on decorating this headquarters of the Bolshevik party.56

55 56

William Morris, Vesti niotkuda ili apokha schast’ia (St. Petersburg: Delo, 1906) and William Morris, Vesti niotkuda. Utopiia (St. Petersburg: tip. Balianskogo, 1909). See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 113, pp. 11-15.

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Figure 4.4

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‘A float of the New World’. 1 May 1919 in Petrograd. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5478.

Apart from posters and floats, artists decorated several canal boats with agitational drawings, covered Central Press kiosks with panels depicting members of the proletariat (fig. 4.12) and had hidden the monument to Alexander III with a wooden box decorated with fir tree branches, which also served as a stand for speakers. This new hide-away for the monument of the vilified tsar illustrated the changing priorities in Petrograd festive decorations – the Futurist play of words that adorned the panels covering this monument in November 1918 was replaced by a symmetrical box; and the slogan ‘Art is One of the Means of Unifying People’ was superseded by ‘Greetings to the True Leaders of the Socialist Revolution’. On May Day 1919, a special rally for Petrograd school children was held on Chernyshevskaia Square (fig. 4.13) and the Decorative Institute made three hundred posters (none of which seem to have survived) and several banners for children’s columns participating in the parade (fig. 4.14). Judging by the remaining photographs, one can conclude that the posters and banners were executed in a cheerful, primitive, lubok style, presumably in bright colours

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Figure 4.5

‘The Old World float’, which was called The Dragon of Capitalism. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5464.

with clear messages. The Decorative Institute also performed a theatre play by Vladimir Rappoport Spring [Vesna] (fig. 4.15).57 Despite all the economic difficulties, 1 May celebrations were still held on a grand scale and were welcomed by the hungry, but ever hopeful citizens of Petrograd.

Second Anniversary of the Revolution, November 1919 By the time of the next important festival, the second anniversary of the October Revolution, the economic crisis had deepened, complicated by the advance of the White Guard North-Western Army, headed by Nikolai Iudenich, on Petrograd. The decree of VTsIK on the celebrations of the second anniversary of the October Revolution stated that ‘due to difficult circumstances, fifty million

57

See TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 62, op. 1, d. 2, p. 13.

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Figure 4.6

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Show float in Petrograd on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5370-5371.

roubles that were assigned by the Soviet of People’s Commissars for the celebrations of the day of the October Revolution should be divided thus: forty million roubles should be given as benefits to families of Red Army soldiers and ten million roubles should be spent on strengthening the written and spoken agitation on the day’; it also ordered those responsible to be strict in saving every rouble.58 In Petrograd, the question of funding the October Revolution festival was discussed at the meeting of the presidium of the Petrograd Soviet that took place on 4 October. Unlike the Soviet of People’s Commissars, the presidium calculated that twenty-five million roubles were necessary for the city decorations. They chose a special central committee responsible for the festival preparations (which included Andreeva, Ionov, V. Vel’chan and S. Zorin) and gave them an advance of one million roubles. Expecting arguments between the committee, Narkompros and Proletkult, the Petrograd Soviet issued a special decree, which stated that all the artists, organisations and institutions

58

See Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo. Dokumenty i materialy, p. 97.

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Figure 4.7

Demonstration on Vasilievskii Island in Petrograd. Motorcar draped with fir branches and decorated with a poster with a caricature of Alexander Kolchak on the front and a poster representing members of the International on top of the car. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1252 and TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Др 163.

Figure 4.8

Decorated automobile on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИH 1267.

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Figure 4.9

Demonstration on 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1297.

Figure 4.10

Planting new trees on the Field of Mars. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 1419.

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Figure 4.11

Decoration of the road in front of Smolny. 1 May 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, II-Б-5513.

must be subordinate to the new central festival committee and cooperate with all their initiatives.59 On 8 October, a conference was opened at the Palace of Labour, which elected a special working committee, comprised of six sections: artistic, building, publishing, medical, itinerary and cinematographic. The working committee was entrusted with the development of all the plans of the festival celebrations; they were responsible for the decorations for Uprising Square, Smolny and the Square of Victims of the Revolution, where the main events were taking place. Decorations for other parts of the city were entrusted to district councils.60 A detailed plan for the decoration of Petrograd was developed by the artistic section of the art workers’ trades union and competitions were announced for decoration of Smolny, Uprising Square and the Square of Victims of the

59 60

See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 113, p. 19. See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 7384, op. 1, d. 42, p. 38.

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Figure 4.12

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Central Press kiosks in Petrograd. 1 May 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg, Гр 2415.

Revolution, for portraits of revolutionary leaders, posters, emblems, badges and the cover of the festive magazine.61 One of the most controversial competition entries, which won a substantial financial reward and was implemented and officially opened on 7 November 1919, was a symbolic tower designed by A. Vakhrameev that was built in the middle of Uprising Square in order to ‘imprison’ once again the statue of Alexander III (fig. 4.16). It might have been inspired by the play The Bricklayer [Kamenshchik] by one of the Proletkult writers, Pavel Bessal’ko, a graduate of Lenin’s school for workers in Paris.62 This play is an allegorical tale about an architect who designs tall buildings and the worker who executes his plans. The architect, rather inconveniently, is suffering from vertigo and dies trying to overcome his fears. When the Revolution begins, the bricklayer, who has now studied architectural theory, takes over the job of his former employer and starts to construct a huge ‘tower of the commune’ – a revolutionary tower of Babel that will end national divisions between workers and inspire a single

61 62

See Zhizn’ iskusstva, 15 October 1919. P. Bessal’ko, ‘Kamenshchik’, in Plamia, 1918, no. 33, pp. 2-7.

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Figure 4.13

Rally for Petrograd school children. Chernyshevskaia Square, Petrograd. May Day 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 16276 (02).

international language, recalling the subscription booths for courses in Esperanto on 1 May 1919. This play raised once again one of the central themes in Proletkult theories: the need for workers to take over the tasks of intellectuals. Here one of the labourers tells the protagonist: ‘It is good that you studied the art of building. Workers will trust you to construct the tower. You are ours; we are proud that you are one of our own.’63 In front of Vakhrameev’s tower, a high pedestal was erected with a sculpture by Blokh, who was the head of the artistic section of the committee responsible for the organisation of the festival. It was called The Death of

63

P. Bessal’ko, ‘Kamenshchik’, in Plamia, 1918, no. 33, p. 6. Quoted in Mally, p. 141. Later, The Bricklayer was also used as a model for theatrical improvisations in the Red Army Drama Studio and perhaps even inspired Tatlin to design his model for the Monument to the Third International.

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Figure 4.14

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Petrograd Agricultural School at May Day demonstration. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 12202.

Capitalism [Smert’ Kapitalizma] and depicted a muscular worker in an apron who was about to hit a capitalist monster with a huge hammer. According to Vakhrameev, the tower was supposed to have a red star on top and be lit up with colourful lights in the evening. It symbolised the breaking of capitalist chains by the proletariat. The tower was made of a wooden structure covered with a large canvas, which was delivered during the night before the official opening on 7 November but was torn by the strong wind after just a few hours.64 Rather more successful was the archway constructed at the entrance to Smolny, richly decorated with a lit inscription ‘Proletariat of All Countries, Unite’ and a huge panel that showed people from different countries united under the banner of the III International. Portraits of Marx and Lenin adorned

64

See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 7384, op. 1, d. 42, p. 19.

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Figure 4.15

Performance of Vladimir Rappoport’s theatre play, Spring, during a rally for Petrograd school children. Chernyshevskaia Square, Petrograd. May Day 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 16276 (01).

Figure 4.16

Mikhail Blokh, The Death of Capitalism. Part of the veiling of Paolo Troubetzkoy’s monument to Alexander III, 7 November 1919. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2541.

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the top of the arch, and the new symbol of Bolshevik Russia, the hammer and sickle, was widely used in decorations for the arch and the facade of Smolny. From the archway, the two rows of red flags and posters with various tools and scenes from workers’ everyday life led to the Bolshevik headquarters.65 In contrast with the festive decoration of Smolny, all around it, the armed soldiers were hiding behind sacks of sand; an inevitable reminder of the civil war.66 However, despite the ongoing war and economic crisis, most plans for the festive decorations for Petrograd were fulfilled and thousands of hungry and cold people came out to celebrate the Second Anniversary of the Revolution. All the artists who took part in the competitions were paid for the materials they used, while the winners received 90,625 roubles between them.67 None of the left artists were among the winners; instead, members of the World of Art and Proletkult were entrusted with the decoration of the city.68 The brave avant-garde artists, who contributed with such enthusiasm to the decorations of Petrograd on 7 November 1918, Puni and his wife Boguslavskaia, escaped from Russia in disillusionment by crossing the iced gulf to Finland at the end of 1919. All the decorations of the streets and squares in the outskirts of Petrograd were undertaken by amateur artists. Instead of paying large sums of money to professionals, local authorities spent funds allocated to them on supplying workers with galoshes and bread to ensure that they could participate in the demonstration. Shortly before the second anniversary of the Revolution, the Red Army won an important victory over the Iudenich troops that had reached the outskirts of Petrograd and threatened to conquer the city. This breakthrough was celebrated throughout Russia and on 7 November 1919, the authorities of Cheliabinsk sent a train with thirty-four carriages filled with wheat to people starving in the ‘cradle of the Revolution’. On the eve of the celebrations, the festive meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was opened by an orchestral performance of the Internationale and a choral performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Zinoviev proclaimed: Many victims were sacrificed by Red Petrograd in the last days and weeks, many precious lives were given, but never before people died for more

65 66 67 68

See TsGAKFFD St. Petersburg, Гр 2536; Гр 41327. Ibid., Гр 2537. See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 7384, op. 1, d. 42, pp. 47-48. Ibid.

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Chapter 4 worthy causes, than our comrades, who gave their lives for the defence of Petrograd, the capital of the world Revolution.69

Following Zinoviev’s speech, Lenin’s letter was read, in which Petrograd workers were greeted as the vanguard of all the workers of the world, who were the first to raise the banner of proletarian revolution, and who managed to defend their city despite all the difficulties.70 On 7 November, the victory of the Red Army over Iudenich’s troops was announced at all the workers’ meetings and rallies, and the festival had a distinguished military presence. Red Army troops and marines from the Baltic fleet marched across Palace Square and Rudnev’s memorial to the victims of the Revolution was officially opened on the Field of Mars. It included granite plinths adorned with Lunacharsky’s poetic verse: ‘Those who died for the great cause are immortal. Those who sacrificed their lives for people, who worked, fought and died for the good of mankind, will forever live in people’s memory.’ The newspaper Petrogradskaia Pravda reported: An amazing gathering of people can be seen on the Field of Mars: continuously between 12 and 2 pm the columns of workers and soldiers with banners are walking across the Field, bowing down to the graves. During this march, cannons were fired and fireworks were released at the Peter and Paul Fortress… From the Field of Mars to Smolny, along the Prospect of 25 October [Nevsky] and Soviet Prospect [Staro-Nevsky] uninterrupted columns of thousands of workers and soldiers were marching along carrying banners and posters and singing revolutionary songs. After paying their respects to the victims of the Revolution, workers went back to their districts. The whole Petrograd proletariat took part in this grand manifestation… In the evening beautiful fireworks on the Uprising Square attracted thousands spectators.71

69

70 71

TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 33, pp. 1-2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Много жертв понес Красный Петроград за последние дни и недели, много дорогих жизней погибло, но некогда еще люди не умирали за более благородные цели, чем те товарищи, которые погибли защищая Петроград, столицу мировой революции.’ See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 40, p. 117. Petrogradskaia Pravda, 9 November 1919. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘На Марсовом поле необычайное стечение народа, непрерывно с 12-ти до 2-х проходят рабочие и воины со знаменами, которые благоговейно склонялись над незабвенными руюгилами. Это прохождение сопровождалось исполнением похоронного марша и салютом с Петропавловской крепости… От Марсова поля к Смольному по

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7 November 1919 saw the first military parade, which in future years of the Soviet regime, would be at the centre of every festival and would subordinate all the city decorations. The cultural diversity expressed in the celebration of the First Anniversary of the Revolution was soon replaced by carefully orchestrated and controlled state military parades. This distinguishes the first revolutionary parade from those including and following the second anniversary of the Revolution. Already in November 1919, there was one important sign of increasing Bolshevik consolidation and centralisation and a reduced freedom from censorship of avant-garde groups as well as of Proletkult and IZO Narkompros. This affected adversely the dialogues and critiques offered by Bogdanov, Lunarcharsky and Punin. The principles promoted by Le Bon, however, were becoming increasingly useful. The avant-garde continued (though emigration increased) but it no longer had full independence. Constructivism reflected politics and many, including Rodchenko and Lissitzky, accommodated the new demands. проспектам 25 Октября и Советскому непрерывно тянулись тысячи рабочих, работниц и красноармейцев, матросов со знаменами, плакатами, оркестрами и пением революционных песен, возвращались после открытия памятника жертвам революции во все районы. Весь питерский пролетариат принял участие в этой грандиозной манифестации… Вечером на площади Восстания был сожжен прекрасный фейерверк, привлекший тысячи зрителей.’

Chapter 5

Street Art – Collective, Politicised: the New Public Spectacle Debates on ‘Proletarian Culture’ in Pravda: Proletkult’s Subordination to Narkompros By 1920, the Civil War was being won by the Red Army in almost all theatres. In the end, the allies did not intervene significantly: the British left by the end of 1919 and the Red Army had defeated the White Army in Ukraine, as well as the army led by Admiral Kolchak in Siberia. The remains of the White forces, commanded by General Wrangel, were beaten in the Crimea and were evacuated in Autumn of 1920. In the same year, Poland, now essentially unified and independent, invaded Ukraine. It succeeded at first and captured Kiev, but the Red Army, having just defeated Anton Denikin, re-grouped and pushed the Poles back out of Ukraine. There was then a hot debate about whether they should invade Poland (and thereby take the first concrete step to spreading the Revolution), but the Red Army failed to capture Warsaw, and the subsequent Treaty of Riga was favourable to Poland. At the same time, communist uprisings in Germany, Italy and Hungary had been suppressed, and the Allies were becoming active in stopping the further spread of such actions, but Lenin remained convinced that revolution would still arise from the high level of post-war discontent across Europe. In the context of this book, the influence of the Civil War and subsequent events suggests that the elements prevalent in 1919 were largely still in force in 1920. The economic situation remained extreme, with rations falling to 900 calories a day, as against the 2,300 considered necessary for non-manual labour.1 Contemporaries described Petrograd in 1920 as a severe, starving, ragged city: half-empty, without electricity, cars or cabmen. Due to a lack of oil, 775 factories were closed down. Only 722,000 people remained in Petrograd (in the beginning of 1918, the population of the city was two million people).2

1 See Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, p. 80. 2 Ibid.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_007

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In 1920, the III All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions decreed that all salaries would be paid in food, cloth, shoes and soap vouchers and the amount that one received was to depend on the category to which one belonged. As mentioned in the previous chapter, artists selling their works were considered to be small businessmen, and were qualified as bourgeoisie, the lowest category with the lowest rations. Thus, the question of positioning the artist as proletarian became even more urgent and vital. In January 1918, the ‘political and literary newspaper’ New Petrograd Gazette [Novaia Petrogradskaia Gazeta] published an article by one of its correspondents, A. Chesnokov, which stated: Undoubtedly the Russian people really appreciate art. […] But in what sort of conditions and under which circumstances these builders of spiritual culture have to work, is hardly discussed… An artist essentially is not different from an ordinary worker: he spends his working day, which is not limited by any particular working hours or salary, covered in paint, clay or ink, in often pretty doubtful hygienic conditions.3 Chesnokov finished his article by saying that ‘art at the present moment is more essential for people’s education than anything else’, and that artists should have the same rights as other workers’, since their work is ‘essential for people’s future happiness’.4 In 1919, Punin, together with Brik, another member of the Visual Arts Section, had developed this argument further in their articles in Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo kommuny], and played a crucial role in trying to persuade the authorities that artists were working as hard as others and should be given a

3 A. Chesnokov, ‘Khudozhestvennaia Zhizn’’, in Novaia Petrogradskaia Gazeta, 27 January 1918, no. 19, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Несомненно русский народ очень любит искусство. […] А при каких жизненных условиях и обстоятельствах приходится работать этим строителям культуры духа, об этом пишут и говорят мало… Художник, в сущности, ничем не отличается от рядового трудящегося рабочего: вымазанный красками, глиной, чернилами, – он проводит свой трудовой день, не ограниченный ни часами, ни заработной платой, часто в весьма сомнительных гигиенических условиях.’ 4 Ibid. Quotations in Russian read: ‘Искусство, в настоящий момент, надобно для просвещения народа более, нежели что-либо другое.’ ‘…художественный труд должен пользоваться всеми правами, как необходимый для будущего счастья народа.’

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place next to other members of the commune, such as shoemakers, cabinetmakers and dressmakers.5 But there was a catch: in order to be qualified for the first, privileged category, artists had to start working for the state (the first move towards the Party’s control over art). Actors who worked for the state theatres belonged to the first category already. Then, all the journalists who joined the newlyemerged Union of Journalists were classified as workers. Artists were still in a difficult situation. They belonged to different unions, which were yet to be replaced by the one, single Union of Artists. In the new state, everyday survival became an instrument in the hands of Bolsheviks. Related to the Civil War and the economic situation is the effect on social structures and social attitudes. There was growing dissatisfaction amongst the peasants. The badly-managed system to organise adequate grain and food supplies to the cities had been removed, but there were still transport difficulties and most food that did arrive ran through the partially-tolerated black market. In the end, peasants took up arms, and there was a full-scale peasant insurrection in Tambov province in August 1920. Peace did not reign in the cities either. Major resistance groups including the Democratic Centralists and the Workers’ Opposition were formed, leading to a chain of disruptions in Petrograd resulting eventually in the armed Kronshtadt mutiny of 1921. Leaflets demanding ‘Freedom of Trade’ and ‘Soviets without Communists’ were glued to lamp-posts throughout Petrograd. The last factor, again related to the others, was the continuing change in the nature and structure of the Bolshevik government, and in its relationship with the population. Once the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved in January 1918, a programme of centralisation of all power into the Bolshevik government had accelerated and the establishment of the Central Committee or Politburo (to centralise decision-making) and the Orgburo (to centralise administration) in March 1919 was further endorsed in the 9th Party Congress. The process was completed (now reflecting Lenin’s reaction to the Petrograd and Kronstadt disturbances) by the 10th Party Congress in 1921, including the banning of freedom of speech, even inside the party. A central issue in the heated political discussions that began in 1920 was the future role of proletarian institutions. The year 1920 saw both the peak and the demise of Proletkult. At its peak, it claimed a total of 84,000 members organised in 300 local groups, with an additional 500,000 more casual followers.6 5 See O. Brik, ‘Khudozhnik i Kommuna’, in Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo, November 1919, no. 1, pp. 25-26. 6 See Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, p. 193.

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Between 5 and 12 October 1920, now that the worst of the Civil War had passed, Proletkult delegates gathered in Moscow at the National Congress of Proletkult to discuss what seemed to be the bright future of their cause. At the beginning of the congress, Proletkult’s future looked optimistic: the organisation’s mass base promised to grow as the new era of peace saw the return of workers to the factories, and its national leaders were convinced that Proletkult’s work would improve in quality now that the agitational tasks of the war were over. They even foresaw international expansion and support. But these optimistic projections were quickly undermined. By the conclusion of the conference, the Communist Party Central Committee had forced Proletkult to give up its independence and become part of the state’s cultural bureaucracy, thereby initiating a ‘period of precipitous decline for the organi[s]ation’.7 Lynn Mally later explained that in 1920 ‘critical factions within the Communist Party called for reorgani[s]ation and decentrali[s]ation; in response, the party leadership moved quickly to undercut potentially troublesome groups, among them the Proletkult.’8

The End of Proletkult According to Lunacharsky’s later recollection, even before the Congress was called, several measures were taken to pull Proletkult closer to the Party. Lenin instructed Lunacharsky ‘to go to the congress and confirm that Proletkult must be under the control of Narkompros [and] must regard itself as an organ of Narkompros’.9 Later Lunacharsky wrote that: ‘Vladimir Ilyich was evidently rather afraid that some sort of political heresy was nesting in Proletkult.’10 The resolution, drafted by Lenin on 8 October 1920 stated that: …The All-Russian Congress of Proletkult most definitely rejects as theoretically incorrect and practically harmful all attempts to think up its 7 8 9 10

Ibid. Ibid., p. 194. Fitzpatrick: The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 177. A. Lunacharsky, ‘Lenin and Art. Recollections’ (1924), in Sobranie Sochinenii v 8 tomakh, ed. by I. Anisimov and A. Ovcharenko (Moscow, 1963-67), vol. 7, p. 405. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Владимир Ильич был явно напуган тем, что в Пролеткульте гнездилась какая-то политическая ересь.’

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At the National Congress of Proletkult it has been decreed that: 1. For the closest convergence of all the Proletkult organisations with Narkompros, a new Department of Proletarian Culture, which will be directing and supervising Proletkult organisations using their resources and achievements in political-educational work, is established as part of Narkompros. 2. This department is formed on the same basis as all other divisions of Narkompros, it will be subordinated to the Collegium of Narkompros and will use all the organisational bodies of the Commissariat. 3. In order to engage members of Proletkult fully with all the political and educational work, club activities of Proletkult will be merged with the work of ‘politprosvet’ [organisations for political education]. Proletkult will organise work of their studios and sections within these clubs.12 As early as May 1920, there was an order from the Communist Party executive committee to clear IZO Narkompros of Futurists (the Section of Visual Arts was itself liquidated in 1921). And in July 1920, the new ‘political-educational sector’ of Narkompros, Glavpolitprosvet, the Main Political-Educational Committee [Glavnyi politiko-prosvetitel’nyi komitet], was formed. Responsible for coordinating the political education of workers as well as propaganda, this organisation was also supposed to become the highest authority in the management of the arts. However, with the exception of Pyotr Voevodin of FOTO-KINO, none of the former heads of the IZO Narkompros wanted to join 11 12

Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 179. RGALI, f. 1230, op. 1, ed. kh. 92. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Положение о формах слияния народного комиссариата по просвещению с Пролеткультом: 1. Для теснейшего сближения организаций Пролеткульта с Наркомпросом, при Наркомпросе учреждается Отдел Пролетарской Культуры, функциями которого является руководство и идейное направление работы организаций Пролеткульта и использование из сил и достижений в области политико-просветительской работы. 2. Отдел этот образуется на одинаковых основаниях со всеми отделами Наркомпроса, подчиняясь Коллегии Наркомпроса и пользуясь всеми общеорганизационными учреждениями Наркомпроса. 3. С целью наиболее широкого и планомерного втягивания работников Пролеткульта или его студийцев в политико-просветительную работу, клубная работа Пролеткульта сливается с соответсвенной работой политпросветов. Пролеткульт организует в этих клубах работу своих студий и своих секций.’

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Glavpolitprosvet. So, it appointed Pyotr Kiselis, a relatively uninspiring ‘revolutionary’ artist, as head of the new IZO. From now on, the main purpose of art was supposed to be agitation and the education of workers. And not surprisingly, Glavpolitprosvet had the full support of the Central Committee of the Party. Now, even Lunacharsky took the view that ‘the Party should be everywhere like the Biblical spirit of God’.13 In November 1920, he announced at the meeting of the political-education departments that: ‘As long as the proletariat of Russia trusts the Communist Party, only the Party will direct education.’14 The government’s attack on left and independent artists and organisations reached a peak on 1 December 1920, when Pravda published a letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ‘About Proletkults’ [O Proletkul’takh]. In this letter, Proletkult was denounced as a ‘petit bourgeois’ organisation operating outside Soviet institutions and a haven for ‘socially-alien elements’. It was inspired by the article ‘On the Question of Proletkult’ [K voprosu o Proletkul’te], which was published in May 1919 in Pravda and was written by V. Boiarchenkov, a worker who at the time attended a drama studio in Moscow. Here he observed: ‘Not so long ago comrade Antonov wrote in Pravda that Narkompros is dealing with serving the petty bourgeoisie. Unfortunately the same can be said about Proletkult, since it is serving the same classes as Narkompros.’15 Boiarchenkov complained that in his drama studio, mainly members of the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, ‘with whom one cannot create proletarian culture’, were actively involved, since Proletkult failed to explain to workers the significance of the drama course. Thus, for the first two years after the October Revolution, Proletkult received financial support from the Bolshevik government, but through 1919 and 1920, the Bolshevik leadership grew increasingly hostile to it. After the letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party heavily criticising Proletkult, the president of Proletkult was removed and Bogdanov lost his seat on

13 14 15

Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 183. Ibid. V. Boiarchenkov, ‘K voprosu o Proletkul’te’, in Pravda, 6 May 1919, no. 95, p. 1. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Не так давно товарищ Антонов писал в «Правде», что Наркомпрос обслуживает мелкую буржеазию. К сожалению, то же можно сказать и о Пролеткульте, так как и он обслуживает те же классы, что и Наркомпрос.’

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its Central Committee. He withdrew from Proletkult completely in 1921, and was subsequently arrested and interrogated in 1923.16 In the same letter of 1 December 1920, the Futurists’ influence in the Proletkult studios was condemned and Narkompros was criticised for supporting left artists. It called the Futurists ‘decadents, supportive of an idealistic philosophy hostile to Marxism’, stating that ‘in the field of visual arts workers were instilled with absurd, corrupt taste (Futurism)’.17 This letter was followed by an article, which was probably written by the head of Petrograd City and Regional Government, Zinoviev, and ended with rather harsh criticism of people like Bogdanov: ‘Those members of intelligentsia, who tried to smuggle their reactionary views under the cover of “proletarian culture”, are now raising noisy agitation against orders of the Central Committee’.18 Soon all the publishing activities of Narkompros were taken over by the State Publishing Company [Gosizdat]. Just a decade later, publishing was placed under strict control by the state. It can be argued that the Bolsheviks proved quite good at ‘keeping up appearances’ for the first few years after the Revolution. They appeared to be liberal and democratic, but already in 1918, Lenin had shut down the newspaper New Life [Novaia zhizn’] after the appearance in it of Gorky’s article in which the famous writer described the father of the October Revolution as a talented man, who has all the qualities of a ‘leader’, as well as the lack of morals necessary for this role and ‘a pure landowner’s ruthless attitude’ toward the masses.19 A few years later, such criticism would have resulted in imprisonment and the

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On 8 September 1923, Bogdanov was amongst a number of people arrested. He was released after five weeks on 13 October; however, his file was not closed until a decree passed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 16 January 1989. He wrote about his experiences under arrest in Five weeks with the GPU. ‘O Proletkul’takh’, in Pravda, 1 December 1920, p. 3. Quotations in Russian read: ‘Футуристы, декаденты, сторонники враждебной марксизму идеалистической философии’; ‘В области искусства рабочим прививали нелепые извращённые вкусы (футуризм).’ ‘O Proletkul’takh’, in V. I. Lenin i izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo (Moscow, 1977), p. 358. Quotation in Russian read: ‘Те самые интеллигентские элементы, которые пытались контрабандно протащить свои реакционнве взгляды под видом «пролетарской культуры», теперь поднимают шумную агитациюпротив вышеприведенного постановления ЦК.’ See Maxim Gorky, Nesvoevremennye mysli. Zametki o revolutsii i kul’ture (Moscow, 1990), p. 151.

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death penalty; in 1918 Lenin felt that closing down the newspaper would be a strong enough measure. At the end of 1922, a new journal of the Futurist movement, Left Front of the Arts [Lef ], which aimed ‘to shape revolutionary art’, was approved for publication. However, it was edited and controlled by Gosizdat. While Lef was trying to justify its experiments with words as the essential work for the construction of the new language of Communist society, the freedom of words of any type was getting more and more limited in Russia. After being excited about all the new possibilities which came with political change, already in February 1920 Punin had written in his diary: ‘One quality of the revolution – life gets to be a risk’.20 It took the Soviet authorities another thirty years after the closure of the Art of the Commune to bring Punin to silence. In 1949, he was sent to the GULAG, where he died in 1953. Perhaps the supreme irony of Punin’s life was that this proletarian society, for whom he so fervently wished to interpret art, turned into one whose representatives eventually rejected everything he worked for and stood for, and which ultimately swallowed him up. So, the riddle persisted unresolved. The new proletarian society needed new, non-bourgeois and preferably Russian art, which it was unlikely to produce itself. The extreme interpretation represented by the Futurists and related movements would not have been understood or appreciated by them, as it was to a decreasing degree by its state mentors. In his speech at the National Congress of Proletkult, Lunacharsky announced: Proletariat in its scientific and artistic activities must critically use the experience of professional artists from all strands of art – both academic and innovative – choosing in them the qualities which aid organisation of new communist art.21 By 1920, culture in all its forms was recognised not just as a tool of informing or persuasion to ensure the advancement of the new society, but now also of its control. As Le Bon had argued, the crowds automatically place themselves 20 21

The Diaries of Nikolai Punin: 1904-1953, note of 12 February 1920, p. 62. Doklad Lunacharskogo o professionalism v iskusstve in RGALI, f. 1230, op. 2, ed. khr. 27, pp. 4-5. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Пролетариат в своём научном и художественном творчестве должен критически использовать навыки профессиональных художников всех родов искусства, как академического, так и наваторского направлений, выбирая из них то, что способствует организации нового коммунистического искусства.’

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under the authority of a chief and once an idea is established, contagion sets in, or must be set in motion: ‘Ideas, sentiments, emotions and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power intense as that of microbes.’22 Back in 1895, Le Bon had explained: As soon as a new dogma is implanted in the mind of crowds it becomes the source of inspiration whence are evolved its institutions, arts, and mode of existence……men of action have no thought beyond realising the accepted belief, legislators beyond applying it, while philosophers, artists and men of letters are solely preoccupied with its expression under various shapes.23

Development of the Workers’ Theatres in Russia as a Model for Post-revolutionary Mass Performances At the end of the nineteenth century, Lev Tolstoy saw the theatre as ‘the most powerful pulpit of our time’24 and Konstantin Stanislavsky proclaimed that the theatre ‘must be the teacher of society’.25 In imperial St. Petersburg, already in the 1860’s, the celebratory fireworks were replaced (as a high fire hazard) with theatrical performances. In February 1880, members of the state Duma supported the suggestion of the police commissioner to open accessible theatres in St. Petersburg for the increase of the morals of the lowest strides of society.26 As a result, in 1886 owners of several factories in the city opened ‘for the education of workers’ a permanent ‘People’s Theatre’ [Narodnyi Teatr] on the Smolensk Field on Vasilievskii Island and a Summer Open Theatre in Peter’s Park.27 But was it supposed to be the theatre for the people or by the people? It started as the theatre for the people when the Nevskoe Society of People’s Amusements, Vyborgskii Garden, Vasileostrovskii Theatre and ‘A Publicly 22 23 24 25 26 27

Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 92. Ibid. See S. G. Marks, How Russia shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 209. Ibid., p. 210. See Prazdnichnyi Peterburg, ed. by A. Nekrylova (St. Petersburg: Art-Deko, 2003), p. 85. The first people’s theatres were opened in 1871 in Odessa and in 1872 in Moscow. See E. Ol’khovskii, ‘Formirovanie rabochei intelligenttsiia v Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka’, in the materials of international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, p. 90.

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Accessible Theatre’ [Obshchedostupnyi Teatr] were opened (fig. 5.4). Theatre performances took place on Galernyi Island for the port workers and their families; the St. Petersburg Temperance Society organised theatre and musical evenings for workers at tea houses. Apparently, these performances were popular among workers and already in 1896 in his book People’s Theatre, Nikolai Timkovskii concluded that ‘theatre educated and enlightened common people’.28 In his book, The Union of Youth. An Artists’ Society of the Russian Avantgarde, Jeremy Howard described The House of Interludes that was opened in 1910 in St. Petersburg. Here Meyerhold and Boris Pronin (both of whom would later become leading Soviet theatre directors) experimented with interludes performed amidst the public, the applying of make-up in the auditorium and the ‘casting’ of the audience (as in the production of the play The Conversed Prince where members of the public became visitors at a Spanish bar).29 Already in 1906 in his production of Alexander Blok’s A Small Fairground Booth [Balaganchik], Meyerhold also used improvisation and pantomime as well as the active involvement of members of the audience in the production. Participation in theatrical performances not only enlightened workers but also separated them even further from the peasants and lifted them into the new class of worker-intelligentsia. But soon workers decided to create their own schools and theatrical societies rather than having these activities imposed upon them by the members of the bourgeoisie. Thus in 1913, the correspondent of Pravda in Perm in his article ‘Workers’ Theatre’ wrote that in bourgeois circles people believed that if workers were allowed anywhere near the cultural apparatus, they would have destroyed culture itself. On the contrary, the challenge was to prove that workers could be in charge of all cultural achievements that were useful for them, since the bourgeoisie did not have any energy left to work in the direction of the arts.30 The historian Edward Swift suggested that workers’ theatre circles were inspired by the seasonal peasant workers, who would work temporarily in the cities.31 Indeed, the first plays in these theatres were based on fairy-tales. Thus, 28

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N. Timkovskii, People’s Theatre (Moscow, 1896), quoted in E. Ol’khovskii, ‘Formirovanie rabochei intelligentsii v Rossii v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka’, pp. 90-91. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Театр образует и просвещает рабочих.’ See Jeremy Howard, The Union of Youth. An Artists’ Society of the Russian Avant-garde (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 75 ‘Rabochii teatr’, in Pravda, 30 May 1913, quoted in E. Swift, ‘Rabochii teatr i ‘proletarskaiia kul’tura’ v predrevolutsionnoi Rossii, 1905-1917’, in the materials of international conference Rabochie I intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, p. 168. See ibid., p. 168.

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Figure 5.1

Vladimir Tatlin, ‘Venice from Kumer’ and ‘Tsar’s Son’. Costume designs for Tsar Maximilian, 1911, pencil and gouache on paper, 23 × 17 cm. Photos: N. Punin Archive, St. Petersburg.

one of the most popular plays that was performed in factories and staged by the workers themselves throughout Russia from 1896 until 1917, was a Russian play from the late eighteenth century: Tsar Maximilian and his Disobedient Son Adolf.32 This play, in the form of a farce, was an improvisation on the subject of the fatal conflict between Peter the Great and his son Aleksei. It is mainly known to art and theatre historians in the West thanks to the famous sets and costumes designed by Tatlin for the performance of Tsar Maximilian in Moscow in November 1911 (fig. 5.1).

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Theatre producer, Nikolai Popov, witnessed workers from Tsindal’ Factory performing Tsar Maximilian in 1896. He wrote that they repeated this performance several times and staged it by themselves without any professional help. All the actors were men, wearing their casual clothes with a few decorations made out of paper. Also the poetess, Anna Akhmatova, witnessed workers of the factory in Tsarskoe Selo performing Tsar Maximilian. There are numerous reports that this play was popular even in 1916, and that workers from the Sugar Refinery in Chernigov region repeated this play every Christmas. See ibid., p. 168.

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Tatlin’s elegant designs were heavily influenced by the illustrations of folk tales and primitivism of Russian popular prints, lubki.33 What we do not know and will probably never find out is whether Tatlin actually saw one of the workers’ performances of Tsar Maximilian. When the members of the Russian intelligentsia (including Bogdanov) were talking about the important educational role of art and theatre, they often assumed that the workers did not have any culture of their own and were waiting to be enlightened through what was essentially bourgeois culture. However, since a large proportion of urban workers in nineteenth-century Russia originated from the peasantry (even though they may have tried to deny it), in many cases they brought traditional performances and their own artistic traditions with them. The census of 1900 showed that 90 per cent of workers in the Tsindal factory never attended any of the Moscow theatres,34 yet most of them either participated or watched performances in the workers’ theatre. Furthermore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a new stratum of workers emerged. They were usually highly qualified, had quite high wages and were especially keen to deny any links with the peasants. They called themselves ‘conscious workers’ [‘soznatel’nye rabochie’] in order to stress their special position among the masses. In all their behaviour, the members of the worker-intelligentsia tried to stress their belonging to the cities and city culture. Thus, Semen Kanatchikov, a highly-qualified modeller, who came to Moscow from a village but actively tried to forget about his rural origins, wrote in his autobiography that often, as soon as a worker became conscious and stopped finding his current social situation satisfactory, he would start feeling burdened by his surroundings and would strive to communicate with those who were similar to him and to spend his spare time both sensibly and culturally.35 Many workers like Kanatchikov, who were unsatisfied with their social situation, would join Marxist circles. But apart from political awareness, their cultural education determined to which stratum in the workers’ hierarchy they belonged. The workers’ intelligentsia used to read journals and attend evening lectures, theatres and museums. They also participated in workers’ theatres

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For Tatlin’s Tsar Maximilian, see Lynton, Tatlin’s Tower, pp. 16-18. See E. Swift, ‘Rabochii teatr i ‘proletarskaiia kul’tura’ v predrevolutsionnoi Rossii, 1905-1917’, in the materials of international conference Rabochie i intelligentsiia v Rossii v epokhu reform i revolutsii. 1861-fevral’ 1917, p. 169. Quoted in ibid., p. 170.

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which strove to enlighten the ‘less educated masses’ and to increase interest in visual spectacle. If Party schools, Sunday schools for workers and People’s Theatres were imposed by the members of the bourgeoisie, who strived to educate workers through art, Workers’ Theatres tried to unite the working class and establish a proletarian culture, independent from other castes of society. They also promoted a feeling of solidarity and equality between actors and spectators: an important technique that would be picked up and developed by the Bolsheviks in mass street performances of 1919-1920, where both actors and members of the public would participate in the production. In the report of a Workers’ Theatre play, staged in one of the Moscow factories in 1916, the correspondent observed that ‘it was impossible to separate the stage from the auditorium, since the performance united actors and spectators.’36 Instead of the dominance of the actors, these plays strived to show that they were made by the workers and for the workers. It was not coincidental that after the Bolshevik Revolution many leaders of the Workers’ Theatres became active members of Proletkult, which proclaimed that Proletarian culture had to be created by the proletariat rather than members of the intelligentsia. Thus, one of the active leaders of the Workers’ Theatre who was also attending classes at Panina’s People’s House in 1908, was Aleksei Mashirov, who gave himself the pen name ‘Samobytnik’37 and in 1917 became one of the founders of Proletkult and a president of the Petrograd city organisation.38 Back in 1912 in his novel, Engineer Menni, the head of All-Russia Proletkult, Bogdanov expressed his faith in the inherent egalitarianism of all workers (who address each other as ‘brothers’), and his awareness that the intelligentsia and the more politically- and socially-aware workers, while able to represent the aspirations of an entire class, rose above the proletariat and became detached from them. The problem of the elite who know and the masses who are constrained to believe was poignantly illustrated in the moving lament of the bewildered worker in this novel. Bogdanov’s answer to the dilemma of cultural leadership was Proletkult. But did he manage to find an answer to the question of how to gain predominance in a country where workers were still a small minority:

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Quoted in ibid., p. 183. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Было невозможно отдулить сцену от зала, так как представление было общностью актёров и зрителей.’ From the Russian word for ‘original’ or ‘distinctive’. See Mally, Culture of the Future, pp. 100-101.

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The Proletkult was ‘proletarian’ only in the broadest sense of the word; it drew its major support from the labouring population at large, from industrial workers and their children, from white-collar employees and artisans, and even from the peasantry. […] Proletkultists passionately asserted the proletariat’s central position in the new social order, but they did not agree on just what proletariat was. For some it was synonymous with the industrial working class. They hoped the movement would find a following among the most culturally and politically advanced representatives of the factory labour force. For many others, not unlike the Populists and Socialist Revolutionaries of years gone by, the proletariat included all of the long-suffering Russian people, the narod.39 Against the views of the Proletkult leaders, the Bolsheviks advocated an alliance between the poor peasantry and the proletariat. Already by early 1919, Narkompros had formed a division of ‘worker-peasant theatre’, which marked their continued efforts in finding a new terminology for amateur performances by the lower classes. The first leader of this division was a worker and the longtime activist of People’s Theatre, Valentin Tikhonovich. Unlike members of Proletkult, he believed that workers and peasants shared a lot in common: they both worked, many factory labourers were not that far removed from the land, and many peasants spent part of the year in a factory. Rather than turning their backs on society’s largest social group, the workers should collaborate with the peasants to create a new theatre.40 Thus, this historic conflict provoked numerous debates on the nature and role of proletarian culture and became even more pronounced after the Bolshevik Revolution.

May Day 1920: Mass Performances and Spectacles as Effective Forms of Propaganda at the Time of Civil War and War Communism In 1919 and 1920, mass theatrical performances and spectacles became a last resort for the free expression of artistic creativity. They also epitomised all the

39 40

Ibid., pp. xxiv-xxvi. See Mally, Revolutionary Acts. Amateur Theatre and the Soviet State. 1917-1938 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 21.

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ambitions of Proletkult, which strived to involve the masses in artistic creation. Theatre as an inherently collective art was at the cutting edge of the work of Proletkult studios and clubs throughout Russia. One of its most active propagators, Platon Kerzhentsev, insisted that the people’s theatre be not a theatre for the people but a ‘theatre of the people’, i.e. based on the creative work of the lower classes.’41 He remarked that ‘the task of the proletarian theatre is not to produce good professional actors who will successfully perform the plays of a socialist repertory, but to give an outlet to the creative artistic instinct of the broad masses.’42 In Petrograd, the first theatre to stage revolutionary performances belonged to Proletkult. In Spring of 1918, Proletkult was given the former Assembly of Nobles, and a ceremonial opening of the Proletkult Palace included a performance by Proletkult’s new theatre studio, which included 200 students of both sexes and was led by Bessal’ko, a ‘proletarian poet’, and a graduate of Lenin’s school in Paris. The Proletkult performance belonged more to festivity than to the theatre; it was a ritual celebration – stylized, measured, a canvas of ideas and not details. It was a proletarian show for a worker audience. Its peculiar stylistics were absorbed by future festival spectacles.43 Already in 1918, Proletkult performances were laying strong foundations for the mass spectacles that became the centre of all the festivals in the 1920s. In 1919, one of the theoreticians of Proletkult, Vladimir Tikhanovich wrote: Beauty has to penetrate into everyday reality…Theatre – is the best means of aesthetisation of life and the development of a new culture, represented by not single geniuses but aestheticized masses; a fusion of festivals and every day; leisure and labour.44 Mass performances promised to bring art to the common people and give them a chance to participate in its very creation. The ‘masses’ were at the same 41 42 43 44

Quoted in James von Geldern, p. 28. Ibid. Ibid., p. 32. Quoted in A. Mazaev, Iskusstvo i Bol’shevizm. 1920-1930 (Moscow: Komkniga, 2007), pp. 16-17. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Нужно проникновение красоты в органичную ткань быта… Театр – лучшее средство эстетизации жизни и развития культуры, представляемой ну одиночными гениями, а эстетизированными массами; слияния воедино праздников и будней, отдыха и труда.’

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time part of the spectacle and spectatorship; they were acted upon and actors at the same time. They also provided an opportunity for spontaneity and the free expression of people’s feelings about recent events. In his book The Art of Interruption, John Roberts has explained that definitions of the ‘everyday’ in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia are debated ‘through the framework of proletarian culture’ and that ‘capturing the ‘everyday’ and transforming the ‘everyday’ for a ‘true Bolshevism’ became the terrain on which the right and left of the party fought out the cultural debate’.45 In the unstable economic and political situation in the midst of the Civil War, the 8th Congress of the Communist Party, which took place in March 1919, called all the cultural workers to develop the widest possible propaganda of communist ideas.46 By expressing the pathos of the fight against the exploiters and class enemies, mass performances had to play the leading role in the revolutionary education of the masses. Following traditional elements of pre-revolutionary Russian fairs, which included balagans, sideshows and clowns, the street theatre of 1919 included ‘flying troupes’ on platforms pulled by streetcars and trucks, carnival acts and circus shows at designated stops with clowns, skits and songs (fig. 5.2). Drama and play, native to traditional festivals, developed a new and, in a sense, a more successful means to communicate with illiterate masses: The mass-theatre debate touched on ambiguities of great consequence after the Revolution. The belief that spectacles embodied the spirit of socialist revolution was common, but its roots were tangled. Some, following Wagner, felt that mass drama would, like the Greek drama, express the nation’s unified will; others considered it an instrument of political struggle. When the October Revolution placed a party claiming to represent the working class in power, the leaders faced a dilemma: Should mass theatre represent the workers in power or the people struggling for expression? Lunacharsky, representing the state, assumed optimistically that both interests could be served.47 But even before the Russian and European intelligentsia developed an interest in mass performances, the army had served to acquaint the Russian lower 45 46 47

John Roberts, The Art of Interruption. Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 16. See KPSS v rezolutsiiakh i resheniiakh s’ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK. Part 1. 1889-1925 (Moscow, 1953), p. 420. James von Geldern, p. 26.

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Figure 5.2

Crowds watching an outdoor performance in front of the Musical Comedy Theatre on Nevsky Prospect. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

classes with theatre. And it only had to be expected that in 1919, along with Proletkult studios, the Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army was given the task of producing the first, most important, outside performances (fig. 5.3). It was organised by the director of the Mobile-Popular Theatre, Nikolai Vinogradov, in 1919 and was awarded the status of a special military unit. The Red Army Studio’s productions introduced a new type of mass performance, so-called igrishche, a mass performance with thousands of spectators and the participation of both amateur actors and such professionals as Meyerhold, Andreeva, Aleksei Gorky and Chaliapin. They followed the format of Meyerhold’s early experiments with interludes performed amongst the public. The Overthrow of the Autocracy The first igrishche took place on 12 March 1919 in the Iron Hall of the People’s House [Narodny Dom]48 in Petrograd, when the Red Army studio performed

48

The largest People’s House (which included theatre productions) was opened in St. Petersburg on 12 December 1900. It was called ‘Place for the Public Entertainment of the

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Figure 5.3

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Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army. 23 February 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

a version of the The Overthrow of the Autocracy [Sverzhenie Samoderzhaviia], one of the first large-scale historical pageants, dedicated to the events which led to the February Revolution. Ironically, the first mass spectacle of Bolshevik Petrograd celebrated the February Revolution, which the Bolsheviks had overturned. It was a true improvisation, which included the active participation of the audience, who sang along and participated in some scenes. The performance was a game in all senses of the word; it was play at revolution, a revolt by soldiers who had participated in the real events. On red and white platforms at either end of the hall, actor-soldiers representing the autocracy and the Revolution, spoke lines taken from the press, held stylised meetings, sang, and simulated combat. Improvisation gave a chance for both actors and members of the audience to express their attitudes to the historic events. Contemporaries

Emperor Nicholas II’. Before the 1917 Revolution, it was managed by the Department for National Sobriety. After the Revolution, it was used as a theatre. It burned down in 1932 and was replaced by the Theatre of Lenin’s Komsomol, later re-named as the ‘Baltiiskii Dom Theatre’.

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Figure 5.4

Performance on Uritsky Square of The Overthrow of the Autocracy by the Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army (director Nikolai Vinogradov). 20 July 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

remarked that ‘improvisation attracts attention of most theatre activists as a type of art to which the future belongs’.49 If in 1919 participation of spectators in performances was more spontaneous than planned, in 1920 the attraction of members of the audience to participate in mass performances was seen as a primary purpose of the spectacle. So striking was the effect of The Overthrow of the Autocracy that it was repeated 250 times in barracks, camps, on the staircases of former palaces and in Palace Square itself during the next seven months (fig. 5.4, 5.5), first in the same format as the original performance and later as an extended version under the title The Red Year [Krasnyi God]. These performances were so successful that the TEO (Theatre Section) of Narkompros decided to move them outside in order to allow more people to see and to participate in the spectacles. Planning the celebrations on 1 May 1919, Narkompros declared: Theatres on that day should give their performances exclusively in the open air. On the squares, at the street crossings and in the parks spe49

N. Lvov, ‘Opyt improvizatsii v raboche-krest’ianskom teatre’, in Vestnik teatra, 1919, no. 13, p. 5. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Импровизация все больше привлекает внимание театральных деятелей, как вид искусства, которому принадгаежит будущее.’

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Figure 5.5

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Episode ‘9 January 1905’ from the performance on Uritsky Square of The Overthrow of the Autocracy by the Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army (director N. Vinogradov). 20 July 1919. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

cial grand stands should be erected. Lorries will be turned into moving stages – they too can be used by actors. Here, on the squares, colourful and mottled balagany will involve circus programme with clowns, jugglers and dancers – everyone must live a new life, everything must involve the spectators, who must actively participate in all the performances.50 Thus, the usual elements of traditional Russian festival, balagany, fair grounds and circus performances, were now filled with new revolutionary contents and

50

Vestnik teatra, 29 April-2 May 1919, no. 22, p. 3. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Театры в этот день должны давать свои спектакли исключительно на открытом возду’хе. На площадях, на перекрестках улиц, площадках парков воздвигаются подмостки. На фурах привозят передвижные сцены, грузовой автомобиль тоже может служить помостом для труппы актеров. Тут же, на площадях, воздвигаются балаганы с их пестрой и шумной программой, цирки, устраиваются раешники, клоуны, балагуры, шуты, жонглеры, танцоры – все должны жить новой жизнью, все должны вовлечь зрителей, которые должны принимать участие в том, что творится на подмостках этих балаганов.’

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Figure 5.6

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Street performance in Petrograd. 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

aimed to encourage members of the audience not just to observe but to participate in all the festive events. They had become ‘revolutionary cabarets’ which comprised a recital of satirical verse, clowns and choral singing and was performed on the platforms attached to trams and lorries (fig. 5.6). The idea of the mobile theatre performance was developed further on 1 May 1920 when such famous theatre directors as Sergei Radlov, Vladimir Soloviev, Piotrovsky and Rappoport staged short dramas on tram platforms decorated by professional artists including Sarra Lebedeva and Lebedev, and moved them around Petrograd. One of Lebedev’s poster panels on a mobile theatre platform included the slogan ‘This is a Museum-piece Citizen!!! Gather Round and Have a Good Stare!!!’. Humorous slogans and caricatures replaced more conventional styles. The importance of theatre for the education of the masses was indicated by the government when on 26 August 1919 a new division of Narkompros, Central Theatre [Tsentroteatr], was created. This new Bolshevik organ would be responsible for all the mass performances and spectacles. The Third International The next outdoor spectacle was the performance by the Theatre and Drama Workshop which took place on May Day 1919 in front of the People’s House

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and was called The Third International [Tretii Internatsional]. The mobile stage was much the same as in The Overthrow of the Autocracy, except for a symbolic globe placed centre-stage: a prop borrowed from Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe [Misteriia Buff ] and used in previous Petrograd festivals. The play included slogans about revolution, the end of tyrants, the burial of martyrs, and a world of peace. On the same day in the Porokhovye factory district on the outskirts of Petrograd, one of Vinogradov’s assistants, Dmitry Shcheglov, who had left the Red Army Studio for a studio of his own at the Petrograd Proletkult, produced the first (and only) Proletkult mass spectacle From the Power of Darkness to the Sunlight [Ot Vlasti T’my k Solnechnomu Svetu]. Like The Third International, it was an ‘outdoor agitational show’, which included little dialogue. Shcheglov believed that spoken words would be lost in the open air; instead the plot was conveyed by pantomime. Speech was mostly slogans, delivered either by a worker chorus or by individuals with megaphones. This performance had good reviews and pleased the authorities, and in November, Shcheglov was invited to produce another spectacle, From Darkness to Light [Ot T’my k Svetu], this time in the city centre. The second spectacle was largely indistinguishable from the first. But the real epiphany of the mass outside performances took place in 1920, when the armies of Kolchak and Denikin were defeated and the Entente stopped blockading Russia. The general spirit of the festivals was much more optimistic than in 1919, and it was declared at the IX Communist Party Congress that May Day 1920 was to be celebrated as a massive subbotnik [a day of unpaid labour]51 which would culminate in the grandiose mass performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour [Misteriia Osvobozhdennogo Truda]. The Monument to Alexander III was lovingly covered by spruce branches, and a temporary sculpture, Trumpeter of the World Revolution, replaced Blokh’s installation used for 7 November 1919, The Death of Capitalism. Celebrations on 1 May 1920 started with a traditional demonstration and included seventeen thousand workers carrying banners with slogans (including new slogans in support of the Polish proletariat due to the Soviet-Polish war that had started in April 1920) and tools for participation in the subbotnik (fig. 5.7). They started by dismantling the beautiful iron grate, designed by the architect R. F. Meltser and built in 1901, around the garden by the Winter

51

See KPSS v rezolutsiiakh i resheniiakh s’ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK. Part 2 (Moscow, 1970), p. 164.

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Figure 5.7

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Members of the Polish proletariat in Petrograd on May Day 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg. Below: Banners left during work at a day of unpaid labour [subbotnik]. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 5065.

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Palace. This grate included several double-headed eagles and therefore had to be demolished. On May Day 1920, seven thousand workers and students dismantled the grate and loaded one hundred carriages, which moved all the rubble to a barge moored on the Neva along a specially erected railway (fig. 5.8, 5.9). A few sections of this beautiful railing decorated with iron leaves were preserved and moved to Stachek Avenue, one of the factory districts on the outskirts of Petrograd. Another centre of revolutionary festivals, the Field of Mars, was cleared of rubbish and several young lilac trees were planted there. After the subbotnik, a military parade with the participation of all the divisions of the Red Army and sailors from the Baltic fleet started on Uritsky Square. Since the workers were unlikely to visit museums, several exhibitions were opened on Uritsky Square and along Nevsky Prospect. Photographs and reproductions of paintings together with a commentary were dedicated to the Great French Revolution (fig. 5.10), to the Congress of Socialists that took place in Paris in 1889 and to the first Russian revolution of 1905, and were arranged on wooden panels attached to the facades of former palaces. In 1918, these facades were covered by Futurist bright canvases; in 1920 much more direct and easier-to-understand political propaganda was employed. But the most important part of the 1 May celebrations was played by the mass performances and spectacles. In his speech made on May Day, Lunacharsky announced: ‘Now it is clear to us that enemies would not strangle us, that the main loop which we carried around our necks has been broken and that we deserve to have a joyous May Day festival.’52 On the eve of 1 May 1920, Lunacharsky’s article ‘On Popular Festivals’ was published in the magazine Theatre Herald [Vestnik teatra]. Here he explained that now the masses must ‘outwardly manifest themselves’ and become ‘their own spectacle’.53 He distinguished two main components of popular festival: the ‘mass’ component, represented by ‘converging movements of the mass public’ and culminating in ‘action or elevated, symbolic ceremony’ at a focal point in the city; and the ‘intimate’ component, which would include celebrations ‘either indoors, where

52

53

Istoriia Sovetskogo Teatra. Ocherki razvitiia (Leningrad, 1933), vol. 1, p. 267. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Стало ясно, что враг нас не задушит, что главная петля, висевшая у нас на шее, нами разорвана и мы заслужили, чтобы нынешний первый май стал праздником веселым.’ Vestnik teatra, 27 April-2 May 1920, no. 62, p. 13. See translation of this article in Vladimir Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova and Catherine Cooke, Festivals and Celebrations in Russia. 1918-1933, p. 124.

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Figure 5.8

Loading the railing’s foundations onto a rail cart. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 40376.

all premises are turned into a kind of revolutionary cabaret, or out of doors: on trams, moving lorries, or simply on tables, barrels, etc.’54 54

Ibid.

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Figure 5.9

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Dismantling of the railing which surrounded the Winter Palace Garden. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of Political History of Russia, St. Petersburg, ИН 40385.

The latter component in Lunacharsky’s popular festival was the direct descendant of the pre-revolutionary balagans, which formed the central part of traditional village fêtes and city fairs. On 1 May 1920, professional actors and musicians from Petrograd academic theatres, as well as the music and club sections of Narkompros performed several pantomimes. The club section of Narkompros organised a pantomime called Transfer of Slave Labour into Bright Construction [Perekhod Rabstva v Svetloe Stroitel’stvo] that was performed on the mobile platform of a tram that moved around the city centre (fig. 5.11). Professional actors presented Russian fairy tales and folk songs from platforms attached to trams and lorries (fig. 5.12).55 The newspaper Zhizn’ iskusstva reported: ‘All the tram platforms were decorated with posters painted by artists, and some were completely covered by them. The general impression is very bright and colourful.’56 55 56

See the full list of performances in Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1-3 May 1920. Zhizn’ iskusstva, 4 May 1920. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Все трамвайные платформы были украшены художественно расписанными плакатами, а некоторые вагоны были совершенно закрыты ими. Общее впечатление чрезвычайно яркое, красочное.’

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Figure 5.10

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Street stand dedicated to 100 years of French Revolution. 1 May 1920. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 40555.

These mobile platforms moved around Petrograd from 4 pm to 8 pm, repeating their programme several times. In the evening, they all gathered around the Field of Mars (which in 1918 had been re-named the Square of the Victims of the Revolution). Celebrations continued in the Summer Garden, where choirs and stand-up comedians performed. The Mystery of Liberated Labour But the real apotheosis of the whole festival became the mass performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour [Misteriia Osvobozhdennogo Truda], which was performed in front of the former Stock Exchange overlooking the Neva River and the Peter and Paul Fortress. More than four thousand professional actors and students, as well as soldiers from the Red Army, took part in this performance. The script was written by Pavel Arsky; it was directed by Alexan-

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Figure 5.11

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Pantomime Transferral of a Slave’s Labour into Bright Construction on a mobile tram platform. Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

der Kugel’, Yury Annenkov and Sofia Maslovskaia; decorations were painted by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Vladimir Shchuko and Annenkov. Around 35,000 spectators came to watch this extraordinary drama, which aimed to illustrate ‘the fight of slaves for freedom against the lords of all times and nations’ (fig. 5.13). This colourful spectacle included carousing emperors and capitalists dancing to cheap Gypsy music and the can-can. A huge gate of gold guarded a kingdom of brotherhood and equality; the forbidden land of traditional myths and fairy-tales. Outside toiled the wretched of the earth, shackled and whipped marching along accompanied by Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’. Time and space were relative and Roman slaves led by Spartacus ran towards red banners, followed by peasants with Stenka Razin ahead of them. Then in the East, a red star appeared, perhaps a reference to Bogdanov’s utopian novel, heralding the liberation of mankind. In the grand finale, the Kingdom of Socialism was revealed in the form of a rising sun, a red star, a tree of liberty around which the victors revelled, red banners, and a figure of Liberated Labour in front of which the soldiers exchanged their weapons for the implements of peace (fig. 5.14). The effect of this scene was strengthened by searchlights from ships on the river that shone onto the stage; shots that boomed from the nearby fortress and four large bands that played the

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Figure 5.12

Theatrical performance on a platform attached to a lorry. Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

‘Internationale’. The audience seemed to merge with the performers as they crowded the stage and sang the anthem of revolution. ‘Liberated Labour’ was the first large-scale display of revolutionary myth to a mass audience. Its high level of abstraction set it off from the rather concrete Red Army productions. Both the masses and the rulers in the play are drawn from all peoples and all epochs. The historical process predominates, and the promised land of Utopia is an array of stylized symbols. Unlike in the monumental propaganda of Lenin, the Russian Revolutionary tradition is almost absent. […] And the entire production breathed emotionalism – the mysterious setting, the aura of suspense, the kinetic melodrama, the merciless caricatures of evil men and women, the music and lights, the density of the mass audience were all deployed

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Figure 5.13

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Spectators watching the performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour in front of the former Stock Exchange in Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

to generate visceral reaction and to project a historical myth in a union of arts, technology, urban space, and festive occasion.57 Unlike previous festivals, May Day in 1920 was organised entirely by the Committee for the Organisation and Conducting all Proletarian Festivals [KOMPROLETPRAZD], which was founded by Ispolkom of the Petrograd Soviet in March 1920 and was entrusted with the supervision of all the celebrations in the city. This committee was chaired by Antselovich with Gorky as vice-director (or ‘comrade of the chairman’) and was responsible for the artistic and technical departments.58 It was also responsible for the mass antireligious performance that took place in Petrograd during the night following the Easter Vigil on 5 May 1920. 57 58

Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 95. See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 3, d. 255, p. 3.

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Figure 5.14

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Performance The Mystery of Liberated Labour, which took place in front of the former Stock Exchange in Petrograd. 1 May 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

Soon after 1 May 1920, the Petrograd Soviet decided to use the nationalised dachas on Kamenny Island, which had belonged to the aristocracy before the Revolution, for ‘Houses of Rest’ [Doma Otdykha] for the workers. Intended to re-gain the support of the proletariat, these comfortable houses and regular meals felt for hungry impoverished workers like real luxury. In a few weeks, Chekhonin, a former member of the World of Art movement, who had actively participated in all the festive city decorations, was commissioned to paint decorative panels, emblems, posters and banners, which were intended to decorate the squares and alleys of the island. A wooden triumphal arch was designed by the architect Fomin at the entrance to the island. For the main People’s Meetings Square in the middle of the island, the sculptor Blokh created a ten-meter tall plaster figure of a naked proletarian, which was supposed to be taller than Michelangelo’s David. When the committee for Petrosoviet came to inspect the monument before it was officially unveiled, they found that Blokh’s Proletarian was ‘too naked’ and ordered the sculptor ‘to dress him up immediately’. In her memoirs, the artist Valentina Khodasevich wrote that originally Blokh refused to cover up his sculpture, saying that all the scaffolding was already dismantled and he had run out of plaster. However, the committee gave him a few workers and obliged him to sort

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it out overnight. Frustrated, Blokh had to compromise and make an apron for his Proletarian out of wood.59 The Blockade of Russia One of the main parts of the carefully organised worker’s leisure activities was the mass performance The Blockade of Russia [Blokada Rossii], which was held on 20 June 1920 (fig. 5.15). This play was suggested by the commissar of Petrograd theatres, Andreeva, and was directed by Radlov with decorations designed by the architect Fomin and the artist Khodasevich. The stage was erected on a little island in the middle of the lake and an orchestra played on a floating platform. This island was staged as a blockaded Russia, assaulted by the Entente, invaded by the Poles, and rescued by the Red Army. There was no text; instead buffoonery, mime, circus elements, and the usual array of fireworks, light, and sound were used. Seven hundred fifty Red Army soldiers performed in the scenes of foreign intervention, the battle on the water and the final military parade. This performance was a great success and marked an important shift in mass performances from eternal myths to an illustration of immediate political problems. The contemporary report from the committee responsible for staging this spectacle sent to Petrosoviet stated: Serving the audience, which exceeded by many times the number of people who could attend conventional theatres, our group followed the following principles: Art should now play an official role; it should become a weapon for agitation and propaganda of the ideas of communism as well as cultural-educational ideals; it must become revolutionary – it must charge the masses with positive political energy; it must become deeply democratic and use techniques which would be accessible to even illiterate citizens; and at the same time it must be artistic and express political and economic issues in beautiful forms.60

59 60

See Valentina Khodasevich, Portrety slovami (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1987), p. 144. TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 283, op. 2, d. 146, p. 71. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Обслуживая аудиторию, в бесконечное множество раз превышающую численно контингент посетителей закрытых театров, труппа в основу своей работы поставила принципы: Искусство должно сейчас играть роль служебнуто; оно должно стать орудием агитации и пропаганды идей коммунизма и идей порядка культурно-просветительного; оно должно стать революционным, т. е. должно массам давать заряд положительной политической энергии; оно должно стать глубоко демократичным, т. е. должно пользоваться приемами, доступными

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Figure 5.15

Performance The Blockade of Russia. Kamenny Island, Petrograd. 20 June 1920. Photos: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

Toward a World Commune On 19 July 1920, the Second Congress of the III Communist International was opened in Petrograd with great pomp. By 9 am, dressed-up workers’ representatives from all Petrograd’s factories were lined up in front of the Moscow пониманию даже неграмотных граждан; и при всем при этом, оно должно быть художественным, т. е. отражающим вопросы политики, экономики и т. д. в красивых формах.’

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Workers’ representatives from all of Petrograd’s factories lined up in front of the Moscow Railway Station to meet delegates of the Second Congress of the III Communist International. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

Railway Station (fig. 5.16); the orchestra played revolutionary music on the platform while members of the Petrograd committee of the Communist Party met the delegates who arrived at the Congress from Moscow. All the guests and delegates were then put on brightly decorated trams and taken to Smolny. From there everyone walked through ranks of school children and soldiers to Uritsky Square where the Congress took place. After the Congress at 5 pm, the demonstration began that culminated in an international rally on Uritsky Square (fig. 5.17). All the houses along the demonstration route were decorated with flags and posters produced by the artists from the Decorative Institute: Shkol’nik, Berger, Buzin, Pakulin and others. But the main event of the Congress was undoubtedly the grandiose mass performance called Toward a World Commune [K Mirovoi Kommune], directed

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Figure 5.17

International rally on Uritsky Square dedicated to the Second Congress of the III Communist International. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

by Andreeva and produced by designers Radlov and Piotrovsky. More than 4,000 professional and amateur actors, students and soldiers participated in this performance, which lasted from 10pm to 4am and which was attended by Lenin himself (fig. 5.18). This performance had a rather complicated plot, which started as a retrospective of the Paris Commune, the First World War, and the February and October Revolutions. It was staged on the square in front of the Stock Exchange and was lit up by projectors from the Peter and Paul Fortress and from military ships moored in the Neva. In the grand finale, the joyful, liberated people of Earth marched around the square accompanied by fireworks (fig. 5.19). For the first time, real cars and real troops and real cannons were used in this performance and delegates of the Congress took part. The city itself played an important part in the performance. In his article ‘Festivals of 1920’ Piotrovsky remarked that they turned the square into Russia under siege, which was then liberated by real Red Army troops who ran across the bridge and arrested ‘enemies’ who were hiding behind the backs of the spectators.61 Theatre was 61

See A. Piotrovsky, Za sovetskii teatr! (Leningrad, 1925), pp. 12-14.

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The participants of the mass performance Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

splashing out into life, the historical events were re-enacted and a new mythology was born. The Austrian writer, René Fulöp-Miller, who visited Russia in the 1920s, wrote in his book The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: They [Bolsheviks] tried, by the introduction of great festive massperformances, to make the streets themselves the arena for dramatic events, and to link up parades, processions, and national festivals, so as to form an ordered and systematically total effect. In the slogan ‘Theatricali[s]e life’, the dictators of revolutionary art saw the possibility of evolving with scenic means of propaganda such as could never be attained within the theatre itself. …It was no wonder that the Bolshevists began to regard the ‘theatricalisation of life’ as a task of high political importance.62

62

René Fulöp-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia, p. 133.

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Figure 5.19

Scenes from the mass enactment of Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

Clearly, political propaganda did not need to transmit truthful statements – it might have worked more effectively if the statements were ‘theatricalised’. As Le Bon had explained: Just as is the case with respect to persons in whom the reasoning power is absent, the figurative imagination of crowds is very powerful and very susceptible of being keenly impressed…Crowds being incapable both of reflection and of reasoning, are devoid of the notion of improbability; and it is to be noted that in a general way it is the most improbable things that are the most striking.63 Le Bon had further argued that it is in the nature of crowds to favour the illusion over the fact, however true or not:

63

Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 35.

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From the dawn of civilisation onwards, crowds have always undergone the influence of illusions. […] Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy has been unable to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations and the reason why socialism is so powerful today is that it constitutes the last illusion that is still vital.64 Petrograd was indeed the most spectacular ‘theatre city’ which also played a crucial part in revolutionary history, analogous in some ways to Paris in the 1790’s. These useful qualities were exploited by Bolshevik leaders and theatre directors, but the overall effect of the show, which was called Toward a World Commune, was memorable, but not very successful in terms of political propaganda. On 21 July 1920, the newspaper Petrogradskaia Pravda published an article by P. Kudelli, who remarked on this performance: ‘Toward a World Commune’ encompasses far too many complicated events from the First International down to our day, including both February and October of the Great Russian Revolution. Not everyone could compile an artistic fictional scenario round all these historical events. […] The haste with which the scenario was written could be felt in everything, in the scenario itself and in its performance. The scenario did not give a clear picture of the epoch. We saw nothing but a dramatization of dull prose, written with the aim of giving a historical study from the First to the Third International. This dullness led to tedious slowness utterly inartistic prose.65 But despite these negative comments, more than 30,000 citizens of Petrograd saw this dramatisation performed. And despite Kudelli’s impression that everything was done in haste, preparations for this spectacle took months: all the Petrograd actors were mobilised and two months before the performance, Petrosoviet prohibited art workers from leaving the city before the performance.66 Originally, the organisers of this performance had asked Altman to decorate the Stock Exchange Building (fig. 5.20). He proposed: 64 65 66

Ibid., pp. 66-67. Petrogradskaia Pravda, 21 July 1920, no. 159, trans. from Russian by Tolstoy, Bibikova and Cooke in Street Art of the Revolution, p. 128. TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 283, op. 2, d. 143, p. 13.

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Figure 5.20

Nathan Altman. Design for decorating the Stock Exchange building as a stage set for the mass dramatisation of Toward a World Commune. 19 July 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

…to paint several columns red, in order to erase the impression of a classical building, to break the arches by extending the third arch into the fronton to make an impression of a full circle. As the result, we will have a completely new, unexpected constructivist building.67 Altman remarked that his design was refused because he suggested painting parts of the Stock Exchange in green which, according to the organisers, was not ‘a revolutionary colour.’68 Instead, a much less known artist, P. Shil’dknekht, was commissioned to make all the decorations for Toward a World Commune. His design was much more conventional than Altman’s: above the columns on the front of the Stock Exchange, he placed wood panels with slogans written in different languages and decorated with red drapes and a golden fringe. His decorations for the play were equally modest: a black silhouette of the double-headed eagle that in the second part of the play was replaced by the red star.

67

68

OR RNB, f. 1126, ed. khr. 50, p. 13. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘…покрасить несколько колонн в красный цвет, так чтобы исчезло само впечатление классического здания, прорвать архитрав, продолжив третью арку внутри фронтона в полный круг. Получалось совершенно новое, неожиданное и, по-своему, конструктивное здание.’ See ibid.

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Mass performances attracted thousands of people and had strong government support that now saw them as the most successful propaganda tool. With the organisation of Glavpolitprosvet, the state imposed strict control over all public celebrations. In 1920, a special department of TsK, called RKP(b), responsible for agitation and propaganda (Agitprop) was organised. With the help of Narkompros, Agitprop controlled all artistic production and mass performances. In October 1920, Meyerhold (who had recently been appointed as head of TEO Narkompros) announced that the third anniversary of the Revolution would become a ‘Theatre October’. He strived to revolutionise theatre by making it political and agitational, and involving spectators in all performances. Narkompros’ ‘Book on the Political Basis in the Sphere of Art’ stressed that art should be used exclusively for ‘bright illustration of political, revolutionary and propaganda work’ and that special support should be given to ‘choral singing and mass performances.’69 These recommendations were implemented in the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Revolution. As in previous years, a special festival committee was elected at the RKP(b) meeting of 6 September 1920.70 In the first resolution, it declared that none of the citizens called by the Central Festival Committee were allowed to refuse to cooperate and all the organisations where they worked permanently should not obstruct them in their work for the Committee.71 Under this decree, thousands of peo69

70 71

Vestnik teatra, 1920, no. 75, p. 9. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘для поднятия и яркого иллюстрирования политической и революционной, агитационнопропагандистской работы.’ Особое внимание обращалось на содействие ‘широкому расцвету хорового пения и массовых действ.’ See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 4, d. 283, p. 39. TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 4, d. 219, p. 151. The full quotation in Russian reads: ‘Ввиду предстоящих Октябрьских торжеств по ознаменованию трехлетней годовщины Советской республики и в связи с этим огромной работы по проведению плана празднеств в жизнь объявляется к неуклонному исполнению: Никто из граждан, вызванных Центральной комиссией по празднествам, не имеет права отказываться от возложенных на него комиссией по празднествам обязанностей; учреждения и организации, в коих служат мобилизованные Центральной комиссией по празднествам граждане, не могут чинить препятствий к их временному переходу в распоряжение Центральной комиссии независимо от занимаемой должности или поста; все сотрудники сохраняют за собой все присвоенные им права по месту их службы или работы; всем учреждениям и организациям, работающим по подготовке к празднествам и нуждающихся в необходимых работниках, обращаться непосредственно в комиссию с указанием фамилии, какую занимает должность, для какой работы необходим и на сколько времени’.

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ple were mobilised for the preparations for the festival on 7 November 1920. Apart from conventional city decorations and mass performances, lighting and fireworks were widely used. In his book Festive City Oleg Nemiro remarked: Lighting of the Petrograd evening on the day of the third anniversary of the Proletarian Revolution included electrically lit slogans, illuminated figures, new and old symbolic emblems – stars, hammer and sickle, a globe with contours of borders of the Soviet Republic, military ships and cannons.72 Due to shortages of materials, all the slogans and posters used for previous festivals were re-used. Thus, at the end of September, the Central Festival Committee decreed that all the posters and banners made for the Second Congress of the Third International and given to factories and organisations, should be returned before 8 October. All the returned posters had to be re-made for 7 November.73 These decrees explain why only a few banners and posters made in 1917-1920 have survived. But at least the special FOTO-KINO section was created to ensure sufficient documentation of all the festive processions, decorations of the city and performances. For this reason, on 7 November 1920 eight tarpaulin tents were erected along the route for photographing and filming the street demonstrations. 72

73

O. Nemiro, Prazdnichnyi Gorod: Iskusstvo oformleniia prazdnikov. Istoriia i sovremennost’ (Leningrad, 1987), pp. 139-140. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘В световом наряде вечернего Петрограда в третью годовщину пролетарской революции широко применялись электролозунги, иллюминированные фигуры, новые и старые символико-эмблематические элементы – звезды, серп и молот, земной шар с контуфами границ Республики Советов, боевые корабли, пушки.’ TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 102, op. 1, d. 94, p. 12. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Центральная комиссия по организации торжеств предлагает принять немедленно меры, чтобы все плакаты и лозунги, выданные в связи со 2-м Конгрессом III Коммунистического Интернационала учреждениям, организациям, завкомам, были немедненно, не позже 8 октября, доставлены во Дворец Труда… Означенный материал будет перекрашен, с местными лозунгами возвращен обратно.’ Also TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 79, d. 266, pp. 1, 3. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘К предстоящим Октябрьским торжествам нашей фабрике присланы в промывку и перекраску ткани, окрашенные нами в свое время для 2-го Конгресса III Интернационала, а также новые. Просим Комиссию озаботиться выдачей нам анилиновых красителей, а также мыла и каустической соды дтя смывки и стирки тканей, предназначенных для Октябрьских торжеств’.

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Figure 5.21

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Street exhibition in Petrograd. 7 November 1920. Photo: TsGAKFFD, St. Petersburg Гр 2975.

Agitational photo exhibitions were opened outside the National Public Library (fig. 5.21) and the Russian Museum. The Smolny, Field of Mars, Palace of Labour and Houses of Workers’ Rest were decorated by Dobuzhinsky, Shchuko, Konashevich, Bruni and Liubarsky. A few days before the festival, the newspaper Zhizn’ iskusstva previewed the decorations for Petrograd: This year’s decorations are remarkable because they are made of wood, greenery and electricity. Due to fabric shortages, canvas won’t be used at all. Thus for example in tone with the architecture of the building, an arch will be erected in front of Smolny.74

74

Zhizn’ iskusstva, 23-24 October 1920. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Украшения нынешнего года отличаются тем, что они изготовляются из дерева, зелени и электричества. Материя ввиду ее недостаточности совершенно не будет пущена в ход. Таким образом, все проекты носят характер исключительно архитектурный. Так, например, у Смольного будет устроена арка, соответствующая архитектуре здания.’

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Figure 5.22

Gymnastics demonstration in Petrograd. 7 November 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

The Field of Mars had also been decorated with a wooden arch. Instead of the decorations for the houses along the route of the festive procession, funds were now allocated to fireworks, agitational flyers (which were spread across the city by aeroplanes), party meetings, concerts, gymnastic demonstrations (fig. 5.22) and motorbike rallies (on Palace Square).

Re-enactment of The Storming of the Winter Palace The central event of the celebrations became yet another mass performance: The Storming of the Winter Palace [Vziatie Zimnego Dvortsa]. It was the last great mass spectacle of the Civil War period, performed on Palace Square with the participation of 6,000 performers: actors, theatre students, soldiers and workers, including 125 ballet dancers, 100 circus actors, 1,750 workers and students, 200 women, 260 secondary actors and 150 assistants.75 There were also tanks and armoured cars involved.

75

See Yu. Annenkov, Dnevnik moikh vstrech. Tsikl tragedii (Leningrad, 1991), p. 104.

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Figure 5.23

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Mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. 7 November 1920. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

Dmitry Temkin was in charge of the overall organisation of this performance, which was called a ‘mass action’; it was directed by Evreinov, Kugel’, Nikolai Petrov and Konstantin Derzhavin and all the decoration and costumes were designed by Annenkov. On the eastern side of the square, by the building of the Guards Corps Headquarters, two stages connected by a bridge were erected. They divided all the participants into two groups, pro- and counterRevolution. Annenkov’s decorations included palaces on the white stage and factories and multi-story workers’ living quarters on the red stage. Kerensky, the Provisional Government, members of the aristocracy, bankers and merchants occupied the ‘white’ stage while the ‘red’ stage belonged to the faceless masses – at first chaotic, and later organised and mighty (fig. 5.23, 5.24). This remarkable spectacle was performed twice: in the torrential rain on 7 November and in better weather conditions on 8 November, when it was filmed. More than 60,000 people came to see this historical performance. Among them was the most famous Soviet film director, Eisenstein, who based his film October. Ten Days that Shook the World on this festival performance, rather than on much less dramatic historical events. Eisenstein’s film has fired

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Mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. 7 November 1920. Photos: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

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the imagination of several generations all over the world, but the real storming of the Winter Palace was quite a modest affair. The palace, which in October 1917 housed a powerless cabinet, was seized a day after the Bolsheviks had taken power, and it was never really stormed. Although on the day of the October Revolution Eisenstein was in Petrograd, he got rather distracted by the discovery of an outstanding collection of engravings that belonged to his aunt. In his memoirs, he recalled that he noticed that ‘there seemed to be more shooting than usual coming from one part of the town’,76 but after a day of total immersion in eighteenth-century prints, he peacefully went to bed. However, he was much more impressed by the 1920 performance, which he did see and based his film on it.77 Interestingly enough, the film was commissioned by Nikolai Podvoisky, who was a member of the troika that commanded the 1917 seizure of the Winter Palace. However, he chose to base the description of the storming of the Winter Palace in his memoirs not on the real events he witnessed, but on the over-dramatised vision of thousands of angry Red Guardsmen, led by Lenin, charging across the vast square, which he had seen on 7 November 1920 (fig. 5.25). Ironically, these stories prove once again the success of the mass performances including The Storming of the Winter Palace in political propaganda and in Bolshevik re-creations of historical events and the subsequent rewriting of history. The Communist Party also regarded this performance as a great success, and generously rewarded Temkin with a stove and samovar (which were used in the spectacle itself),78 Evreinov received a fur coat made of red fox and Kugel’, Annenkov, Derzhavin and Petrov – tobacco enough for a hundred cigarettes and two kilos of frozen apples each.79 Very positive reviews appeared in all the newspapers. The critic Adrian Piotrovsky called this performance ‘effective’ and ‘majestic’ and said that Annenkov’s decorations were ‘fantastic’.80 Izvestiia reported: ‘The performance 76

77 78 79 80

See Sergei Eisenstein, Selected Works, vol. 4, Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein, ed. by Richard Taylor and trans. by William Powell (London: BFI Publishing, 1995), p. 72. See James von Geldern, pp. 1-2. See TsGA St. Petersburg, f. 1000, op. 79, d. 243, pp. 4-9; d. 249, pp. 2-8. See the memoirs of N. Petrov, 50 i 500 (Moscow, 1960), p. 136. A. Piotrovskii, ‘Za Sovetskii Teatr!’, Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1920, no. 584-585. Full quotation in Russian reads: ‘Все же заключительная атака освещенных факелами автомобилей была несомненно эффектна. Эффектным и в известном смысле величественным было и все зрелище, в особенности фантастические, пылающие в ночи огнями огромных рамп города постройки Анненкова.’

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Figure 5.25

Red Guardsmen marching through Red Square in the mass dramatisation The Storming of the Winter Palace. Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

on Uritsky Square had finally erased all the doubts about the possibility of collective mass theatrical dramatisation; it established the main direction of future work in this field.’81 The revolutionary myth presented by these spectacles projected the heroism, sacrifice, courage and nobility of those who made and prepared the Revolution. At the end of a vale of tears lay the forbidden space of Utopia conquered at last by the heroes. The magnification of good and evil, aside from its dramatic power, was also the moral justification for the turbulence and violence of the struggle – to set the stage for the absolution of the victors without a trace of nuance or ambiguity. Embedded

81

Izvestiia, 6 November 1920. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Спектакль на площади Урицкого окончательно разрешил все сомнения в возможности создания коллективной массовой театрализованной инсценировки и утверждает основную линию дальнейшей работы в этом направлении.’

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in this myth was the first text in the genealogy of the Russian Revolution – subsequently elaborated in the historiography of the 1920s.82 The festival decoration of 1917 and 1918 and the spectacles and mass performances of 1919-1920 constituted the new mythology of the Bolshevik Revolution. Instead of presenting a vision of the future, they provided trusting viewers and participants with an improved version of the Bolshevik past and present – they carried them into Utopia, and showed them the mythical path to it. At a time of economic shortages and starvation, they gave people hope and faith in a bright, Bolshevik future. 82

Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 97.

Epilogue In terms of time, late 1917 to the end of 1920 was a short period. The changes brought over this period affected almost all aspects of Russian life. Not that these changes followed any clear, pre-defined path. As Geoffrey Hosking puts it: The Bolsheviks had seized power with few definite ideas about how they would govern and any such ideas had now been swept away by civil war, deindustrialisation and famine. Lenin spent the rest of his life grappling with those unintended consequences of his own revolution…Utopia had failed.1 In almost all its components, almost all the premises on which Lenin had urged an uprising in October 1917 had proved false. There had been no international revolution, and as the revolution had remained confined in Russia, Russia found itself surrounded by hostile or at least wary states. Furthermore, it was rapidly resuming many of the outward forms of the old tsarist state, including the mobilisation of state religion, in this case Marxism, and the increasingly brutal activities of the successors to the tsar’s Okhrana, the Cheka. By the end of the period, the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat had become rather a bitter joke, as, in many cases, the urban workers were jobless and impoverished, and no longer had any real access to, or any real representation in the political processes. Their nascent resistance organisation, the Workers’ Opposition, would be proscribed in the 10th Party Congress in 1921 after an armed revolt at Kronshtadt. In many ways, the peasantry, after the land reforms, had lapsed back into looking after themselves, though there was also significant organised unrest. They regarded the Bolsheviks as largely selfinterested city people, and the idea of the peasants sharing a new future with the industrial proletariat became ever more distant, had it ever been possible. But, at the same time, when the large but diverse groups of opponents failed to consolidate their undeniable early opportunity to overthrow the new government and the Allies failed to go beyond supplying the White forces, the Bolshevik forces prevailed and the government survived. The task for propaganda initially was to try to define the values of the new government and identify the proletariat’s heroic role in it, while at the same

1 Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1990), p. 130.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004355682_008

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time conveying that it was not just a putsch (as it was initially known) but a mass movement. Historical opponents – the urban industrial workforce and the rural peasantry – would unite to march together into the future. In the middle period (1918-1919), these tasks were joined by the need to bring a sense of optimism, to overlook the rising famine and the very significant threat to the major cities from White armies, and in 1920, to celebrate the victories of the Red Army. So, a critical examination of the festive decorations and mass performances deployed as the main artistic tools of the October Revolution, particularly in the crucial early years of the Civil War, promotes a reconsideration of the relationship between reality and utopian thought in the field of what was presented to the audiences. Lenin called the Revolution ‘a festival of the oppressed and the exploited’,2 while Lunacharsky believed that the public festival was the most important art form of the Revolution. At a time of unrest and uncertainty, Bolshevik leaders allocated money and resources to propaganda and agitation, in which city decorations and mass performances were the cornerstones. Using folk and religious traditions already in existence, the Bolshevik leaders only had to change the sets, costumes and insert new dates into the calendar to mark the passage from the imperial past to the communist present, and its future. Although Lenin’s early attempts to use monuments as key elements in propaganda seemed not to have been very successful in Petrograd, between 1917 and 1920, this ‘cradle of Revolution’ witnessed several highly significant festival decorations, parades and mass performances. It was also Petrograd that gave birth to the most striking symbol of the October Revolution, a different type of monument: Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, the model of which was unveiled in the old Imperial Academy of Arts a day after the performance of The Storming of the Winter Palace. This brave construction, which still inspires artists throughout the world, was never built, but the model was carried around the city during several demonstrations like an old-fashioned icon to Mother Mary. Just before Tatlin’s monument was opened to the public, Punin wrote a short pamphlet, The Monument to the Third International [Pamiatnik III Internatsionala], in which he explained that: ‘Figurative monuments (Greek and Italian) undoubtedly contradict Modernity. They cultivate individual heroism, confuse history: torsos and the heads of heroes do not comply with the mod-

2 Quoted in Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 97.

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ern understanding of history’.3 Punin felt that after the 1917 Revolution, there was a need to express ‘the tension of feelings and thoughts of the collective thousands’. At the time, when people did not notice individual monuments in the rush of the modern world, ‘a monument had to live by the social and public life of the city and the city had to live in it. It must be useful and dynamic, then it would be modern’.4 Punin proclaimed: We confirm that this project is the first revolutionary work of art, which we can send and are sending to Europe… We establish: – only the power of millions of proletarian minds could come up with the idea of this monument and offer it to the world – its form must be realised by the muscles of this powerful force, since we have here the ideal – a live and classic expression in a pure and creative form – of the international union of the workers of the globe.5 Punin believed that Tatlin’s Monument epitomised the ultimate fulfilment of the social role of art – the establishment of World Socialism – which IZO Narkompros was striving to fulfil back in 1918. But were all the government funds spent on monumental and decorative propaganda at the time of Civil War justified? Was Lunacharsky right when he used Robespierre’s words to justify party funding priorities: Gather people together and you will improve them because when grouped together, people will aspire to like one another but can only like 3 N. Punin, Pamiatnik III Internatsionala (Petrograd: Publishing House of IZO Narkompros, 1920), p. 2. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Фигурные (греко-итальянские) памятники находятся в двойном противоречии с современностью. Они культивируют индивидуальный героизм, сбивают историю: торсы и головы героев (и богов) не соответствуют современному пониманию истории.’ 4 Ibid., p. 4. Quotation in Russian read: ‘напряжение чувствований и дум коллективной тысячи’; ‘памятник должен жить социально-государственной жизнью города и город должен жить в нем. Он должен быть нужным и динамичным, тогда он будет современным.’ 5 Ibid., pp. 3-4. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Мы утверждаем, что настоящий проект есть первая революционная художественная работа, которую мы можем и посылаем Европе… Мы утверждаем: – только наполнение мощью многомиллионного пролетарского сознания могло бросить в мир идею этого памятника – формы; она должна быть реализована мускулами этой мощи, ибо мы имеем идеальное, живое и классическое выражение в чистой и творческой форме интернационального союза рабочих земного шара.’

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Figure E.1

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May Day demonstrations in Leningrad. 1979. Photo: Family archive of N. Murray.

what they respect. Give this gathering a great moral and political theme – and love for all things worthy will grow together with pleasure in every heart because people will meet each other with pleasure.6 But, perhaps to the relief of subsequent generations, Tatlin’s Tower was never built and after the Civil War came to an end in late 1921, the artists who had been mobilised and the Red Army troops were no longer available in large numbers, so the genre of mass performances came to an end. This form of public celebration also did not reflect the tasks of the Communist Party at a time when the primary purpose of the festivals became the showcasing of economic prospects. The decorations of Petrograd also became very modest. For the next sixtyseven years of Communist rule, houses and demonstrations were decorated only with red flags, portraits of party leaders and slogans (fig. E.1). However, the first months after the February Revolution and the three years that followed the October uprising witnessed the most dramatic expressions

6 Quoted in Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 98.

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of political propaganda. Festivals incorporated Bolshevik ideals and became the most vivid expression of artistic policies of the new, post-revolutionary Russia. Red propaganda was largely directed at illiterate peasants and its effectiveness was dependent on the internal organisation of the Bolshevik Party and its leadership of the working classes and the peasants, social forces on which Lenin especially relied during the harsh years of the Civil War. In his philosophical treatise, Tectology: Universal Organisation Science, written between 1913 and 1922, Bogdanov for the first time introduced the term ‘organisational weapon’ [orgoruzhie – organizatsionnoe oruzhie]. He suggested that the main tool that should be employed for the organisation of the masses should be ideology combined with art. His debates with Lenin started on the pages of Proletarii already in 1909, and continued after the Revolution. Lenin (and later Stalin) considered Bogdanov’s natural philosophy an ideological threat to dialectic materialism. However, it did not deter him from employing Bogdanov’s ideas in Bolshevik artistic policy. In 1918 Bogdanov wrote: Art is the most powerful weapon for organisation of collective forces, in the class society – class forces. […] Our theoreticians, who consider art, according with aristocratic and in part bourgeois tradition, ‘decoration of life’, some sort of luxury in it, do not understand to which extent they contradict themselves, since at the same time they recognize the educational, thus practical-organisational role of art.7 An attempt to approach the ideologies and emotions of the weaker masses through the strictly scientific terms of dialectical materialism would not have been wise at all. Visual propaganda, with deep roots in Russian culture, did not require an ability to comprehend the written word, thus offering an adequate means of attracting a broader strata of the population with revolutionary messages.

7 A. Bogdanov, Iskusstvo i rabochii klass (Moscow, 1918), p. 8. The quotation in Russian reads: ‘Искусство – самое могущественное орудие организации коллективных сил, в обществе классовом – сил классовых. […] Наши теоретики, считающие искусство, согласно аристократической и частью буржуазной традиции, «украшением жизни», своего рода роскошью в ней, не понимают, до какой степени они сами себе противоречат, когда в то же время признают за искусством воспитательное, т.е. именно практически-организационное значение.’

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275

Art undoubtedly played a decisive role in transforming Russian society and shaping the new Soviet citizen. Artists possessed the image-making means to set the stage for the new era. Artistic forms deeply rooted in Russian culture, such as the use of lubok in the Petrograd decorations on May Day 1918 and traditional carnival elements in the spectacles of 1919-1920, were used to convey messages that could be easily understood. The rapidly changing political situation found the most vivid expression in the festive decorations and performances in Petrograd, the city which witnessed all the revolutions. Thus, the atmosphere of universal optimism and overwhelming joy and hope for the bright future that united the citizens of Petrograd, regardless of their background or position in society, after the February Revolution splashed out onto the streets during the procession dedicated to the funerals of the victims of the Revolution and May Day. The new allegories and symbols deployed in the first festivals in 1917 were not clearly defined yet, and artists had to refer to the images used in the celebrations of the French Revolution and Paris Commune. The Bolshevik Revolution called for the creation of a new visual language that could be deployed for propaganda and at least in the beginning, all artists could try to participate in its creation: academics and symbolists, Futurists, Cubists and amateur artists (who were often members of Proletkult). The People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment invited artists to leave their studios and to participate actively in the decoration of streets, squares and public buildings for the celebration of two anniversaries that served as landmarks in the construction of the new Soviet identity: the anniversaries of the October Revolution and May Day. These first festivals, according to their reception in the press, were something like a battlefield between the avant-garde and more traditional artists, who remained faithful to realistic forms of representation. The ‘Futurist innovations’ of the ‘left artists’ often earned a lukewarm, sometimes even hostile, reception, since they employed a language barely intelligible to the masses, and were soon banned altogether. As Richard Stites put it: They [left artists] aspired not to trim the urban topography but to remake it – at least for the day of festival. Thus the painting of trees, the edificial camouflages, the Cubist projections of every sort, the funny statues, and the mixed symbols. During the revolution, Dobuzhinsky produced a two-headed eagle with a hammer and sickle in its claws; in Saratov an artist adorned a revolutionary funeral tribune with Matisse-like red nude females on a black crepe background. Such things were toned down by the authorities and eventually banned altogether. Decor came

276

Epilogue to mean an abundance of red cloth, slogans on banners, the perennial red star (sometimes showered from aircraft), and the emblems of revolution.8

The art of the new Soviet state was born out of the debates between Narkompros and Proletkult, and although the latter was soon subordinated to the former, its belief that proletarian art should be created by members of the proletariat won, and was soon employed by the Communist Party. But a central irony remains: this was said to be the proletariat’s revolution, but by the end of this short period, the state was controlling all activities centrally, freedom of speech was compromised, all representative mechanisms had disappeared and opposition was being suppressed, often violently. To justify this, Lenin produced this masterpiece of elastic rationale: Marxism teaches us that only the political party of the working class, i.e. the Communist Party, is capable of uniting, educating and organising such a vanguard of the proletariat and of the working masses as is capable of resisting the inevitable petty bourgeois waverings of those masses… (and) their trade union prejudices.9 After 1920, the utopian and mythic themes that were so vividly expressed in festive decorations and mass performances in the first three years after the Revolution, were reduced to the political campaign of the moment. Solid bronze plaques with portraits of Party leaders replaced bright Futurist panels and carefully orchestrated ‘parade days’ made cheerful festivals of the first post-revolutionary years a part of history. After 1920, the workers replaced the artists as the designers of the festival decorations, but this amateur approach also did not last long since the members of Proletkult were not allowed to participate in city decorations after 1927. From 1921 onwards, peaceful public demonstrations were dominated by military parades, signalling the heroic advantage of the armed forces over workers and peasants. After Lenin’s death, his cult was expressed in every festival by an abundance of his portraits and slogans, with quotes from his speeches. On May Day 1924, these elements were combined in a vivid display of patriotism as tanks and

8 Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, p. 99. 9 Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1990), p. 90.

Epilogue

Figure E.2

277

Decorative installation diagrams and statistics with the slogan ‘Revolution is calling everyone to hard work’, 1 May 1921. Photo: Archive of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.

troops marched past Lenin’s tomb with a squadron of planes overhead. They were followed by workers carrying banners inscribed with quotations from Lenin, called by Richard Stites ‘a mobile version of Lenin’s talking city’.10 Together with the Civil War, foreign interventions and famine, all the brave avant-garde experimentation in the visual language of the festivals fell into oblivion. In 1921, Izvestiia announced that: ‘This time, in contrast with previous years when Futurism dominated, everything was kept realistic and hence more accessible to the untutored observer’.11 In the now-peaceful Soviet state, the battles were largely economic and along with banners adorned with slogans and portraits of Lenin, after 1920 workers started to carry graphs and production figures (which also decorated the streets (fig. E.2)), as visual promises to do better in the next quarter. Art in the Soviet state after the Civil War had to provide people with instructions and directions, while freedom of imagination became a thing of the past. 10 11

Stites, p. 99. Quoted in Tolstoy, Bibikova, Cooke, Street Art of the Revolution, p. 123.

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In 1921, the Proletkult magazine Gorn called artists to create portable decorations and carry them to the factories in order to approach the maximum number of workers. It also instructed festival organisers to send agitators to talk to members of the public before and during festivals. This resolution also included a new extended list of revolutionary celebrations and encouraged artists to participate actively in all of them since ‘art organises masses through images.’12 Just as Le Bon wrote back in 1895 advising political leaders on the art

12

Report of N. Liashko ‘Rabochie prazdnestva Proletkulta’, written for Gorn, June 1921, no. 2. Report was not published, manuscript can be found in RGALI, f. 1230, op. 1, ed. khr. 458. Full quotation in Russian reads: ‘Идти с удачно организованным, разработанным и продемонстрированным на Арене празднеством на фабрики и заводы в подлинном смысле этого слова. Декорации и прочее, следовательно должны быть портативными. На празднествах – перед началом, в перерывах – выпускать в зрителей агитаторов с речами и тезисами: а) вспомните всё, что видели и слышали в буржуазных театрах и кинематографах, и сравните с тем, что видите и слышите здесь; б) чем отличается от виденного то, что вы видите и слышите здесь; в) Пролетарское творчество – душа рабочего класса: представители класса могут сбиваться с пути, увлекаться злобой дня, искусство не сбивается: оно очищает класс от накипи злобы дня, растит крылья, ведёт, будит в минуты усталости и поражений, образами напоминает, что рабочий класс силён трудом и жаждой освобождения его и т.д. […] Искусство организует образами. В противовес понятиям образы не умирают, а лишь изменяются. Список празднеств: 1-я группа (события) Январь Февраль Март Апрель Май Июнь Июль Август Сентябрь Октябрь Ноябрь Декабрь

9 января Февральская Революция Парижская коммуна Ленские события 1 мая Мировая бойня /война 1914 г./ «Капитал» Маркса Декабристы Выход из подполья 1-й Сов. Раб. День 1905 г. Революция 1905 г. Восстание 1905 г. Октябрьская революция. 2я группа /эпизоды и быт/ 1. Тайные массовки и собрания. 2. Завод и революция. 3. Тюрьма, ссылка, каторга.

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279

of crowd management: ‘Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images.’13 In 1917-1918, artists and members of the intelligentsia who still had a decisive word in the choice of Petrograd festive decorations, believed that ancient Greek and Roman mythology, together with history generally, including images used in the celebrations after the French Revolution, were appropriate subject matter for allegorical presentation in Soviet festivals. After Glavpolitprosvet was put in charge of all the festivals in September 1920, the illusion held by the intelligentsia that workers could be educated to be like them, evaporated. The subject matter of all the artistic production for Soviet celebrations was now under the strict control of the state; it had to be straight-forward rather than allegorical and it had to glorify the triumph of socialism and the victory of the proletariat. Along with the change in subject matter, the further illusion of the intelligentsia that workers would be able to understand non-figurative art, also became a thing of the past. In 1926, GINKhUK, where artists were still allowed to experiment with new artistic forms and styles, was closed down, and now all the artistic freedoms were burning out like a candle. In 1928, Punin wrote: A few days ago I was looking through Zaratustra; how much I got from it, and it is sitting somewhere inside me; I asked my students about it but nobody had read Nietzsche. What do they live by nowadays? What feeds their life? I do not understand. The most typical characteristic of this new generation is probably the lack of ‘ideals’, or generalisations, or goals, if one does not take Marxism into account, in which they do not believe anyway. Compared with us, they are all very modest – no claims to resolve ‘world problems’, some sort of participants in life, but not its creators.14

13 14

4. Нелегальщина. 5. Подпрлье. 6. Взятие Бастилии. 7. Рабочая газета. Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 20. Letter from Punin to Anna Arens of 2 August 1928, in Nikolai Punin, Mir Svetel Luboviu. Dnevniki, pis’ma, p. 297. Quotation in Russian reads: ‘Как-то на днях перелистал «Заратустру»; как много от него, и незаметно где-то сидит; спрашивал своих учеников – никто не читал Ницше. Чем они сейчас живут? Что обобщает их жизнь? Непонятно. Самое характерное, пожалуй, для этих новых поколений то, что они без «идеалов», т.е. без обобщений, без цели, если не считать марксизма, в который

280

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The times were now beginning to change rapidly. A new era of terror, and rejection of any personal goals and ambitions, was emerging. The proletariat had technically more power than members of the intelligentsia, but their taste in art had hardly developed and the experiments in festive decorations and mass performances of 1917-1920 remained part of distant history. One may conclude that the intelligentsia’s experiment in the first two decades of the twentieth century in educating workers via the messages inherent in festive decorations was a failure, but in starving Petrograd, they filled citizens with hope and brightened up their spirits, and this probably played a crucial part in most people’s perseverance and eventual survival. They also gave a chance to artists from all the artistic movements to express their most ambitious projects and to attempt to find a visual language that represented the new Soviet society. By covering the facades of the classical palaces with avant-garde works, young Russian artists proclaimed the victory of new art over the archaic architecture associated with tsarist Russia. Their brave experiment has not only saved palaces from destruction, but has also been employed subsequently in Europe. The Soviet festivals were seen by the Bolshevik state as the most effective tool in the agitation and education of the proletariat. Essential funds and manpower were diverted to them in the midst of famine and economic disaster. And it proved to be the most effective form of propaganda. The people’s impressions of the festive decorations and spectacles were often so strong that the recollections of even those who witnessed the actual events were overridden by those of the dramatised theatrical performances. In the three years after the 1917 Revolution, festive street decorations were turned from utopian dreams of a new world, in which a new art would reign, into strictly controlled and orchestrated parades. The attempts of avant-garde artists to visualise a utopia turned into the dystopia of Soviet reality.

они все равно не верят. Какие они все, по сравнению с нами, скромные, никаких претензий на решение «мировых вопросов», какие-то соучастники жизни, а не ее делатели.’

Bibliography Archival Sources The State Archive of Russian Federation, Moscow – GARF [Государственный Архив Российской Федерации – ГАРФ]: f. 2306. Narkompros f. 1230. Proletkult f. 2313. Glavpolitprosvet Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg – OR RNB [Отдел Рукописей Российской Национальной Библиотеки – ОР РНБ]: f. 1126. Nathan Altman Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow – RGALI [Российский Государственный Архив Литературы и Искусства – РГАЛИ]: f. 218. School for Workers on Capri f. 1230. Proletkult Central Archive of Literature and Art, St. Petersburg – TsGALI [Центральный Государственный Архив Литературы и Искусства – ЦГАЛИ]: f. 283. Narkompros f. 62. Decorative Institute The Scientific Archive of the Russian Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg – RAH [Научный Архив Российской Академии Художеств – РАХ]: f. 218. S. K. Isakov f. 263. N. N. Punin Central State Archive, St. Petersburg – TsGA [Центральный Государственный Архив – ЦГА]: f. 7384. 1 May 1917 in Petrograd f. 143, f. 1000, f. 2551. 1 May 1918 in Petrograd f. 142, f. 1000. 7 November 1918 and 1 May 1919 in Petrograd f. 7384. 7 November 1920 in Petrograd f. 102. Second Congress of the III International in Petrograd The Archive of Cinematic and Photographic Documents, St. Petersburg – TsGAKFFD [Центральный Государственный Архив Кинофотофонодокументов – ЦГАКФФД СПб]: D 1877, D 3863, E 3445, D 1880, G 15246. Funerals of the Victims of February Revolution. 23 March 1917 G 15942. 1 May 1917 in Petrograd Гр 2536, Гр 41327. 7 November 1919 in Petrograd

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Index 1905 Revolution 1, 33, 34, 45, 46, 50 9 January 1905 xviii, 33, 65, 241 Abramtsevo 10 Academy of Science 59 Admiralty (Petrograd) xvi, 60, 168 Agitprop 261 Agricultural Soviet 149 AKhRR xxi, 23, 25 Aleksander Column xv, 139, 142, 163, 164 Aleksander Gardens 163 Aleksander II 114, 126 Aleksander III xiii, xiv, xviii, 116-121, 151, 209, 215, 218, 243 Aleksander Nevsky Cemetery 89 Aleksander Nevsky Monastery xvii, 187 All-Arts Union 64, 86 All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions 223 All-Russian Central Executive Committee xxii All-Russian Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage xxi All-Russian League for the Equality of Women 140 All-Union State Political Administration xxii Alsace-Lorraine 6, 52 Altman, Nathan ix, xv, xix, 64, 101, 109, 126, 152, 160-168, 181, 182, 191, 204-206, 259, 260 America 7, 22, 161 Andreev, Leonid 86 Andreev, Nikolai 121 Andreeva, Maria xii, 30, 36, 38, 40, 131, 149, 161, 211, 238, 253, 256 Annenkov, Yurii 30, 84, 249, 264, 265, 267 Antselovich, Naum 131, 149, 205, 206, 251 Army and Navy Hall (Petrograd) xvii, 185 Arsky, Pavel 248 Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo Kommuny] xvii, 31, 103, 189-195, 197-201, 223, 229 Art Workers Guild 10 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 10 Arts and Crafts movement 9

Arts Commission (Petrograd, 1917) 63, 65 Assembly of Nobles 236 Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions [Peredvizhniki] 23 Bakunin, Mikhail xiv, 114, 119, 126, 127 Baltiiskii factory 207 Baranov-Rossiné, Vladimir xiii, 100, 109, 179, 204 Baransky, A. 79 Bedny, Demian 118 Bellini, Giovanni 175 Benjamin, Walter 136 Benois, Alexander [Benua, Aleksandr] 63, 89, 95, 96, 158 Berger 255 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 126 Bessal’ko, Pavel 108, 198, 215, 216, 236 Bilibin, Ivan 1 Blanqui, Louis-Auguste 123 Blockade of Russia, The xix, 253, 254 Blok, Alexander 231 Blokh, Mikhail xvi, xviii, 179, 180, 216, 218, 243, 252, 253 Boccioni, Umberto 126 Bogdanov, Alexander (Alexander Malinovsky) xii, 3, 11-18, 32, 35-38, 40-42, 47-53, 78, 94, 95, 109, 148, 189, 195, 196, 221, 227, 228, 233, 234, 249, 274 Bogdanovism 15 Bogdanov’s nihilism 14 Boguslavskaia, Ksenia xv, 153-155, 177, 186, 219 Boiarchenkov, V. 227 Bolshaia Morskaia xii, 74 Bolshevik Revolution 2, 12, 17, 23, 29, 72, 92, 95, 111, 150, 153, 155, 187, 234, 235, 269, 275 Bolsheviks xi, 3, 32, 33, 39, 41, 42, 49-51, 61, 81, 83, 90, 92, 98, 103, 111, 114, 116, 130, 133, 136, 140, 146, 149, 197, 202, 224, 228, 234, 235, 239, 257, 267, 270 Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir 129 Brik, Osip 94, 102, 103, 191, 192, 194, 198, 200, 223, 224

296 Britain 9, 10, 66, 70-72, 75, 81 British Socialist League 74 Brodsky, Isaak 1 Bruni, Lev 56, 64, 160, 164, 263 Buchanan, Sir George 66 Bugbear 1, 71 Bukharin, Nikolai 13 Bulla, Viktor xiv, xv, 135-138, 166 Buzin 255 Campanella, Tommaso (1568-1639) 114, 115, 119 Capri xii, 11, 35-38, 40-42, 44, 45, 52, 131, 197 Catherine Canal Embankment xvi, 174, 175, 177 Catherine II 123 Central Committee 13, 31, 44, 51, 106, 131, 132, 149, 151, 203, 224, 225, 227, 228 Central Press xviii, 209, 215 Central Union xiii, 82 Cézanne, Paul 123 Chagall, Marc xi, 191 Chaliapin, Feodor xi, 38, 65, 238 Cheka xxi, 270 Chekhonin, Sergei xiii, xvii, 1, 100, 101, 159, 186, 187, 252 Cheliabinsk 219 Chernikhov, Yakov 78 Chernyshev, Tikhon xv, xvi, 158-160, 174 Chernyshevskaia Square, Petrograd xviii, 209, 216, 218 Chkheidze, Nikolai 65, 77 Chopin, Frédéric 123, 249 Civil War 13, 19, 27, 31, 44, 75, 95, 104, 202, 203, 222, 224, 225, 235, 237, 264, 271-274, 277 Collegium for Matters of Art and Artistic Industry 204 Commissariat for Agriculture 177 Communist Futurist xxi Communist Party of the Soviet Union xxi Community of Artists’ Society 158 Comte, Auguste 4 Constituent Assembly 92, 198, 203, 224 Cossacks 76, 89-91 Courbet, Gustave 159 Crane, Walter 10, 71-75, 83, 187, 208 cultural revolution 12, 15, 18, 93

Index Curzon, Lord George

26

Danton, Georges 123 Daumier, Honoré 144, 159 Day of International Solidarity of Workers 30, 77, 78, 129 de Robespierre, Maximilien 123 Death of Capitalism, The xviii, 218, 243 Decorative Institute 209, 210, 255 Democratic Centralists 224 Deni, Viktor 72 Denikin, Anton 222, 243 Denis, Maurice 175 Derzhavin, Konstantin 265, 267 Diaghilev, Sergei 43, 63, 95, 96 Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav xvi, 1, 63, 137, 138, 151, 168, 249, 263, 275 Docker’s Union Export Branch 72 Dragon of Capitalism, The xvii, 210 Drawing School of the Pedagogical College 158 Dreyfus Affair 6, 52 Dual Power 63 Duma xiv, 1, 38, 42, 62, 84, 144, 145, 230 Eberling, Alfred xv, 157-159 Eisenstein, Sergei 136, 265, 267 English Embankment xvi, 151, 169-171 Evreinov, Nikolai 84, 265, 267 Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies 69 Fabian Socialists 17 Fascist Italy 2, 3 February Revolution 20, 60, 62, 65, 66, 69, 71, 84, 93, 101, 114, 239, 273, 275 Festival of the Supreme Being 4, 69, 163 Field of Mars xiv, xvii, 65, 68, 69, 133, 135, 151, 179, 208, 213, 220, 245, 248, 263, 264 First All-Russian Conference of Proletkult 20 First Anniversary of the October Revolution 30, 72, 110, 116, 119, 125, 135, 148-151, 155, 158, 171, 191, 206, 221 Fomin, Iliya xiv, 117, 118, 121, 252, 253 FOTO-KINO xxi, 226, 262 France 4-6, 25, 46, 66, 76 Franco-Prussian War 144

Index Freedom of Arts 64, 71 French Revolution xix, 3, 4, 6, 22, 23, 29, 52, 69, 83, 84, 116, 144, 178-180, 189, 245, 248, 275, 279 Funerals of the Victims of the Revolution 65, 90 Futurism 24, 100, 103, 107-109, 126, 146, 148, 189-191, 193, 195, 197-201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219, 221, 228, 277 Gaideburov, Pavel xiii, 86, 88 Gaideburov’s Mobile-Popular Theatre xiii, 88 Galernyi Island 231 Gauguin, Paul 175 General Boulanger 6, 52 General Staff Building xv, 142, 164, 165, 167 Germany 2, 4, 6, 25, 222 GINKhUK xxi, 279 Gippius, Zinaida 120, 121 Glavpolitprosvet 203, 226, 227, 261, 279 Golikman, M. 79 Gorky, Aleksei 238 Gorky, Maxim xii, 35-38, 40-44, 63, 65, 68, 93, 131, 149, 228, 238, 251 GPU xxi, 13, 228 Great Dock Strike 70 Great Northern War 25 Great War 55, 71 Grigoriev, Boris xvi, 169-171, 173 Grosvenor Gallery 72 Guards Corps Headquarters 265 Heine, Heinrich 123 Hercules and the Old Man of the Sea 72 Hermitage Theatre 99 Honourary Revolutionary Red Banner 75 House of Interludes, The 231 Houses of Rest [Doma Otdykha] for the workers 252 igrishche 238 Il’in, Mikhail xiii, 100 Imperial Academy of Arts 23, 63, 64, 72, 151, 157, 271 Imperial family 1 Institute of the History of Art 63 International Socialist Movement 71

297 International Women’s Day 62 International, the xvii, 71, 79, 80, 83, 182, 183, 207, 212 Ionov, Ilia 149, 194, 211 Isakov, Sergei 55, 64 Ispolkom 251 Italy xii, 2, 3, 5-7, 22, 37, 46, 76, 126, 222 Iudenich, Nikolai 210, 219, 220 Ivanov 26, 131, 149 Izhorskii Factory 72 IZO Narkompros xxi, 25, 26, 100, 101, 103, 109, 115, 119, 131, 155, 161, 181, 188, 191, 194, 199, 204-206, 221, 223, 226, 272 Kalashnikov, M. 79 Kalinin, Fedor xiii, 40, 97, 106, 108 Kamenny Island xix, 252, 254 Kanatchikov, Semen 233 Kandinsky, Vasily 101, 103 Karev, Aleksei xiii, 100, 101, 204 Kazan Cathedral (Petrograd) 60, 88 Kerensky, Alexander 76, 83, 90, 93, 98, 177, 265 Kerzhentsev, Platon 26, 203, 236 Khalturin, Stepan 114 Khlebnikov, Velimir 99, 169 Khodasevich, Valentina 252, 253 Kirillov, Vladimir xiii, 97, 196 Kiselis, Pyotr (1890-1940) 227 Klodt, Baron Pyotr 119, 120 Kolchak, Aleksander xvii, 44, 207, 212, 222, 243 Kolesnikov, Stepan 128 Kolli, Nikolai 126, 127 Kollontai, Aleksandra 62 KomFut xxi, 102, 103, 108 Konashevich 159, 263 Kornilov, Lavr 90 Korolev, Boris xiv, 126, 127 Kozlinsky, Vladimir xv, xvii, 154-157, 186 KPSS xxi, 15, 237, 243 Kremlin (Moscow) 1, 8 Kronshtadt mutiny of 1921 224 Krupskaia, Nadezhda 203 Ksheshinskaya, Matilda 114 Kugel’, Aleksander 249, 265, 267 Kunstpolitik 4 Kushner, Boris 101-103, 191

298 Kustodiev, Boris

Index xii, 1, 2, 159, 169

Larionov, Mikhail 56 Le Bon, Gustave 3, 5-9, 12-14, 52, 61, 79, 80, 221, 229, 230, 258, 278, 279 Le vendeur de soleil xiii, 87, 88 Lebedev, Vladimir xiii, xvii, 27, 31, 44, 97, 98, 107, 109, 130, 181-183, 185, 242 Lebedev-Polianskii, Pavel xiii, 31, 44, 97, 98, 107 Lebedeva, Sarra 242 left artist(s) 24, 103, 104, 109, 126, 148, 161, 189, 197, 200, 203, 206, 219, 228, 275 Lena goldfields 1 Lenin, Vladimir xi, xii, xiv, 1, 5, 7, 8, 12-19, 21, 27, 32, 35, 37, 39, 41-44, 51, 54, 62, 63, 81, 92, 93, 95, 101, 103-105, 111-116, 119, 121-124, 126, 129, 135, 145, 146, 177, 187, 202, 207, 215, 217, 220, 222, 224, 225, 228, 229, 236, 239, 250, 256, 267, 270, 271, 274, 276, 277 Leningrad xi, xx, 22, 25-30, 32, 66, 71, 118, 131, 150, 167, 204, 245, 256, 262, 264, 273 Leningrad Bolshevik Party 28 Leningrad’s State Institute of Art History 22 Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda xiv, 21, 101, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 121, 123, 124 Lentulov, Aristarch 56 Letters from Hell [Adskaia Pochta] 71 Levin, Kirik xiii, 100 Liashko, Nikolai 60, 61, 278 Liberty Bond Day 65, 86, 90, 91 Lissitzky, El 127, 221 Liteiny Prospect xv-xvii, 153, 157, 158, 176, 184, 185 Liubarskii 263 Lourie, Arthur 99 Lubetkin, Berthold 127 lubok (lubki) 75, 76, 144, 154, 156, 157, 185, 186, 209, 233, 275 Lunacharsky, Anatoly xi, xii, xxi, 3, 4, 12, 14, 26, 27, 35, 38-46, 51-53, 91-97, 99-101, 103-106, 110, 112-116, 120, 123, 124, 126, 132, 146, 148, 151, 161, 165, 169, 175, 179, 191, 195, 196, 199-201, 205, 220, 225, 227, 229, 237, 245, 247, 271, 272 Lvov, Georgy 26, 65, 240

Maiakovskogo Square xiv, 124 Main Political-Educational Committee xxi, 226 Malevich, Kazimir 56, 101, 191, 196 Malinovsky, Aleksander xii, 11, 17, 18, 99 Malinovsky, Petr 99 Mamontov, Savva and Elizaveta 10 Manchester 20, 28, 70, 71, 112, 152, 231, 237 Marat, Jean-Paul 114, 123 Marenkov, Aleksei 72 Mariinsky Palace xiv, 86, 142, 143 Mariinsky Square 119, 120 Marseillaise 69, 76, 77, 84, 87, 89 Marx, Karl xiv, 8-10, 19, 43, 47, 51, 74, 107, 120, 124-126, 178, 217 Mashirov, Aleksei (‘Samobytnik’) xiii, 234 Mashkov, Ilia 56, 101 Maslovskaia, Sofia 249 Mass spectacles 63, 236, 239, 242, 243, 245, 264 Matisse, Henri 175, 183, 275 Matveev, Aleksander xiv, 101, 125 Matveev, Petr 204 May Day xii-xiv, xviii, xx, 27, 31, 43, 62, 65, 73, 78-85, 90, 109, 116, 117, 119, 122, 129-133, 135-138, 140, 146, 148, 180, 187, 202, 204-209, 216-218, 235, 242-245, 251, 273, 275, 276 Mayakovsky, Vladimir xi, 56, 102, 103, 126, 154, 155, 190, 191, 194, 195, 198, 201, 243 McDonald 26 Meltser, R. F. 243 Mensheviks 32, 33, 42, 46, 49, 92, 123 Metalworker xvi, 180 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 64, 149, 231, 238, 261 Mezentsev, Sergei 126 Mgebrov, Aleksander 86 Miasnikov, I. 79 Michelangelo’s David 252 Military Commissariat 205 Millet, Jean-François 159 Ministry of Arts 63, 64 Ministry of Education xxi Ministry of Fine Arts 64 Mobile-Popular Theatre xiii, 87, 88, 238 Modern Lubok Corporation 56 Moika River (Petrograd) 183

Index Monument to the Third International 147, 216, 271 Moor, Dmitrii 72 Moore, Thomas 119 Morris, William 9, 10, 208 Moscow ix, xii, xiv, xix, xxi, 1, 2, 11-17, 21, 23-25, 27-31, 34, 38, 40-42, 45, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 63-66, 69, 86, 90, 95, 101, 103-105, 111, 115, 116, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 133, 146, 148, 149, 152, 169, 185, 189, 192, 193, 196, 225, 227, 228, 230-234, 236, 237, 243, 253-255, 267, 274 Moscow Railway Station xix, 255 Moscow State University 69 Munich Secession 175 Museum of Political History of Russia ix, xii-xiv, xvii-xix, 22, 75, 79, 82, 87, 120, 127, 133, 135, 212, 213, 216-218, 244, 246, 247 Mushtakov, Aleksander 197, 198 Musical Comedy Theatre, Petrograd xiv, xviii, 147, 238 Mystery of Liberated Labour, The xix, 243, 248, 251, 252 Narkompros xiii, xiv, xxi, 12, 14, 18, 19, 21, 25, 31, 95-101, 103, 105-109, 115, 119, 129, 131, 147-150, 153, 155, 161, 181, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 199, 203-206, 211, 221, 222, 225-228, 235, 240, 242, 247, 261, 272, 276 Narkompros, Adult Education Division 98, 203 Narkompros, Art and Production Section 193 Narkompros, Central Theatre 242 Narkompros, IZO [Visual Arts Section] xxi, 25, 97, 100, 102, 189, 223 Narkompros, Photography and Cinema Section xxi Narkompros, Theatre Section (TEO) xiv, 86, 147, 149, 240, 261 Narodny Bridge xvii, 182, 183 National Library ix, xiv, 139 NEP xxii, 114 Neva Embankment 69, 168 Nevskoe Society of People’s Amusements 230 Nevsky Prospect xiv, xv, xviii, 60, 84, 88, 98,

299 114, 133, 136-138, 144, 145, 153, 158, 159, 183, 206, 238, 245 New Economic Policy xxii, 114 New Journal of Art, Literature and Science, The 10 New Model Unions 70 Nicholas I xiv, 119, 120, 122 Nicholas II 1, 54, 60, 141, 177, 239 Nystad 25 October Idyll 1 October Manifesto 1 October Revolution xxii, 14, 23, 25, 30, 46, 58, 62, 90, 95, 96, 98, 102, 103, 106, 109-111, 114, 116, 118, 133, 135, 144, 148-151, 157, 158, 161, 189, 191, 197, 201, 210, 211, 227, 228, 237, 267, 271, 275 October. Ten Days that Shook the World 265 OGPU xxi, xxii, 13 Okhrana xxii, 19, 44, 270 Okhta xv, xvii, 157, 180, 186 Okhtenskii Bridge xv, xvii, 155, 184, 185 Oksuz 149 Oleniev, O. 201 Organisational Bureau xxii Orgburo xxii, 203, 224 Oruzheinaia Square 169 Overthrow of the Autocracy, The xviii, 238-241, 243 Palace of Arts (Winter Palace) 158, 193, 199, 201 Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw 69 Palace of Proletarian Culture 98, 129 Paléologue, Maurice 66, 76 Panina, Countess 46, 93, 234 Panteleimonovskii Bridge (Petrograd) xvi, 177 Paris Commune 6, 22, 23, 52, 116, 129, 144, 256, 275 People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs xxi People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment xxi, 14, 275 People’s House 46, 93, 234, 238, 242 People’s Meetings Square 252 Performance 66, 76-78, 87, 96, 147, 218, 219, 232, 234, 236, 238-243, 248, 250-257,

300 259, 264, 265, 267, 271, Perovskaia, Sofia 114, 126 Pertsov, Viktor 192, 193 Pestel Bridge xvi, 177 Peter and Paul Fortress (Petrograd) 58, 69, 114, 146, 220, 248, 256 Peter I 25, 58, 59 Peterhof 59 Petrograd ix, xi-xix, xxi, 1, 9, 16, 19-22, 25-30, 42, 46, 56, 57, 62-69, 72-76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87, 89-91, 93-95, 97, 98, 100-102, 107, 109-111, 113-115, 119, 122-126, 129-133, 135-142, 144-158, 160, 161, 163-165, 167, 169-172, 174, 177, 178, 180, 187-189, 194, 198, 202-206, 208-212, 214-220, 222-224, 228, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242-245, 247-255, 259, 262-264, 267, 271-273, 275, 279, 280 Petrograd Agricultural School xviii, 217 ‘Petrograd Labour Commune’ 129 Petrograd Party Committee 91, 94 Petrograd Proletkult 46, 91, 94, 97, 98, 107, 243 Petrograd Soviet 63, 65, 66, 69, 75, 115, 129, 131, 150, 187, 188, 205, 206, 211, 219, 251, 252 Petrosovet (Petrograd Union) 194 Petrov, Nikolai xv, xvi, 154, 172, 173, 175, 176, 265, 267 Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma xv, xvi, 154, 172, 173, 175, 176 Piotrovsky, Adrian 26, 242, 256, 267 Plan for Monumental Propaganda xiv, 21, 101, 111-115, 119, 121, 123, 124, 126 Plekhanov, Georgi 13, 15, 38, 39, 51-53, 119 Podvoisky, Nikolai 267 Pokrovsky, Mikhail 38, 41, 42, 99 Politburo 8, 13, 203, 224 Politburo Central Committee 13 Pravda 13, 15, 37, 78, 123, 187, 188, 204-206, 220, 222, 227, 228, 231, 259 Proletarian Art 30, 48, 50, 78, 91, 189 Proletarian Culture xxii, 4, 13, 16, 17, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49-51, 53, 55, 57, 98, 129, 222, 226 Proletkult xi, xiii, xv, xxii, 11-21, 31, 39, 44-46, 49, 60, 76, 91, 93-99, 103,

Index 106-109, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 149, 152, 157, 159, 187, 193-198, 201, 203, 205, 211, 215, 216, 219, 221, 222, 224-229, 234-236, 238, 243, 275, 276, 278 Proletkult Palace (Petrograd) 236 Proletkult, National Congress of 31, 225, 226, 229 Pronin, Boris 231 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 119 Provisional Government 21, 29, 30, 58, 61-66, 76, 77, 84, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 111, 114, 265 Pudovkin, Vsevolod 117 Pumpianskii, Lev 171, 203 Puni, Ivan xvii, 109, 135, 153, 154, 169, 184-186, 191, 219 Punin, Nikolai xii, xiii, xvii, xviii, xxi, 3, 14, 26, 39, 56, 57, 63, 64, 90, 94, 99-101, 106, 107, 109, 110, 125-127, 148, 160, 164, 165, 167, 183, 185, 189-201, 221, 223, 229, 232, 271, 272, 279 Putilov Factory 78 Rachilde [Marguerite Vallette-Eymery] xiii, 87, 88 Radishchev, Aleksander xiv, 123, 124 Radlov, Sergei 242, 253, 256 Railian, Foma 141, 142 Ramishvili, I. 66 Rappoport, Vladimir xviii, 210, 218, 242 Rasputin, Grigorii 1 Razin, Stepan xvi, 172, 173, 175, 249 Red Army xiv, xvii, xviii, 72, 125, 126, 130, 132-134, 142, 143, 182, 183, 205, 211, 216, 219, 220, 222, 238-241, 243, 245, 248, 250, 253, 256, 271, 273 Red Army Drama Studio 216 Red Army Theatrical-Dramaturgical Studio xviii, 238-241 Red Calendar 29, 128 Red Guard 90, 124 Red Square (Moscow) xx, 268 Repin, Ilya 86, 158 Revolution Square, Moscow 126 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai 77 Ripida 178 RKP(b) xxii, 261

Index Rodchenko, Aleksander 64, 101, 136, 169, 196, 221 Roerich, Nikolai 63 Romanov 60, 113, 168 Rome 38, 39, 59, 63 Rozanova, Olga 100, 101 RSDRP xxii, 32-35, 37, 50 Rudnev, Lev xii, xvi, 68, 69, 78, 178, 179, 204, 220 Rundaltsov, Mikhail xvi, 174, 176, 177 Ruskin College, Oxford 9 Russian Army 62 Russian Empire xxii, 45, 59, 71 Russian enlightenment 10 Russian Freedom [Russkaia volia] newspaper 87 Russian Marxism 17, 52 Russian Orthodox Church 76 Russian Social Democratic Labour Party xxii, 35, 50 Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic 158 Russo-Japanese War 1 Saint-Simon, Henri de 119 Samokhvalov, Aleksander 84 Saratov 128, 275 Scarecrow in a Cage xiv, 117, 121 Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets 92 Second Anniversary of the Revolution 57, 73, 83, 116, 210, 219, 221 Second Congress of the III Communist International xix, 254-256 Shaporina, Lubov 151, 152 Shcheglov, Dmitry 14, 243 Shchuko, Vladimir 249, 263 Shervud, Leonid xiv, 122-124, 145 Shil’dknekht, P. 260 Shklovsky, Viktor 164, 201 Shkol’nik, Iosif 204, 255 Shterenberg, David xiii, xxi, 26, 97, 98, 100, 101, 132, 161, 181, 182, 189, 191, 193 Shukov, Pavel 135 Shvarts, L. 44 Smolny Institute (Petrograd) 114, 124, 125, 129 Social Democratic Labour Party xxii, 11, 35, 50

301 Socialism xvi, 13, 16, 52, 53, 73, 115, 131, 169-171, 249, 272 Socialist movement 10 Socialist Revolution xxii, 85, 209 Sokol, A. 79 Sologub, Fedor 86, 90 Soloviev, Vladimir 242 Somov, Konstantin 1 Soviet of People’s Commissars 211 Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies 65, 69 Soviet Russia 24, 29, 42, 102, 111, 157, 257 Soviet Union xii, xxi, xxii, 3, 8, 20, 27, 29, 49, 54, 62, 122, 202, 222, 270, 276 Sovnarkom xxii, 114, 115, 199 Special Corps of Gendarmes xxii Speech [Rech’] newspaper 60, 86, 87, 151 Spring [Vesna], play by Vladimir Rappoport 210 St. George 72, 81, 83, 103 St. Isaac’s Square (Petrograd) 100, 120 St. Nicholas Cathedral (Petrograd) xvi, 174-176 St. Petersburg Temperance Society 231 Stalin, Joseph 7, 8, 13, 69, 78, 81, 145, 146, 274 Stanislavsky, Konstantin 230 State Institute of Artistic Culture, Petrograd xxi State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg xii-xviii, xx, 21, 67-69, 81, 116-118, 124, 125, 145, 164-167, 175, 177, 180, 183, 185, 186, 209-211, 214, 277 State of Workers and Peasants 19 State Political Directorate xxi, xxii State Publishing Company (Gosizdat) 228, 229 State Russian Museum xii, xv-xvii, 21, 73, 153-155, 157-160, 170-174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184-187 Steinberg, Yakob 135 Stock Exchange Building xix, 259, 260 Stock Exchange, Petrograd xix, 248, 251, 252, 256, 259, 260 Storming of the Winter Palace xix, xx, 264-268, 271 Subbotnik [a day of unpaid labor] xviii, 243-245 Sukhanov, Nikolai 15, 30, 65, 66, 85

302 Summer Gardens (Petrograd) xvi, 177 Summer Palace (Peterhof) 59 Supreme Soviet of the People’s Economy xxii, 96 Sverdlov, Yakov 130 Switzerland 22, 25, 93 Synod Building (Petrograd) xvi, 179 Taine, Hippolyte 5 Tambov province 224 Tatlin, Vladimir xviii, 64, 99, 101, 147, 192, 193, 201, 216, 232, 233, 271-273 Temkin, Dmitry 265, 267 Tenth Party Conference xxii Theatre and Drama Workshop 242 Theatre Square (Moscow) 126 Theatre Square (Petrograd) xv, xvi, 126, 154, 172, 173 Third Anniversary of the Revolution 261, 262 Tikhanovich, Vladimir 236 Tikhonovich, Valentin 235 Timkovskii, Nikolai 231 Tolstoy, Lev 27, 28, 103, 126, 138, 169, 175, 176, 207, 230, 245, 259, 277 Toward a World Commune xix, 254, 255, 257-260 Trades Unions Soviet, Artistic Section 204 Trainin, Ilia 108 Transferral of a Slave’s Labour into Bright Construction xix, 249 Treaty of Riga 222 Tretyakov, Sergei 136 Triumphal Square (Moscow) 123 Trotsky, Leon xi, 7, 36-38, 53, 54, 62, 72, 149 Trubetskoy, Paolo 118 Trumpeter of the World Revolution xiii, 117, 120, 243 Tsar Maximilian xviii, 232, 233 Tsar Nicholas II 1 Tsar’s Son xviii, 232 Turgenevskaia Square (Petrograd) xiv, 127 Tutill, George 71, 72 Tyrsa, Nikolai xv, 153, 157-161, 164 Udaltsova, Nadezhda 101 Union of Art Workers 99 Union of Artists 64, 169, 224

Index Union of Journalists 224 Union of Metal Workers xiii, 82 Union of Workers and Peasants 157, 159, 160 Uprising Square (Petrograd) xiii, 116, 214, 215, 220 Uritsky (former Palace) Square xv, xviii, xix, 161, 163-165, 240, 241, 245, 255, 256, 268 USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 62 Vakhrameev, A. 215-217 Van Gogh, Vincent 159 Vasileostrovskii Theatre 230 Vasilievsky Island (Petrograd) xvii Vaulin, Petr xiii, 100, 101 Venice from Kumer xviii, 232 Vertov, Dziga 136, 169 Vesenkha xxii, 96 Vinogradov, Nikolai xviii, 238, 240, 241, 243 Voevodin, Pyotr 226 Vova Korolevich xiv, 147 Voznitskii, S. 79 VTsIK xxii, 104, 130, 204, 210 Vyborgskii Garden (Petrograd) 230 War Communism xxii, 31, 235 White Army 222 White Guard North-Western Army 210 Whitman, Walt xvi, 169-171, 173 Winstanley, Gerrard 119 Winter Palace Garden (Petrograd) xix, 247 Winter Palace (Petrograd) xiii, xix, xx, 1, 59, 60, 79, 87, 88, 90, 99, 100, 114, 123, 124, 132, 141, 143, 147, 152, 163, 193, 202, 247, 264-268, 271 Workers’ Marseillaise 69, 89 Workers’ Opposition 224, 270 World of Art [Mir Iskusstva] 1, 10, 24, 63, 87, 89, 137, 167, 169, 219, 252 World War I 1, 62, 63, 77, 154 Wrangel, General 222 Yatmanov, Grigory

xi, 131, 132, 147, 148

Zamyatin, Evgeny 105, 202 Zarathustra 5, 8 Zelinsky, Kornei 190 Zheliabov, Andrei 114 Zhupel xii, 1, 2

Index Zhuravskaya, Zinaida 140 Zinoviev, Grigory 42, 43, 129, 149, 194, 206, 208, 219, 220, 228 Znamenskaia Square (Petrograd) xiii, 116

303 Zola, Émile 5 Zorin, S. 211 Zubov, Count 63, 64 Zvorykin, Boris 83