Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics: Science, Art and Technology in the Early Soviet Union 9781000911077, 1000911071

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Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics

Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics presents an innovative look at the Russian avant-garde and its cultural encounters with the sciences in the 1920s. The book examines some of the lesser known entanglements between architects, filmmakers and philosophers, on the one hand, and experimental psychologists and physiologists on the other. In Russia, famous avant-garde artists, such as El Lissitzky, Vassily Kandinsky and Dziga Vertov, helped propagate a movement referred to as “psychotechnics” that was emerging at the time in Germany and the United States and eventually led to a “psychotechnical boom.” At the end of the story told in the book, it becomes clear that this boom continues to the present day. By analyzing concrete projects undertaken by Russian artists and scientists in cooperation with one another, and by drawing on as-yet-unpublished archival material, Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics challenges the established notion of socialist sciences. At the same time, it provides an entirely new picture of what was thought to be modern art, thereby demonstrating that artistic experimentation had much more than a mere metaphorical meaning in Russian arts in the 1920s. In 2007, Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics was acknowledged with an award for interdisciplinary research by the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Society, Großbothen. In 2011, the book received funding from the VolkswagenStiftung to be translated into English and Russian (the Russian edition was published by NLO books in 2019). The original German edition also received favorable reviews in NZZ, NTM, Derive, Junge Welt and Sehepunkte. Margarete Vöhringer is currently Professor for the Materiality of Knowledge at Georg-August-University Göttingen. Her research interests include materiality and aesthetics of the sciences, connections between art and science, history of collecting and exhibiting, Russian avant-garde, and cultural techniques of seeing. She has co-edited several anthologies: Sehstörungen. Grenzwerte des Visuellen in Künsten und Wissenschaften (with Anne Kathrin Reulecke, Berlin 2019); Wissenschaft im Museum – Ausstellung im Labor (with Anke Te Heesen, Berlin 2014) and Phantome im Labor: Die Verbreitung der Reflexe in Hirnforschung, Kunst und Technik. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 32(1), 2009 (with Yvonne Wübben).

Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 Series Editors Robert M. Brain The University of British Columbia, Canada and Ernst Hamm York University, Canada

Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 focuses on the social, cultural, industrial and economic contexts of science and technology from the ‘sci­ entific revolution’ up to the Second World War. Publishing lively, original, innovative research across a broad spectrum of subjects and genres by an international list of authors, the series has a global compass that concerns the development of modern science in all regions of the world. Subjects may range from close studies of particular sciences and problems to cultural and social histories of science, technology and biomedicine; accounts of scientific travel and exploration; transnational histories of scientific and technologi­ cal change; monographs examining instruments, their makers and users; the material and visual cultures of science; contextual studies of institutions and of individual scientists, engineers and popularizers of science; and well-edited volumes of essays on themes in the field. Also in the series Pursuing the Unity of Science: Ideology and Scientific Practice from the Great War to the Cold War Harmke Kamminga and Geert Somsen The Enlightenment of Thomas Beddoes: Science, Medicine and Reform Trevor Levere, Larry Stewart, and Hugh Torrens, with Joseph Wachelder Brainwaves: A Cultural History of Electroencephalography Cornelius Borck, translated by Ann M. Hentschel Hélène Metzger: Historian and Historiographer of the Sciences Dr. Cristina Chimisso Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics: Science, Art and Technology in the Early Soviet Union Margarete Vöhringer www.routledge.com/Science-Technology-and-Culture-1700-1945/book­ series/STAC

Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics Science, Art and Technology in the Early Soviet Union Margarete Vöhringer

First published in English 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Margarete Vöhringer The right of Margarete Vöhringer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Translated from Avantgarde und Psychotechnik: Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik der Wahrnehmungsexperimente in der frühen Sowjetunion Published in German © Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vöhringer, Margarete, 1973– author. | Vöhringer, Margarete, 1973– Avantgarde und Psychotechnik. Title: Avant-garde and psychotechnics : science, art and technology in the early Soviet Union / Margarete Vöhringer. Other titles: Avantgarde und Psychotechnik. English Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Science, technology and culture, 1700–1945 | Translation of the author’s thesis (doctoral)—Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2006, under the title: Avantgarde und Psychotechnik : Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik der Wahrnehmungsexperimente in der frühen Sowjetunion. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023003344 (print) | LCCN 2023003345 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032532646 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032532677 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003411185 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—Russia (Federation)— History—20th century. | Art, Russian—20th century. | Psychology and art—Russia (Federation)—History—20th century. | Art and technology—Russia (Federation)—History—20th century. Classification: LCC N6988.5.A83 V6413 2023 (print) | LCC N6988.5.A83 (ebook) | DDC 709.47/0904—dc23/eng/20230227 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023003344 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023003345 ISBN: 978-1-032-53264-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-53267-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-41118-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Preface to the English Edition Acknowledgments Transliteration List of Abbreviations Introduction

vi

xi

xii

xiii

1

1 Feed(ing) Back: Nicolai Ladovsky’s Psychotechnical

Laboratory for Architecture, Moscow 1921–1927

25

2 Networking: Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the

Brain – Film as Reflexology, Leningrad/Moscow 1925–1926

91

3 Grafting: Alexander Bogdanov’s Circular Blood

Transfusions, Moscow 1924–1928

155

Conclusion: Feeding Back, Networking and Grafting as

Cultural Techniques

205

Bibliography Index

211

236

Preface to the English Edition

The idea for this book arose out of a deep interest in the relationship between art and reality. I developed this curiosity in the 1990s at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG), where I had the unique opportunity to study theory and practice in tandem with one another. In addition to provid­ ing me with invaluable experience in the production of drawings and films, my studies also led – perhaps more importantly – to a fundamental disrup­ tion of my self-understanding as an art historian. I discovered that an entire universe existed between theoretical interpretations of works of art and the actual practices employed by artists themselves. Hans Belting, my professor at the time, had made a similar observation in his book Likeness and Pres­ ence1 with regard to the relationship between theological discourse and reli­ gious iconic practices, and it seemed to me that this insight might also apply to the Russian avant-garde. It prompted me to ask the following question: is it possible that the bold scientific claims made by Russian artists after the October Revolution – that is, at a time when members of the avant-garde movement began conducting their own experiments using methods drawn from the fields of psychology and physiology – were not as utopian as one might think when reading their official manifestos? I would soon argue that what was at stake here in terms of the concrete practices of artistic produc­ tion and reception was not only the historical ordering of works of art but also the very nature of the relationship between artist and viewer, between production and reception. In other words, I  sought to find answers to the following key questions: what kind of experiment actually takes place when artists – rather than scientists – carry it out? And what implications does this have for the reality in which the experiment takes place? By the time I started working on my thesis in 2000, scholarly writing on the history of science had already taken a number of different turns, including ones toward the ‘practical’ and the ‘pictorial.’ At the beginning of the century, the field had started broadening its horizons to include new, cultural-scientific perspectives, which consequently provided me with the opportunity to set up my research project at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. While at Max Planck, I became familiar with the latest meth­ ods being used in the interdisciplinary field of science studies. In fact, these

Preface to the English Edition

vii

methods proved crucial to my own research, as they delivered the analytical tools I needed to identify and unveil experimental practices in art.2 Histori­ cal epistemology was an important anchor in this context, especially in the form in which it was introduced to me, that is, via Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Michael Hagner.3 Rather than following a linear sequence of scientific discoveries, this approach to research instead focused on the distribution of knowledge, looking especially at the political and social mechanisms of its verification, the media, the preconditions of comprehension, the poetology of knowledge as represented by Joseph Vogl,4 and the aesthetics of knowledge in the sense in which I examine them in my book. With this in mind, I devoted each chapter to a fresh reexamination of the question of how best to deter­ mine the relationship between the artistic practices of avant-gardists and the methods and procedures used by scientists. I also tried to illustrate as effec­ tively as possible the entangled nature of the connection between these two. At the time I  was writing, the range of contemporary writings on the Russian avant-garde focused heavily on artists’ manifestos, which were then related directly to their works of art, with much less consideration paid to the processes of producing art and developing theories. This trend might have been due to the fact that a deeper interest in the activities of the post-revolutionary avant-garde only emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, prior to which only a small number of sources were available to researchers from the West. Nonetheless, I still had access, at the time, to a number of highly impor­ tant assessments of the avant-garde that became essential for my research. These included Boris Groys’ The Total Art of Stalinism and Die Erfindung Russlands (tr. The invention of Russia), which already illustrated the entan­ glements between avant-garde art, political ideology and science in the avant­ garde movement after the October Revolution.5 While Groys undertook his analysis largely within the context of the history of ideas, I chose to focus on incorporating concrete practices into this tangled network of interests. My goal was not, however, to merely add one more element to an already wellknown story. Instead, I sought to shift priorities away from otherwise lofty and utopian ideas and focus on the preconditions for – and the effectiveness of – that which was truly doable and that which was actually done. Further inspiration came from those exhibitions and publications con­ taining translated sources on the Russian avant-garde that had been pro­ duced with great effort starting in the 1970s by Eckhart Gillen and Hubertus Gassner.6 In Russia, it was Selim O. Khan-Magomedov and other witnesses and relatives of the avant-garde artists themselves who helped popularize the material covering this glorious period in Russian art.7 In the United States, many of the writings of avant-garde artists had been made accessible before­ hand, and it was equally important that Anglo-American avant-garde research had already prompted scientific concepts such as ‘the experiment’ and ‘the laboratory’ to become associated with Russian avant-garde art.8 Indeed, when reading Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics, English-language readers will frequently encounter ideas and concepts that are already well-known

viii

Preface to the English Edition

to them. Less well-known, however, will be the discourses out of which my book emerged; in addition to the science studies and art and cultural stud­ ies mentioned above, these discourses also include a form of media studies known as the Berliner Schule (Berlin school) that formed around Friedrich Kittler. In fact, Kittler was the first to call my attention to the concept of ‘psychotechnics’ when he described the connection between psychotechnics and surrealism in Discourse Networks.9 Kittler also initiated research into ‘cultural techniques,’ which prompted researchers to take a closer look at practices, albeit with less of a focus on the emergence of knowledge and more on cultural production. According to Thomas Macho, cultural techniques, which include writing, reading, painting, arithmetic and making music, are activities that always form the basis of theories or at least pave the way for them.10 In other words, I came to see the reality out of which the Russian avant-garde emerged – that is, the actual conditions under which it grew into an experimental culture – as being primarily a dense fabric of practices that moved back and forth between the disciplines. Of course, since my book was published in German in 2007, the state and status of research have changed considerably. In fact, there are now a number of German-language publications focusing explicitly on practices that serve to generate knowledge in science, art and literature, such as collect­ ing, drawing and writing. Most of these works have been published in asso­ ciation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.11 Although these books do not refer specifically to the Russian avant-garde, other works have appeared on that subject as well. For example, Verena Krieger’s Kunst als Neuschöpfung der Wirklichkeit12 (tr. Art as a Recreation of Reality) emerged at roughly the same time as my book. Unfortunately, Christina Kiaer and Maira Gough’s work, published in the United States, reached me too late,13 as did a more recent anthology on design exploring the architectural teachings of the Russian avant-gardists.14 In addition, the num­ ber of books published on the subject of the ‘New Man’ in the Soviet Union is almost endless;15 for example, volumes were published in Russian covering the sound experiments undertaken in the 1920s. Also issued for the first time in Russian was the Dictionary of Artistic Concepts, which had been devel­ oped in 1923–1929 at the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (RAKhN) in Moscow but was never published.16 The RAKhN also stands at the center of a group of researchers working on the ‘Sprache der Dinge’ (the ‘language of things’) at Ruhr University Bochum; that group has already completed the first classification of the RAKhN in two magazine issues.17 New ideas on the relationship between art and science have also appeared in Russia as well as in the United States.18 In other words, even if one doesn’t take into account the several new publishing companies devoted to issuing books on the Russian avant-garde, such as the series ‘Avant-garde’ by the European University Press in Saint-Petersburg, and more recent publication series, such as Brill’s “Russian History and Culture” series, it would still be safe to say that the Russian avant-garde is experiencing a rediscovery again and again. My book

Preface to the English Edition

ix

was not able to address these more recent publications, yet it is designed in such a way as to join their ranks to foster future research into the avant­ garde. And I sincerely hope my work inspires young scholars to venture even deeper into the historical vicissitudes of the 1920s and to obtain fresh new ideas for their contemporaries. The fact that my book is now being published in Russian and English translation is a source of tremendous joy. First of all, my thanks go to the generous financial support I received from the VolkswagenStiftung. I am also grateful for the faith and confidence I  received from my colleagues at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (Leibniz-Center for Literary and Cultural Studies Berlin), in particular from Sigrid Weigel and Daniel Weidner, who accompanied my work over the course of several years and in this way helped to finance the translations. I would also like to thank Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Georg Witte for suggesting to the VolkswagenStiftung that my book be translated and for being constant sources of inspi­ ration both in their own work and in their suggestions for my own. Most of all I would like to thank my three translators, Vera Dubina, Julie Hagedorn and Kirill Levinson, who put tremendous effort into finding the right words for my thoughts in their respective languages. The ease with which the book can be read stands as evidence of their success. And last but not least, I thank the two editors who accepted my book for publication in Russian and English – Irina Prokhorova and Robert Brain. Notes 1 Hans Belting: Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image Before the Era of Art. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997. 2 Bruno Latour: Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA, 1999 [1987]; Andrew Pickering (ed.): Science as Prac­ tice and Culture. Chicago, IL, 1992. 3 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Michael Hagner (eds.): Die Experimentalisierung des Lebens. Berlin, 1993; Michael Hagner, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, and Bettina Wahrig-Schmidt (eds.): Objekte, Differenzen, Konjunkturen. Experimentalsysteme im historischen Kontext). Berlin, 1994. 4 Josph Vogl (ed.): Poetologien des Wissens um 1800, Munich 1999. 5 Boris Groys: The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1992. Boris Groys: Die Erfindung Russlands, Munich 1995. 6 Kunst aus der Revolution, Sowjetische Kunst während der Phase der Kollektivier­ ung und Industrialisierung 1927–1933, Berlin 1977; Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen: Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischem Realismus. Dokumente und Kommentare, Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934. Cologne, 1979. 7 To name a few examples: Alexander N. Lavrentev (ed.): Rakursy Rodchenko (Rodchenko’s Approaches). Moscow, 1992; Selim O. Chan-Magomedov: Tvor­ çeskie Teçenija, Koncepcii i organizacii sovetskogo Avangarda, Bd. 1–7. Moskau, 1993–1995; Gita L. Vygodskaya und Tamara M. Lifanova: Lev Semjonovic Vygotskij. Leben – Tätigkeit – Persönlichkeit. Hamburg, 2000. 8 Nicoletta Misler (ed.): RAKhN. The Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, in Experiment – A  Journal of Russian Culture. Los Angeles, CA, 1997; John E.

x Preface to the English Edition Bowlt und Olga Matich (eds.): Laboratory of Dreams. The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment. Stanford, CA, 1996; Richard Stites: Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989; Camilla Gray: The Great Experiment. Russian Art 1863–1922. London, 1962. 9 Friedrich Kittler: Discourse Networks, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1990. 10 Thomas Macho: Zeit und Zahl. Kalender und Zeitrechnung als Kulturtechni­ ken, in: Sybille Krämer and Horst Bredekamp (eds.): Bild, Schrift, Zahl. Munich, 2003, 179–192. 11 Anke Te Heesen: Der Zeitungsausschnitt. Ein Papierobjekt der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main, 2006; Christoph Hoffmann (Hrsg.): Wissen im Entwurf, I: Daten sichern. Schreiben und Zeichnen als Verfahren der Aufzeichnung. Zurich/Berlin, 2008; Barbara Wittmann and Christoph Hoffmann (eds.): Knowledge in the Mak­ ing: Drawing and Writing as Research Techniques, Science in Context 26/2, 2013. 12 Verena Krieger: Kunst als Neuschöpfung der Wirklichkeit. Die Anti-Ästhetik der russischen Moderne. Cologne, 2006. 13 Christina Kiaer: Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Con­ structivism, Cambridge, MA, 2005; Maria Gough: The Artist as Producer. Rus­ sian Constructivism in Revolution, Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA/London, 2005. 14 Ralph Johannes (ed.): Entwerfen. Architektenausbildung in Europa von Vitruv bis Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Geschichte, Theorie, Praxis. Hamburg, 2009. 15 For a good overview, see Birte Kohtz and Alexander Kraus: Kopfgeburten. Neue Literatur zur Schaffung des neuen Menschen in der Sowjetunion, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 52, 2012, pp. 801–826. 16 Andrey Smirnov: Sound in Z. Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia. London, 2013; Igor Chubarov (ed.): Slovar’ chu­ dojestvennych terminov GAChN. Moscow, 2005; Avantgarde v kulture XX veka. 1900–1930. Teoria. Istoria. Poetika, 2 vol., Moscow, 2010. 17 Filosofija i nauki ob iskusstve. GAChN v istorii evropejskogo ėstetičeskogo soznanija [Philosophy and Cultural Studies. GAChN in the History of European Aesthetic Consciousness]. Special issue of the magazine Logos No. 2(75), 2010, ed. by N. Plotnikov, N. Podzemskaia, I. Chubarov; Nikolaj Plotnikov: Kunst als Sprache – Sprachen der Kunst. Russische Ästhetik und Kunsttheorie der 1920er Jahre in der europäischen Diskussion, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, special issue 12, 2014. 18 Irina Sirotkina and Roger Smith: The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde. Dance, Kinaesthesia and the Arts in Revolutionaly Russia, London and New York 2017; Alexei Kojevnikov: The Cultural Spaces of the Soviet Cosmos, in: J.T. Andrews and A. A. Siddiqi (eds.): Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture. Pittsburg, 2011; Simon Werrett: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History, Chicago, 2010. Isabel Wünsche: The Organic School of the Russian Avant-Garde. Nature’s Creative Principles. Farnham and Burlington, 2015; Robert Michael Brain: The Pulse of Modernism. Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siécle Europe. Seattle, WA and London, 2015.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the tireless patience and curiosity of my family and friends. I would especially like to thank my parents from the bottom of my heart for their support. My deepest gratitude also goes to my doctoral supervisors, Horst Bredekamp and Michael Hagner, for our many conversations and their guid­ ance along the often winding path through the history of art and science. I would equally like to thank my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG). It was the unvarying interest expressed by Sven Dierig, Philipp Felsch, Peter Geimer, Christoph Hoffmann, Helmut Müller-Sievers, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Henning Schmidgen and Simon Werrett, in particular, that prevented this book from getting lost in a myriad of twists and turns. I  would also like to thank the employees at the MPIWG library for their friendly and always productive assistance in procuring literature. For their invaluable support during my research in St. Petersburg, I extend my sincerest appreciation to Daniel Alexandrov from the European Univer­ sity and Juri A. Vinogradov from the Pavlov Archives. In Moscow, I  ben­ efited tremendously from the knowledge and addresses provided to me by Naum Klejman from the Kino Museum, Selim O. Chan-Magomedov from the Architecture Academy and Georgij Gloveli from the International Bogda­ nov Institute. In Berlin, Peter Berz, Hans-Christian von Herrmann, Markus Krajewski and Joseph Vogl significantly enriched the breadth of my sub­ ject matter by way of their suggestions, comments and questions. Shortly before completing the book, Alexandre Métraux helped me with the finishing touches, for which I would like to extend a special thanks. I am also grateful to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the VolkswagenStiftung and the Media Faculty at Bauhaus University in Weimar for their significant financial and institutional support. Elle Janssen, Stefan Saffer, Birgit Schneider, Julia Voss and Birk Weiberg always knew what to say when things got tough, and for that they have my sincerest thanks. I also owe a number of crazy theses to Martin Carlé. And, finally, I would like to thank Andree Korpys for all his productive doubts.

Transliteration

English transliterations from the Russian follow the scientific transliteration system, except in the case of established proper names, such as El Lissitzky, where the spelling suggested by the Library of Congress is used. In the bibliography, the names of translated titles are written in the original bibliographical spelling. The citation method used here corresponds to the Chicago Manual of Style. Archive key Fond (f.)  =  archive inventory; opis’ (op.)  =  inventory number; edinica khranenija (ed. khr.) or delo (d.) = archive unit, convolute; list (l.) = sheet, page; oborot (ob.) = verso

Abbreviations

Some of the institutions mentioned here changed their names in the course of the 1920s. In order to avoid any confusion with regard to terminology, the institution’s first name will always be used, even when referring to a period of time in which a new name was introduced. For example, VKhUTEMAS and RAKhN will be used throughout. The only exceptions to this rule will be in citations. ASNOVA: Association of New Architects, Moscow GARF: State Archive of the Russian Federation GINKhUK: State Institute of Artistic Culture, (emerged out of the MChK: Museum for Artistic Culture, 1919–1926), Leningrad 1923–1926 GUS: State Education Council, part of Narkompros INKhUK: Institute of Artistic Culture, Moscow 1920–1923/24 LEF: Left Front of Art, (later Novyi Lef: New Left Front of Art) MGU: Moscow State University NARKOMPROS: People’s Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment, Moscow NEP: New Economic Policy NOT: Scientific Labor Organization OBMAS: United Workshops OSA: Organization of Contemporary Architects RAKhN: Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (starting in 1925 as GAKhN, State Academy for Artistic Sciences), Moscow 1921–1930 RGALI: Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow RGASPI: Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History, Moscow ZHIVSKUL’PTARKH: Commission for the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Moscow 1919 VKhUTEMAS: Higher Artistic Technical Workshops, founded in 1920 (starting in 1928, known as VKhUTEIN: Higher ArtisticTechnical Institute) CIT: Central Institute of Labor

xiv

Abbreviations

Archives, Institutes, Museums Archive of the National Research Center for Hematology, Moscow Bekhterev Museum at the Psychoneurological Research Institute, St. Petersburg Darwin Museum, Moscow Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso-Issoco, Rome GARF: State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow Gosfilmofond: State Film Archive, Moscow Museum of Hygiene, St. Petersburg Institute for Scientific Film, Göttingen (since 2012 at the Technical Information Library/TIB Hanover) Natsional’nyj Meditsinskij Issledovtel’skij Tsentr Gematologii (National Medical Research Center for Hematology), Moscow Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow Musei Kino (Cinema Museum), Moscow Pavlov Museum at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, St. Petersburg RGAKFD: Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive, Moscow RGALI: Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow RGASPI: Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Moscow TsGIA: Central State Historical Archive St. Petersburg (of the Leningrad area), St. Petersburg Ugolok Durova: Vladimir L. Durov’s Animal Theater and Museum, Moscow Medical History Museum, Moscow State Central Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow

Introduction

To this day, the psychotechnical experiments developed by Russian avant­ gardists in the post-revolutionary era continue to capture the attention of every individual who moves through public spaces in Moscow. Whether crossing a street, making one’s way from one building to another, navigating public transportation systems, shopping for food, or borrowing books from a library, the two sides of psychotechnical experimentalization are tangible and ever-present. On the one hand, a person’s visual, auditory and motor faculties of perception are addressed by means of signs, sounds and archi­ tecture; on the other hand, the individual is also simultaneously steered and controlled. Such attempts to organize public space are common in all modern cities; in Moscow, however, the result is not a more efficient coordination of communication and movement, but rather the exact opposite, namely a state of constant disorientation. For example, when entering one of the first metro stations, Biblioteka Imeni Lenina,1 built in the center of the capital, one is confronted not with the entrance to the subway track, as one would expect, but rather with its exit. At this point, the individual’s task is to remain calm and turn right, all the while being pushed from behind by the masses of peo­ ple streaming in and, at the same time, making sure not to get run over by the commuters flowing out of the station. In a small aluminum box located between the entrance and the exit, a woman sits monitoring this quagmire of orientation: she gives verbal instructions, corrects inappropriate behavior with a blow of her whistle and keeps an eye on the entrance gates (which snap up and down based on information provided to them by photoelec­ tric sensors) so that none of the individuals moving in the wrong direction is injured. Instead of being ushered smoothly and silently into the space, commuters are confronted with “No Exit” signs that force them to change direction and coordinate movements with other commuters. It is precisely this fascinating contradiction between an obvious effort to organize public space and its dysfunction in real terms that provides the inspiration for the following study.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185-1

2 Introduction On Experimental Practices in Art and Science In January 1921, the First All-Russian Initiative Conference on the Scientific Organization of Labor and Production was held in Moscow. The event not only examined economic-technical issues but also expanded its spectrum to include socioeconomic and psycho-physiological perspectives on the scientific organization of labor.2 With 313 registered participants, including engineers, technicians, psycho-physiologists,3 sociologists and physicians, the attend­ ance numbers more than fulfilled the expectations of the organizers, who were led by none other than Leon Trotsky, Commander of the Red Army at the time. A number of highly prominent speakers were selected to appear: for example, the welcome address was given by Alexander Bogdanov, author of a “General Organization Theory”4 and a political opponent of Lenin. As the initiator of the cultural-revolutionary workers’ movement known as the Proletkult,5 Bogdanov inquired first and foremost into the cultural conditions that could bring about a sought-after increase in work performance: “Which stimuli must we use, which interests must we arouse in Russian workers in the socialist society in order to attain maximum work performance with the greatest job satisfaction?”6 Yet another luminary of the Soviet Union’s aca­ demic universe took the stage after Bogdanov, namely Vladimir Bekhterev, founder and director of the Psychoneurological Institute in Leningrad and representative of a holistically oriented reflexology. He put forward the anal­ ogy of man and machine, highlighting nonetheless the differences between the two: “Man gets tired, yet he has the ability to replace his power con­ sumption from within himself, he is able to increase his efficiency by means of training, and he is capable of creative activity.”7 Ultimately, Bekhterev’s theories also led to an emphasis on culture – with a call for the creation of a profession that was as yet absent at this congress, that is, that of artists devoted to propaganda: “The interest of the worker is the main stimulus for increasing work performance . . . for its own sake, and this must be strived for with the help of enlightenment and propaganda.”8 Only a short time later, these artists could be found in almost all research institutes and organization committees. They worked not only to create the stimuli required to increase job satisfaction, as demanded by Bogdanov, but more importantly to discover exactly what these stimuli were in the first place. In accessing the subject, members of the artistic and scientific avant­ garde began to cooperate: “Together with the man of science, the workerartist must become a psycho-engineer, a psycho-designer.”9 State of Research, Archive Status and Materials

The congruence of art and science has hardly ever been more emphatically postulated than by Boris Eikhenbaum, a representative of Russian Formalism.

Introduction

3

With regard to this movement’s later phase in the post-revolutionary 1920s10 in Russia, he reports the following: There is a tendency towards the consolidation and convergence of different methods of thought and different linguistic means to understand one and the same fact of life. In this respect, science and art reveal themselves not so much as different (and contradictory) types of thought, but rather as different linguistic forms, as different systems of speech and expression.11 This merger of art and science expressed itself among the Formalists in a dis­ pute not only with literature but also with theater, photography and film and led to the identification of media-specific “methods of thought.” And yet, does not the formal proclamation of a convergence of the different “types of thought” promise something other than the comparability of “systems of speech and expression”? The artists of the 1920s saw the new Communist society as a type of artis­ tic experiment; especially when – in keeping with the Formalist ideal – they deployed “art as a technique”12 of uncovering and visualizing that which could not be seen in order to unshackle the automated perception of the oppressed worker, thus using artistic alienation for the benefit of an “enlight­ ened proletarian.” Less well-known is the fact that in this experimentaliza­ tion, the arts were seconded by the life sciences that had spread rapidly in Russia starting at the beginning of the 20th century, that is, physiology, psy­ chology, psychophysics and – especially in the 1920s – psychotechnics. Even though the concept of “life sciences” had not yet been coined in the 1920s, it is appropriate as a collective term to describe those sciences devoted to the examination of people and thus to experiments with human beings. Moreo­ ver, in terms of their development, all of these sciences were very strongly intertwined with one another by means of an exchange of practices. However, in the Soviet Union, they had one thing in common most of all, that is, the all-encompassing goal of creating for the new, revolutionary man an equally new and appropriate living environment. For the artists, this meant first and foremost establishing new frameworks of visual perception. In this sense, more was called into question than Eikhenbaum himself wanted to admit. Instead of bringing science (as theory) and art (as practice) closer together in their common textuality, the goal was to place attention on the practices in both spheres. The traces of these practices suggest that they are meant to be understood not only metaphorically but also as verbal, visual and haptic condensations of historical processes.13 Just as images “in their essence are [based on] reactions to images,”14 as Horst Bredekamp emphasizes, this also applies to the practices that call forth these images in the first place. When filmmakers studied at psycho-neurological institutes and shot their films in physiological experimental laboratories [Pudovkin, see Chapter 2], when architects developed apparatuses to measure perception [Ladovsky,

4 Introduction see Chapter  1], and when philosophers set up medical laboratories [Bog­ danov, see Chapter 3], it is hard to resist making assumptions with regard to the practical conditions and outcomes of these interactions among disci­ plines. However, there are methodological problems involved in pursuing this course. How can we speak of art and science when the very difference between them is already suggested by the question itself? “The thesis that confirms the influence of science on art is based on the difference between art and science, otherwise we would not speak of influence.”15 Can a categoriza­ tion using the terms “art” and “science” even be sustained in the face of the complex mixture of their practices? By all means, because questions arise that undermine the model of influence and, at the same time, avoid the hasty leveling-out of all differences: Which scientific apparatuses found their way into artistic laboratories, and vice versa? Which artistic experiments became relevant for the sciences? To what extent did such experiments and other possible synergy effects resulting from cooperating disciplines actually affect image and text production? What relationship did the leading media of the time, that is, photography and film, have with the dissemination of scientific practice and its coupling with the arts? What consequences did this have for the traditional triad of artist–work–viewer? The assumption that motivates us to ask these questions is that there are relationships between art and science that are more complex than mere influ­ ences from one discipline to another, that is, there are relationships that are more diverse than what is typically determined, generally speaking, as being the interaction of the arts with discoveries made by science. Art history has developed a broad repertoire of methods designed to portray this interaction in a complex manner. This spectrum of the historical discipline ranges from the traditional influence model, which examines works of art according to scientific ideas,16 to sociological perspectives that examine working condi­ tions and social context,17 all the way to approaches that view the materials of art as the condition for the possibility of its production.18 In turn, repre­ sentatives of a visual culture that seeks to make room for non-artistic images also call for the removal of borders – not in order to free up the methods but much more the objects of their discipline.19 The research that goes the farthest in this regard even takes into account the technical conditions of images, that is, it is devoted to the techniques of images and their imaging procedures.20 As seen from this perspective, it would appear that the difference between the “two cultures”21 – on the level of both their methods and their objects – is less a borderline and much more a permeable threshold zone.22 Accordingly, in the specific context of the Soviet Union in the eventful 1920s, it is not pos­ sible to make a clean distinction between art and science. The results of their associations were not present in one or the other discipline, in the arts or in the sciences. On the contrary, artistic-experimental practices were underway at the same time in many different spheres, and the products and processes generated by the sciences were not merely processed aesthetically by the arts; they were also functionalized and instrumentalized.

Introduction

5

Until now, research into the Russian avant-garde, which developed in the philological discipline of Slavic Studies and on the edges of Eastern Euro­ pean history, has only partly accepted this state of affairs. First of all, the most important minds from the worlds of philosophy, art, and politics were examined in terms of their biography or their oeuvre.23 Some studies focus on institutions, movements and their networks, but they do so mostly in the form of the history of ideas.24 The artistic practices of the artists were seen as being complementary to their text-based work, but they were hardly taken seriously as crucial elements in the production of theory.25 Research on the history of technical media in the early Soviet Union is even rarer than studies into their artistic practices.26 The sciences were examined historically and in a comprehensive manner not least by the State Science Academies in Russia,27 while the interrelationship with artistic disciplines28 and their techniques and means of representation continues to be lacking.29 The difficulty of apply­ ing interdisciplinary approaches – that is, approaches from disciplines other than philological ones – to the Russian material arises primarily due to lan­ guage barriers, the still relatively traditional state of historiography in Rus­ sia30 and difficult access to sources. And yet, in fact, the situation with regard to archives couldn’t possibly be more ideal, especially seeing as they hold an invaluable amount of material that remained untouched and under lock and key in the era of the Soviet Union. However, the rooms in which these sources are found were not immune to the ideological transfigurations of the past several years. For example, since the revolution, various sources were scattered to different archives, institutes, museums and estates. Some sources have not yet been catalogued and some are kept – depending on their politi­ cal relevance – in more or less yellowing folders and in more or less secure, dark basements. Depending on their hypothetical status, they are either easy to examine, such as protocols from art academies, or supposedly lost, such as protocols from medical experimental laboratories. Some papers appear suddenly after the fifth request, while others are found by chance between unsorted piles of paper. In the case of the estates of famous authors, it is customary to invite family members to tea. In fact, one accesses the most important materials exclusively at such gatherings. If the document sought is ultimately found, copies cost between one and eight dollars – depending on one’s powers of persuasion – and are made either in ten minutes or in four weeks. In other words, the interdisciplinary study of the Russian avant-garde requires that one follow all those paths that the historical figures themselves took and attempt to trace their steps, even though they are constantly being scattered about by various archival methods. Pioneering work was done in this area in a dissertation by Margareta Tillberg.31 She examines Michael Matyushin’s theory of color not only in the context of the Russian avant-garde but also with regard to its scientific inspirers. Yet another impressive work is Irina Sirotkina’s “Literary Genius,”32 which illuminates the intersection of art and science in a concrete way by showing how Russian psychiatry and literature influenced each other in the

6

Introduction

course of the 19th century. Indeed, as prominent research objects and, at the same time, socially acknowledged critics of psychiatry, writers contributed considerably to psychiatry’s institutional development. Sirotkina shows very clearly how insightful the interaction can be with scientific institutions, on the one hand, and with literary works, on the other, when no attention is paid to the borders between their specific interests. Her examination ends, however, shortly after the Russian Revolution, right at the time when Rus­ sian avant-garde literature – alongside other media, including architecture, photography and film – was coming into the view of the sciences. More spe­ cifically, it was a time in which psychiatry was joined by a number of new disciplines, such as psychotechnics. The Russian Avant-Garde as an Experimental Culture

The goal here is to gain a clear picture of the historical constellation regard­ less of any disciplinary fog that might be clouding the view. Indeed, in postrevolutionary Russia, the focus should not be on the differences between art and science or on their similarities. What is relevant here is much more the almost complete absence of this academic distinction. Magazines show­ casing laboratories at art institutions next to laboratories of experimental psychology, zoology and cinematography [see Chapter  2] were directed in equal measure at an unsuspecting public that knew nothing of strict borders between disciplines. Artists and scientists appeared to be operating on a com­ mon ground. With the exception of Eikhenbaum’s aforementioned “one and the same fact(s),” how can we connect the threads between areas that only become separated as a result of the act of historical assessment? Aren’t joint facts – and the questions, problems and goals associated with them – too quickly at hand within a spatially and temporally identical framework? In what way can we question, supplement and correct discursive references? And, last but not least, how can the other dimension of the discourse be tamed, that is, the dimension of chance, of the discontinued and of material­ ity?33 How can the “certain impossible possibility of saying the event”34 be made productive? Just like the Formalists before him, Michel Foucault, too, came to a stand­ still in the face of this question in language: “Foucault seems to have not seen any other guidelines through European history than that of the alpha­ bet that underlies it.”35 The logic of media beyond language, the logic of apparatuses and practices that do not express themselves in language had to elude him: “Things mumble already a meaning that our language only needs to grasp.”36 The nonverbal discourse was taken on by a media theory that analyzed it initially based on “discourse networks,”37 that is, on “systems of writing down, and soon thereafter based on the notations of ‘gramophone, film, typewriter’38 and ultimately on “symbol practices.”39 The translation of all experiences into language was recognized as a para­ dox already by Martin Heidegger, according to whom “we remain, speaking

Introduction

7

of the language, mired in a continually inadequate speaking. This entangle­ ment closes us off against that which should give expression to thinking.”40 He differentiated between scientific representation (Vorstellen) and philo­ sophical thinking (Denken) and specified that representation needs method in order to generate knowledge; thinking, on the other hand, does not. There­ fore, the only opportunity to untangle language can be found in noting “the peculiar nature of the thought path, i.e., to take a look around us in the area where thinking resides.”41 Heidegger did indeed see scientific representation as being incompatible with philosophical thinking, and thus he perpetuated the difference between science and philosophy: nevertheless, can we not use his own argument to concede to both the sciences and the visual arts in this very same area in which thinking develops and in which neither scientific production nor its methodological application or linguistic communication operates? And doesn’t the act of looking around in this pre-linguistic “area of thinking” mean, in fact, that all possible things and events – just not the method – emerge in it? Peter Galison compares Bauhaus architecture with the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and establishes different analogies between the two, including common methods, ideologies, languages, interests, adversaries, styles and goals, ultimately in order to emphasize that art and science “sup­ ported each other” and legitimized one another: “For the Bauhäusler, the Vienna Circle stood for the solid ground of science. . . . For the logical posi­ tivists, their association with the larger world of modern art certified them as progressive.”42 By concluding that art and philosophy have a complementary relationship, however, Galison ends up confirming precisely the traditional border that both groups – philosophers and architects – thought they were tearing down in their joint projects to “reform fundamental aspects of daily life.”43 However, the common challenge of art and science, as it was discov­ ered in post-revolutionary Russia, should be understood as the basis for a factual, politically fostered and technologically supported convergence of sci­ ence and art – a convergence that was reflected not only linguistically in their various proclamations but already in practical terms with regard to the “areas” in which they developed.44 In order to resist the temptation to simply repeat popular artistic asser­ tions, and in order to touch on more than “mere identifying parallelisms”45 between the disciplines, the focus here will be on the practices of these art­ ists, that is, on experimental processes, instruments and findings and on the respective contexts that were able to create the conditions required for the emergence of these practices. Instead of analyzing works of art primarily in relation to the statements made by artists, these works of art gain more rel­ evance with regard to their modes of production. This follows Peter Geimer’s estimation of scientific illustrations and extends it to artistic works: “The status of a scientific illustration is determined . . . not first in its observation, but already in the experimental entanglements of its creation.”46 In addition to examining the intentions of artists and their work, the task here will be

8

Introduction

to take into consideration their development paths, their divergences and omissions – things that cannot be elicited from the works and rarely only from the artists. The products of artists and scientists are almost deliberately opaque; their images are “iconographies of the invisible, and both claim to be true.”47 Just like publications arising from experimental arrangements, works of art are also authorized products that stand at the end of a series of trials and decisions that can only be discovered in relation to them. Indeed, just like the modern scientist, the modern artist is “no theory-driven engi­ neer, . . . but rather a tinkerer.”48 In other words, the initial methodological hypothesis of this book is con­ cerned with the productivity of a comparison of art and science on the level of their actual practices. In the history of science, a “turning-away from theo­ ries, abstract discoveries, ideas or even paradigms towards a more practiceoriented approach to science”49 would trigger the so-called “practical turn.” Instead of historicizing the heroes of individual disciplines and their theories, emphasis is placed here on institutes and laboratories, apparatuses, instru­ ments and experiments.50 This shift toward “science in action”51 finds its most consistent expression in a research project that takes as its starting point the popularity of experimentation in the life sciences in the 19th century so as to historicize its individual components, that is, experiments, technologies, objects, spaces, actors and theories.52 It is significant here that it assumes the “experimentalization of life” not only with regard to the life sciences but also to modern art. With this in mind, we can examine Surrealist experiments with automatic writing using not only the above-mentioned aspects, but also August Strindberg’s excursus into photography, Berthold Brecht’s theater and Marcel Proust’s writing room.53 The goal of a history of science after the “practical turn” is to take seriously “the historical dimension of knowledge and its forms of representation, its fundamental categories and media, its practices and cultural, social and economic interweaving . . . in close proxim­ ity to the cultural sciences.”54 The border between science and art can thus be removed by means of a history of the cultural sciences.55 Against this back­ drop, it is possible to concretize the attempt being made here to examine the works of the Russian avant-garde according to their practices and to situate them in the context of their much more well-known theories, utopias and discourses. In this sense, works of art can be isolated in three steps: initially with regard to their material characteristics (the works), then their discursive references (the statements of those involved) and finally their practical imple­ mentation (the experiments). It is only in relation to the practices that the disciplinary boundaries cease to apply: indeed, they are “repeatedly eroded, displaced and drawn anew” by the practical actions themselves.56 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger described precisely this movement for modern knowledge pro­ duction on the basis of experimental systems. As the smallest “units of work and experimental environments with which scientists can deal and in which they operate,” they represent the areas in which “the objects of research”57 first take shape or much more those in which the researcher operates and

Introduction

9

thinks. They are open for “unforeseen and unpredictable events” that lead to “individual experimental systems split open or linked to hybrid systems.” The result is a traffic network of practices, techniques, ideas, things and events that do not lead to academic disciplines, but rather to “fields whose local clusters we can refer to as experimental cultures.”58 In 1917, the October Revolution provided the impetus for a fundamental reconfiguration of all disciplines that appeared relevant to the new regime. The result was a complex, interdisciplinary situation that more or less encouraged the transfer of practices and methods on an institutional level. For example, laboratories were set up at the newly founded art academies where the human body and human perception were analyzed systematically according to physiological and psychological criteria: the Institute for Artis­ tic Culture (INKhUK), the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (RAKhN) and the Higher Artistic Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS)59 were think tanks for the most progressive artists and scientists of that time. Their work focused on the search for the foundations of mass communication, for the laws of perception and ultimately for the possibilities to influence these two. There is a good reason why the opening speaker at the First All-Russian Initiative Conference on the Scientific Organization Labor and Production triumphed: “After political liberation, it will be possible to treat problems in a purely scientific way, without being inhibited by anything.”60 The ultimate result of these developments can be seen in the spreading of a new scientific application in Russia – psychotechnics. Having emerged around 1900 at different locations in Europe and then, after World War I (WWI), been established as a discipline in the context of the rationaliza­ tion debates, psychotechnics saw itself as a form of practical psychology that expanded its area of responsibility to include everything that opened itself up to it. And it was precisely in this sense that it opened itself up to avant-garde art. At this point, drawing on the aforementioned concept of experimental systems, it is possible to see the situation in Russia in the 1920s as an experi­ mental culture, that is, as a situation in which such different areas of social life as the economy, government, schools and thus all disciplines arranged themselves anew, more or less spontaneously. This situation was also accom­ panied by several unpredictable events, the outcome of which was shaped by nothing less than the great expectation of a new future. In the years prior to Stalin’s dictatorship, the priorities of the ruling powers appeared to be quite different from those of a supposedly all-powerful party: “The level of selfcontrol that the man of the future will be able to achieve – it is just as hard to imagine as the highs to which his technology will lead.”61 This was not at all meant as a utopian promise; on the contrary, it was based much more on a particular idea of the processes in art and science. Years later, in 1938, when this future had long since come and gone, Leon Trotsky reminisced on the structural conditions and the freedom of art and science: “A philosophi­ cal, sociological, natural scientific or artistic discovery still appears as the fruit of a valuable coincidence, in other words, as a more or less spontaneous

10

Introduction

manifestation of the necessity.” He goes on to argue in favor of the main­ tenance of those social conditions “under which this co-incidence [Zu-fall] continues to occur.”62 How is it possible that a society which explicitly sought to achieve the liberation of its oppressed citizens would end up engendering one of the most unpredictable justice systems of the 20th century? How could brutal indus­ trialization arise out of socialism? How could harsh discipline emerge out of self-control? And what part did the autonomy of art and science play in this process? According to Michel Foucault, every form of power exerted is closely linked with the spread of fear, especially that of the Soviet socialists. All socialists of the future thus have one single task, even before they turn to human rights declarations: “They must invent an exercise of power that doesn’t frighten people.”63 Was this the driving force behind all the experi­ ments and discoveries that Trotsky wanted to create through the autonomy of art and science? In the depictions contained in this book, the focus is on giving up the usual dichotomies in favor of a political and critical approach: instead of demonizing the disciplining and controls exerted by apparently false ruling powers or glorifying their futile yearning for freedom and equal­ ity, the idea here is to analyze the conditions and mechanisms that brought all of these contradictions together in the first place. Only in this way can we uncover the always current paradox that transformed freedom into con­ trol and artists into scientists after the October Revolution and which even exposed technocratic Marxism as “unpolitical politics.”64 Only in this way can we recognize the error, that is, that one can ever have a neutral and unpolitical position with regard to anything. Nevertheless, even with all pos­ sible political passion for the major goals of the revolutionaries, it no longer suffices merely to be able to comprehend the behavior of state apparatuses. This has already been examined as much as necessary. At this point, it is more important to understand “that power isn’t localized in the state apparatus.”65 On the contrary, in order to learn from Soviet history, we have to ask how power structures were propagated from top to bottom, how they were carried out by individuals who were not usually anchored in state apparatuses, that is, by artists and scientists. In this book, the focus lies thus on the “mechanisms of power that function outside, below and alongside the State apparatus, on a much more minute and everyday level.”66 It focuses on those banal, incidental, unnoticed and quiet political actions. In order to achieve this goal, this book seeks to shed light on the inter­ connectedness of artistic and scientific practices within post-revolutionary experimental culture using three examples that were active concurrently in the environment of the Russian avant-garde and which dealt in one way or another with experimental processes drawn from psychology and physiol­ ogy. This approach is in no way designed to suggest an equivalency between the avant-garde and psychotechnics; instead, it aims to highlight differences in the artists’ approach to the sciences of their time. In 1926, the architect and pedagogue Nicolai Ladovsky founded an art school in Moscow, the

Introduction

11

Psychotechnical Laboratory for Architecture, in order to train the visual per­ ception of his students. In contrast to other methods of that era, Ladovsky’s experiments with psychotechnical practices occurred not only in Moscow but also in Harvard and Berlin, and with avant-garde artists, such as Tatlin, Le Corbusier, Lissitzky, Kandinsky and Matyushin [Chapter 1]. A further site of interaction between art and science was Ivan Pavlov’s physiological labora­ tory in Leningrad, where the filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin shot his first film, Mechanics of the Brain, in 1925. This book will sketch out how Pudovkin – in confrontation with Pavlov’s laboratory routine – developed a film practice that, on the one hand, represented Pavlov’s reflex theory in terms of content and, on the other hand, imitated it cinematically [Chapter 2]. As a final case of applied psycho-physiology, the focus in the concluding chapter will be on Alexander Bogdanov’s Institute for Blood Transfusions, which he set up in Moscow in 1926. Bogdanov’s unique practice of circular blood transfusions emerged not only from the background of his comprehensive philosophical work: it also developed by drawing on and in response to the laboratory sci­ ences and thus on the interconnectedness of artistic and scientific practices [Chapter 3]. All of these examples are linked by something that will be worked out in the course of the book as being constitutive of psychotechnics, that is, the technical access to the human psyche or, rather, the different ways of connecting psyche and technology, that is, feeding back, networking and grafting. In each of the three cases presented here, the major figures were both artists and scientists: an architect brought processes from experimen­ tal psychology to the art academy; a filmmaker went to the laboratory of a physiologist to shoot his first film and a psychiatrist applied his experiences in philosophy and art to his work in the hospital. None of these figures is especially known for their proximity to the Russian avant-garde. This is not due to their being active merely in the shadow of the few famous avant­ gardists; instead, it is simply due to the shape of the historiography of the avant-garde, which has been content thus far to deal with the published works of its most famous representatives, that is, Malevich, Rodchenko or Eisenstein, instead of pursuing those winding paths through the Russian archives in an attempt to understand the contexts within which this artistic movement dynamically emerged. The latter approach is, however, much more appropriate to the subject matter, seeing as the Russian avant-garde is characterized precisely by the fact that it was not initiated or dominated by individual persons.67 The term “Russian avant-garde” was applied to art retroactively by Slav­ ists and historians prior to and after the October Revolution. It describes a movement of informal groups, each of which tried to distinguish themselves from the other, and most of which emerged out of exhibitions.68 Very much in keeping with its etymological origin as a “vanguard, group of pioneers,”69 a plethora of characteristics are attributed to the Russian avant-garde that have since become features of the entire scope of modern art in the 20th

12 Introduction century, that is, a radical turning-away from tradition and academicism, interdisciplinarity, media diversity, originality, abstraction, formal experi­ mentation, technology euphoria, the disappearance of the author, the deval­ uation of the original, etc.70 Participating in the Russian avant-garde were artists working in different fields, including sculptors, graphic artists, pho­ tographers and filmmakers. Most of the time, artists would bring together all of these fields in their own oeuvre. For example, Alexander Rodchenko began as a painter, then moved to sculpture and graphic art and ultimately discovered photography. El Lissitzky moved from typography to architec­ ture via exhibition design. The technological curiosity of these multitalented individuals also expressed itself in their individual works and brought forth formal innovations. Indeed, collages, series, copies and interactive room installations have been an integral part of modern art since then. A further characteristic of the Russian avant-garde was its applied nature, that is, the use of artistic skills for the production of everyday products. Whether in clothing, furniture, cutlery, books, posters or color designs of public spaces, geometric abstractions were used in all areas of decoration and propaganda. The emphasis was not merely on design, but also on a shift of conscious­ ness: “We came to cleanse the personality of academic embellishment, to burn the mold of the past out of the brain.”71 The utilization of art opened up artistic practices not only within the disciplines. Indeed, a large number of avant-gardists turned to the practices of engineers and scientists – con­ nections that have been examined only partially to this day, even though the published writings almost demand such an examination: “The Suprematists did in art what chemists did in medicine. They determined the effective part of the means.”72 The sciences played a greater role for the Russian avant­ garde than for all artistic movements that followed, because they contributed significantly to the political relevance of art against the backdrop of scientific Marxism. One thing is sure: regardless of whether all the formal attributions can be validated for the first time for the Russian avant-gardists, never before and never again was there an era that gave its artists such a close proximity to power as the post-revolutionary twenties in Russia. And never were artists and scientists closer to one another than during the decade marked by the popularity of Soviet psychotechnics. The interconnections between art and psychotechnics are manifold – not least because of the heterogeneity of these two large fields of study – and will be examined in this book by means of three main case studies. This approach will reveal very different points of contact between psycho-physiological research and the artistic avant-garde, which will then become increasingly abstract in the sequence of examples presented here. While the architect Ladovsky still referred explicitly to psychotechnics, Pudovkin put his medium – film – to work beyond psychotechnics, that is, in the laboratory of a physiologist, even though, in practical terms, he took up psychotechnical film theory in a tacit manner in his montage. For his part, Bogdanov ultimately

Introduction

13

developed a completely new and invasive form of psychotechnics, also with­ out referring to the term specifically and working separately from avant­ garde experiments, while still being entirely beholden to their logic. In other words, the work continues to open up the focus on the events: starting with a clear case of knowledge transfer between architecture and psychotechnics, something similar is sought between film and reflexology and between blood physiology and labor management. The media of artistic psychotechnics – space, film and blood – each illustrates a model for practical psychology. While space manipulates primarily the technical-organizational environment in the form of objective psychotechnics, film directly addresses the perception of its viewers in the form of subjective psychotechnics.73 Ultimately, blood undermines this model: in other words, by physiologically accessing the psy­ che, psychotechnics is paradoxically transformed into its opposite and, in the final analysis, simultaneously realized. In this process, the concept of that which psychotechnics technically addresses, that is, the psyche, appears ques­ tionable. The goal was to make the psyche accessible, first via movement, then via perception and finally via blood circulation: the psyche, however, remained invisible and untouchable. In none of the examples was the location of that which formed the focus of all experiments even thematized. Instead, the psyche was completely assumed in a self-explanatory way to be something that somehow physically materialized itself. Although Hugo Mün­ sterberg, the founder of psychotechnics, denied the existence of an immate­ rial psyche altogether, he was still secretly looking for it – also by means of a detour via the physis: “The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words: there is none.”74 Ultimately, the act of focusing on the practices of art and science with regard to art makes it possible to definitively modify the idea of a utopian and primarily theoretical avant-garde. It also allows us to correct and con­ solidate in a practical manner the downright excessive rhetoric taken up by avant-garde research with regard to the “laboratory of modernity” that has shaped the discourse until now.75 Psychotechnics first reveals the horizon of what it can be when it stretches out to the arts: what kind of culture mani­ fests itself in psychotechnics? What kind of relationship do man and machine enter into within psychotechnics? What kind of relationship exists between psyche and physis? And what was ultimately supposed to be optimized in the short circuit of the psyche and technology? What was its relationship to the Russian projections of the “New Man”? Psychotechnics as a Technique for Addressing the Psyche

“Liars!” would have been the only verdict issued by Hugo Münsterberg in 1907, had he been permitted to do so after psychologically examining the most spectacular serial murderer America had seen to date. Contrary to what one might expect, however, he would not have incriminated Harry Orchard,

14 Introduction who was accused of 18 murders. Instead, Münsterberg would have been able to confirm that Orchard was speaking the truth when he accused the rep­ resentatives of the Western Federation of Mineworkers of being the actual contractors of his political murders, thus implicating the top ranks of the labor union.76 Hugo Münsterberg, a psychologist at Harvard University in Boston, was asked by the court to examine Harry Orchard’s statement in a scientific manner. Once schooled in the fundamentals of experimental psychology at Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig, Münsterberg had in the meantime turned toward applied psychology, which he would go on to popularize as psychotechnics a couple of years later at Harvard.77 As a science “that utilizes psychology in order to fulfill human tasks,”78 it examined, among other things, “how a lawyer could act in order to bring to light the secret thoughts of the witness.”79 Münsterberg set off on the four-day train trip to Boise, Idaho, precisely for this purpose. He took with him “a trunk full of psychological apparatuses”80 – the most prominent among them an automa­ tograph for the detection of involuntary movements, a pneumograph for measuring breath and a sphygmograph that records the heartbeat.81 After roughly 100 assessments, including association tests, examinations of hearing, sight, memory and attention span, Münsterberg was convinced that Orchard was neither lying nor had he lost his nervousness as a result of a disease or autosuggestion. In fact, from a psychological perspective, Orchard’s statements were entirely sincere. Münsterberg believed so much in his findings and their legal relevance that he did not hesitate to pass them on to the press. He was very surprised when the court decided against his assessment and against Orchard and instead in favor of the very labor unionists he had accused. It was a political decision. He then found himself in the crossfire of the press: “Hugo Monsterwork of Harvard had invented a machine for detecting liars in the act.”82 Münsterberg was ultimately accused of corruption by unionist representatives and officially slandered as a psychological expert. What exactly had come in the way of his attempt “to connect science with art, research with practice,”83 the lawyer with the psychologist? As unusual as this case may appear, it can still be seen as paradigmatic for the newly emerging discipline of psychotechnics. It can also be seen as such with regard to the means, sequence and effect of Münsterberg’s journey out of the scientific laboratory into social reality. A  collection of flexible apparatuses – ones that were able to be transported and combined in differ­ ent ways – were used to analyze individual physiological and psychological characteristics of the object under investigation, such as breathing, pulse and perception. They operated outside of and independently of the controlled environment of the laboratory in which they were developed. In order to operate effectively outside of the lab, they had to be simple, handy and ruggedly constructed. Their immediate objective was to record consciously uncontrol­ lable processes and to assess them in relation to the activity of consciousness,

Introduction

15

whether it be to reveal conscious activities or to bring to light unconscious processes.84 According to Münsterberg, [P]ractical life wants to know which feelings and thoughts, which deci­ sions and emotions are to be expected under certain conditions . . . , no matter whether it’s the mechanism that produces it, the physi­ ological game of the brain cells or the work of an unconscious mental apparatus.85 In this sense, Münsterberg’s instruments were technical agents rendering comprehensible that which is unspeakable and unnoticed. The psychotechni­ cal technician was no longer merely interested in the causal connections of mental processes that experimental psychology had worked out, but rather solely in their processes and effects.86 Yet another goal of psychotechnics was to simultaneously acknowledge and foresee these feelings and thoughts and to find methods with regard to “how they can be influenced and controlled.”87 However, both the appara­ tuses and the psychologist that operated them took a mostly neutral stance in connection with the function of psychologically determined findings, as Münsterberg’s somewhat politically naïve verdict showed. He saw himself as a non-participatory pioneer who, “like an engineer knows how to build a bridge or dig a tunnel, that is, assuming that the bridge or tunnel is desired.”88 In Orchard’s case, this meant the following: it was not the statements of the accused that were examined by Münsterberg. In other words, Münsterberg was not interested in what Orchard said, but much more in the measurable artifacts that his speech brought forth, that is, how he breathed, trembled, moved his eyes, coughed and sweated. Rather than listening to the meaning and importance of that which was spoken, Münsterberg was looking for the material and physiological side effects of speaking, that is, for the relation­ ships that developed between speaking and behaving. Thus, he was less inter­ ested in the importance of his findings, that is, in whether they were desirable or not. He was solely interested in the individual circumstances in which they were able to emerge and the consequences they entailed from a psychologi­ cal perspective. Psychotechnics “determines, like any technical science, what is supposed to happen. . . . The question as to whether this goal is the right one – that is of no concern to technical science.”89 An approach as neutral as this already contains the potential for misuse in its very concept – a form of misuse that Münsterberg, too, could not escape. In doubtful cases, the opinion of psychologists was disregarded, and instead consideration made for the interests of those involved. Thus, according to Alexandre Métraux, Münsterberg found himself in the rough waters of the objective that had driven applied research since the 19th century, which was “to communicate hegemonic knowledge and simplify the attainment of goals by involving the work of experts.”90 And yet, Münsterberg had no intention of manifesting an indivisible hegemonic knowledge, let alone putting himself in its service.

16 Introduction Psychotechnics was a method developed to enable everyone who used it to plan, fulfill and control social processes on one’s own. Psychotechnics attempted to operate in “education and teaching, jurisprudence and punish­ ment, labor and shopping”91 in every “sphere of human culture”92 and using as diverse research objects as children, savages, the mentally ill, the wretched and animals.93 Despite the neutrality of his judgments, Münsterberg was nev­ ertheless highly aware of the targeted nature of his processes: so much so that he elevated this nature to a characteristic that stood in stark contrast to expository psychology. While the latter sought to “shed light on events in the past,”94 the aim of psychotechnics was to achieve “forward-looking, practi­ cal life tasks.”95 Psychotechnics determined that “if this or that goal is to be achieved, this or that psychological means must be used.”96 Its goal lay thus not in the present or the past but in the future. Münsterberg was neither the first person to grasp the concept of psycho­ technics, nor was he the first to implement its processes. Furthermore, the object of his application – the human psyche – was anything but new to psychology. In 1903, William Stern had already defined his applied psychol­ ogy as “psychotechnics”; however, this terminological precursor can hardly be understood methodologically as being the same thing.97 While Münster­ berg obviously borrowed Stern’s expression, his concept of psychotechnics went beyond Stern’s own conceptions.98 Stern defined psychotechnics as “in general, every form of ‘psychological influence,’ ” whereas Münsterberg con­ centrated on a technical approach, that is, one that is “geared toward the practical fulfillment of tasks.”99 And where Stern denied psychologists the ability to take up a “neutral perspective”100 with regard to the object of their application, Münsterberg localized the productive moment of his psycho­ technics in that very spot. The object of psychotechnics, that is, the human psyche had in the course of the 19th century – long before there was any sub­ ject known as psychology – created a place in the sciences by means of psy­ chiatry and its interest in anomalous mental phenomenon: “By focusing on the improvement of the individual and the prevention of future crimes . . . the target has increasingly become the mental constitution of the delinquent.”101 In other words, the psyche stood at the end of a history of disciplining, which played normal and abnormal conditions off against each other, and at the beginning of a history of psychology, which complicated this binary model “by means of problematizing the functioning of normal processes of con­ sciousness.”102 In the second half of the 19th century, a psychiatrist named Emil Kraepelin began to unite the two realms of psychiatry and experimen­ tal psychology. As “one of the first attempts to apply psychological science to another, practical area,” Kraepelin’s work can be seen as a precursor to psychotechnics, even though he relied more on the psychophysics of Gustav Fechner than on Wilhelm Wundt’s practices of physiological psychology.103 Around 1900, spearheaded by Stern, psychology eventually began to examine not only academic “ ‘basic research’ into general human mental phenomenon . . . but also the scattering of mental systems in populations.”104

Introduction

17

This marked a decisive step toward a form of psychology that took part in practical life and was geared toward “instances of population-political regu­ lation (such as the state, entrepreneurs, professional and labor organizations) as well as to individuals who wanted to optimize their life planning (profes­ sional advice, information of giftedness, etc.).”105 Münsterberg borrowed the technical procedures from the Leipzig experimental psychology laboratory of his mentor, Wilhelm Wundt. In that laboratory, re-combined instruments were already being used to register specific sensory ideas and call into ques­ tion the relationships between perceptions and the ideas they evoked.106 In doing so, Wundt had also produced the connection between mental processes and their physiological effects. And yet, both Wundt’s apparatuses and those proudly presented by Münsterberg in his first own photography laboratory in Freiburg remained within the laboratory space in which they were tested. On the other hand, the Freiburg photography leaves no doubt that the move out of the laboratory would not be long in coming: the lab techni­ cians, who appear like orchestra members gathered around Münsterberg, hold what appear to be light-footed instruments in their hands and give the impression of preparing for their first tour. In general, the psychotechnics of Münsterberg’s contemporaries was understood as being an applied psychology that dealt with the needs of the inhabitants of modern industrialized societies – first and foremost the workers – and that came, in particular, in the form of aptitude tests. How­ ever, since the end of the 19th century, a number of activities that made use of psychological knowledge in medicine, psychiatry, characterology and pedagogy were being referred to as applied psychology.107 Münsterberg, however, distanced himself from these applications. He did not want to limit himself to the psychological treatment of the patients, to improvements in

Figure 1.1 Münsterberg’s psychological lab in Freiburg, with Münsterberg himself sitting at the table in the center of the image (Margaret Münsterberg 1922, 27)

18

Introduction

childrearing or to determining different conditions of normality. He aimed much more at a “practical application of psychology in the service of cul­ tural tasks,”108 by which he meant “all forms of thinking, wanting and feeling that have contributed to the development of culture.”109 Teachers, lawyers, preachers, salesmen, politicians, factory owners, natural scientists and artists – Münsterberg wanted all of them to be able to benefit from psy­ chological knowledge made available by psychotechnics “in order to decide what we should do.”110 For the moment, however, this offering of psychotechnical uses remained limited to just that, and Münsterberg performed his experiments mostly in his Harvard laboratory. With the advent of WWI, psychotechnics lost the broad horizon it had projected for itself. After its successful use in the selection of soldiers and pilots, it absolutely blossomed and branched off institutionally into two main areas: industrial psychology (i.e., operational psychology, industrial psychotechnics or occupational psychology) and military psychology.111 And yet, the further areas in which it was used, which Münsterberg also defined as belonging to the cultural sphere, that is, pedagogy, forensics, aesthetics and advertising, were edged out.112 Since that moment, psychotechnics has stood irrevocably – and in spite its often bizarre and seemingly reckless experiments – in the shadow of labor management and disciplining: “The sciences pressed forward every­ where from merely measuring the abilities and functions of human beings to actually controlling and steering them in a targeted manner.”113 International conferences for psychotechnics, industrial psychology or labor management brought together scientists from all over the world.114 At universities in Berlin, Harvard and Moscow, psychotechnical work was carried out at psychological institutes, laboratories and clinics, while medi­ cal institutions set up spaces for practical psychology.115 Open institutes for labor management, operations and factories became home to laboratories for operational psychology, industrial psychology and psychotechnics. Psy­ chotechnical institutes were founded in England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Japan.116 A plethora of journals focusing on “practical psychology,” “industrial psychotechnics,” “business psychology,” “psycho­ technical magazines” and “career guidance” provided a forum for interna­ tional psychotechnicians to exchange experiences. Policemen, pilots, typists, tram drivers, telephone operators, truck drivers and radio operators – in effect, all individuals who worked at machines – were tested and trained using eye exams, time and movement measurements, fatigue and attention studies. Can a research and teaching method that attempted to encapsulate all disciplines and all spheres of cultural production gain legitimacy solely from out of the context of labor management? Can an international phenomenon such as psychotechnics – one that consisted of so many regional individual phenom­ ena – even be reduced to a common denominator, especially if its very defi­ nition entailed that it would take part in a practical way in each culture in which it was active? And what kind of cultures were these anyway, if peda­ gogical, medical, economic, legal, social and artistic psychotechnics117 – that

Introduction

19

is, if its “work in factories and hospitals, in schools and court”118 – was based primarily on the treatment of workers at machines? Psychotechnics received the cultural usage that Münsterberg had foreseen for it not in America, but rather in the Soviet Union, the country in which the first free workers’ state started to emerge after the Cultural Revolution. In other words, it found usage in the country where, one decade later, every worker would come under suspicion as an alleged cheater, even though the goal immediately after the revolution was to use all means possible to prevent precisely this from happening. Here, it wasn’t merely psychiatrists, psycholo­ gists, physiologists, pedagogues and industrialists who devoted themselves to this new scientific application that “linked itself with art” and offered controlled access to machine-based work processes. Soviet psychotechnics reached deeply into the areas commonly associated with the Russian avant­ garde, that is, with the most radical forms of modern art. In 1921, at the largest avant-garde art school in Moscow, the Higher Artistic Technical Workshops,119 Alexander Rodchenko referred to the discipline of “Graphic Construction,” of which he was the head, using a slogan that put in a nut­ shell the social striving for a revolutionary break with all that had come before it – a break that revealed itself in psychotechnics: “The constructive life is the art of the future.”120 In the meantime, in a neighboring discipline at the same art school, there emerged a psychotechnical laboratory for architecture – an area of psychotechnical application that has been entirely neglected by historians of Russian architecture and psychotechnics until now. Notes 1 Moscow’s Biblioteka Imeni Lenina is a Moscow metro station located directly next to the Russian State Library, the Kremlin and the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture. 2 See Baumgarten 1924, 47 et seq., and Tatur 1979, 40 et seq. 3 In the case of job titles such as “psycho-physiologist,” the scientists own selfdesignations will be used here. In this era, it was often the case that different professional designations were created to describe comparable occupations and vice versa. These contradictions will be scrutinized by examining actual research practices. 4 Bogdanov 1913b and 1917. 5 Acronym for proletarian culture. 6 Bogdanov according to Baumgarten 1924, 50. 7 Quote taken from Baumgarten’s summary of Bekhterev’s presentation, 1924, 51. 8 Bekhterev according to Baumgarten 1924, 51. 9 Tret’yakov 1923, 202. 10 When the terms twenties and thirties are used here, the reference is always to the 20th century. 11 Eikhenbaum 1969, 382. 12 Shklovsky 1917. 13 For an understanding of metaphors that not only express ideas but also bring forth these ideas, images and practices in the first place, see Otis 2001, 48. 14 Bredekamp 2003, 10.

20 Introduction 15 Weibel 1997, 167. 16 See for instance, Dalrymple Henderson 1975/76 and 1983, Douglas 1980 and 1984, and Wünsche 1997. 17 Baxandall 1987, Alpers 1989, Crary 1996 [1990], Elkins 1997, Krauss 1998 [1993], Kemp, Wolfgang 1979. Since the 1970s, a number of philosophers and art historians have attempted to describe art as science: see Feyerabend 1984, Davis 1975, Rotzler 1974, Rank, Sachs etc. (eds.) 1968, Baumgart, Birkle etc. (eds.) 1993. A symposium in Berlin took up this approach as well: see Kunst als Wissenschaft – Wissenschaft als Kunst (Art as Science – Science as Art), 2001. 18 Wagner 2002, Pietsch 2002. 19 Kubler 1962, Belting 1995, Boehm 1994. Discipline-related expansions such as this are situated in the context of the “pictorial turn,” which insists on the domi­ nance of images and their production and impact processes both in art and in the sciences: see Mitchell 1994 and 1995. 20 The project is known as Das Technische Bild (The Technical Image) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin under the leadership of Horst Bredekamp. On the relationship between images and techniques, see Geimer 2003, Hoffmann 2002, Asendorf 1997. An overview of the most recent research into the scientific history of visual culture can be found in Dommann 2004. 21 Snow 1993. 22 Peter Geimer refers to this transition area more critically as a “general gray zone,” Geimer 2003, 28. 23 Hagemeister 1989, Gassner 1984, Stokes 1995, Sargeant 2000. 24 The structural comparison of the ideas in philosophy, avant-garde art and poli­ tics was presented by Boris Groys in a radical manner, see Groys 1996. For an overview of the highly networked avant-garde artists, see Williams 1977. For more on the Proletkult, see Mally 1990. For more on the Narkompros, see Fitzpatrick 1970. For more on Constructivism, see Lodder 1983. 25 One exception to this tendency can be found in the publications and exhibitions of Hubertus Gassner, who introduced the Russian avant-garde to a broader audience in Germany in the late 1970s, see Kunst in die Produktion 1977; Gassner, Gillen, Eckhardt (ed.) 1979. 26 Murasov and Witte (eds.) 2003. Zielinski 2002 to Gastev 262–291. Lazzarato 2002 to Vertov 112–127. On the history of Soviet technology, see Bailes 1978. On early cinema and its technology in Russia, see Tsivian 1994. 27 Of these institutions, especially the works at the Vavilov Institute for the His­ tory of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and the European Universities in St. Petersburg and Moscow should be emphasized. On the history of science in Russia, see Graham 1987, Joravsky 1989, Kozulin 1984, Werrett 2000. 28 Here, the arts are questioned in terms of the history of ideas with regard to their influences from biology, physics and cosmology: Wünsche 1997, Douglas 1980 and 1984, Henderson 1975/76, Davis 1975. 29 While there are indeed inspiring articles, such as Hubertus Gassner’s “Von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft und zurück” and Linda Dalrymple-Henderson’s “ ‘The Fourth Dimension’ in Russia from Ouspensky to Malevich,” these discuss the scientific character of the Russian avant-garde solely based on the artists’ proc­ lamations and do not include the sciences of the day in their discourse, see Gassner 1977 and Dalrymple Henderson 1975/76. What the artists understood to be “science” and why their art was seen as being scientific in nature remain unclear here.

Introduction

21

30 This does not apply to the humanities in which Russian semiotics and culturol­ ogy emerged in connection with Formalism. Indeed, semiotics and culturology also related textual structures to nonverbal phenomena in a manner similar to Structuralism. 31 Tillberg 2003. Art and science of the early Soviet era are examined at the edge of large overviews, for example, in: Rüting 2002 to Gastev and Gor’kij 195–213; Bochow 1997 on the Taylorsystem and on Meyerhold 63–80; Holl 2002 on avant-garde cinema and psychophysiology; Herrmann 1996 on Gastev, Taylor and Theatre 143–193. 32 Sirotkina 2002. 33 According to Foucault 1998 [1972], 38. 34 Derrida 2003, quotation of the German title. 35 Kittler 1999, 9. 36 Foucault 1998 [1972], 32. 37 Kittler 1990 [1985], quotation of the title. In his later years, Foucault already portrayed the path of these media sciences by means of his “discursive practices.” 38 Kittler 1999 [1986], quotation of the title. 39 Siegert 2003, quotation of the German subtitle (author’s emphasis). 40 Heidegger 1959, 179. 41 Ibid. 42 Galison 1990, 748. 43 Ibid., 732. 44 Such proclamations have emerged repeatedly since Shklovsky’s concept of “art as technique,” see Shklovsky 1917. For example, in 1997, the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM) thematized the converging methods of art and science, and in 2004 their common cultural techniques: “The \\international\media\art\ price would like to offer evidence that art and science .  .  . , in spite of differ­ ent methods, are converging cultural techniques with a common alphanumeric code.” See Weibel 2004. 45 Galison 1990, 710. 46 Geimer 2003, 37. 47 Bredekamp 2003, 15. 48 Rheinberger 2003a, 38. 49 Hagner 2001, 21. 50 See Latour 1999, Pickering 1992, Rheinberger and Hagner 1993, Jones and Galison 1998. 51 Latour 1999 [1987]. 52 Project “The Experimentalization of Life. Configurations Between Science, Art and Technology” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (MPIWG) under the guidance of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, see http://vlp. mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/exp/index_e.html. Further explorations of the arts by science historians are Gockel and Hagner 2004, Galison and Jones 1998, Dierig 2001, and Obrist and Vanderlinden 2001. 53 Lectures at the first conference of the “Experimental Cultures” project, Decem­ ber  2001 at MPIWG Berlin, see the preprint of the MPIWG No. 213 and Schmidgen, Geimer, Dierig 2004. 54 Hagner 2001, 30. 55 Ibid. 56 Rheinberger 2003a, 34. 57 Ibid., 33. 58 Rheinberger 2003a, 34.

22 Introduction 59 INKhUK: Institute for Artistic Culture 1920–1923/24; RAKhN: Russian Acad­ emy of Artistic Sciences (starting in 1925 as GAKhN, State Academy of Artistic Sciences), Moscow 1921–1930; VKhUTEMAS: Higher Artistic Technical Work­ shops, founded in 1920 (starting in 1928 as VKhUTEIN: Higher Artistic Techni­ cal Institute). 60 A. Gwosdjev acc. to Baumgarten 1924, 49.

61 Trotsky 1972 [1924], 212.

62 Breton and Trotski 1938, 435 (emphasis in the original). The manifesto was

politically so delicate and critical of Stalin that Trotsky asked Diego Rivera to sign it in his stead. 63 Foucault 1980, 59–60. 64 Galison and Thompson 1999, 10. 65 Foucault 1980, 59–60. Koenen 2000 [1998] provides the most thoughtful description of early communism including the role of the state apparatus. 66 Foucault 1980, 59–60. 67 The work of Jevgenij Kovtun provides good insights into these connections and makes available a large body of material, for example, Kowtun 1996. 68 Frederick Starr in Zander Rudenstine 1982, 15. For more on the concept in arts and politics, see Egbert 1967, 330–336; in the realm of literature, see Hardt 1989. An amalgamation of philosophical and artistic avant-garde ideas was developed by Bürger in 1964. The most complex account of the European avant­ garde can be found in Barck 2000, 544–549. 69 Wahrig 1985, 88, and Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen 1997 [1995], 84. 70 Rosalind Krauss examines all of these characteristics of modern art in her critical essays, see Krauss 2000 [1985]. 71 Malevich quoted in Kowtun 1996, 16. 72 Shklovsky quoted in Kowtun 1996, 15. 73 This distinction follows the historical concepts of psychotechnics, see subjective and objective psychotechnics according to Fritz Giese (1928) and, in Russia, O. Ermanskii (1928). 74 Münsterberg 1909, 125. 75 The most incisive publications on the “Experimental Avant-Garde” are: Gray 1962: The Great Experiment; Stites 1989: Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution; Gassner, Kopanski, Stengel 1992: Die Konstruktion der Utopie (The Construc­ tion of Utopia); Bowlt and Matich 1996: Laboratory of Dreams; Wolter and Schwenk 1992: Die Grosse Utopie (The Big Utopia); Misler 1997: Experiment – A Journal of Russian Culture; Paperno and Grossman 1994: Creating Life. The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism; Schlögel 2002: Petersburg. Das Laboratorium der Moderne (The Laboratory of the Mod­ ern); Groys and Hollein 2003: Traumfabrik Kommunismus (Communism as a Dream Factory). 76 The case of Harry Orchard is described in the biography of Münsterberg’s daughter, see Münsterberg, Margaret, 1922, 141 f. 77 In 1914, Münsterberg published the programmatic text Grundzüge der Psycho­ technik (tr. Basic psychotechnics), see Münsterberg 1928 [1914]; in 1912, he had already presented an area of application for psychotechnics, that is, business psychology, see Münsterberg 1916 [1912]. 78 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 17. 79 Ibid., 15. 80 Münsterberg 1922, 144.

Introduction

23

81 Shortly thereafter, these apparatuses were presented to the public alongside illustrations in the New York Herald, see Münsterberg 1922, 148. Münsterberg reported of some further instruments, see ibid., 1908. 82 Münsterberg, Margaret, 1922, 149.

83 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 23.

84 Münsterberg equated unconscious psychological and physiological processes,

see ibid., 1928 [1914], 45. 85 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 4. 86 For more on experimental psychology as a role model and predecessor of psy­ chotechnics, see Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 10–18. 87 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 4. 88 Ibid., 19. 89 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 18. 90 Métraux 1985, 223. 91 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 21. 92 Ibid., 10. 93 Ibid., 16. 94 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 16. 95 Ibid., 17. Münsterberg lists social psychology, folk psychology and cultural psychology as explanatory psychologies. For more on the classification of theoretical, applied, causal and intentional psychology, see Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 1–41. 96 Münsterberg 1916 [1912], 19. 97 Schrage 2000, 75. The following explanations owe much to the few overviews of the emergence of psychotechnics: Schrage 2000, Chapter 1, Métraux 1985, Schraube 1998 and Jäger 1985, the latter, especially pp. 96–103. 98 Giese 1927, 2. 99 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 6. 100 Schrage 2000, 75. 101 Ibid., 26. 102 Ibid., 27. Emphasis in the original. 103 Bakel 1994, 83; on Kraepelin’s application of psycho-physical theory, compare ibid., 84 and 92–99; Kraepelin also played an important role in Russia for the development of psychiatry, see Sirotkina 2002, 5–6. 104 Schrage 2000, 28. 105 Ibid. 106 Hoffmann 1999, 57. 107 See Jäger 1985. 108 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 1. 109 Ibid., 2. 110 Ebd., VI and 6–7. 111 Métraux 1985, 225–226. Métraux portrays the institutional developments of psychotechnics prior to and after 1933 in Germany. For more on the pre-history of psychotechnics in the fields of labor management and Taylorism, see Rabin­ bach 2001, 313–334. For more on psychotechnics in Germany during the Nazi era, see Geuter 1984. 112 Métraux 1985, 225. 113 Schwarz 1999, 206. 114 Among the meetings of psychotechnicians were the following: the First All-Russian Conference on the Psychophysiology of Labor and Professional Choice, Moscow 1927; Organization of Labor and Production, the Segona Conferé­ ncia Internacional de Psicotécnica Aplicada a l’Orientació Professional i a l’Organització Cientifica del Treball, Barcelona 1922; the Fifth International

24 Introduction

115 116 117 118 119 120

Psychotechnical Conference, Utrecht 1928; the All-German Conference for the Practical Psychotechnics of Transporters, Berlin 1928; the Fourth International Conference on Psychotechnics, Paris 1927; and many more. For more on the institutional permeation of applied psychology, see Métraux 1985, 227–229. Rabinbach 2001, 331. Münsterberg 1928 [1914], VII. Ibid., VI. The Artistic Technical Workshops were abbreviated and referred to as VKhUTEMAS. In this book, for reasons of easy readability, the abbreviation “work­ shops” will be used. Rodchenko 1921, 372.

1

Feed(ing) Back Nicolai Ladovsky’s Psychotechnical Laboratory for Architecture, Moscow 1921–1927

Architectural Practices: Models, Not Paper, and Space, Not Stone In 1928, Le Corbusier was in Moscow working on the Centrosoyuz1 government building, his only project in the Soviet Union. At one point during his stay, he paid a visit to the VKhUTEMAS Higher Artistic Techni­ cal Workshops, which were located in the direct vicinity of his construc­ tion site. There, the Swiss-French architect encountered a highly ambitious colleague named Nicolai Ladovsky whose Psychotechnical Laboratory for Architecture he was invited to explore. Le Corbusier was so impressed by this laboratory that he submitted himself to one of its experiments without hesitation. Unexpectedly, however, the experiment produced less than edify­ ing results for both architects. Using an apparatus constructed by Ladovsky himself, called a prostrometr (a device designed to measure spatial faculties), Le Corbusier had his spatial faculty tested and was forced to acknowledge that he did not fulfill the prerequisites required of all future architects study­ ing at the VKhUTEMAS Workshops, that is, he did not possess the faculty of spatial vision. The test showed that each of his eyes perceived the same spatial structures too differently, which basically meant that he could not see stereoscopically. Ironically, this also meant that the psychotechnical perception tests Ladovsky had been using to choose the most talented design and architecture students would have automatically disqualified one of the most prominent architects of that era.2 This anecdote about the prostrometr reveals both its popularity and its utter failure. Amazingly, the experiment is the only one we know about from Ladovsky’s laboratory. Indeed, instead of experimental findings, it was pre­ cisely spatial perception apparatuses that served Ladovsky’s pupils in their quest to propagate psychotechnical architecture among the general public. It was an architecture that adhered to the Soviet state’s “principle of planning and monitoring” and had the not-exactly-modest goal of “organizing the psychology of the masses.”3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185-2

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Figure 1.2 Prostrometr (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5)

Rationalism and Construction

After the October Revolution, the first and most important task of the new ruling powers was indeed a more modest objective than the organization of the masses, namely the restructuring of the institutions that formed the basis of social life. As early as 1918, as part of the reorganization of all educational facilities, efforts were made to restructure the VKhUTEMAS Workshops. A number of avant-garde artists were already active at the newly founded People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment and Education – referred to as NARKOMPROS4 – including the Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky and the Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. Their task was to adjust the education of

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the next generation of artists to fit the new responsibilities of socialist art. This was reflected institutionally primarily in the foundation of the largest of the Soviet art schools in Moscow, launched by Lenin himself by decree in 1920: the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, or VKhUTEMAS,5 were designed as a facility for practical education, which meant also for the practical application of the arts.6 To achieve this, VKhUTEMAS brought almost 100 members together in different faculties and laboratories focusing on architecture, graphics, photography, theater, sculpture, textile processing and visual arts. Students not only had a large selection of teachers and learn­ ing methods from which to choose, but they were also allowed to make their selections based entirely on their own preferences.7 This network of different artistic disciplines – combined with a high level of methodical openness – was already in and of itself enough to stimulate the formulation of new artistic practices. However, the popularity of the inter­ disciplinary approaches practiced in Russia in the 1920s was even more farreaching than that. Not only did different artistic disciplines cooperate with one another, the arts also interacted with the sciences and, more specifically, with the life sciences of the day: that is, with psychology, physiology, psycho­ physics and, in particular, psychotechnics. Margareta Tillberg draws parallels between these two aspects of postrevolutionary art, that is, an emphasis on practical application and a rap­ prochement with the sciences, and tendencies observed in Soviet science: “They all [the art institutions, M. V.] embodied the ‘scientification’ which permeated the whole agenda of the early Soviet state, as well as the urge to increase the practicality of science, both important Bolshevik features.”8 But where did Bolshevik science get its agenda? Indeed, just as all other areas of Soviet society, the scientification of art cannot be accounted for solely by means of its ideological patronage. In fact, the history of the sciences proves that those so-called “Bolshevik features” were already present in Russia long before the Soviet era. For example, interdisciplinarity was a characteristic of Russian psychology from the very beginning of its existence. Significantly inspired by the experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt and thus always oriented toward experimental practice, the “diversity of the institutional anchoring of the discipline” had already culminated in “an interweaving of psychology with other disciplines” at the end of the 19th century.9 As Alexandre Métraux points out, even the Russian term used to designate the discipline as the “psychological sciences” reveals its heterogeneity.10 The incursion of psychological practices into the realm of the fine arts is therefore not surprising in light of the general openness of the discipline of psychology in Russia. And, yet, the question remains: how did it come to be that the fine arts – of all things – took on the role of a cooperation partner? A look at the reports issued by the institutions that were organized by the People’s Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment (NARKOM­ PROS) shows that out of 55 facilities, 24 were devoted explicitly to phys­ iology or psychology alone.11 If we add other responsibilities held by the

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NARKOMPROS Education Commissariat, such as homes for children, working groups and congresses, the result is a further 39 enterprises that make use of psychological and physiological methods in connection with the “social education” of the people.12 By 1931, at the facilities organized by the Commissariat for Health, Labor and Social Affairs, a total of 79 projects were created that had, in some form or another, set themselves the goal of researching and improving the physiological and psychological constitution of the socialist worker.13 This rather high number already reveals a secret, that is, the development of the life sciences into a large-scale political pro­ gram.14 The high number also makes the spread of the jargon and practices of the life sciences to disciplines like art plausible in the first place. For example, the Education Commissariat undertook the “development of a general plan for national enlightenment and the working out of all questions relating to enlightenment and culture,”15 and it achieved this in six sections, each of which referred to its scientific nature already in its name, and each of which examined technical, political and artistic problems.16 With this in mind, it is hard to imagine that the art schools and museums that were also restruc­ tured by the Commissariat – including the VKhUTEMAS Workshops and the Academy for Artistic Sciences RAKhN – would have been able to resist being impressed by the physiological and psychological activities that surrounded them. Indeed, it is much more likely that they drew significantly on them.17 Much like Peter Galison’s conclusions on the relationship of the Bauhaus to the Vienna Circle, it can be said here, too, that a common source of funds elu­ cidated the connections between art and science in a very concrete manner: “The connecting links between art and philosophy were real, not metaphori­ cal, as artists and philosophers were bound by shared political, scientific, and programmatic concerns.”18 The architecture for the building of the new Soviet world in Russia is generally associated with Russian Constructivism. Vladimir Tatlin, a painter, and El Lissitzky, an architect, are the most famous and keenest representa­ tives of this type of architecture – one that connected the modernity of mate­ rials with the radical nature of form-design. Tatlin’s “Monument to the Third International” and Lissitzky’s “Prouns” were indeed never implemented out­ side the museum: however, as models, they achieved the status of symbols of the new art – an “art of the machine, with its construction and logic, its rhythm, its components, its material and its metaphysical spirit.”19 And yet, the central elements of Constructivism in the 1920s, that is, the align­ ment with the functioning of the machine, the concentration on building materials, the orchestration of formal elements and the cohesive spiritual moment – often described as a “harmony” or “utopia”20 – did not clearly lead to a mechanistic form of engineering. Instead, attributions such as these originated primarily in a report about radical art in the Soviet Union pub­ lished on behalf of an international office of the People’s Commissariat that was designed to depict – primarily to Western viewers – the different artistic movements as being united. This led to a definition of Constructivism as

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“machine art” (Maschinenkunst) before it was even developed in all of its facets.21 The result was a version of Tatlin’s monument designed to spiral up into the sky as a 400-meter communist answer to the Eifel Tower in Paris at the heart of historical Petrograd. Ultimately, however, the monument was not made out of solid, smooth reinforced concrete but out of breakable natu­ ral wood and stood only 5 meters high.22 Lissitzky’s “Prouns” (projects to confirm a new art) were painted concepts for space experiments that did not exactly correspond to the world view of engineers. On the contrary, they were designed to portray objects that followed their own set of laws: “This is not the path of the engineer, who moves by mathematical tables, algebraic computations, and blueprints. .  .  . Not a single written mathematical fact has survived from Egypt. But Egypt created a vast OBJECT-ful culture.”23 Lissitzky could have used these words just as easily to describe the work of Nicolai Ladovsky and his students and colleagues, whose psychotechnical laboratory at the VKhUTEMAS Workshops left behind a large number of spatial objects – models, apparatuses and buildings – instead of laboratory reports and experimental facts. It appears that the gathering of post-revolutionary avant-garde artists in Russia under the label of Constructivism was no easy feat, not least with regard to their products and especially considering how contradictory and dissimilar their approaches to creating “a new universal artistic culture” were.24 Any attempt to define what characterized Constructivism – and to what extent Constructivism influenced the associated avant-garde movement – becomes even more difficult when one takes into account the degree to which individual representatives of the different movements were closely linked to one another. For example, both Tatlin and Lissitzky taught at the Workshops and worked together with Alexander Rodchenko in the wood and metalworking faculty side-by-side with Nicolai Ladovsky, whose architecture has gone down in the history of the avant-garde not as representing Constructivism, but rather as an example of the competing movement of Rationalism.25 For his part, Konstantin Melnikov made the situation even more complicated; he was one of the most in-demand architects of the 1920s, and also a colleague of Ladovsky, and he belonged to neither of the two moments. On the contrary, he remembers the juxtaposition of Constructivism and Rationalism as being a phony debate: [T]he devotees of architectural discussion in Ladovsky’s ASNOVA and Ginzburg’s OSA stood about posing, without building anything. The former called themselves ‘new’ architects, the latter, called themselves ‘contemporary.’ I understood their torrent of words less than anyone else among us.26 The beginnings of Rationalism – together with Constructivism – lie in a small commission called Zhivskul’ptarkh, which is an abbreviation for paint­ ing, sculpture and architecture and which was founded in 1919 to bring

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Figure 1.3 Experimental projects of the Zhivskul’ptarkh Commission, 1919 (KhanMagomedov 1984, image section, interior, 1)

about a synthesis of the spatial arts.27 Ladovsky and Rodchenko were among the members of this group of architects, painters and sculptors charged with seeking out solutions for post-revolutionary spatial needs, that is, spaces for mass events, such as the “House of the Commune,” the “House of the Sovi­ ets,” the “Temple for the Unification of the People,” for film factories, sports stadiums and large-scale housing estates. Not only did the architectural designs that emerged from this commission remain – like Tatlin’s tower – entirely unrealized, they also used an almost identical formal language, that is, spirals; circles, cylinders and cuboids; repeating, upward-reaching forms that twisted in on themselves; interlaced, curved plates; oblique pyramids and segmented walls. The approach of this commission – that is, to combine the opportunities of all spatial arts with one another – was continued both institutionally in the structures of VKhUTEMAS and formally in Ladovsky’s first models at the beginning of the 1920s. Here, stairs and railings clamber up and down columns, much like an apple peel peeled in one go. Surfaces bend like concave lenses, floating ramps and flights of stairs tapering upward appear at once liberated from the force of gravity and impelled unstoppably toward the sky. Nicolai Punin, an art

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Figure 1.4 Top: models created by the students working in the discipline of “Space”

at VKhUTEMAS, mid-1920s (Khan-Magomedov 1983, 138, 144, 146)

Bottom: W. Balikhin, library, pre-diploma project at VKhUTEMAS, headed by N.

Ladovsky, 1921 (Khan-Magomedov 1983, 238 and 507)

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historian at the People’s Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment, brought the impetus of these geometric form-structures to a point that was anything but constructive: “The monument should be a place of the most intense movement; least of all one should stand still or sit down in it, you must be mechanically taken up, down, carried away against your will.”28

Figure 1.5 “Izvestija ASNOVA – Assotsiatsii novykh arkhitektorov” (“News of the Association of New Architects” journal (RGALI, f. 2361, op. 1, ed. khr. 59)

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Lissitzky’s proximity to Ladovsky was far greater than formal similari­ ties are able to show. In 1925, when he came to Moscow, Lissitzky wrote to his partner Sophie Küppers: “Here in Moscow, I  haven’t seen anyone, I  haven’t told anyone of my arrival. Today, I’m expecting Ladovsky.”29 Together, they edited the magazine “Izvestiya ASNOVA,” which was designed to act as a mouthpiece for Ladovsky’s ASNOVA group of architects. In 1926, he published his significant essay on psychotechnics in architecture in that magazine.30 Also in 1926, Lissitzky’s “Prouns” – which had been designed, painted and drawn mostly on flat surfaces until then – were realized at the “First Demonstration Room at the International Art Exhibition Dresden,” an exhibition with flexible walls, colors and images that he would go on to develop further into the “Cabinet of Abstracts” in 1928 in Hannover. The order of the objects enabled visitors to become actively involved in the design of the exhibition, that is, to hide and move images, to exchange colors, and to set off visual effects on the walls by means of their own movement: “The effect of the walls changes with every movement of the visitors in the room. . . . Thus an optical dynamic results from human intervention. This game makes the observer active.” Thus, Lissitzky’s Prouns stood in direct relation to those experiments that had already challenged Le Corbusier’s perception. Just as in that case, here, too, the recipient is “physically forced to deal with the exhibited objects.”31 The ASNOVA architects also encouraged their recipients to move. In their magazine, Lissitzky und Ladovsky declared that the relationship between man and machine in both architecture and text was a visual one as well: “Man is the measure of all tailors,” but not “the measure of all things.” That might seem indecipherable, but it resolves itself at the bottom right of the page. A sketchbook with measurements at the edges shows a man “in the meas­ urement of the tailor.” In other words, what is at stake here is not the meas­ urement of the world by man, but vice versa, that is, the measurable and measured man. An image series develops diagonally across the entire page, from top right to left bottom, and moves from hero sculptures to electrical towers and zeppelins all the way to the newest architecture rising up to the sky. The idea is that recent technical achievements should be compared “not to bones and not to meat.” A photograph taken in the style of Rodchenko, that is, an extreme view from below, is found at the end of this series and ultimately subtitled with a call to movement: “Learn to see what’s in front of your eyes. Instructions: Throw your head back, pick up the paper and look from below to up high, then you will see.”32 This simple eye test shows that only the person who challenges his per­ ception can recognize what a small dimension man inhabits in the world and ultimately what role architecture plays in it. Following this perception experiment, moving in a left to right reading direction, are the words: “Architecture, however, is measured only by architecture.”33 At this point, we might understand this to mean that architecture follows its own laws, sets

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its own standards and grows, just like technology, far beyond man. However, if, after completing the perception experiment, we look once again at the bottom right of the sketchbook – that is, at the area to which the arrow is pointing our attention and which shows precisely these small, measurable people – it is possible to come to the exact opposite conclusion. In other words, it is possible to conclude that it isn’t the technology but instead only the measurement of man that makes this incomparable architecture possible, which, in turn, begs the question: how can this be set into motion by means of architecture, if not through a knowledge of the laws of human perception? The architects who took this question explicitly as the starting point of their work defined themselves primarily in contrast to pre-revolutionary architectural movements and referred to their type of building as Rationalistic, not Constructivist: “Can we assume that the architect who constructs a form is not aware of how this form will be perceived by the observer?”34 asked the initiator, Ladovsky, mischievously. In asking this question, he was pointing to what he considered to be fundamental and always genuine architectural knowledge, that is, the knowledge of its potential impact on human per­ ception. Only two years after the Rationalists had organized themselves in ASNOVA, a Constructivist group called the OSA emerged in opposition to them. Where does this late differentiation of the two architectural groups originate, especially seeing as their institutional and formal beginnings were so close to one another? When efforts to jump-start perception processes can be found on both sides and when the design forms on both sides con­ sist of dynamically ordered, geometric forms, it becomes difficult from our current perspective to sustain avant-garde historians’ categorization of postrevolutionary architecture in Constructivism and Rationalism: indeed, when looked at with regard to the strict, explicitly functional and industrial–mate­ rial laws they followed and the ways in which they designed buildings ori­ ented toward the perception of man, it appears that the two “schools” were not as antagonistic as widely believed.35 Which common model can be found for the construction of the new socialist world, one that undoubtedly united both architectural groups and yet made possible – and necessary – two dif­ ferent directions? Psychoanalysis via Architecture

In 1923, a group of architects broke off from their faculty at the VKhUTEMAS Workshops and established an independent department, which they called the discipline of “Space.” It immediately became a must-attend event for all faculties at the institute.36 This group was made up of Nico­ lai Ladovsky and the students with whom he had worked in part at the Zhivskul’ptarch commission and at the Academy for Artistic Culture.37 Just as in those circles, they insisted on an exchange among disciplines and the necessity of rejecting traditional forms in favor of an innovative form-design that was appropriate to the new society.38 It was so important to establish

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this form-design that Rationalists and Constructivists sought unambiguous scientific and technology-based rules for the design process that no architect would be able to escape stylistically and that could be adapted to all aesthetic developments in architecture.39 For this purpose, the Rationalists set aside pre-revolutionary doctrines regarding the proportions and systems of artistic forms and concentrated on the examination of space and its effects on the observer; their goal was to study the laws by which architecture was perceived by its users, that is, in order to “rationalize and objectify intuitive-individual reception.”40 Not only did they claim the authority of the laws of human perception, they also gave these laws absolute priority in the process of architectural design. Nicolai Ladovsky characterized this concentration on the spatial perception of architecture as a “psychoanalytical method” and saw in the “psycho-physiological rules of perception” the objective basis of artistic composition.41 It must be noted that Ladovsky’s use of the terminology of psychoanaly­ sis had nothing in common with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. It merely expressed his analysis of the spatial effect on the human psyche. While Freud localized the psyche in the unconscious, Ladovsky understood it as a func­ tion of sight and movement. It had neither a physical location, nor was it presented as an intangible black box. Ladovsky’s psyche expressed itself in the coordination of visual perception with physical performance. This understanding of the psyche as an effect of physical processes also changed the design process of the architect: according to Ladovsky, the architect’s visual impressions should be taken directly from the observation of nature – that is, from the physical experience of architecture via a spatial model and the testing of its effect on real space – instead of first being bent onto the sur­ face and then translated back into space by that surface.42 The first prod­ uct in the design process of the psychoanalytical architect was not the plan on paper but rather the spatial model: what characterized his craft was not the act of drawing on a surface but rather the act of sculptural modeling in space. Presumably, the popularity of psychoanalysis in the early years of the Soviet Union played a role in deciding the concept chosen by Ladovsky, and yet there is no indication that he had read the works of Freud.43 Nor did he ever mention that he was familiar with the discipline, nor can his “psy­ choanalysis” be understood as being comparable to Freud’s – apart from the fact that both, when seen in a very general way, shared the notion of a psyche as an object that could be analyzed and manipulated. Freud was convinced that he could bring forth the inner processes of his patients, just as Ladovsky attempted to turn the mental capacities of his architects outward by means of perception apparatuses. In addition, the terminological reference of Ladovsky’s Rationalism to the philosophical Rationalism of Russia in the 19th century helps us understand his architecture even less than his reference to psychoanalysis. Indeed, the common characteristics of Rationalism, such as the clarity and simplicity of form, analytical design and admiration for

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technical and functional perfection, apply just as much – if not more – to the architecture of the Constructivists.44 As early as in 1921, Ladovsky was already referring to a key shift in his understanding of the demands placed on architects: When we think of a circle that surrounds a center, then we receive elements of movement and stasis at the same time. .  .  . Whether we perceive a combination [of forms, M. V.] as movement or stasis depends on our education.45 Ladovsky placed the architect at the vanishing point of the user of his buildings rather than that of the producer, which is where the Constructiv­ ists liked to see him. Whereas the Constructivists focused on the industrial and economic conditions of their building materials, that is, on the use­ fulness and efficiency of production in relation to function, the focus of Rationalistic composition was on human perception and on an observer whose body and mind could be influenced by architectural space and forms. As Ladovsky stated, “Space, not stone, is the material of architecture.”46 This statement concretized his position, which nonetheless did not exclude Constructivist characteristics. Instead, the issue was much more a question of priority: When planning a building, the architect must, first of all, order and compose space; he must not let himself be constrained by materials and construction. Construction plays a role in architecture only to the extent that it determines the concept of the space.47 Ladovsky’s shift in perspective enabled, first and foremost, new learning methods – methods that were designed to allow architects “to think in space and not on the surface.”48 These methods would go on to become the basis for Constructivist and Rationalist architectural education alike. Whereas traditional teaching methods began with an analysis of classical models and used drawings on paper to develop into an abstract layout of architectural projects, Ladovsky rejected the analysis of “old standards” entirely and went even further to turn the entire process of composition on its head: first and foremost, the architect would have to develop his idea in the form of a spatial model, and only then should he create drawings that can be used to imple­ ment the design. In other words, instead of designing on paper, design should take place by means of spatial models. The imagination of a space and its effects on the user was described using the characteristics of room shapes: (1) geometric properties, such as aspect ratio, angle, surfaces; (2) physical qualities, such as weight, density, mass and volume; (3) mechanical properties, such as movement, stasis, dynamic, rhythm and (4) logical qualities, such as the expressiveness of the surface.49 The idea was to use these criteria to be able to analyze the mental perception

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of motifs of the space, such as rest, strength, weakness, finiteness and infinity in three-dimensional models. One can imagine this as a set of experimen­ tally developed form-combinations alongside their spatial effects, that is, a set of categorized and catalogued design standards that are understandable to every architect and accessible via a type of dictionary.50 Using this diction­ ary, the architectural space could be organized according to objective laws: in turn, the psyche of the “consumers” of architecture could be defined in that space in advance according to their own experiences.51 Ladovsky derived the

Figure 1.6 Nicolai Ladovsky (Khan-Magomedov 1984, front binding)

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necessity to influence the human psyche by means of architecture from life in fast-paced, industrialized and tech-heavy cities: Contemporary man must constantly deal with the architecture surrounding him. By means of their views and forms, the architectural structures of cities .  .  . have a direct influence on the feelings of the “ ‘consumers” of architecture.52 Very little biographical knowledge exists with regard to Nicolai Ladovsky. His estate seems to have been lost, and the Art and Literature Archive in Moscow holds only a baptismal certificate: the certificate states his year of birth as 1881 and also records his religion and official name change from the Jewish to the Protestant-Lutheran faith.53 He did not have a family and was able to study architecture in Moscow – something only few of his Jewish col­ leagues were also able to do – thanks entirely to his change to the Protestant faith. He received his degree at the relatively late age of 36, after 15 years of working at construction sites and 4 years of working as an iron caster.54 A short introduction to Ladovsky’s work lists 1941 as the year of his death, without naming the exact circumstances.55 In 1925, Lissitzky described very impressively his cooperation with Ladovsky: The situation is the following: the ecstatic phase is over. After all this, one wants to be smart, – that means not thinking loudly about things, not analyzing things out loud and not understanding things out loud. On the contrary, just stretch your hands, place them together and see what captures your senses and what the brain chooses.56 It is likely that Ladovsky’s restrained yet concentrated character played a large role in his fate as an architect. He was not able to prove himself as an avant-garde propagandist nor as an architectural theoretician nor as an architect. Ladovsky came to be known as an educator who shaped the instruction of a new generation of architects after the revolution. Thus, the number of structures he actually built is hardly known.57 Two of his realized designs however can be described as phenomena that are very suitable for the masses. Indeed, they form parts of two metro stations at central points in downtown Moscow. Both of Ladovsky’s designs arose in the mid-1930s. The first one is found at the “Red Gate” within the Moscow ring line. The second one is located directly opposite the Russian Secret Service building and in the direct vicin­ ity of his office, the VKhUTEMAS.58 Four arches that taper inward draw the gaze of the passenger at the “Red Gate” inexorably to the metro entrance. Running the risk of anachronism, and in spite of all of the modernity of the design, the colossal entrance recalls – especially thanks to its stone block construction – Roman column portals.

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Figure 1.7a Entrance to the metro at the Red Gates, 1934–1935 (Noever 1994, 170)

Figure 1.7b Dinkelsbühl, Middle Franconia: west portal of the St. George Church, around 1200 (Redslob 1909, 4)

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And this comparison is not as outlandish as it might appear at first, had it been possible in the 1930s to pour more simple concrete gate arches.59 Ladovsky’s reference to the portal construction prior to the central perspec­ tive, that is, to the design with the help of the felt perspective, could be taken as an indication of his criticism of the central perspective.60 Just as Anatole Senkevitch already showed, Ladovsky understood the space created by the central perspective as being merely one of many possible spaces. Accord­ ing to Ladovsky, the central perspective limits the perception of space–time experiences and also the opportunities to achieve these experiences with the help of architecture: “In order to facilitate the observer’s orientation to his physical surroundings, it was necessary to develop a new, more dynamic way of conveying the order and measure of spatial form.”61 The origin of the new space–time experience becomes apparent, at the latest, when one walks around the metro station: at this point, the arched portal reveals itself as the frontal view of an oversized telescope protruding out from underground. The technical symbolism becomes even clearer with the Lubyanka metro station.62 At the portal, two openings lead to the underground train. Once again, the entrances narrow down from the outside to the inside: however, this time, they do so without geometric increments, but rather quite gently in concrete. From a distance, it might seem that we are looking at the very wide open eyes of an owl. From the side, the arched doorways once again appear to be eye glasses. Much like binoculars, two lenses look out from behind a wall and up from the underground; they observe the mysterious back-and-forth before them, which just happens to be a large flat square that is home to the imposing secret service building. The interior of the rail terminal continues the binocular form by means of regularly recurring semicircular column arches. It was not a coincidence that Ladovsky chose optical apparatuses as technical models. The anti-perspective paradigm of his era was not that of

Figure 1.8 Metro at the Red Gates, side view (photo 1935, Paperny 2002, 51)

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Figure 1.9a Lubyanka metro station, formerly known as Dzerzhinskaya (photo by M. Vöhringer, 2003)

Figure 1.9b Side view of the entrance to Lubyanka metro station (photo by M. Vöhringer 2003)

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Figure 1.10 Lubyanka metro station, tunnel view of the tracks (Noever 1994, 171)

a perspective felt by human beings; instead, it was that of a technical per­ spective. The technical gaze, the measurable “seeing” already postulated by ASNOVA, that is, the eyes of telescopes, binoculars, cameras and film cam­ eras, must have opened up to the artist worlds hitherto invisible to the human eye: “The artist sees better than the average observer and is obliged to trans­ fer his feelings to the observer.”63 In 1926, in order to develop the emergence of such feelings and the spatial imagination of the architect and to base them on the “scientific research and objective psycho-physiological laws of human perception of architectural form, space and color,” Ladovsky began work on establishing a psychotechnical laboratory.64 How to Experiment With Apparatuses, Space and Human Beings “The streets are our brushes, the square our palettes,”65 trumpeted Vladimir Mayakovsky after the October Revolution and pointed to a bud­ ding movement in the post-revolutionary arts that would echo the emer­ gence of the life sciences from their own laboratory. Just as psychotechnics traded laboratories for factories and workers, so too did avant-garde art­ ists leave their museums and workshops in order to put to use the experi­ ments that had been purely artistic until then and to bring them “into the

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middle of life.”66 Both saw their task no longer in the production of uni­ versal theories and/or eternal works of art. Instead, they invested in objects that adapted to the necessities of the time. Accordingly, they also came and went with this era: And now we prepare a work that is not at all violent in its full effect. Because for us, what is monumental is not the work, which will stand there for one year of one decade or century, but rather the always standing expansion of human performance.67 Indeed, in light of its unique timeliness, Ladovsky’s work, too, is difficult to grasp in its full effect. Examining Space in the Psychotechnical Architectural Laboratory

Even after his first stay in Moscow and the failed test at the hands of Ladovsky’s perception apparatus, le Corbusier was far from indignant and instead full of enthusiasm: “I found in Moscow people working tire­ lessly at the invention of a new architecture .  .  . searching for the most characteristic, the most pure solutions.”68 In 1927, Nicolai Ladovsky had advanced the psychoanalytical method in a psychotechnical laboratory and in the form of several experimental setups at the VKhUTEMAS. In his so-called “Black Room” – a room painted entirely in black – he installed a series of instruments, or what he called Glazometry (meters for visual judgment), used to examine the perception of lines, angles and space and thus to test proportion and space perception in human beings. These instruments had a threefold function: on the one hand, they were used as aptitude tests on architecture students; they were also used regularly in the course of studies as exercises designed to improve students’ perception aptitude and, ultimately, they were also used in the design process as part of experiments. The reports of two of Ladovsky’s students are the only documents we have describing the instruments and their functions precisely:69 the Liglazometr70 was a device used to measure the visual assessment of distance in relation to linear size. In this case, a bar was moved between two rulers which carried a scale on their back that only the testers themselves could see. The person being tested had to estimate the length shown by the bar on the rulers, both in centimeters and in relations (one-quarter, one-third etc.). The Ploglazometr was an instrument designed to measure visual ability so as to determine the relationships of surface areas. Different geometric forms were organized under a glass on which lines were placed: by moving the glass, different parts of the objects were marked, and the person being tested was asked to compare the proportions of these

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Figure 1.11 Liglazometr (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5)

Figure 1.12 Ploglazometr (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5)

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Figure 1.13 Oglazometr (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5)

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Figure 1.14 Uglazometr (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5)

objects. The Oglazometr was an apparatus designed to measure perceptive abilities with regard to the determination of the size of volumes. Students were asked to fill water into different-sized glass containers (cir­ cular, cylindrical etc.). Depending on the task, the idea was either to fill the same amount of water into each container or to fill each container to the same percentage of its volume (half, one-third etc.). The Uglazometr was used to test the assessment of angles as well as the degree of horizontality and verticality of lines. Two marking bars mounted horizontally and vertically could be rotated in any ratio, while their angular dimensions were shown to the tester on the back side. The Prostrometr was an apparatus designed to measure the perception of the depth of space. Two horizontal surfaces could be moved in different degrees in relation to two solid verticals, upon which figures were placed at varying heights. In order to prevent the observer from being dis­ tracted by the surrounding depth of space, the room was painted completely black. From a fixed position, the test person looked through two openings that were adjustable in height, so that the depth of space could be determined in relation to the inclination of the ground surface and the figures in the ver­ tical: this could be done not only with both eyes together but also with one eye each. The curricula of the psychotechnical laboratory remained relatively abstract with regard to the task of individual tests; but what they do show concretely is just how far-reaching and programmatic Ladovsky’s scien­ tific orientation was.71 Divided into three research groups, all aspects of architecture were analyzed in his department exclusively with regard to the human psyche and its organization by means of the organization of architecture. Once again, what becomes evident here, too, is that when we speak of the psyche, we are referring to a materially undefined result of

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perception and movement processes. Although it cannot be localized – for example, the brain as the site of the psyche – it does reveal itself by means of visual impressions: for example, the group for the “analysis of archi­ tectural elements” examined the mental effects of form, color, volume and space, the interaction of these elements (color with form, light with space etc.) and their effects on the human psyche. The emphasis here was on the experimental control of all disciplines that dealt with space. The group that examined the “functions of architecture in relation to social-animated and technical-economical factors” was responsible for examining the soci­ ology of architecture, the meeting of architecture and technology, the criti­ cism of technical norms and architectural standards and for “NOT,” the Scientific Labor Organization in the architectural production and planning process. And, finally, the group for the “task of pedagogy and psycho­ technics” was responsible for examining psychotechnics in architecture and conceiving rational learning methods. This section played the most important role in the first year following the founding of the institute, see­ ing as it was the place where the experimental equipment described above was constructed. What, then, did these apparatuses promise to provide? What was so special that the architect had to develop special apparatuses to measure it? While the first four instruments appear to have been used primarily for the repeated training of students’ assessment abilities, the Prostrometr had the potential to virtually revolutionize the work process of architects: indeed, using this device allowed them to design in space instead on paper. In the artistic world of the Prostrometr, which was shielded from the environment by means of black walls, the architect was able to imagine the relationships among horizontal surfaces, vertical walls and human figures in an ideal way. The architect could change the inclination of the basic surface to the verti­ cal again and again in relation to the distance to the figure: he could cor­ rect impressions, sharpen or loosen the depth effect and transfer the optimal results ultimately to their model. In doing so, the architect created the illusion of spatial coordination, orientation, imagination and a combination of space and form with the opportunity of being able to more or less “anticipate” a particular part of his model: “The work of the architects on the geometric expressive ability of form . . . consists in the convergence of the image that we gain from the perception of the real perspective to the image that arises in projections.”72 The Prostrometr also enabled the confirmation and/or correction of data collected by the other devices, that is, the ability to test the impressions of certain angle ratios and volumes sizes in space and to “measure the feel for spatial changes and relations.”73 This desire to measure feelings was far from a modest goal: indeed, feelings were exactly the phenomenon that had stubbornly eluded the many attempts at scientific evaluation undertaken by physiologists and psychologists thus far. Feelings could not be observed or measured, as one would, for example, determine the effect of the sun on

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blood coagulation; however, they could not be completely excluded from scientific analysis either.74 The Rationalists evaded this difficulty by applying a very broad concept of “measurement.” They did not use it in the sense of mathematical measurement, the collection of numbers or the gathering of statistics; instead, they “gauged” feelings by means of catalogued experien­ tial knowledge, that is, by collecting comparable and reproducible spatial impressions. Nicolai Dokuchaev, a student of Ladovsky’s, obviously rec­ ognized this elusive aspect of the perception of architecture, and Anatole Senkevitch deduces the following from his writings: “The observer seldom perceives a building in a purely mechanical way, but inevitably brings to it associations which have very little to do with the facts of construction.”75 The Prostrometr was designed to evoke, record and vary precisely these asso­ ciations within a specific fixed frame so as to free up the architect’s creation process from technical drawing and thus to enable genuinely spatial design. The forms used in Ladovsky’s tests include the following measurement factors: “attention,” “memory capacity,” “perception measurement” and “spatial and motor skills.” In other words, these are both physiological and psychological. The positive and negative estimates made by the students were measured in percentages, and the time needed for a certain number of estimates was noted, seeing as the goal was to improve the latter by means of repeated tests.76 The data of each student was recorded on a “personal card” – also called a “psycho profile” – and made available to the students so that they could monitor their own progress.77 Even though no such filled-out profile card has been unearthed so far, the empty form provides enough of a clear indication of the seriousness with which the architects attempted to control their tests and make them repeatable and comparable. This approach was very much in line with an evident and experimental routine based on con­ stants that had been captured using technology. In addition to these cards, Ladovsky planned to use film technology to verify “the organization of space and time.”78 Indeed, what could bring a spatial concept closer to its real implantation – closer than any Prostrometr or model – if not a filmic report of the spaces in the process of their construc­ tion? The results of the process of construction could be checked at any time by the architect, whose task it was to “communicate the organization of space and time to others (but he must test it on himself first).”79 The possibil­ ity of self-control for the purposes of optimizing movement routines in work processes had, some years prior, prompted Frank B. Gilbreth in the United States to introduce cinematographic apparatuses at construction sites.80 In addition to observing the building managers and architects, the idea here was to also study the construction workers themselves by means of film shots of their movements so as to determine what was required to optimize the work process. The Rationalist architects sought to reform not just construction work, but also the work of technical drafters: in order to do so, they explored not only films but also recording techniques such as the graphic plotter. In

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Figure 1.15 “Personal card” showing the results of the psychotechnical examination of a person’s “architectural suitability” (Khan-Magomedov 1984, image section, interior, 5) Left page: Attention: memory capacity for figures and angles; visual estimation of lines a and b, of an area, an amplitude, an angle  sense of proportion. Right page: Spatial faculties: spatial coordination of verticality and horizontality; spa­ tial orientation; spatial perception; spatial imagination; spatial combinatorial ability  motor aptitude.

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this area, with regard to the questions of the Scientific Labor Organization (NOT), they cooperated among others with the “Psycho-Physiological Insti­ tute” in Moscow, “which carried out a large number of special experiments that determined the so-called ‘fatigue curves.’ ”81 In keeping with Ladovsky’s psychoanalytic method, the point here, too, was to have spatial ideas lead to architectural designs – almost directly and without being transferred to a surface. Spatial models, the Prostrometr, curve plotters and film apparatus – all of these can be seen as technical means that enabled the recording of the effects of space on viewers and thus permitted the transfer of these effects into real buildings, bypassing drawings done by hand. However, the findings gen­ erated by curve plotters and film apparatuses are, to this day, just as untrace­ able as the psychological profiles resulting from the eye meters. And yet, even though these psychotechnical experiments didn’t end well and little concrete evidence was preserved to determine their scientific suita­ bility, this did not prevent Anatoly Lunacharsky, head of the ISO NARKOM­ PROS, from granting official recognition to the experiments in 1928, when he praised Ladovsky’s faculty as the “crown of the workshops.”82 This dis­ tinction should not be underestimated, especially if one considers the role the institution played in the early Soviet cultural landscape, as emphasized by the historian Frederick Starr: “There is no topic more central to the history of early Soviet culture than this school. . . . Its rise and fall tells the story of Russian experimental art in the twenties.”83 Architecture as Operation, Not Utopia

The dominance of Rationalism at VKhUTEMAS and the institutional parallels with regard to common entrance exams and basic courses sug­ gest a strong structural similarity between Constructivism and Rational­ ism. Ladovsky’s perception tests – and the fact that they accounted for a large part of the curriculum – lead us to believe that the architects of both movements built upon on the same knowledge garnered from psychotech­ nical research into perception.84 Both experimented with space and form, both influenced the perception and movement of human beings and both required that architectural means be used scientifically and functionally. The only element that distinguishes the two is the setting of priorities during the design process: whereas the Constructivists focused on an analysis of objec­ tive materials and prioritized the functions of buildings85 and scientific mass production over subjective impressions, the Rationalists devoted themselves first and foremost to the subjective and individual effects of forms so as to be able to implement them in public form complexes and objectify them as trans-individual “effects”: “What is paramount, even before the planning of residential areas, is the necessity of anticipating the specific .  .  . effects of architectural objects.”86 Thus, the difference between Constructivism and Rationalism lies not in them having two mutually exclusive approaches; instead, it lies in two perspectives that represent inverted mirror images of one another within a common architectural praxis.

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These inverted priorities were not reflected formally at the beginning, but, by the mid-1920s, they had emerged very clearly.87 Especially in contrast to Constructivism, the designs made in Ladovsky’s workspace reveal specifics that point to his psychotechnical ambitions: rationalist projects display an essentially more diverse spatial design, they show both cubist and circular forms and they play with surprising changes in viewer standpoints and seem­ ingly unproductive repetitions of perspectives.

Figure 1.16 P. Smolenskaya, diploma project on the subject of the “House of the Con­ gress” (with a room seating 10,000 guests), Ladovsky Workshop 1928 (Khan-Magomedov 2000, 100)

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Figure 1.17 Top left: A. Langman, L. Tcherikover, “Dynamo” Stadium in Moscow, 1928 Left middle and bottom: O. Lyalin, J. Svirskij, “Dynamo” Stadium in Leningrad, 1928; top right and middle: I. Lamtsov, W. Petrov, “Krasnyje Khamovniki” sports club in Moscow, 1928; right, bottom: M. Minkus’ design for a swimming pool, 1929 (Khan-Magomedov 1983, 521)

The arrangement of forms ranges from contradictions and omissions to interruptions. Material differences are emphasized as are abrupt openings in surfaces; there is a movement back and forth between quiet and loud locations and between brightness and darkness. Floating platforms and steep staircases correspond with one another, as do perspectives that arouse atten­ tion and others that disrupt the view. The Constructivist buildings appear almost static next to these varied and dynamic arrangements. Much more restrained in the blending of form variants, less circular, and using more linear forms more regularly and clearly, Constructivism appears to obey precisely the opposite principle.

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Figure 1.18 A. Silchenkov, House of Industry and Trade, diploma project, Ladovsky Workshop 1928 (Khan-Magomedov 2000, 97)

This is to say that it does not follow the unpredictable rhythm of a distracted perception that permanently changes its speed and rhythm independently of external disturbances; instead, it follows an absolutely regular rhythm – perhaps a rhythm of the machine. Hugh D. Hudson sees the decisive divergence of opinion between the two architectural groups in the change of social relations. Instead of

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Figure 1.19 S. Koshin, diploma project on the subject of the “Palace of Work in Moscow,” Vesnin Workshop, 1926 (Khan-Magomedov 2000, 90)

manipulating the perception of architecture, the Constructivists manipu­ lated the interaction of people within new living structures. This interac­ tion, Hudson argued, corresponded to the functioning of a machine.88 The setting of design priorities found its formal expression in a type of build­ ing that was strict on the one hand, but playful on the other; social on the one hand, but aesthetic on the other; mechanistic on the one hand, but organizational on the other. However, these contrasts are not mutu­ ally exclusive. On the contrary, Mois Ginzburg, one of the most influential

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Constructivist architectural theorists, argued in favor of the simultaneity of the two approaches: In this way, the Constructive system creates – thanks to our perceptual experience and human beings’ psycho-physiological special features – yet another system that is self-sufficient, while it develops itself at the same time from out of the construction of the world of forms, upon which it is dependent: in other words, the aesthetic system.89 Thus, the construction of the post-revolutionary work environment was derived, on the one hand, from human beings: on the other hand, however, it also constructed itself by means of a dependence on laws that lay outside of it. If we recall Ladovsky’s design of the Metro entrance, the reciprocity of his construction method becomes evident: he most surely used the Prostrometr to perform extensive tests with regard to the proportions the portals would need in order to lead commuters in a rush through the subway smoothly to their track. His model for automatic commuter management, however, did not come from an observation of human behavior; instead, it was oriented toward the functioning of optical apparatuses, that is, telescopes. Already in 1920, Ladovsky announced: “Technology performs miracles. Miracles must now be performed in architecture as well.”90 A final and decisive common trait shared by the Constructivists and Rationalists with regard to the realization of their technical miracles can be found ultimately in the fact that they both used the same methodological source, that is, the scientific organization of labor. While Ladovsky’s students drew tiredness curves at the Psycho-Physiological Institute in Moscow, the Constructivists were interested in examining rhythm. In 1923, Mois Ginz­ burg had already declared: No matter which science we turn to, no matter which life process we linger on, we will see everywhere the manifestations of rhythm. . . . The same goes for the inner universe of human beings – the functioning of lung and heart, the movement of the arms and legs independently from the laws of rhythm which reveal elements of psychophysical nature.91 The analogies between inner and outer, natural and unnatural laws, human beings and machines were examined at the same time by mem­ bers of Constructivism at the State Institute for Rhythmic Education in Moscow, in order to establish “the relationship between rhythmic educa­ tion and the scientific organization of labor.”92 As with labor management scientists in Europe and America at the time, the focus was on the synchro­ nization of human and machine movement and the adaptation of human beings to machines and vice versa, that is, the construction of machines for human beings.93

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What Nicolai Ladovsky realized with the help of his eye meters was noth­ ing less than precisely this synchronization of human perception with its measurement by means of apparatuses. As a result, both Rationalism and Constructivism subscribed to an architecture that surrounded human beings prior to, during and after work, that is, an architecture that was subject to the same efficiency paradigm as labor management sciences: The rationality of architecture is based on an economic principle just as much as technical rationality is based on the same. The difference consists in the following: technical rationality is the economy of the work and materials during the construction of a practical building; architectural rationality is the economy of mental energy involved in the perception of the spatial and functional characteristics of the building. The ratio architecture is the synthesis of these two rationalities in one building.94 In other words, the man–machine analogy did not divide Rationalism and Constructivism; instead, it united them in the model of labor management sci­ ences. This labor management also suggests the necessity of two architectural concepts: whereas the first distinguished between physiological and psycholog­ ical labor management, the two architectures divided up the complementary characteristics of human beings among themselves, that is, the Constructivists took up the physical rhythms involved in movement, while Ladovksy’s Ration­ alists examined the psychical energies that these movements require. Our knowledge of Ladovsky’s experimental space corrects not only the relationship between Constructivism and Rationalism; it also serves to trans­ form the idea we have of Rationalistic architecture into its precise opposite. In light of their designs and buildings, Rationalist architecture now appears playful and unpredictable: it stands for exaggeration, experimentation, vari­ ety, abrupt movement and challenges to perception as well as to the utopian and the unrealizable. In short, it stands for characteristics that do not nec­ essarily reflect systematic experimental procedures. In view of the psychotechnical perception experiments, the “intellectual utopianism”95 becomes a concrete search for the objective and operational bases of artistic forms. It also becomes a search for the laws of perception and for an understanding of the effects of space and form on viewers – this is sought so as to be able to transport the particular effects of a space reliably to the viewer and to gener­ ate targeted reactions, feelings and reflexes in the viewer: All of our buildings – and this is not just a law of biology but also one of the economy and the environment – must provide consumers . . . with intellectual stimulation and influence by means of their organization and ordering, inasmuch as this elevates our way of life and activity.96

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These words recall the large-scale political project undertaken at that time with regard to the reorganization of the way of life – a reorganization that related to the socialization of lifestyle habits, needs, taste in art, educational levels and forms of living.97 The Constructivists committed themselves explic­ itly to the service of achieving this goal: “The aim of the architecture of our era is not the construction of a specific building but the ‘Construction,’ the forming of new social relations that result from new conditions of produc­ tion.”98 But what exactly did the Rationalists rebuild? Given their scientific claims, the Rationalists were not concerned with the idea of surprising the viewer aesthetically, nor were they interested in imagi­ native architecture. Instead, they developed models designed to generate the calculable, effective and repeatable communication of spatial effect and orien­ tation. Architecture as a pure art was discarded in favor of a scientific organi­ zation of the necessary and desirable effects of life. Form became a stimulant for specific reflexes and behaviors of the subject. It became a definite sign that the human perception apparatus had been set in motion. In this setting up of new spaces and events, Rationalism took part in the construction of the new world. It “supplied homes with organization and a general reflection of form that had a positive effect on our minds and would improve living conditions to the maximum.”99 Rationalistic architecture re-programmed its inhabit­ ants, conditioned their perception and opened up new realms of experience by forcing certain subject relationships and hierarchies into existence; and it did so with the goal of transforming these subjects into objects that could figure in an architectural reference system. In this sense, the process allowed them to carry over the scientification of perception – which had been put into practice by the life sciences – into the scientification of architecture: Science has shown that art, which is a special form of mental activity performed by human beings, . . . can become an ordering power both for individuals and social life. As a fundamentally social art, architecture is especially confronted with the . . . challenge of providing collective construction in our era with appropriate designs to fit our way of life.100 Architecture was no longer understood as an aesthetic object; instead, it was seen as a program, as a functioning apparatus and as a biological pro­ cess that – in contrast to analytical science – was not based on objectivity but rather on operationalization. Architecture was seen as being based not on reflection but on the manipulation of perception: “It would appear that we need no special proof to show that the forms taken on by modern residential construction have a didactic influence on their inhabitants.”101 Indeed, the goal of the Rationalists was not to explain the perception of the world. The goal was to operate with it.

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Economy of the Experiment Utopia is the experiment in which the possible change of an element may be ob­ served, along with the effects of such a change on the compound phenomenon we call life.102

Alongside the Constructivists, a number of activities relating to labor manage­ ment, psychotechnics and psycho-physiology in the Soviet Union shared the approach of Rationalist architecture to influencing the mental state of their inhabitants by means of exterior influences such as forms, sounds and letters. The artists at the VKhUTEMAS Workshops were by no means the only ones to adopt this knowledge from psychology and physiology and to apply it outside the realm of the sciences. With its 1,500 to 2,000 students,103 however, the Work­ shops were by far the largest and most prestigious artistic teaching institutions in Russia in the 1920s. They were also well-known far beyond Russia. In 1928, they received a visit from a delegation of architects from the Bauhaus in Dessau: in fact, Lissitzky had mediated between the two institutions for many years, and starting in 1921, Kandinsky had taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar.104 Hannes Meyer, who was head of the Bauhaus in Dessau in the 1920s, represented a form of architecture that corresponded to the Rationalists’ own approach: Building is a biological process. Building is not an aesthetic process. . . . In its design, the new dwelling becomes not only a ‘machine for living’ [Le Corbusier], but also a biological apparatus serving the needs of body and mind.105 The VKhUTEMAS Workshops were also comparable to the Bauhaus in terms of their structure: both taught in workshops and fostered not only interdisciplinarity but also encouraged personnel exchanges with compara­ ble institutions. For example, in 1921, Ladovsky, Krinsky and Dokuchaev were active at the Institute for Artistic Culture and at the VKhUTEMAS Workshops. Wassily Kandinsky first headed up the institute and after that went on to develop his “science of art” in a separate division of the Academy of Artistic Sciences. In 1930/31, Alexei Leontiev gave an “Intro­ duction to Psychology” course at the renamed Higher Artistic Technical Institute.106 In other words, at least in the academic world, the inspiration of artistic practices by way of methods of experimental psychology was not an exception. From Kandinsky to Gastev: Russian Avant-Garde and Applied Psychology

It is likely that Nicolai Ladovsky encountered perception psychology for the first time via Wassily Kandinsky at the Moscow Institute for Artistic Culture called INKhUK. Starting in 1920, Kandinsky had developed a program there focusing on systematic research into the formal and psychological aspects of

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the human perception of form and space. In doing so, he settled on objectives that were similar to Ladovsky’s psychoanalytic method: The theoretical examination of any form of art must be preceded by an analysis of the means of this art. . . . This analysis must proceed in such a way that it determines the reflection of the artistic means in the experience of the person perceiving the art, that is to say, in that person’s mind.107 However, Kandinsky’s theoretical projections did not enjoy success in Russia, even though they had originated from the same source as most experimental psychological approaches of his time, that is, the writings of Wilhelm Wundt, which were translated into Russian for the first time by Kandinsky’s greatuncle Viktor, meaning that he most likely had access to them.108 At INKhUK, however, Kandinsky was attacked by the Constructivists – the loudest among them his successor Alexander Rodchenko – for his allegedly unworkable the­ ories; ultimately, they even voted him out of his position. Kandinsky’s sub­ sequent work at the Academy of Artistic Sciences was to be short-lived yet effective; he set up the first department for so-called “Physico-Psychology,” that is, for the examination of the formal and aesthetic aspects of percep­ tion.109 The neologism in the title of his department refers to Wundt’s blue­ print for a physiological psychology: however, what is not explained in the protocols of the academy is the reason why Kandinsky dealt with this subject in particular, and how he was able to make use of it. This is a state of affairs that no doubt contributed to Kandinsky’s institutional difficulties. In 1923, Alexander Rodchenko took Kandinsky’s approach with regard to the artistic ability to explore perception and applied it to actual teaching practice: his courses in graphics at the Institute for Artistic Culture began with exercises in which the students combined simple forms (circles, triangles and square) with one another in order to test the visual impression of different combi­ nations.110 Like Ladovsky, after the INKhUK was closed, he moved not to the theoretically oriented Academy of Artistic Sciences, but instead to the practical, application-oriented VKhUTEMAS Workshops. The analogous institution in Leningrad, called the State Institute for Artistic Culture or GINKhUK, was managed by Kazimir Malevich. Starting in 1923, in addition to other research areas such as Tatlin’s Workshop for Material Culture, it was home to the Department of Organic Culture, where the painter Michael Matyushin was working on the “Psychophysiology of Visual Perception.” Just like Ladovsky, Matyushin wanted to improve and even expand visual perception: I am learning to perceive anew, for which purpose I look ‘more broadly’. . . . We can observe each phenomenon in its entire fullness of movement: forwards, backwards and sideways. We can perceive the space from behind. . . . I required [the student, M. V.] to comprehend the object

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Feed(ing) Back with his eyes just as much as with his hands and to feel that it has no boundary, but instead a volume. . . . We trained our eyes to walk around the object and to cover it, as it were. By training to look all the way around, to encompass ourselves from all sides by space, we were able to come to know depth.111

In order to train this faculty, Matyushin and his students wandered through the streets of Leningrad, even following passersby; the task was to track the movement of these pedestrians with their eyes and to complete the movement in relation to their own movement by means of their so-called “indirect vision,” which is to say without turning one’s head.112 Matyushin announced that the task of his department was “to develop the entire organism,” for which all sensory faculties – including touch, hearing and vision – were trained not only using color experiments, but also with the help of moving models and observational objects, such as “lines, surfaces, straight and non-straight bodies of the same height.” The entire organism depleted itself ultimately in the “comprehensive new orientation of the central brain.”113 Ladovsky used the same objects for the examination and training of the senses – right down to the color. He also walked the streets, albeit at night when they were empty. He carried out his psychotechnical experiments outside the laboratory on real architecture: in fact, he tested the impression of buildings on himself, examined their spatial effect and depth, explored the visibility of lines and investigated the dynamics of his movement in relation to the buildings surrounding him.114 However, in contrast to Matyushin, who experimented primarily with the eyes, Ladovsky repeated the impressions taken from the urban space in the laboratory using apparatuses and investi­ gated them under experimental conditions.115 By 1926, one laboratory for psychophysics, one for experimental psy­ chophysiology and one for experimental aesthetics and art theory had been set up at the Academy for Artistic Sciences, which was administered by the Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment.116 Here, experimental psy­ chology played a central role in its most explicit form, even on the level of personnel: among the members of the academy were the psychologists Georgi Chelpanov, Pavel Kapterev and Lev Vygotsky.117 Alexander Gabrichevsky, an art historian researching at the RAKhN, emphasized that the desired integration of scientific thought and artistic creativity would not be able to succeed without the life sciences.118 For example, a committee for psycho­ technics at the physic-psychological laboratory focused on the vocal arts and trained voices; they did not, however, train visual perception, which was the object in the psycho-physiological department once inspired by Kandinsky. Such committees focusing on research into aesthetic and spatial perception sought to determine the effects of proportion, symmetry and composition and also the “felt” effects of lines or geometric forms.119 There is still very little clarity as to how exactly these experiments were carried out; how­ ever, according to the work plans – which were recorded but not formulated

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programmatically – they served very explicitly the psycho-physical analysis of the perception of the artist.120 This was shared by the psychologists at the RAKhN, much like the question of the spatial perception with Ladovsky. However, starting in the mid-1920s, the Academy’s program covered much more than just the actual perception of forms; indeed, they began to feature the application of this perception knowledge to historical works of art and artists: The task now . . . is to acknowledge and use artistic experiment as a special method. . . . An “experiment” in the field of art history might seem to be a paradox. But this or that potential divergence in analo­ gous artistic forms, changes in conditions of perception, the state of the external environment in which a work of art is placed – all this allows us to speak of an experimental art history, not just of an empiri­ cal one.121 At the beginning of the 19th century, psychiatric, social and individual psychologists in Russia, Europe and America had already started to investi­ gate ingenuity.122 The psychologists at the RAKhN took up this history in a seamless fashion when they categorized formal stylistic devices – for example, those of the Futurists – as being connected to mental disorders.123 Kandinsky went even further and participated in a project that sought to expand the application of psychology to the artists of his day – as well as to artists of the future. As part of a committee of psychiatrists and artists, he supported plans for the setting up of institutes for ingenuity and genius that sought to not only examine mental hygiene but also protect and educate of new artists.124 In this case, it was not about the fostering of elites in a eugenic sense, but rather in the socialist sense of incorporating special forms of natures.125 After a decades-long focus on the artist-genius, one finds an especially impressive indication of the era’s love of experimentation in the fact that the induc­ tion of mental disorders was able to bring forth new styles of art; it is also a further indication of the openness and applied nature of psychology in Russia. Presumably as a result of the chaos caused by the civil war, neither the commission nor the institute were actually set up. Kandinsky followed a call to the Bauhaus in Weimar; back at the Academy of Artistic Sciences, his research programs were continued in the purely academic manner described above. For this reason, Ladovsky can be seen as the innovating force behind an applied psychology that went beyond the approaches followed by the RAKhN. First of all, he devoted himself to more than just pure analysis: he also trained architects’ perception by repeating experiments over and over again. This indicates that he was attempting not only to recognize their men­ tal state; he was also trying to change it. Second, when he aimed at achieving targeted changes in his subjects, his interest was geared not merely toward historical objects, but also toward future ones. And, third, Ladovsky took the results of his attempts far beyond the academic framework: in order to carry

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out his experiments in reality, on real human beings, he applied his experi­ mentally constructed architecture to every passerby that entered its realm. One of the most illuminating factors here is the relationship between Ladovsky and Lev Vygotsky, who was a member of the RAKhN and had already gained popularity with his dissertation “The Psychology of Art” in 1925. In direct contrast to Ladovsky, Vygotsky believed that the methods of art could be useful for psychological research: We could show that art is the central emotion . . . released mainly in the cerebral cortex. The emotions of art are spirit-based emotions. Instead of expressing themselves in clenched fists and bodily shaking, they dis­ solve mainly in fantasy images.126 Vygotsky used “pneumographic drawings” to measure the emotions of readers with regard to texts: he also recorded changes in breath and charted the most impactful moments of the texts.127 For him, art was a “technology of feelings.”128 However, the object of his analysis was not the psychology of the artists or the viewer. Vygotsky worked on a “psychological map” of the artwork that enabled those who were familiar with it to localize the mecha­ nisms that spoke to the observer.129 These mechanisms were not intended for the enlightenment of the recipient of art; instead, they were designed for targeted use by artists. In this sense, Vygotsky’s approach also appears to stand in opposition to Ladovsky’s: instead of architectural maps, the latter produced mental profiles of architects. In both cases, the focus of interest did indeed lie on the possibil­ ity of transferring effects onto the viewer – and both made use of apparatuses to carry out of their experiments; and yet, the two men approached their objects from different directions. In order to capture the influences on the psyche, Vygotsky analyzed the mechanisms of psychological manipulation primarily from outside the psyche. In contrast, Ladovsky researched both, that is, first the influence of architecture on the psyche and then, in a second step, the psyche itself. His goal was to define the possibilities to manipulate its “exterior.”130 This two-tiered approach provides a precise characterization of the two sides of psychotechnics, that is, objective and subjective. In other words, psychotechnics involved the testing of human perception (subjective) as well as of its technical–organizational environment (objective), which was undertaken by architecture in the case described here.131 There are many further examples of the use of psychological and physi­ ological knowledge among the Russian avant-garde – examples that are more or less distant from Ladovsky: in fact, there are so many examples that they can only be mentioned in passing here. The most well-known among them are the biomechanics of the theater producer Vsevolod Meyerhold and the Cen­ tral Institute of Labor (CIT) set up by the poet Alexei Gastev.132 Both made reference to a physiological science of labor management and categorized psychology as being of secondary importance. The writers and theoreticians

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of Russian Formalism and Structuralism were concerned with aphasia research: for example, Sergei Eisenstein made use of the dynamic psychology of Kurt Lewin for his “Montage of Attractions,” which had been passed on to him by Alexander Luria, a colleague of Eisenstein at the Moscow Film School and a close associate of Vygotsky’s.133 Here, once again, psychology and the influence of language and film on the psyche played a key role, if less as a supplier of method than as a source of inspiration for their own meth­ ods. At the same time, after the Revolution, facilities shot up like mushrooms out of the ground: these organizations went beyond art to use the practices of experimental psychology at institutes, hospitals, schools and universities.134 However, in spite of all of these parallel appearances, one question remains unanswered: what or who was the first to prompt Ladovsky to apply – of all things – the methods of psychotechnics to architecture? Genealogies: Psychotechnics From Harvard, German Devices and Russian Psycho-Profiles

As an architect, Ladovsky did not conceal the myriad of influences he took from other disciplines. In his only publication on the psychotechnical laboratory – a rather short and compact treatise – he urged his students to borrow methods from all forms of science that dealt with perception and in particular from psychotechnics: An architect must, if indeed in an elementary way, be familiar with the laws of perception and the associated possibilities to influence it. He must make use of all the means available to him to obtain all that contemporary science has to offer. Among the sciences that most foster the development of architecture, the young discipline of psychotechnics takes on an eminently important role.135 Ladovsky then listed the perspectives of psychotechnics in the field of aesthet­ ics and made exclusive reference to the approaches taken by Harvard profes­ sor Hugo Münsterberg, the founding father of psychotechnics: “Balance of simple forms (Pierce), unequal division (Anquier), symmetry (Puffer), repeti­ tion of spatial forms (Rowland), vertical division (Dawis), simple rhythmic forms, etc.”136 The aforementioned laboratory at Harvard had made a name for itself especially due to its focus on aesthetics; and, as a result of its ongo­ ing research, it was able to maintain its unique worldwide status until World War I.137 Münsterberg’s programmatic writing on psychotechnics – called the “Fundamentals of Psychotechnics” – had already been made available in a German edition in Russia in 1914, the year of its publication. In 1923, it was also translated and published in Russian.138 The psychological work being done at Harvard was extensively documented from the very beginning: stereoscopic sight, eye movements during dizziness, sight during dizziness, aesthetics of repeated spatial forms (Rowland), disruption via optical stimuli,

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the moving force of complexity – all of these were of interest to Ladovsky.139 And even Münsterberg’s brief description of the experiments points to a fun­ damental kinship to the architectural laboratory in Russia: “On a dark back­ ground, . . . , if a short vertical line were placed just left of the center of a picture, a long one near the right-hand frame would create the most satisfac­ tory aesthetic impression.”140 Ladovsky was obviously well-informed about the experimental activities taking place at Harvard. Indeed, the Russian avant-garde – and the entire scientific community – must have known enough about Münsterberg for Ladovsky to be able to quote him and convince his colleagues of the neces­ sity of a scientific-technical laboratory in architecture: Psychotechnics cannot produce artists . . . , but it can give all arts a basis with which they can definitely reach the goals they seek to achieve. . . . A broadly developed psychotechnics can . . . codify the methods of the composition, despite the persistent idea that a genius can create intui­ tively that which science develops only with tremendous effort.141 A protocol from Ladovsky’s architectural faculty that depicts the tasks and procedures undertaken in 1928 shows that his wish was granted. With­ out any further details, and yet explicitly enough for the official addressees, he related his teaching methods to those “derived from pedagogy and psy­ chotechnics in the strictest sense of the word.” Like Münsterberg and the psychologists at RAKhN, Ladovsky analyzed perception with the help of those “methods derived from applied psychology,” as well as the “analyti­ cal methods that were taken from humanities and experiments on empirical structures.”142 At this point, one question remains: what consequences did the actual application of psychology as psychotechnics have on the teaching and testing of students? With regard to the testing of students, Ladovsky made some practical promises that psychotechnics seemed to enable: for example, he argued that differences of opinions with regard to the quality of architecture could be eliminated, as could the haphazardness involved in the evaluation of com­ petition submissions. He also argued that the emotions felt by teachers and students relating to misunderstandings would be able to be scientifically founded.143 Instead of the arbitrariness of the examiner, the objectivity of a precise apparatus would be able to determine the quality of the architect. Although this does not sound very plausible, as the experiment with Le Corbusier already showed, it was, however, entirely in line with the psychotechnics of time. In the United States, Münsterberg also believed that his psychologi­ cal studies – more than anything else – were destined for something bigger: “They could be immediately transformed into advice for the outside world . . . and they seemed predestined to be applied in practical life.”144 Ladovsky outlined the decisive characteristics of this discipline much like they had been

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formulated by Münsterberg: the discipline of psychotechnics aimed at the scientific establishment of production and creation processes by means of instrumental controls, not only in the narrow context of factories but also in a much broader sense. “Psychotechnics,” as Münsterberg explained, “is the science of the practical application of psychology in the service of cultural tasks.”145 Therefore, it was suitable not only for aptitude tests designed to help organize industrial workers; it could also be used for the organization and production of effects on a wide variety of objects involved in psychotech­ nical experiments, including artistic ones: “the artist attempts to have an effect on the soul . . . of the viewer so that certain aesthetic feelings are brought forth in them.”146 And artists do this – just like Ladovsky and every other psychologist who practices psychotechnics – with the help of apparatuses. Dominik Schrage, who defines psychotechnics as an instrument for solv­ ing problems between the social and the psychological,147 that is, between the worker and the environment, provides a succinct definition of the psy­ chotechnical approach:148 first of all, the analysis of the work process in a factory or workshop made it possible to define the needs of the worker (and this corresponds with Ladovsky’s observations of real architecture at night). After that followed the isolation and fragmentation of the “human factors” that are relevant for the work situation, that is, visual judgment (which cor­ responds to the spatial perception of forms, volumes, colors, depths, etc.), attention, emotionality and sensitivity. After collecting all the necessary data, the psychotechnician would then enter his laboratory, where he would have to “create a system of reality and . . . under these artificial and changeable conditions – which are adapted to reality as closely as possible – and exam­ ine the performance of the candidate under study”149 so as to control and manipulate the received data relating to the duration and intensity of atten­ tion, sensation etc. Thus far, Ladovsky followed psychotechnical methods. But what about the nature of his results? What could possibly have been the desired results of his data collection if the psychotechnical laboratory was set up to produce actual buildings rather than mere data? Ladovsky’s first and most tangible findings were not statistical data on workers and their mental constitution; instead, they related to instruments. Instruments had once acted as powerful advertisers for Münsterberg’s labo­ ratory, and the Moscow Rationalists also showcased their own research in journals with the help of postcard-size images of apparatuses.150 It is not at all surprising, then, especially after all the references, that we can understand the absence of statistical data by drawing on Münsterberg’s help. Psycho­ technics had [A] practical task, because the purpose of this analysis is not a theoreti­ cal study of perception processes and also not a mere historical assess­ ment of past experiences; instead, it is an examination that serves the task of revealing the dependability of witnesses [and/or the architects,

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Feed(ing) Back M. V.] and thus influencing a judge’s [and/or an observer’s, M. V.] future decision.151

The problem with regard to the lack of data can be found in exactly these practical, future-oriented tasks. In his first publication, Münsterberg had already concluded that psychotechnical methods were appropriate for architecture. He had determined that the perception of spatial depth would be one of its main fields of interest and also expressed regret that psychotechnics was lacking “almost entirely in experimental data” for this purpose.152 In order to address this lack, Ladovsky had constructed his Prostrometr, which was similar to a stereoscope in that it had each eye – isolated from the other – look at two-dimensional set­ ups. Münsterberg had argued that the resulting stereoscopic effect was proof that our knowledge of the flatness of things and images does not exclude a real perception of depth: “The perspective from which our right eye sees the things on our table differs from the perspective of the left eye.” From that, he concluded, “The two different perspectives are bound into one image of the landscape in which distant objects appear much further away from us than those in the foreground. We feel the depth of things directly.”153 Ladovsky will very likely have used precisely this effect not only to collect data about vision similar to the data derived from the experiment with Le Corbusier; but also, his aim was to use this data first and foremost for very practical and material aims, that is, for trained architects and spatial constructions. In his laboratory, Ladovsky created an experimental procedure in which the collected data was merely a means to an end and thus required no safekeep­ ing; he moved from the experience of architectural effects in the streets to their instrumental testing in the laboratory and all the way to the encourage­ ment of future experiences via the training of both the perception ability of his architects and the construction of their buildings. In doing so, he went far beyond all of the manifestations of psychotechnics of his time; however, he still pursued goals that were entirely within the realm of psychotechnics. Both architects and psychotechnicians understood space as a stimulus for certain reactions; and both thought that addressees should be trained in such a way that they could learn how to compensate and synchronize this motor and sensory stimulus using their fragmented senses. If we see the absence of statistical data as owing to the precedence of practical purpose, then the emphasis shifts to the historical tradition of the apparatuses themselves. The search for analogies to Ladovsky’s devices leads to more evident connections to Western psychotechnics. In fact, the apparatuses point to a different story of architectural psychotechnics than the one provided by Ladovsky. In 1919, a Berlin-based psychotechnician named Walter Moede presented two instruments designed to test the senses: the Optometer and the Angle Estimator, and both devices were created to provide estimates rather than exact measurements of perception.154

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Figure 1.20a Moede’s Optometer (Baumgarten 1922, 143)

Much like Ladovsky’s Ploglazometr, the Optometer made it possible to calculate the relationship of forms, the level of attention and the speed of the estimates. The Angle Estimator corresponds to Ladovsky’s Oglazometr. And yet, aside from principal and functional affinities, it becomes apparent right away that Ladovsky’s apparatuses must have been developed more independently. Indeed, the materials and forms of both setups are simply

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Figure 1.20b Angle estimator (Baumgarten 1922, 144)

Figure 1.21 Topmost in the figure: Duchamp’s bicycle wheel, 1913, and Rotary Glass

Plates (Precision Optics), 1920

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too different. While Moede’s apparatuses were as refined and well-crafted as clocks, the Russian’s wood setup recalls more Marcel Duchamp’s Readymade Constructions. in their dismembered and re-designed state, these con­ structions only point to their original function, but can no longer be used as such.155 And yet this doesn’t mean that Ladovsky’s eye meters were improvised or inexpedient; on the contrary, apparatuses of the experimental sciences often constituted idiosyncratic combinations of known parts pieced together to form an unknown whole. One apparatus with a comparable function was made by experimental psychologist Edward Titchener in 1895 and served the same optical examination of spatial depth as Ladovsky’s Prostrometr – with a similarly archaic appearance.156 Developed 30  years prior to Ladovsky’s device, it consisted of simple wooden boxes visibly screwed together on the surface. Both Titchener and Ladovsky designed apparatuses that looked like models for apparatuses: they were the first of their kind and still entirely unsuitable for broad and/or

Figure 1.22 Apparatus for monocular and binocular depth assessment (Titchener 1895, from the virtual lab at the MPIWG Berlin)

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industrial use. In Ladovsky’s case, it is possible that the necessity of his new developments was the result of the highly underdeveloped status of research at the time: The objective state of development in the humanities, the entirely inad­ equate development of the science of art and the insignificant fruitful­ ness of modern psychology – these prevent us from fully realizing the psycho-organizational role that the spatial arts could play in life.157 Yet another reason for the independent construction of the instruments might be found in the difficult post-revolutionary situation in the Soviet Union. It is likely that many of the Russian devices were destroyed during the civil war, and new apparatuses were still difficult to access. Although the Rapallo Treaty enabled economic relations with Germany, the transfer of technical aid was often limited when no military advantages were involved. In general, a certain level of mistrust appeared to emerge when Russian developers merely copied the work of Western instrument builders. This may ultimately be due to Soviet ideology in the 1920s, which already preferred a genuine Soviet science, that is, one that was superior to the capitalist world.158 Accordingly, in 1928, Ladovsky’s group also promised that they “would give Soviet architects the ability to solve urban problems with methods that are inaccessible to Western architects and planners.”159 These ideological resent­ ments influenced the research dynamic of psychotechnics and caused feigned competitions. For example, in order to work with instruments and methods from Western nations in the first place, Isaak Spielrein, the director of a labo­ ratory for industrial psychotechnics, sought first to test them with regard to their functionality.160 The results of his tests were almost all negative, including also those relating to Walter Moede’s perception apparatuses. This approach allowed Soviet researchers to prove the necessity of state investments in the construction of apparatuses while also demonstrating their ideologi­ cally recognized research interests. There were, in fact, exemptions made for the import of know-how from the West. The only useful psychotechnical application imported from the capitalist West came in 1923 with a test method for pilots161 – here, again, the focus was on perception, albeit paired with a concrete military industrial applicability. The Central Institute for Labor in Moscow was another location where psychotechnical methods from the West were used. The head of that institute, Alexei Gastev, however, was not as skilled as Isaak Spielrein. In 1924, after having used Western apparatuses in the fifth laboratory, he was “forced to squander two years to overcome this legacy.”162 For Gastev, such a delay was especially fatal, seeing as he saw himself as nothing less than the ultimate rep­ resentative of Taylorism in Russia, that is, working in the service of increasing efficiency, optimizing the work processes and further developing the “one best worker.”163 After the psychotechnical apparatuses had impaired his research,

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it is no wonder that Gastev soon had very critical words for the discipline: he argued that psychotechnics “sorted people, but did not educate them.”164 According to Gastev, every Soviet citizen must be educated in such a way that he can “look with the eyes of the devil and hear with the ears of a dog.”165 Gastev and Spielrein founded their institute in the early 1920s in the first post-revolutionary phase of the industrial restoration in which Ladovsky’s plans for the psychotechnical architecture laboratory also emerged.166 The private-sector economy, which was permitted in a limited form after the civil war by Lenin’s New Economic Policy, contributed to a situation in which pre­ revolutionary desires could sometimes be implemented faster than before.167 One of these developments was the expansion of the Scientific Labor Organi­ zation, called NOT, whose framework was already determined by Trotsky, Bekhterev and Bogdanov at the first conference devoted to it in 1921: A necessary basis of scientific organization is formed by the world and findings of psycho-physiology, reflexology, labor hygiene and human fatigue, because this is the only way to do justice not only to the demands of economical business management, but also the interests of the working man.168 The latter, the “energy balance of workers,”169 marked the key difference to American Taylorism and led to a variety of enterprises throughout the entire Soviet empire that more or less successfully attempted to integrate all usable disciplines relating to labor management for the purposes of the protection of labor. Individual locations and entire laboratories were set up at people’s commissaries, institutes, universities and academies to perform labor-oriented research in Moscow, Petrograd, Kazan, Kharkiv, Kiev, Sverd­ lovsk, Rostov, Erivan, Minsk, Baku and Tashkent.170 Just as notable as the quantity of the findings with regard to the Scientific Labor Organization (NOT) was the diversity of professions brought together by the labor management movement, including physiologists, psychologists, philosophers, painters and architects. For example, Michael Matyushin wrote “NOT in Art” in giant letters above the door of his laboratory in Leningrad; Nicolai Ladovsky set up his own section for the scientific organization of work at his psychotechnical architecture laboratory; Alexander Bogdanov criticized Taylorism and well-known supposedly “pure researchers,”171 such as Nicolai Bernstein, Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria and Vladimir Bekhterev, met in journals and at conferences as “impure practitioners” of the scientific organization of work. Just as in Russian psychology, Soviet labor studies had a hybrid nature in terms of disciplines and a more or less state-sponsored proximity to actual practice.172 The reasons for its ultimate success are obvious: the goal was to address three immense problems at once, that is, an ailing industrial base, a mass of unqualified and mostly illiterate unskilled workers and a paradoxical policy that attempted to reconcile business and

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social interests, industrialization and socialism.173 In short, the Russian econ­ omy was threatening to shrink again after the civil war, much like the cooling foam of milk that has gotten too hot. The Moscow-based psychotechnicians were geographically closest to Ladovsky’s experimental architecture. Given the aforementioned diversity within the Scientific Labor Organization (NOT) movement, it is hardly pos­ sible to speak of “the psychotechnicians.” Complex debates between the rep­ resentatives of the different labor-management approaches did even more to complicate the clear differentiation between psychotechnics, psychophysiol­ ogy and physiological labor management sciences. It is therefore wise to take a look at Ladovsky’s environment. In 1922, Isaak Spielrein, who initiated psychotechnics in Russia and was active at several locations in Moscow simultaneously,174 devoted himself to the “examination of professions from a psychological standpoint and from the perspective of professional psychogra­ phy.”175 In order to pursue the latter, psychologists themselves carried out the profession they were seeking to improve and regularly charted their work in a so-called “psychographic” manner; the goal was ultimately to improve the work situation, for example, by means of adjustments to office furniture.176 At the same time, they developed tests to determine the suitability and apti­ tude of switchboard operators, tram drivers, type-setters, soldiers and many other relatively new professions. The idea behind these tests was to move past bourgeois profiles – such as class, personal connections and family mem­ bers – to determine and apply a person’s ability to work. Another possibility was to use these tests to make legions of famers employable in the first place. Spielrein’s approach was far from being narrowly focused on occupational selection, which is something psychotechnics was accused of repeatedly by competing labor management scientists such as Aleksei Gastev. He optimized his workers by changing their environments; in turn, he changed the world of labor by changing its participants. In doing so, Spielrein involved the two sides of psychotechnics that were decisive for the rationalization concept of the 1920s, which Ladovsky also covered, that is, the improvement of both the objective working conditions and subjective efforts.177 Gastev also operated within this spectrum. His concept of the so-called “ustanovka” had a double meaning: on the one hand, it referred to the “installation, setup, and technical equipment” and, on the other hand, the “set­ ting in terms of subjective attitude.”178 First, Gastev analyzed work processes by means of time and movement studies; then he picked apart the move­ ments of his participants down to the smallest units possible, at which point each unit was then trained individually and ultimately put back together anew to form the most effective workflow possible. The result was the “cul­ tural setting” of the worker, which meant both his inclusion within the for­ mal organization of the workspace and his “psychological attitude.”179 In Gastev’s context, psychology was limited to the reconstruction of the move­ ment apparatus, to the creation of “nerve-muscle machines,”180 that is, of human machines whose mental state would change as a result of the training

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of their physique: “Machinification standardizes not only the gestures, that is, not only the methods of production, but also daily thoughts.”181 In this process, Ladovsky, Spielrein and Gastev’s setups were in accordance with one another. And yet, Ladovsky and Gastev had even more in common: the lat­ ter was also well-networked in the Russian avant-garde, published poems in avant-garde journals and participated in political discussion roundtables.182 Also, his role model for this new culture of movement was not ‘movement genius’ but rather a perception genius, that is, not a gymnast, but a traffic cop.183 Gastev’s attacks on psychotechnics can only be understood if one remem­ bers that he headed up the most important labor-management institute in the Soviet Union – the Central Institute of Labor – until the first five-year plan, at which point he was faced with competition from psychotechnics. In 1927, the First Russian Conference for Psychology of Occupational Selec­ tion led to the founding of the All Union Society for Psychotechnics, which brought together the most important labor management institutes and pub­ lished its own journal.184 The government increasingly became interested in the dissemination of psychotechnical methods: for example, it involved the Moscow Institute for Labor Protection, where Spielrein also worked in the technological planning of large-scale state projects and ordered mass psy­ chological tests at schools – designed to create the so-called “psychological profiles.”185 Whether Ladovsky was involved in these circles is yet unknown: however, it is noteworthy that he was able to found and equip his psychotechnical laboratory in precisely the same year in which psychotechnics was enjoying enormous popularity. And many other things are also noteworthy at this point. For example, Ladovsky named the psycho-profiles of his architecture students after the government-mandated psychological profiles that had been developed by a Russian neurologist named Grigory Rossolimo.186 As a co-founder of the Society for Experimental Psychology in Russia, Rossolimo had developed not only a series of new apparatuses with such promising names as ‘brain topographs,’ ‘synergometers’ and ‘orthocynometers’; since 1923/24, as head of the Neurological Institute at Moscow University, he had also been dealing with psychotechnics.187 His profiles did not envisage any testing of the abili­ ties of his specimens; instead he measured exactly the same things Ladovsky was also looking at, that is, attention, memory and the combination of individual feelings. Much like the intelligence tests developed later, the psycho-profiles served not only the education and fostering of especially gifted children by means of the selection process but also the early recogni­ tion of mental disorders. It is therefore not surprising that Rossolimo had come up with the idea of an “aesthetic medicine” already many years before the revolution; the idea involved the psychiatric control of art and art educa­ tion, and he had tried to implement this after the revolution at the very same ‘genius institutes’ for which Kandinsky had fought.188 The genius institutes were, in fact, never founded, but we can definitely see psychotechnics as a

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realization of these early efforts to bring an entire culture under the direction of the life scientists. And, at this point, it was the artists’ turn to respond. Psychotechnical Architecture as Technology If the task of psychotechnics lay “in the assignment of people to professions; the rationalization of the influence of human beings .  .  .  ; the rationaliza­ tion of labor including the examination of fatigue, the rationalization of the workers’ movement,”189 what then should we think of an architecture that provoked such a wide variety of movements that we can no longer even rec­ ognize its rationalistic basis? The coexistence of two architectures – on the one hand, that of a precise, simplified form and, on the other hand, that of a formal overload of the gaze, in other words order and clarity versus chaos and confusion – is in no way new in the history of architecture. Indeed, the first ancient Greek designs for the ideal city knew how to use confus­ ing spaces within their geometrically sorted street system: “The structure of private residencies is more tasteful and more in keeping with other practical matters when it is rectilinear. . . . On the other hand, the opposite is . . . better for security purposes in war. Because in this form of construction, the enemy would find it hard to find their way out of the confusion of buildings, and they would also find it difficult to navigate their way through it.”190 HannoWalter Kruft defines the ideal city as “the paradoxical attempt to realize a utopia, the design of a city as its visible footprint.”191 These utopias pertained to state and social models, political systems and aesthetic reflections, that is, to both outward protection and the inner organization of societies. In the course of the 1920s, as the city administration demanded new plans for the ongoing development of the Soviet capital, the Rationalists began to design ideal cities.192 In light of these projects, it becomes especially clear what kind of machine the experimentalization of perception in Ration­ alist architecture fell back on. In 1928, one of Ladovsky’s students, called Popov, conceived a “New City” unparalleled in historical visions of cities; indeed, it is much more comparable to the surveillance architecture of the late 18th century.193 Although Popov used a ring-shaped arrangement of buildings, just as urban planners in medieval cities might have done, there is one aspect that is entirely new: the center of his system, that is, the eight locations in the center, is elevated. From these eight points, eight residential complexes run outward at the same distance so that their endpoints again form a circle. This type of arrangement was described by Michel Foucault in his ground­ breaking critique of the Enlightenment as Panoptism, that is, as a political technology that dates back to Jeremy Bentham’s “simple architectural idea of the Panopticum.”194 In 1787, Bentham was in Belarus, and he used the opportunity of a major restructuring of English correctional facilities to sug­ gest in letters to England “a new method” designed to “give the mind power over the mind in a unprecedented level: a power that is simultaneously free

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Figure 1.23 V. Popov, diploma project on the subject of the “New City,” Ladovsky Workshop 1928 (Khan-Magomedov 2000, 104)

to an equally unprecedented degree to anyone who wanted to abuse it.”195 Whether Bentham’s stay in Belarus played a role or not, it is safe to say, in light of these obvious parallels, that Russian architects were aware of his idea on the optimization of control in prisons, correctional facilities, workhouses, factories, insane asylums, hospitals or schools. The basic principle of Bentham’s system was a central elevated tower within a ring-shaped structure, whose spaces, filled with light, could be – but

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Figure 1.24 Top: layout of the Mazas prison Bottom: Petite Roquette prison, Youth Detention Center, 1836 (Foucault 1994, image section, interior, 23)

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didn’t have to be – observed from the tower. Foucault declared this to be the central moment of a paradigmatic change in control: So to arrange things that surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it: in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.196 Those who are under observation assume that they are under observation at all times, seeing as they cannot see into the observation tower. As a result, their control over the mechanisms of power is severely restricted, if it can be said to be conscious at all. Thus, they behave at all times in a way that is the equiva­ lent of self-control, seeing as it implied control, although that control was not a pre-requisite. The panopticum was a technology, a machine that functions independently from its helmsmen, “because the permanent pressure already has its effect even before the committing of any errors, mistakes and crimes.” This is a highly economic form of the exercise of power, one that reduced the actual monitoring authority, whose “strengths is that never intervenes, it is exercised spontaneously and without noise. . . . Because, without any physical other than architecture and geometry it acts directly on individuals.”197 One could accuse Rationalist architecture of the same thing Foucault accuses the project of the Enlightenment: that it made each individual aware at all times of the control mechanisms regulating him. It also made sure that that individual was potentially visible and could be disciplined therefore at all times and in all locations, that is, that he was imprisoned in a mechanism. Popov even expanded Bentham’s facility further by including eight towers at the center instead of just one tower; in addition to that, yet another even higher tower was placed at the end of each house line, so that the first observation post was itself observed by a second post. One element, however, was missing in Popov’s residential complex, and that is the ring that encircled the center and in which, in Bentham’s model, the cells and their inmates were housed. This could be interpreted to mean that Popov’s power mechanism is interrupted, that there indeed would be nothing to observe and control in a society of freed workers, that this architecture would not disguise anyone’s view, but instead open it up. His architecture staged the view and was directed toward the seeking eye of its human addressee. However, the exact opposite could also be true; it might be the case that Popov sought to expand the control of power at the closed facility to cover the entire society, that is, that he sought to cover even the space between the closed units and outside of them; indeed, this would imply that the tower guards could control the entire workers’ culture and go far beyond merely looking into individual cells. What he most definitely had in his

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sights were the processes between them, the hustle and bustle on the paths and meadows. As Foucault recognized with regard to the Enlightenment, socialist society is also not able to resolve this ambiguity. It is a permanent see-saw of discipline and enlightenment, seeing and being seen, control and self-control, order and chaos, overview and scatteredness – precisely those ambivalences contained in the two architectures of Constructivism and Rationalism. At this point, the question cannot be whether these architectures orient themselves to machines, mechanisms, nature or people; what is decisive here is what kind of machine society uses to measure itself. Alexei Gastev eluci­ dated the panoptic image of an automatically operating society machine in an impressively blunt way: The proletariat is not only constructing a new industry on the basis of certain “types” and “groups” of people. . . ; in its psychology, it also sucks in the entire grandiose structure of the machinery it has set up. This takes place already in the montage of the factory itself, which is visible for all: in this process of construction, operations and fabrica­ tions must be firmly coordinated with one another. . . . , and during every operation and every fabrication, each “type” must submit to the other and be controlled by another. At this point, the psychol­ ogy of the proletariat already transforms into a new social psychology where one human complex works under the control of the other and where the “controller”, in accordance with his work qualification, often stands under the “controlled” and is often entirely unknown to that person.198 If we understand the man–machine analogy as a reciprocal figure, then the difference between man and machine disappears. If the role model of Rationalistic architects was the panoptical machine that operated soundlessly and unnoticed and set in motion everything around it, then human beings themselves had to be able to move automatically and unnoticed within this machinery – as unconsciously as the machine they were a part of. The conse­ quence of this analogy would be that when people don’t notice how a control machine works, the machines also can’t know how people can elude their control. Both, however, behave as if they were reckoning with the other at all times. With the help of his psychotechnical perception experiments, Nicolai Ladovsky dealt with the users of his architecture not merely as reflex appara­ tuses; instead, he also trained them as such, he prompted them to perceive as machines would, to move like machines would, that is, in an automatic and unnoticeable way. By turning off their consciousness, they could react with fragmented, perceptual and motor functions and thus be transformed into mere objects – ones that, in the end, could do nothing other than go fast.199 Nevertheless, Ladovsky introduced a paradigmatic innovation to Fou­ cault’s description of the panopticum around 1800: he had the consumers of

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his architecture become active not in the supposedly enlightened knowledge of their own disciplining; instead, he trained them in the overloading of their senses in the realm of unconscious200 undisciplined behavior. In other words, he trained them in precisely that area in which the machines and control mechanisms seemed to be one step ahead of them, that is, in automatic, unthinking, unpredictable movement, in automatic mutual control and in the withdrawal of control. Thus, the panoptic machine was functionally imitated; but this imitation was not undertaken in favor of a subordinating submission, rather in favor of a strategic conversion. In conclusion, we can establish four stages in Ladovsky’s psychotechnical method: (1) the observation of the impressions of real-life architecture (in an urban space), (2) the analysis of perception (in the laboratory), (3) architec­ tural construction (in the workshop) and (4) the influencing of the human psyche (in public spaces). We were able to look at the first three moments using the apparatuses, protocols, syllabi and architectural models available to us. The fourth moment, on the other hand, creates historiographic prob­ lems, seeing as the subject – the man in a public space – was not connected to any feedback system and thus left behind no material to speak of. It is precisely due to this deficiency of transmitted material that Ladovsky suf­ fered early on. It is possible, however, that his decisive motivation for the use of psychotechnics lay precisely in that deficiency: ‘How can the effects of space be transported reliably to users, and how can their reactions, feelings, and reflexes be provoked systematically?’ This is exactly what he must have asked himself as he took his first walks through Moscow at night to test on himself the effects of steep stairs and rows of buildings; after that, he would feed back these effects into the laboratory, where they were re-created and reconstructed on apparatuses, in order to ultimately return to the public space in the form of universal, architectural elements. This way, Ladovsky indeed got no concrete feedback from users of his architecture; instead, he turned himself and the architects of his faculty into transmitters of this feedback. They were the disruptive factors that moved simultaneously in the urban space and in the laboratory, so as to be able to portray events on top of one another. Just as the term feedback in the realm of radio technology means creating a definite and unstoppable valid connection between two poles, so too did Ladovsky create this connection between the people inside and out­ side, between laboratory and society. Thus, he generated an epistemic loop that used experiences taken from the urban space in order to study them visually in a closed laboratory; at this point in the process, he would use these experiences to train the users of his architecture in the open architectural environment. Whether this training in the sense of a panopticum in fact created a social machine that ‘frees,’ and what it means for freedom, when it is freed from consciousness, is left equally open by an analysis of these architectural processes as other psychotechnical arrangements. However, the question remains: by what means other than those of architecture was the human psyche trained in the Soviet Union?

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Notes 1 The Centrosoyuz (the building of the Central Union of Consumer Cooperatives) was built on the same street in which both Ladovsky and Rodchenko lived at the time. It was located in the direct vicinity of VKhUTEMAS at 39 Myasnitskaya Street (at that time it was called Pervomaiskaya). 2 The experiment was remembered by a student of Ladovsky’s and passed on to me by Selim O. Khan-Magomedov in a discussion in Moscow on June 19, 2003; Kirill Afanasjew briefly mentions Le Corbusier’s test, but without giving any details or describing the consequences in ibid., 1973, 26. 3 “Pervaya Deklaraciya” (“First Declaration”) 1928, in Khazanova 1970, 125. This declaration emerged at the end of 1928 at the founding of the architecture group known as the “ARU Association of Architects – Urbanists,” with whom Ladovsky developed urban concepts. For a biography of Ladovsky and text excerpts, see Barchin 1975, Vol. 1, 337–364. 4 The People’s Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment, NARKOMPROS, was a Soviet government agency set up in 1917. It was responsible for the administration of educational and artistic institutions including the management and maintenance of museums and monuments. Among the individuals active in the sections for music, photography, film, literature, theater and visual arts (ISO) were Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Osip Brik, see Lodder 1983, 48 et seq. The institutional program is documented in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF, F. A-2306, op. 2, ed. khr. 13. For more on the history of NARKOMPROS, see Fitzpatrick 1970, and for the arts in particular, see 110 et seq. 5 VKhUTEMAS (Higher Artistic Technical Workshops) was a merger of two facilities that had existed before the Revolution, that is, the Stroganov Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts and the Moscow Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, cf. MARKHI 1991. For more on the NARKOMPROS decree from December 19, 1920, see Khan-Magomedov 1990, Vol. 1, 43. For more on the history of VKhUTEMAS, see Zhadova 1970. VKhUTEMAS will hereafter be referred to as the “Workshops” for the sake of readability. 6 Tillberg 2003, 54.

7 Khan-Magomedov 1993, 28.

8 Tillberg 2003, 54.

9 Métraux describes the interdisciplinarity of Russian psychology as the central

difference to psychology in Europe and America; see ibid., 1986, 628 and 629. 10 Ibid., 628. 11 The research institutions for psychology and physiology organized by NARKOMPROS can be inferred by means of the protocols in GARF, F. A-2306 op. 19 and in GARF, F. 259, op. 24, d. 9, l. 280–285. 12 The GUS State Education Council examined matters of education as part of the NARKOMPROS. Chairman of the Council from 1921 to 1933 was M. N. Pokrovsky; members included N. K. Krupskaya and A. V. Lunacharsky. For an overview of the institutions and events under the auspices of the GUS, see GARF, F. A-298, op. 1. For more on the emergence of Soviet research institutes, cf. Gra­ ham 1975. 13 Other research on physiology and psychology within the network of the state science research institutes can be found in GARF F. 259, op. 24, d. 9, l. 280–285 (status as of Oct. 29, 1931). 14 For more on labor-management sciences in Russia before and after the Revolu­ tion, see Tatur 1979. 15 GARF, F. A-298, op. 1, ed. khr. 1.

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16 Sections of the GUS in the years 1921–1933 are presented in GARF F. A-298, op. 1. 17 The Russian Academy for Artistic Sciences RAKhN was the theoretical coun­ terpart to the practice-oriented VKhUTEMAS Workshops. In 1925, the Russian Academy was renamed GAKhN, State Academy for Artistic Culture. Cf. Misler 1996. For more on the NARKOMPROS institutes for artistic and scientific edu­ cation, see the protocols of the Index of organizations to the protocols of the NARKOMPROS in GARF, F. A-2306, op. 19, scientific department 1917–1925. 18 Galison 1990, 711 19 Umansky 1920, 19–20. 20 On the characteristics of Constructivism, see Lodder 1986. Bowlt provides a broad definition of Constructivism: “The primary purpose . . . was to project a new human being whose mind and body would function in harmony,” in Chernova 1996, 416–417. 21 Lodder 1983, on Umansky and his report for the NARKOMPROS department of the visual arts ISO headed by Lunacharsky, see 233 and 235. 22 It is unclear whether the use of wood was intentional or arose due to lack of other materials. The monument was supposed to be made of reinforced concrete supporting a rotating glass cylinder, a cube and a pyramid on the interior, see Trotsky 1972 [1924], 205 and Lissitzky 1922 in Lissitzky-Küppers 1992, 343. For a more recent description of Tatlin’s tower, see Kursell and Schäfer 2004, 185–186. 23 From El Lissitzky “Prouns (Towards the Defeat of Art),” 1920–21. Emphasis in the original. Lissitzky’s Prouns arose out of his cooperation with Malevich and are more often connected with Suprematism than with Constructivism. 24 Lodder 1983, 234. Constructivism, like Productivism, can be understood as an applied development of Russian Futurism, see Taylor 1991, 182. Khan-Magomedov emphasizes the difficulty of systematically separating Constructivism and Productivism, ibid., 1994, 237. Gassner avoids this problem by classifying Tatlin as an artist of material culture and Lissitzky as a Constructivist and by distin­ guishing both from the productive Constructivists, ibid. in Gassner, Kopanski, Stengel (eds.) 1992, 48 et seq. For Groys, even Kazimir Malevich is a Construc­ tivist, ibid., 74. Senkevitch sensibly suggests understanding Productivism as a theoretical basis of Constructivism and seeing Tatlin, Malevich and Kandinsky as inspirers of Constructivism, Senkevitch 1974, 140. 25 The historian of the Moscow avant-garde S. O. Khan-Magomedov coined the concept of Rationalism for Ladovsky’s architecture, even though it was known much more as Formalism in Russia of 1920s; taken from a discussion with Khan-Magomedov on June  17, 2003, in Moscow. Ladovsky himself referred to his architecture in his essay on architectural theory as being Rationalist, see ibid., 1926a, 3–5. German translation in Pistorius 1992, 40–42. 26 Melnikov as quoted in Starr 1978, 116. The ASNOVA, Architecture Associa­ tion was a group of architects headed up by Ladovsky starting in 1923. OSA, Society for Contemporary Architects, was founded in 1925 with the Construc­ tivist Vesnin brothers and Mois Ginzburg. At that point, a number of ASNOVA members changed sides. 27 The commission was subordinate to the Sculpture section at the ISO NARKOM­ PROS, see Khan-Magomedov 1984, 15 et seq. Taylor 1991, 71 and Lodder 1983, 60. 28 Punin 1919, quoted in Taylor 1991, 69. 29 Lissitzky’s letter from June 20, 1925, in Lissitzky-Küppers 1992, 61. Ladovsky met Lissitzky in 1921, when he gave a speech on his Prouns at INKhUK.

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30 The Izvestiya ASNOVA – Assotsiatsii novykh arkhitektorov (News of the Association of New Architects) was published only once in 1926: at 1,500 copies, the circulation was high for an art publication. 31 Lissitzky undated, in Lissitzky-Küppers 1992, 367. 32 The magazine ASNOVA 1926, 8. Designed by El Lissitzky. Quoted here from the unpublished archival edition from Ladovsky’s estate with corrections by Lis­ sitzky that indicate the reading direction presented here, in RGALI, F. 2361, op. 1, ed. khr. 59. 33 Ibid. 34 Ladovsky 1926a, 4. 35 A distinction between movements such as this – one that follows the historical actors – can be found, among others, in Khan-Magomedov 1983, 69 and 106. In his dissertation, which represents the most comprehensive work on Rationalism to date, Anatole Senkevitch focuses exclusively on theoretical statements made by the architects and thus avoids the formal indifferences. However, he comes to the conclusion that the distinction between Constructivism and Rationalism is in many cases untenable. 36 Khan-Magomedov 1984, 34. 37 Khan-Magomedov 1983, 108. The employees of this new department were Nicolai V. Dokuchaev and Vladimir Krinsky and the former students W. Balikhin, M. Turkus, M. Korshev, I. Lamtsov, S. Glagolyev and J. Spassky. See Khazanova 1971, 31. 38 It is noteworthy that the rejection of pre-revolutionary art was not shared by the power holders of the early 1920s, such as Trotsky, Lenin and Lunacharsky. They took a neutral stance toward all art movements and felt that none should be regulated by political intervention. For more on the cultural policies of the 1920s, see Senkevitch 1974, 46–67. 39 See the designs of the Constructivist Alexei Gan in 1922, who understood the anti-static and universal rules of art as a logical consequence of the dynamic revolution. 40 The interest in scientifically justifiable effects of artistic performance has precur­ sors, among others, in the neurosciences of the late 19th century, as Sven Dierig shows using the example of a writer and pianist, Dierig 2001. 41 Ladovsky cited in Khan-Magomedov 1984, 31. The source of these statements attributed to Ladovsky is not named by Khan-Magomedov. He partly repro­ duces presentations. In these cases, it is not possible to quote original texts: however, this does not mean it is not possible that these originals could be found in private archives. 42 This design process garnered Rationalism countless misunderstandings as well as accusations of idealism and formalism. The infiltration of the material surface and the examination of perception were interpreted as a retreat to the imagina­ tion and/or to emotional experiences, see Senkevitch 1974, 298 and 301. 43 Ladovsky developed his psychoanalytical method already in 1921 during his work at INKhUK. The heyday of psychoanalysis began, however, only in 1923 with the founding of the first Soviet psychoanalytical institute. An early and impressive report on psychoanalysis in Russia was published by Wilhelm Reich in 1929. See also Etkind 1996 [1993]. 44 Senkevitch 1974, 73. He also refers to the fact that Russian Rationalism in the 19th century was influenced by the Rationalistic thought that came out of Ger­ many and France in the 18th century. 45 Ladovsky quoted acc. to Khan-Magomedov 1984, 18. 46 Ladovsky’s note on the design for the communal house in 1920 in Khan-Magomedov 1983, 544.

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47 Ladovsky 1919 in Barchin 1975, Vol. 1, 343–344. 48 Ladovsky’s psychoanalytical method is described in Khan-Magomedov 1984, 30 et seq. and Senkevitch 1974, 298 et seq. 49 Anatole Senkevitch achieves a highly comprehensible description of Ladovsky’s space-form concept, see Senkevitch 1974, 340. 50 Ladovsky mentioned this collection of forms and terminologies of architecture for the first time in a report by his group at INKhUK in 1921, cf. Papadakis 1991, 25. This dictionary was realized in the course of the 1920s upon the sug­ gestion of Wassily Kandinsky at the RAKhN, see Misler 1996, 126. In addition, in 1922, Florensky and Larionov worked on a so-called “Symbolarium,” that is, a dictionary of symbols. 51 Khan-Magomedov 1984, 32. 52 Ladovsky in Arkhitectura i VKhUTEIN 1929, 8, quoted after Khan-Magomedov 1984, 42–43. 53 Personal estate of Nicolai Ladovsky, in RGALI F. 680, op. 2, ed. khr. 2597. His place of birth is listed as Kotelny in Volynia, Ukraine. 54 For more on Ladovsky’s education, see Khan-Magomedov 1984, 6–8. 55 Barchin 1975, Vol. 1, 337. 56 Letter written by Lissitzky to Sophie Küppers on July  20, 1925, in LissitzkyKüppers 1992, 62. Emphasis in the original. 57 An apartment block on Tverskaya Street (at Red Square) designed by Ladovsky was also built with many modifications and significant construction delays. The Red Stadium on the Lenin hills was not built due to static problems, much like the building of Ladovsky’s “Green City” garden city near Moscow was halted after the initial building phase. His students and colleagues were responsible for further buildings, such as the Central Cultural and Recreation Park in Moscow, the Culture Palace of Metal Workers, the Palace of Councilors, and many more. In addition, many designs and plans were created as part of competition contri­ butions and teaching exercises. Cf. Ladovsky 1930b, Bliznakov 1990, 162. 58 Ladovsky designed only the portal of the “Red Gate” metro station. For the “Lubyanka” station, he also designed the platform hall, see Noever 1994, p. 170/171. 59 Thanks to Helmut Müller-Sievers for pointing out the stone block construction as opposed to concrete and steel construction. For more on columns and portals as architectural ordering elements, see Rykwert 1999. 60 The works of the orthodox priest and physician Pavel Florensky were very instructive in this case, at least as philosophical parallel phenomena. He wrote in 1919 about the “inverted perspective” and also made reference to notions of space in the Middle Ages. 61 Senkevitch 1974, 344. 62 In the 1930s, the station was named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the secret service: “Dzerzhinskaya.” Ladovsky for sure designed and realized the platform; the portal has been realized by Joseph Loveyko probably along the design of Ladovsky. 63 Ladovsky, quoted here from Khan-Magomedov 1984, 19. 64 After the revolution in Russia, faculties were renamed “laboratories,” see Alex­ androv 2003a and 2003b, so that the term “Laboratorium” from that era did not necessarily always represent an experimental lab. 65 Mayakovsky, quoted here from Khan-Magomedov 1983, 14.

66 Ibid.

67 Lissitzky 1925, in Lissitzky-Küppers, 358.

68 Le Corbusier 1930, quoted here from Kopp 1990, 179.

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69 The descriptions are reproduced here in the form of paraphrases and transla­ tions; see Lavrov and Krutikov, both 1928. Khan-Magomedov describes the instruments in detail on the basis of this article and personal depictions by Kru­ tikov, see Khan-Magomedov 1984, 51–53. It is very likely that the RGALI has more material on this subject that was not available at the time of this research for the present study. 70 For the sake of memorability, the names are kept in the Russian original here. They are constructions derived from the functions of the instruments and pro­ duce, when translated, composites such as “space measurer,” “distance meas­ urer,” “surface measurer,” “volume measurer” and “angle measurer.” 71 Krutikov 1928a, 373, and Lavrov 1928, 17. Rationalist architectural teaching was transmitted by Nicolai Dokuchaev in 1927 in a course on the “Basics of Art of Architecture,” the formal elements of which were size, modulation, rhythm, mass and weight. These elements deserve an even more precise examination in comparison to Ladovsky’s methods. In 1974, Senkevitch undertook the first classification of Dokuchaev, 358 et seq. 72 Ladovsky 1926a, 4. 73 Krutikov 1928a, 373. 74 For more on the role of feelings in experimental laboratories, see the publica­ tions of Otniel Dror, published in 1999 in ISIS and his lecture “Antinomies in the Laboratory: Emotion as Object and Knowledge” at the “Experimental Cul­ tures” conference held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, December 2001. For more on the research objects of physiology, see Rothschuh. 75 Anatole Senkevitch 1974, 375/376. 76 Krutikov 1928a, 373. 77 Krutikov 1928b, 406. 78 Khan-Magomedov 1993, 198. El Lissitzky had planned to set up a film studio at VKhUTEMAS, which would most likely have belonged to Ladovsky’s depart­ ment, see Lissitzky in a letter to Sophie Küppers, in Lissitzky-Küppers 1992, 65. 79 Ladovsky, quoted here in Khan-Magomedov 1984, 53. 80 For more on labor management film and on Gilbreth, see Reichert 2001 and 2002, Mehrtens 2003 and Gilbreth 1921. For more on film and psychotechnics, see von Herrmann 2002. 81 Krutikov 1928b, 375. 82 Lunacharsky, quoted here in Pistorius 1992, 115. VKhUTEIN was the name used by VKhUTEMAS to refer to itself starting in 1928. 83 Starr, Frederick S., 1978, 64. 84 Khan-Magomedov 1983, 142. 85 For more on the functional method of Constructivism, see Ginzburg’s series of articles in the magazine Sovetskaya architectura. 86 Ladovsky in Arkhitektura i VKhUTEIN 1929, 8. The “effect form” (“Wirkungs­ form”) is attributed by Senkevitch to Rationalism in contrast to the “existence form” (“Daseinsform”) of the Constructivists, see ibid., 1974, 123. He under­ stands this difference, however, in a philosophical sense and not in relation to labor management sciences. 87 Hudson tests the theories of Rationalism and Constructivism by means of their architecture; however, he does not consider one of Ladovsky’s buildings, see ibid., 1994, 30 et seq. Catherine Cooke comes to the conclusion that “very similar looking work derives from several quite different philosophies of architecture,” ibid., 1991, 10. Vladimir Paperny describes the relationship of post-revolution­ ary architecture and socialist-realist architecture as Culture 1 and 2, whereby he argues that the former has reduced art to the level of life in the course of the

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96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105 106

107 108

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rationalization of all areas, whereas the latter has elevated life to the level of art. He is not able to assign a form to Nikolai Ladovsky, see ibid., 2002, 51–52. Hudson 1994, 25–27. Ginzburg 1924, 114. On Ginzburg’s biography, see Barkhin 1974, Vol. 2, 266–276. Ladovsky’s comment on the design of the community house, in Khan-Magomedov 1983, 544. Ginzburg 1923, 9. Ginzburg dealt not only with American Fordism; his essay “Tselevaya Ustanovka” (Target Setting) also suggests an involvement with Gastev’s movement concepts at Moscow’s CIT, see Senkevitch 1974, 237 et seq. “Opity v Institute ritma” (Experiments at the Institute for Rhythm), 26. This note was taken from Anatole Senkevitch 1974, 152, footnote 40. For more on the analogy of man and machine in the history of labor manage­ ment sciences, see in particular Rabinbach 2001. Ladovsky 1926a, 4. Hudson also refers to Ginzburg’s debate with Wilhelm Wundt, which has not been sufficiently examined to date, see ibid., 1994, 50–51 and Ginzburg 1924, 112. Hudson 1994, 51. Accusations of “utopian” thinking were launched at both Constructivists and Rationalists for the first time in the 1930s by the Social-Realists and led to the banning of the groups. The fact that this accusation continues to be a trait attributed to the Soviet avant-garde to this day in secondary literature is quite amazing. If we compare their practices with those of the scientists they refer to, we see that corresponding utopian characteristics led to highly positivist theories, see for example, Taylor 1991, Glatzer Rosenthal 2004, Krieger 1998. Dokuchaev 1926, 9, quoted here in Senkevitch 1974, 392. Dokuchaev is quoted here as a representative of the Rationalists, seeing as he has published much more than Ladovsky. See Ladovsky 1930b.

Okhitovich 1929, quoted here in Kopp 1990, 183.

Dokuchaev 1928, 53, quoted here in Senkevitch 1974, 399.

Dokuchaev 1928, 53, quoted here in Senkevitch 1974, 401. Ibid. Musil 1978, 246 (German edition). Quoted here from the English translation: The Man without Qualities, Picador Classics, Pan Macmillan, 1997, 61. Tillberg 2003, 56. For example, Mordvinov reported in 1931 about the Bauhaus and Hannes Mey­ er’s architecture in a four-page newspaper article in the Moscow Architectural Newspaper known as Sovetskaya arkhitectura. For more on German architects in the Soviet Union, see Kopp 1990. For more on perception physiology at the Bauhaus and Walter Gropius in particular, see Müller 2004, 61 et seq. Meyer 1928, 12. English quote taken from Wingler, 1969, 153. For more on the history of VKhUTEMAS, not only see Zhadova 1970 but also Khan-Magomedov 1984, Bojko 1982, Lodder 1983. Alongside Alexander Luria and Lev Vygotsky, Leontiev was a representative of the cultural–psychological school in Russia. Kandinsky 1933, 126, quoted here in Senkevitch 1974, 321. See Kandinsky, Viktor K. 1880; for further information, see Misler 2002; Chel­ panov, a colleague of Wundt, quoted him time and again in his works. Bekhterev also worked in Wundt’s lab. In addition to Wundt’s influence, Gestalt psychol­ ogy also affected the aesthetic research done in Russia. Nicoletta Misler points out that employees at RAKhN contributed to Wertheimer’s magazine Psycholo­ gische Forschung (Psychological Research), see ibid., 1997, 125. For more on Wundt in Russia, see Sirotkina 2002 and Joravsky 1989.

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109 Senkevitch 1974, 324, and Misler 1997, 14 et seq. Kandinsky was also Vice-President of RAKhN. Misler provides an excellent overview of RAKhN’s departments, members and programs. The ways in which these programs were implemented and why they were implemented that way remain unknown. 110 See Lavrentiev 1984. 111 Catalogue Matyushin und die Leningrader Avantgarde 1991, 44. Tillberg examines Matyushin comprehensively, see ibid., 2003, and especially on visual perception, 135 et seq. 112 Ibid. appendix, 52. 113 Matyushin 1924, quoted after Gmurzynska 1977, 121. 114 Remembered by Krutikov, a student of Ladovsky’s, and passed on to me by Khan-Magomedov during a conversation in Moscow, June 19, 2003. 115 Tillberg 2003, 159–161. Based on Tillberg’s depictions, we can assume that Matyushin followed an experimental routine, but we do not know how he cre­ ated the constants in his experiments. Apparently his apparatuses served to stim­ ulate sensory organs, but they did not record test procedures. 116 RGALI, F. 941. RAKhN counted few avantgardists among its members, but it still cooperated with their institutions, such as the VKhUTEMAS Workshops, and ensured a broad dissemination of their theories: from 1921 to 1924, the academy organized 1,087 lectures, see Misler 1996, 123. 117 Chelpanov was one of the initiators of experimental psychology in Russia and the first director of the Psychological Institute at Moscow University. Vygotsky was the founder of the cultural–historical school in Soviet psychology and also literary critic and forerunner of cognitive psychology. Kapterev was a biologist and philosopher and, starting in 1924, director of the Moscow Society for Hyp­ nosis. For more on RAKhN, see Chubarov 2003, Misler 1996 and 1997 and Barck 2002. 118 Cf. Misler 1996, 124 and Protokol Nr. 4. Zasedanii Soveta Nauçno-khudoz­ hestvennoj Komissii (Protocol No. 4. Meeting of the Soviet of Scientific-Artistic Commission) in RGALI, F. 941, ed. khr. 4, l. 7. Gabrichevsky co-organized with Kandinsky the Physico-Psychological Department at RAKhN and was one of the founders of the Department of Architectural History and Urban Planning at VKhUTEMAS, see MARKHI 1991, 84. 119 For more on the Psycho-Physical Lab, see Protokols Nr. 1–6 Zased. komissii po psikhotekhniki vokalnogo iskusstva sa 1927 g (Protocols No. 1–6. Meeting of the Commission for the Psychotechnics of the Vocal Arts), in RGALI, F. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 51. For more on the department inspired by Kandinsky, see Arbeit­ splan der Kommission für die Analyse der Künstlerischen Wahrnehmung (Work­ ing Plan of the Commission for the Analysis of Artistic Perception) in RGALI, F. 941, op. 12, d. 47, l. 5. 120 Cf. the descriptions of the experiments done at the Kommission zur Unter­ suchung des Raums an der Physiko-Psychologischen Abteilung des GAKhN (Commission on the Examination of Space at the Physico-Psychological Depart­ ment of the GAKhN) in: RGALI, F. 941, op. 12, d. 36, l. 3, 14.10.1926. Misler examined RAKhN in detail and points to recently translated material, includ­ ing Chelpanov’s “Vvedenie v eksperimental’nuju psikhologiju” (Introduction to Experimental Psychology), 1916, in which he explains the technical diagrams and apparatuses associated with his experiments. 121 Quote from Anon (A. Sidorov, Ed.) 1926, in Misler 1997, 15. Starting in the mid-1920s, the lab referred to itself as the “Experimental Lab for Aesthetics and Art Criticism,” see Senkevitch 1974, 324.

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122 Münsterberg describes psychology that relates to historical objects as the first form of applied psychology, see ibid., 1928, 2 et seq. For more on the writer as object of psychiatry in Russia, see Sirotkina 2002. For more on the history of ingenuity, see Hagner 2004. 123 Misler 1997, 18. 124 Sirotkina 2002, 145 et seq, on Kandinsky 163. In addition to evaluating artists, the idea was to test the ingenuity of scientists and politicians as well. 125 Thanks to Michael Hagner for pointing out this distinction. 126 Vygotsky 1976 [1965], 246. Written as a dissertation in 1925. For more on Vygotsky’s biography, see his daughter Gita Vygotskaya 2000. 127 Chubarov 2003, 13. Vygotsky 1976 [1965], 168 et seq. 128 Vygotsky 1976 [1965], 288. 129 T¡oubarov 2003, 9. 130 Thanks to Philipp Felsch, Berlin, for elucidating this distinction in a discussion on June 30, 2003. 131 Wohlauf 1996, 151. These two concepts were formulated by Fritz Giese, cf. among others Giese 1928, 64 et seq. In Russia, the critic of Taylorism O. Ermanskij emphasized the objective working conditions and subjective efforts that psychotechnics had to accept, see Ermanskii 1928 and Tatur 1979, 152. 132 For more information on Gastev, see Johansson’s biography 1983, Sirotkina 1991, Tatur 1979, 14–21 and Bailes 1977. Ernst Toller reported in 1930 how he was impressed by Gastev’s CIT, by mistake as “Zentrales Institut für Technik” (“Central Institute for Technology”). A  very brief depiction of Gastev’s Tay­ lorism from a specifically American point of view can be found in Hughes 1989, 257 et seq. For more on Meyerhold, see Bochow 1997. 133 For more on this, see Bulgakowa 1989. Eisenstein’s involvement with expressive and Gestalt psychology are so concrete that the lack of literature on the subject is very surprising. 134 For more on the labor management sciences in the Soviet Union, see Tatur 1979; on Soviet psychology, see Joravsky 1989. 135 Ladovsky 1926b, 7. Quoted here in the German translation in Pistorius 1992, 45. 136 Ibid. 137 Hale 1980, 142. 138 Münsterberg 1923 [1914], appeared in its second edition already in 1925. 139 Münsterberg (Ed.) 1906. Münsterberg’s experimental setups in Harvard are not accessible via publications. Thus, it remains to be seen how detailed the informa­ tion about Münsterberg’s work in Russian was communicated. 140 Münsterberg 1914, 455. Quoted here in Hale 1980, 142. 141 Ladovsky 1926b, 7. Here, he quotes Münsterberg, however, does not provide a source. 142 In Poloshenie o nauchno-issledovatel’skoj arkhitekturnoj laboratorii (Decree on the Scientific Research Laboratory for Architecture). The style of this document is beyond any programmatic objectives; its language is serious and constructive, and it sets out the structure of the laboratory down to its administrative details. In RGALI, F. 681, op. 3, ed. khr. 100, 1928. 143 Ladovsky 1926b, 7. 144 Münsterberg 1914, 455. Quoted here in Hale 1980, 142. 145 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 1. 146 Ibid., 6. 147 Schrage 2000, 68. 148 Ibid. 135 et seq.

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149 Moede 1919, 10. 150 Münsterberg’s apparatuses appeared alongside illustration in the New York Herald, see Münsterberg, Margaret, 1922, 148. Ladovsky’s apparatuses were presented by his students in newspapers, cf. Lavrov 1928 and Krutikov 1928a. 151 Münsterberg 1928 [1914], 9. 152 Ibid., 654. 153 Münsterberg 1996 [1916], 42. 154 Moede 1919, 6 et seq. The monthly German publication Praktische Psychologie (Practical Psychology), in which Moede made his instruments public, was most likely known in Russia. In 1924, it was listed as part of a bibliography for sci­ entific labor organization, see Tshakhotin 1924, 104. Franziska Baumgarten’s report on psychotechnics in the West was published in Russian already in 1922; Moede’s instruments were also described in this publication. Baumgarten 1922, 143/144. 155 Thanks to Andree Korpys for the reference to Duchamp. 156 Like Münsterberg, Titchener had studied under Wundt and worked in America. For more on Titchener’s apparatus, see http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de. There is no historical source to tell us which of Titchener’s constructions were known in Russia. However, keeping in mind the exchange among scientists in Russia and Germany and later in America, this can be said to be quite likely. 157 “Pervaya Deklaraciya” (First Declaration) 1928, in Khazanova 1970, 125. 158 On the first pages of his bibliography on Western psychotechnics, Chakhotin emphasizes the necessity of developing new instruments in post-revolutionary Russia, see ibid., 1924. Western technologies were consulted in all phases of con­ solidation of the Soviet economy if necessary, even if they insisted the opposite was true. Cf. Tatur 1979, 10. 159 “Pervaya Deklaraciya” (First Declaration) 1928, in Khazanova 1970, 125. In 1928, Ladovsky founded the group known as “ARU,” that is, the “Association of Architects – Urbanists,” which was devoted to new designs with regard to urban planning. 160 Spielrein was the first director of the Lab for Industrial Psychotechnics at the People’s Commissariat for Employment, founded in Moscow in 1923. He was also the brother of Sabina Spielrein, a patient of C. G. Jung, who had played a large role starting in 1923 in spreading Freud’s psychoanalysis in Russia. Cf. Baumgarten 1924, 60. 161 Ibid., 59–60. 162 Braginsky, an assistant of Gastev’s, describes this problem. Quoted here in Baumgarten 1924, 60. 163 For more on Taylorism and early scientific labor organization in the West, see especially Rabinbach 2001, as well as Hughes 1989 and Mehrtens 2002. On Taylor in Russia, see Ebbinghaus 1978 and Tatur 1979. 164 Gastev 1924, 89. 165 Gastev 1923, 12. Quoted here in Baumgarten 1924, 115. 166 Tatur divides the history of Soviet labor management sciences into three phases: the recovery of existing industry until 1924, the construction of new industrial branches until 1928, and the forcing of industrialization during the first five-year plan. In all three phases, psychotechnics developed further under differing condi­ tions until ultimately being discredited by the five-year plan. 167 For more on the phase of state capitalism after the civil war and war commu­ nism, see Hildermeier 1989, 264 et seq. and Tatur 1979, 37 et seq. 168 Resolution of the Ersten Allrussischen Konferenz für Initiativen der Wissen­ schaftlichen Arbeitsorganisation und Betriebsführung (First All-Russian Con­ ference for Initiatives Regarding the Scientific Organization and Management of Labor) in Tatur 1979, 41. Melanie Tatur wrote a highly differentiated history

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185 186 187 188 189 190

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of the NOT movement in the Soviet Union. More recent depictions can be situ­ ated mostly in the context of the history of Russian management, cf. Korickij et al. 1999. Tatur 1979, 40. Baumgarten 1924, 9 et seq. Tatur 1979, 40 et seq. Métraux 1986a, 629. Métraux 1986a, 629. At the end of the 1920s, as a result of the forced policy of industrialization, the labor management sciences also came under increasing pressure to display a more practice-oriented approach which had, up until then, developed indepen­ dently, see Tatur 1979, 114. Tatur 1979, 15. In 1923, Lenin published an article on analphabetism, thereby making it a high-priority problem. In 1922, Spielrein founded the Laboratory for Industrial Psychotechnics of the People’s Commissariat for Labor. He also headed up the Psychotechnical Section at the Psychological Institute of the University of Moscow and was active in the Department for Applied Psychology of the Communist Academy. In 1921, he was also a member of the Presidium of Gastev’s CIT. Starting in 1925, he headed up a laboratory for psychotechnics at the Institute for Labor Protection, and in 1927 he became head of the newly formed Society for Psychotechnics, cf. Métraux 1986a, 628 and Tatur 1979, 42 and 133. Baumgarten 1924, 67. Ibid. 70. In the early 1930s, at the Institute for Labor Protection, Spielrein helped among other things in the technical planning of large-scale projects, such as the tractor factory in Stalingrad and Kharki, see Tatur 1979, 133. These two factors relating to labor productivity were identified in Russia most prominently by Ermansky, cf. Tatur 1979, 152. Tatur 1979, 15. Ibid. 16. Gastev 1925, 7. Gastev 1969 [1919], 61. For example, at the first conference of the members of Lef: Pervoe Zove¡anie Rabotnikov Lefa, Moscow 1925, in RGALI F. 340, op. 1, e.x. 33. Tatur 1979, 18. Ibid. 116. The newspaper called itself “Psikhotekhnika i Psikhofiziologija truda” (“Psychotechnics and Psycho-Physiology of Labor”), later “Sovetskaya Psikho­ tekhnika.” Melanie Tatur describes the practical influence of psychotechnics as being low; however, she does speak of the Discipline of Psychotechnics, which would be studied in Leningrad alone. Tatur underestimates the fact that the need for psychotechnicians was significantly larger than universities and training institutes could provide, and that, as a result, scientists from other disciplines stepped into the ring on behalf of psychotechnics. For more on the education of psychotechnicians in Soviet Russia, see Rudik 1926. Tatur 1979, 133, and Sirotkina 2002, footnote 90, 226. In 1911, prior to that, Rossolimo had privately organized the first Russian Insti­ tute for Child Neurology and Psychology. For more on Rossolimo cf. in particu­ lar Sirotkina 2002, 142, 226. Sirotkina 2002, 141, and Baumgarten 1924, 70 et seq. For more on the psycho profiles, see Rossolimo 1926 [1910]. Sirotkina 2002, 163. The words of the Communist fraction of the Psychotechnical Society in March 1928 with regard to the socio-political responsibilities of psychotechnics, in Tatur 1979, 117. Aristotle, Politics VII, 2 quoted here in Kruft 1989, 12. For more on the history of ideal states, see also Rosenau 1959 and Kaufmann 1966.

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191 Kruft 1989, 10. 192 Ruble 1990, 137. Ladovsky’s unrealized design for the expansion of Moscow, the so-called “Parable City,” consisted of open circles, each of which promised to be able to expand itself dynamically and independently from one another toward the open side. Cf. Ladovsky 1930a. 193 One article about Rationalist architecture tellingly describes both Popov’s ideal city project as well as Ladovsky’s psychotechnical architectural laboratory, see Lavrov 1928. 194 Foucault 1977, 200. 195 Bentham 1787, for more on Bentham’s visit to Russia, see Werrett 2002. 196 Foucault 1977, 201. 197 Ibid., 206. 198 Gastev 1969 [1919], 61 et seq. 199 See Friedrich Kittler, who recognized, in the case of Ebbinghaus’ psycho-physical experiments, that “at their unreal end, it is possible that all one ends up with is someone who can do nothing more than read very quickly,” Kittler 1995 [1985], 269–270. 200 The idea of being “unconscious” is not used in the Freudian sense but rather as a contrast to “consciously controlled.”

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Networking Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain – Film as Reflexology, Leningrad/Moscow 1925–1926

An Artist Enters the Physiological Laboratory Psychotechnics was not the sole practical source for the rationalistic restruc­ turing of Soviet cities and their inhabitants. As a student of Nicolai Ladovsky noted, “Modern science (in the form of experimental psychology, reflexol­ ogy and other applied sciences) has issued highly compelling evidence of the significance of emotional knowledge and the environment in the lives of human beings.”1 Still, the equally application-oriented practice of reflexology emerged in Russia not merely under the influence of experimental psychol­ ogy; it was also shaped significantly by a form of Russian physiology that had been reflexological2 in nature from the very beginning. Reflexology had been founded in 1863 by Ivan Sechenov, and it was no less a figure than Ivan Pavlov – for the Bolshevists, the authority per se of scientific materialism – who took up this heritage and its ‘physiological’ backing in the absolute implementation of the new socialist order. And yet, in addition to the art­ ists, why was it that Pavlov, Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner, of all people, was absent at the labor-science meetings, although he had contributed the so-called “target reflex” to the initial demand for a “main stimulus to raise work performance”? Pavlov’s Reflexes Behind and in Front of the Camera

On a stormy day in September  1924, nature and chaos broke into Ivan Pavlov’s well-organized experimental space in Leningrad. The River Neva, which flows through Leningrad’s inner city, broke its banks and flooded Pav­ lov’s physiological laboratory at the Academy of Sciences.3 His valuable test objects (his dogs were all groomed with conditional reflexes) were trapped in their cages and already swimming for their lives when Pavlov’s employees burst in at the last minute to save them. The dogs that managed to survive the flood were never the same afterward. They had lost their conditional reflexes and were in shock in a variety of ways. However, this accident did not harm Pavlov’s research; instead, as a result, he discovered that conditional reflexes could be disrupted and reversed. In his laboratory, he began to investigate DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185-3

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Figure 2.1 Vsevolod Pudovkin (Pudowkin 1983, binding)

the processes that led to such nervous diseases.4 And yet, before Pavlov could develop his new interest in the “science of the development of an improved human type,”5 there was yet another disruption in the laboratory program. In 1925, after abandoning his studies in physical chemistry and then spending a couple of years as an apprentice both in the chemistry lab and in Lev Kuleshov’s experimental film studio, Vsevolod Pudovkin began work on his first film, Mechanics of the Brain, a popular scientific documentary about Ivan Pavlov’s physiological laboratory.6 The captivatingly simple subject of the film included reflex teachings at the zoo, on the beach, in the laboratory, in the delivery room and in kinder­ gartens: frogs, dogs, apes and children are the main characters here. The film opens with shots of zoo animals rushing to the feeding station at the sound of a signal. This is followed by a small monkey eating with all fours and play­ ing clumsily with a ball. Small children playing on the ground are shown in a parallel edit. An intertitle elucidates the comparison: “The behavior of the child playing reminds us of the game played by the ape.”7 Then comes an abrupt change in scene: young people swim, swing and ride on the beach – in other words, their behavior has developed, become more evolved. “The behavior of animal and human is the result of the activity of the nervous system” is the conclusion that captions these shots, followed by yet another change of location. An insert signalizes a number of experiments

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Figure 2.2a An ape at play

Figure 2.2b A child at play (Film stills from The Mechanics of the Brain 1926; unless otherwise noted, all images in the chapter are taken from the film)

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Figures 2.3a,b Switching between large and small aperture circles

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Figures 2.4a,b Flickering aperture circle

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that are very difficult to depict in film: stimulus tests on living frogs, dogs and apes. Things that usually take place behind closed laboratory doors are then presented very plainly to the public with the help of close-ups. The severing of a frog’s spinal cord portrays the excitability and conductivity of nerve tis­ sue, while irritations caused by acids and electricity lead to reactions, that is, reflexes. Pavlov’s famous experiments with dogs are then shown in an attempt to explain the innate, so-called “unconditional reflexes.” The fact that dogs react by salivating when they are shown food gives Pavlov a chance to take center stage, albeit in the third person: “Academy member Pavlov in his laboratory in Leningrad determined that the ‘men­ tal’ secretion of saliva is a reflex that the animal develops in the course of its life.” Then the film shifts to the introduction of “conditional reflexes.” When hearing the sound of a metronome, a young ape runs to the feeding station. Over time, the ape learns to distinguish between fast and slow beats; it doesn’t run over every time, but does so only when there is a corresponding speed to the signal. In other words, conditional reflexes can be not only learned but also unlearned. Additional examples show that this applies equally to dogs. Animal experiments make up the largest part of the film and end the way they began: instead of frogs, it is now dogs and apes being operated on in order to study

Figure 2.5a A six-year-old boy washing his ears

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Figure 2.5b A dog in Pavlov’s conditioning station

Figure 2.6 Monkey during conditioning with food and metronome

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conditional reflexes. By removing parts of the brain, the desire here was to show that the formation of conditional reflexes takes place primarily in the cerebrum. Time and again, Pudovkin takes recourse to animated diagrams to visualize these operations; the animals are shown only after the operation, then especially with all of their behavioral limitations. The conclusion is the following: “Unconditioned and conditioned reflexes form the basis of the behavior of human beings.” After several seconds of darkness, the film fades into a delivery room where we see the birth of a child with its few innate reflexes: “The child does not take to the breast upon first try.” In other words, even the conditioned reflex of nourishment must be trained. The film ends with the training of conditional reflexes in human beings, that is, when the education of children orients itself to Pavlov’s reflex teachings, the children learn to eat and drink, to wash and clean themselves and even to play peacefully. In short, they develop complex behavior. Pavlov does not get the last word in the film: instead, the following words appear on the screen – anonymously and with no author mentioned – and repeat almost verbatim a text that had previously appeared: “The theory of conditioned reflexes forms the basis of the materialistic understanding of the behavior of animal and human.” This roughly one-hour film was made at the Moscow film production organization known as Mezhrabpom Rus, where, in addition to Pudovkin,

Figure 2.7 Testing of the unconditional reflexes in the newborn

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almost the entire Kuleshov Collective worked.8 Mezhrabpom was an abbre­ viation for the International Workers Assistance; Rus was the name of the private production company that merged with the workers assistance in 1923 and thus was partly sponsored by the state. It is uncertain as to exactly what kind of interest the production company had in this film. On the one hand, they might have hoped for export earnings, after having distributed Soviet propaganda films abroad for the previous three years. On the other hand, they might have wanted to make good on the announcement they had issued in 1925 with regard to using state funds “for the production of propaganda films for farmers and workers.”9 Pudovkin no doubt hoped his film would allow him to make use of Pavlov’s fame to boost his own renown. Con­ versely, Pavlov was not especially excited about this almost one-year obser­ vation of his laboratory work and stayed away from the shooting.10 Why did he still allow the film to be made? Did the film have something to offer? What kind of influence did Pavlov’s research have on the director’s work? What does Mechanics of the Brain tell us about the understanding of science at the time? And, finally, what does this have to do with psychotechnics? Pudovkin’s film does not show what the title suggests, that is, brains. Instead, it shows what is stated in the film’s subtitle, that is, The Behavior of Animals and Humans.11 Indeed, the experiments on frogs, dogs and apes, which were developed over the course of the 19th century by physiologists

Figure 2.8 Demonstration of motor skills in a dog

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such as Ivan Sechenov and which led to Pavlov’s teaching on reflexes, had consequences for the behavior of the experimental objects. Their reactions to different stimuli are presented in laboratories, in zoo cages and outdoors. Brains are indeed shown, but only in the form of animated drawings illus­ trating the outwardly invisible processes that accompany the behavior of the animals ‘internally.’ Text panels comment on externally invisible occurrences in a simplified way that even laypersons could understand: The stimulation of motor nerves is passed on to the muscles and prompts them to contract. . . . In the case of a strong stimulus, namely acid, the excitement of one center spreads out across the entire brain and is passed on to the neighboring center.12 Such moving-image diagrams depicting processes occurring unnoticed in the body – much like the content of the film itself – were highly topical at the time. It was only the second time that the production studio had created anima­ tions such as these in a special department.13 And the director emphasized that he was filming circumstances that had partly not even been published by Pavlov.14 This allowed the director to underline his own scientific abili­ ties while also simultaneously leaving open the extent to which the film’s arguments differed from those that Pavlov would have authorized, as well as

Figure 2.9a Animation of a conditioned reflex in a dog

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Figure 2.9b Stimulation of two brain centers; a dog’s brain from above and removal of the left hemisphere

how much ideological content Mechanics of the Brain brought to the study of reflexes.15 The concrete images of experiments occurring in the laboratory are almost radical compared with the abstract graphics. In dark, long rooms, frogs are dissected, dogs are conditioned and changes in the perception ability of apes are examined after parts of their brains are removed. The birth of a child her­ alds the future of this laboratory world, and all forms of experimental cruelty are justified when Pavlov’s reflex teachings find application in the education of small children. Whether by playing, setting the table or brushing their teeth, thanks to regular traditional conditioning, the development of children can be not only changed but also improved. This message does not have much in common with the idealistic notions of a more social society. Although the text panels (stubbornly) insist this is true, they nevertheless contradict the filmic narrative, which – thanks to inconsistent montages and poor lighting – conjures up bleak aesthetics and reflects something quite far from euphoric propaganda. Technical inconsistencies, such as qualitatively different intertitles and film-title fade-ins that flash repeatedly, also make it difficult to classify this hybrid film or assign it to one genre or target group – not to mention the optimistic tone of the aesthetics associated with the New Man as it was projected in those day by politicians and philosophers in all Soviet media.16

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The role of Mechanics of the Brain in Pudovkin’s filmography has been largely underestimated to date. The film is seen as a first-time student effort that cannot be compared to his later feature films, Mother and The End of St. Petersburg.17 Pudovkin himself was disappointed with the extent to which Mechanics of the Brain was underestimated and called a “practice film.”18 Although he developed his film practice during the shooting of this film together with Pavlov – and also with express reference to the famous scientist – he was seen primarily as a feature-film author and a realist influenced by Hollywood cinema.19 This ignorance most likely has its origin in the compli­ cated fate of Mechanics of the Brain, which was not uncontroversial thanks to its ideological leanings. In the Russian press, a debate arose regarding the relationship between film and science. Filmmakers, scientists and educators all harbored their own ambitions with regard to the film, and this made the process of releasing it all the more difficult. Produced with very little fund­ ing and classified as a losing deal from the very beginning, Mechanics of the Brain initially had difficulties finding a distributor.20 This was likely due to the low-level popularity of documentary films in those days in compari­ son not only to feature films but also to the ideological content of the film. In 1926, surveys had shown that most moviegoers were reluctant to watch Bolshevist self-propaganda.21 Nevertheless, in order to publicize the film, a brochure was published in 1927 in which the subject matter of Mechanics of the Brain was reviewed and positioned in good scientific company: If you ask me . . . , what this century could be called – the century of the glands, the century of steam and electricity – I say without hesitation that it will be named the century of the materialistic understanding of nature, the century of Darwin.22 Surprisingly, the film actually went on to make a profit.23 The year 1927 was a year of flourishing cinema financing in the Soviet Union24: 119 films were made, 300 million tickets were sold and there were an average of 2.5 mil­ lion viewers for every film.25 For Mechanics of the Brain, the producers had also hoped for high box-office numbers when they published 10,000 copies of a 30-page brochure as an accompanying hand-out in cinemas. Readers were warned on the first page not to read the brochure in lieu of watching the film. “Nullius in verba” (take nobody’s word for it) was the introductory quote to the first chapter, and a footnote explained this famous motto of the Royal Society in a simplified manner: “The word – is nothing, everything is found – in the experiment.”26 The brochure was intended only as a supple­ ment, as a complementary commentary on the film. The focus was on the experiment – but which experiment was it referring to? In spite of its famous patron, Mechanics of the Brain was subject to signifi­ cant censorship, primarily in the capitalist West, and led to very dichotomous reactions. For example, in Great Britain, a number of scenes had to be removed before the film could be shown at the London Workers’ Society. Shots

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Figure 2.10 A woman in labor

of childbirth were considered too intimate for the general public, and the film was prevented from being shown.27 Another version of the film was shown under a new title, Brain Func­ tions, and in a hardly recognizable version at the 1932 International Physiol­ ogy Congress in Rome: the ideological intertitles were completely removed, scenes were shortened, the sequence was changed, camera settings were mirrored and documentary photo and film material about Pavlov himself were added.28 In 1929, according to an archivist at the Pavlov Estate in Saint Petersburg, Mechanics of the Brain set out on a world tour and visited scientific facilities in the United States, where it was also subject to different levels of censorship depending on the individual state in which it was shown.29 In research circles, Mechanics of the Brain was edited without restraint. This occurred either because Pudovkin’s first film was far from being a homog­ enous masterpiece, or because people understood that his montage was not the product of chance. For the theoreticians among his contemporaries, it was not Pudovkin’s filmic experiments but instead his theory of montage that was of some value: In terms of useful literature about the aesthetics of film, the only works worth mentioning are those by Béla Balázs, as well as ‘Panoramique du Cinéma’ by Léon Moussinac and Pudovkin’s ‘Film Direction and Film Manuscript,’ a small work that contains much practical material.30

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These introductory words written by the Gestalt psychologist and film theoretician Rudolph Arnheim in his first 1932 art-psychological work Film as Art illuminate not only Pudovkin’s early prominence; they are also evi­ dence of a perhaps virulent historical omission of Mechanics of the Brain.31 While Arnheim recognized Pudovkin’s film aesthetics as being essential for the history of film, it was most likely no coincidence that the Gestalt psy­ chologist ignored the fact that these aesthetics had come into being at least partially in the experimental experiential space of a physiologist.32 Indeed, unlike Pavlov, Gestalt psychologists rejected the idea that holistic perceptions were comprised simply of partial sensations that could be demonstrated in individual reflexes. They studied perceptions using patterns and structures as a whole. Gestalt psychologists categorically rejected the type of measuring and physiological psychology pursued by Pavlov.33 Mechanics of the Brain, on the other hand, showed precisely such individual functions and simultane­ ously used them to foster the processes of film perception – and perhaps even the perception of the entire society. Pudovkin himself recalled that his first film, alongside science in general, had provided key experiences for his later work: After completing that film, I  understood that the opportunities pro­ vided by film were just beginning to open to me. My interactions with science solidified my belief in art. Today, I am entirely convinced that these two forms of human knowledge are more closely linked to one another than many believe.34 Moreover, “in dealing with scientific film, we established the founding principles of cinematographic work to an even more unshakable extent.”35 His cameraman also emphasized that Mechanics of the Brain was the setting of the development of Pudovkin’s theory of montage and reported that he made sketches regarding the montage while shooting the film itself.36 In this spirit, Pudovkin explained his camera technique in Mechanics of the Brain as being the result of an analysis of Pavlov’s reflex theories: It became clear to me that photographic precision – by being able to fix a movement – permits us to capture movement in a significantly more precise manner than by means of the simple observation of the human eye. I . . . suggested fixing the contraction of the pupil as a precise con­ ditioned reflex with the camera.37 The suggestion was approved by Pudovkin’s scientific consultants in the laboratory.38 The result was a camera lens that opens and closes its aper­ ture in a simulation of the human pupil, which contracts and then is opened further, sometimes depicting a focused detail, sometimes one that is blurry. And yet it was not Pudovkin’s idea alone to imitate the functioning of the human eye or to transmit physiological knowledge to film in an inventive

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way. Much more than that, in his first press comment on Mechanics of the Brain, he promised to “open up the ‘theory of reflexes’ filmically, . . . , to record moments in scientifically valuable experiments that can be captured only with the help of a film camera lens”39 and thus to postulate functions for his apparatuses that go far beyond the task of a documentary film. He understood film technique not only as being necessary for the possibility of communicating experimental knowledge; but also, he saw it as a procedure – one that conformed to scientific method – of identifying knowledge from experiments. The imitation of the pupil is a trick, a simulation of the imitation via the ‘camera eye.’ The narrowed and widened aperture is not used in a coher­ ent manner over the course of the film, that is, it is not solely related to the physical conditions of the perception space. Areas with bright light, such as at the beach, are darkened by a closing aperture, and the same is done with a darkened room in the delivery area. The aperture opens and closes at moments when the brightness does not change at all. It becomes a formal and independent element independent of the laws of perception. Pudovkin under­ mines viewers’ perception, irritates them and provokes their attention, that is, what viewers see, in addition to swimming children, is a constantly chang­ ing aperture. Pudovkin makes viewers (who are watching natural events) become aware of the presence of a camera lens, and he forces them time and again back to the aperture itself, into the ‘black box’ of the camera. Only this way is it possible for the viewer to begin to understand that cinema offers much more than just the ability to mediate everything visible. Indeed, it is much more about the mediality of vision itself, that is, the equating of machine-based and human perception. When Pudovkin rips the viewer’s attention from a detail to a wide shot and then back again – when he repeats shots and cuts them with aperture disks – he does so to demonstrate to viewers the functioning of their perception, that is, to make it clear to them that it is dependent on the latest techniques of making visible: The lens of the camera is the eye of the viewer. It is up to the director whether the viewer is a good observer or a bad one. Of course, it is clear that the turning back and forth of attention – corresponding to the montage – is a process that follows strict laws. The laws that determine proper observation must be transferred in their entirety to the structure of the montage.”40 Montage Theory and Experimental Practice

In Mechanics of the Brain, Pudovkin developed an aesthetic of the apparatus. He saw the film apparatus and its representational condition, that is, mon­ tage, as being simultaneously analogous to that which Pavlov addressed with his physiological experiments, that is, to the psyche and the nervous system. He also saw it as being analogous to the psycho-physiological experiments

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themselves – as a stimulus for conditioned reflexes. For Pavlov, a conditioned reflex was the result of an exterior stimulus that was coupled with an uncon­ ditioned reflex. For example, such stimuli could be the visual, aural and olfactory characteristics of food – ones that showed no “business relations” to the work of the salivary glands yet which still managed to elicit mental secretions.41 It is possible to link the specific rhythm of the metronome to the eating process and cause the production of saliva or to cause fear in connec­ tion with electric stimulation. Pavlov localized both reactions in the brain as two fundamental nervous processes – excitement and inhibition – and presumed that they were in a permanent struggle with one another within the nervous system and had to be balanced out for optimal behavior. One had to “imagine a certain battle between these two contrary processes, which usually ends in a certain equilibrium between the two.”42 If excitation and inhibition are stimulated constantly and in an alternating manner, this leads to complete disorientation43 – which is the same state Pavlov witnessed in his dogs after the flooding of his laboratory, that is, after they had lost all of their trained reflexes. Although Pudovkin did not deal with the functions of the digestive tract, he still transferred precisely this Pavlovian concept to his communication techniques: in the consecutive switching from opened to closed aperture, he applied the relationship of excitement and inhibition to the performance of his film apparatus. Pudovkin was aware of the confusion of apparatus and perception, and his intention was nothing less than to free viewers from their conditioned reflexes – and to put them into a condition of disorientation that ultimately made them conscious of all the processes that determine their perception: “The power of the director consists essentially in the power to prompt the viewer not to see an object in the easiest way it can be seen.”44 But it was not the director alone who was involved in the steering of atten­ tion; it was also the thing that rested on his shoulders, the thing that was always a step ahead, that is, his apparatus. This apparatus was able not only to “prompt viewers to look at the filmed object, it could also bring them to truly comprehend what they were seeing.”45 The idea of trained attentiveness did not simply fall into Pudovkin’s lap out of nowhere. Long before his time, psychologists and physiologists in the 19th century had used various apparatuses to analyze human perception as it related to disorders and high performance.46 Whether it be Étienne-Jules Marey, Angelo Mosso, Albert Londes or Ernst Mach, what they all had in common was that they used technical aids, such as photography and film, to record the results of experiments and, conversely, to record the percep­ tibility of these results.47 The avant-garde filmmakers in Russia were most likely familiar with these experiments. In the same newspapers in which Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain was discussed, there also appeared sev­ eral articles that showcased the use of film for scientific purposes. Microcinematography, x-ray cinematography, slow-motion and time-lapse effects

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were described, as were Étienne-Jules Marey’s famous experiments and the lesser well-known experiments of the Leipzig-based physiologist Fischer, who depicted walking and running processes using individual images taken with film equipment. Indeed, cinema became a public and highly debated tool with which to steer attention to otherwise unnoticed processes and to visualize processes that could not be perceived with the naked eye: Our eye cannot distinguish two points that are as close to each other as 0.005 millimeters. At this point, the two points merge into one. The same goes for two events that are separated by 1/20th to 1/25th of a second. . . . The microscope . . . has sharpened our vision with regard to space. With the help of cinema, we are able to achieve the same thing with regard to time.48 However, not only did Russian avant-garde filmmakers understand enough about the perception effect of film to be able to create an illusion of continuous movement with 25 images per second; they also used it to break this effectively. When human perception is concentrated on the smallest and fastest events, then it falls into line with the vision of the camera and does not see what the eye would see. It sees that which the camera shows, with the help of slow motion and close-ups. In Mechanics of the Brain, for example, this includes a sea lion swimming, frogs twitching and the movements of newborn children. As soon as the abilities of perception were recognized, it seemed easy to expand on them using technology. Such set-ups, however, always also cre­ ated a circular argument – one that was usually not problematized by the participants – between the object of their scientific interest and the experi­ mental environment in which it was examined. The perceptibility of the results of staged experiments – that is, the attention required to perceive these results – was not examined solely with the help of apparatuses. Ultimately, it appeared in the framework of the very technical settings which tried to meas­ ure it. In other words, not only was what was to be seen staged, so, too, was the manner in which perception took place, e.g., in the artificial room, in the experimental laboratory or in the cinema. In a reciprocal sense, human per­ ception and its technical registration in the laboratory were contingent upon one another. From this point on, only a small mind game is required to notice that it wasn’t the film equipment that was developed for the experimentali­ zation of perception; instead, this perception only emerged via experiments with film in the first place. In other words, in an almost strikingly literal sense, attentiveness was a phenomenon generated by a piece of equipment, that is, a technically generated phenomenon.49 Thirty years later, Walter Benjamin engaged in this mind game in his famous essay on perception in the modern era, in which he described perception

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as an ability influenced by psychology, on the one hand, and by film equip­ ment on the other: A glance at occupational psychology illustrates the testing capacity of the equipment. . . . [Psychopathology, M. V.] isolated and made analyz­ able things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception. For the entire spectrum of optical, and now also acoustical, perception the film has brought about a similar deepening of apperception.50 According to Benjamin, this process had a “shock effect” on the viewer that is cushioned “by the heightened presence of mind.”51 Much like Pudovkin, Benjamin saw montage as the thing that manipulated the viewer; he argued that the distracting element of film was based “on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator.”52 In Benjamin’s mind, attentiveness advanced to the status of a redemptive presence-of-mind that was capable of disrupting the distraction, that is, the absence of presence of mind, both when watching films and in modern, impulse-heavy everyday life. The experimental set-up had now, to a certain extent, stepped out of the laboratory, and “attentiveness” had gained a social function that went beyond cinemas. In 1926–27, at the moment that Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain was being shown in cinemas, Benjamin was visiting Moscow for several months. While being there he saw, among others, Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” Vertov’s “Sixth Part of the World” and Pudovkin’s “Mother” in the cinema and met with Anatoly Lunacharsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. These famous representatives of the Russian avant-garde most likely introduced him to and familiarized him with Pavlov’s reflex teachings, which were on everyone’s lips at the time.53 However, no information exists on the extent to which Benjamin, in his essays on the film apparatus, actually thought of Pavlov or whether he even saw Mechanics of the Brain. At least Benjamin’s lover, Asja Lacis, most definitely knew Pavlov’s work, seeing as she had studied with a competitor of his in Leningrad, that is, at the PsychoNeurological Institute of Vladimir Bekhterev. Lacis and Benjamin discussed contemporary psychology in Moscow, as evidenced by a note in Benjamin’s diary: “Asja reminded me of my intention to write something critical of psy­ chology, and I once again realized to what extent the possibility of tackling these subjects depends on my contact with her.”54 We can only speculate as to why this criticism of psychology in the Soviet Union failed to materialize and whom exactly it was Benjamin intended to be critical of. An essay cowritten by Benjamin and Lacis, written roughly one year after his return from Moscow, appears to take up new Soviet education methods. One recognizes immediately that their Program for a Proletarian Children’s Theater is struc­ tured in the terminology of Pavlov’s reflex teachings: the first section bears the title “Schema of Tension” and the second part “Schema of Resolution” – both are paraphrases of excitement and inhibition, respectively. However,

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upon closer inspection of the text, it becomes clear that the apparently affirmative reference is actually meant to be critical, that is, that it turns against precisely that which was propagated by Mechanics of the Brain: “The proletariat disciplines only the proletarians who have grown up. . . . Proletarian education theory demonstrates its superiority by guaranteeing to children the fulfillment of their childhood.”55 Pudovkin’s film showed that precisely this was not the case. Even though Benjamin would not have agreed at all with the application of reflex teachings to the education of children, Mechanics of the Brain still strikes at the heart of his understanding of film: “To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of film.”56 And so it is not surprising that Pavlov had already demonstrated the consequences of the shock effect described by Benjamin years before him, when he did his research on sleep and hypnosis: “Thoughts such as ‘What’s happening to me?’ and ‘Why is it happening?’ inhibit the formation of reflexes.”57 Meanwhile, his colleague, Dr. S. Fursikov, found out that “two inhibitions taken together result in drowsiness.”58 Later, Fursikov worked as a scientific assistant on the filming of Mechanics of the Brain and participated in the organization of the renowned Soviet Brain Research Institute in Moscow. The concentration of perception through the opening and closing of the camera aperture and the shift from close-ups to long shots were also not discovered first by Pudovkin for film. The pioneers of this young medium, including Georges Melies, had already used the circular cutout to crop and emphasize individual objects. This aperture disk was not, however, merely a stylistic device used in silent films: from time to time, it would also appear as a technical artifact. For example, when a camera lens did not let enough light in, or if the film material was only slightly sensitive to light, then the film in the camera had to be passed by the lens very closely, and the aperture opened as widely as possible. It thereby showed what was often used as a formal fade-out effect: the entire area of the negative became visible, includ­ ing the edges of the light disk.59 If we recall the scenes that Pudovkin shot in the physiological laboratory, we can imagine that precisely this technical side-effect determined the aesthetic of the shot: we see a dark room, the light flickers, the image detail is round with soft edges that fray out to the side. The image details appear too indecisive – they change constantly in form, size and clarity – for us to assume that they are intentional. Everything points to the presumption that lighting problems preceded the aperture disk because, as the cameraman complained, owing to the complicated laboratory techniques, it was [N]ecessary to shoot all experiments in the laboratories, childcare facilities, etc. where they were carried out. This is why we had to fit our lamps and the camera into a 3x4-arschin room and literally take up the entire room except for the spot where the apparatus stood.60

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Figures 2.11a,b Aperture circle changing in size and clarity with constant light conditions

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Indeed, in such a small room, too many lamps would have created an enormous amount of heat and no doubt disturbed the test animals in their natural behavior. This problem was not due to insufficient camera techniques; instead it was a problem in principle. Even the most modern cameras of the era – as they were often presented on the pages of avant-garde magazines – would not have been able to overcome these difficulties.61 And even outside the closed laboratory spaces, Pudovkin’s experimental objects were faced with the limitations of the film apparatus that recorded them. The challenge was to encourage zoo animals, which were seeing a camera for the first time, to behave naturally and not be constantly irritated by the sounds emanating from the equipment or from the bright light of the film lighting. To avoid this distraction, both Pudovkin and Pavlov used food to lure the animals: Our task was to film sea lions. The frightened animal swam hurriedly and irregularly back and forth in his pond. We could have simply placed the camera at a certain distance and allowed cinema spectators to observe the sea lion from this perspective, much like any visitor to the zoo would do. But a camera should not observe in that manner. . . . The camera must be able to observe how the animal swims quickly and

Figure 2.12 A sea lion catching food in its mouth

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dexterously from the best possible viewpoint, it has to use close-ups. . . . This is why we had to change the camera position three times. . . . At the same time, the spectator should be given the impression that these three shots of the sea lion were depicting the same consecutive event. . . . You can’t command an animal to swim in a certain direction or to approach the camera in a way the script stipulates. When we filmed the animal from above, it moved across the camera’s field of vision because it was being lured by a fish we had thrown to it. For the close-up shots, we tossed bait to the sea lion as often as we needed until it finally jumped ashore in exactly the right way. In the end, we selected three shots out of a total of thirty.62 However, it wasn’t solely the behavior of the animals that presented Pudovkin with problems at the zoo. Indeed, the adaptation of their behavior to the conditions of his camera caused a reordering of both the film equip­ ment and the animals themselves. Once again, the film apparatus presented not merely the means of better capturing the movement of the animals; instead, the apparatus dictated what was considered to be a ‘better shot’ in the first place. It wasn’t the animals demanding to be fed; instead, it was the equipment that made it necessary to feed them and also caused their strange hunger-driven behavior. At this point, it becomes very clear that it took much more than just the use of one apparatus to make the experiment productive; it was the clash of one apparatus-based setting with another, that is, of one experiential space with another. Precisely when one of the actors had to adapt to the other – the film camera to the zoo animal or vice versa – questions were raised that had not been visible previously. Indeed, modifications to the film apparatus became necessary, the object changed (i.e., the behavior of the animals) and thus the product of the entire experiment set-up also changed, that is, the film. This is a situation familiar to all physiologists who must combine living organisms with measuring instruments. Accordingly, Pavlov’s test subjects were adapted to the film environment: In order to rule out any abnormalities during the filming and any potential influences from irregular conditions (such as irritation due to the bright lights), we carried out the experiments many times with lighting before we even started shooting. This way, the light became an organic part of the experiment.63 Pavlov’s dogs got used to bright lights, zoo elephants were exposed to strange feeding rituals and fidgety children had to sit still. Physiologists, zoo­ keepers and kindergarten teachers had to negotiate with filmmakers as to how much light and space was made available. The camera was re-positioned many times so as to avoid completely confusing the animals and children, and the director developed a special montage so as to be able to unite the disparate locations. The experiments in front of the camera, that is, Pavlov’s

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laboratory routine, changed with the appearance of a cinema apparatus just as the experiments behind the camera with the animals in the zoo changed under the pressure of physiological knowledge. No effort was spared in the laboratory – as in the films – to artificially create a situation that was as natural as possible. And yet, the situation was even more complex than that. In the entanglement of cinema and laboratory, there was no longer any clear separation between artificial and natural world – they had become co-generative.64 In spite of these convincing parallels, it was not possible for Pudovkin – in contrast to Pavlov – to link his film stimuli to precisely calculable reactions. He was not able to analyze human perception as he had declared, that is, as “a strictly regular process.”65 In more sober terms, he was unable to clearly prove the results of his scientific achievements. As simple as the example in the zoo might appear, when related back to Pudovkin’s experimentaliza­ tion of cinema perception, it only stubbornly confirms that it wasn’t human perception that was paramount for him, but rather the functioning of his film apparatus and its technical ‘conditions of perception.’ Pudovkin did not examine the behavior of animals in the zoo, nor did he study the attentive­ ness of people in the cinema; what he did examine were the opportunities presented by his camera to interact with people and animals. By equating the film apparatus with human perception, and by implying that the latter would adapt in an unaffected manner to the conditions presented by the apparatus, Pudovkin was indeed following the late 19th-century experimental psycholo­ gists mentioned above. However, the composite that the individual parts of his experimental structure brought together was unevenly flexible; indeed, it was almost unstable. Pudovkin’s technical set-up consisted not only of a recording device, that is, the film camera, there was also a montage table and a projector, which did not participate simultaneously, but rather successively in the experiment. They formed further stations of the experiment. Pudovkin’s test subjects were first and foremost the physiological organisms that were to be represented in film, then the animals and children that Pudovkin had to orchestrate in front of his camera and ultimately the spectators in front of the screen. His film experiment thus took place in a threefold manner: in the physiological laboratory, in the production studio and in the cinema. If one bears in mind, however, that scientific experiments are characterized by constants – that is, that in addition to variables they have elements that are resistant to change – doubt arises as to how such an experiment could have taken place in this complex set-up of objects, actors and apparatuses. Indeed, what kind of experiment can we even speak of in this case? Reflexology in and With Film Is an artist a poor researcher if he performs his research neither in the labo­ ratory nor according to precisely defined parameters? Pavlov himself did not use film in his laboratory, but he obviously tolerated Pudovkin’s filmmaking

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and his expansion of reflexology from human beings to the technical apparatus and its recipients, that is, from singular, individual objects to numerous test subjects, the crowd of spectators in cinemas. Indeed, this is what Pudovkin meant when he announced his intention of “opening up the ‘theory of reflexes’ using film”66 – and that one could use film to investigate “the behavior of the human masses,”67 that one must use film to examine the “results not on one’s self but on man (in factual, real, non-subjective, objec­ tive practice).”68 Likewise, the effect of Pudovkin’s montage as a stimulant for reactions thus approached a problem that Pavlov was also dealing with: “In certain stages of drowsiness, a discrepancy in the effect of the condi­ tioned stimuli [occurs] in otherwise normal dogs. The positive stimuli lose their effect, whereas the negative stimuli, the inhibition stimuli, achieve a positive effect.”69 How now does Pavlov’s laboratory – this realm carefully shielded against the outside world and additionally isolated by means of a “tower of silence” – hold up to Pudovkin’s open experimental space, that is, the cinema? Bekhterev’s Psycho-Neurological Institute and Other Crime Scenes

It takes a fair deal of detective work to clarify the relationships between the locations where Pudovkin filmed. Pavlov’s Leningrad laboratory was only the site of the experiments with frogs and the conditioning of dogs. The experiments involving apes were carried out at a facility that brought much international scientific fame to Soviet Union, that is, at the Moscow Brain Research Institute of the Communist Academy of Sciences, where the brains of prominent Russians including Lenin had found a central home.70 The shots of sea lions, crocodiles and elephants were filmed at the neighboring Lenin­ grad Zoo, where some of Pavlov’s colleagues earned extra income. And the children at play were, of course, not running after balls in the physiological laboratory; instead, they were filmed in a Soviet kindergarten. Pavlov had equally little to do with research into the conditioned reflexes of children. According to the film credits, the person in charge of that area was his former doctoral student N. Krasnogorsky, in whose Leningrad laboratory the reflex experiments on children were most likely filmed. However, Krasnogorsky did not stop at the tracking of unconditioned reflexes on newborns, which, in the last third of Mechanics of the Brain, begins the examination of the conditioned behavior of human beings.71 He also examined conditioned reflexes using saliva secretions and the frequency of swallowing; he noted the chewing movements using a kymograph and thus developed the traditional conditioning of infants – scenes that, however, are not included in the official cinema version of the popular scientific film.72 Equally noticeable is the fact that the opening film credit refers to six scenes, of which only four are then seen. If one consults the brochure that accompanies the film, it becomes clear that film footage from Krasnogor­ sky’s laboratory must also exist. What this material shows is more than

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frightening: a child lies in a dark room hooked up to a set-up that tracks conditioned reflexes by means of pneumatic pressure connected to the eat­ ing of pastry. As the brochure explains (almost pedantically) with regard to the lab scene, “The scientist is in a specially isolated chamber from which he controls the experiment only through a small window.”73 Further scenes not contained in the cinema version appear no less callous: people suffering from syphilis or children with head injuries are presented in order to examine the formation of inhibitions, excitement, visual sense and motor skills.74 It is well-known that Pudovkin’s film circulated in different versions; how­ ever, there was clearly more than just one official version. Almost all articles covering Mechanics of the Brain speak of six parts of the film; however, only in one of these does Pudovkin announce that the film will be issued in two different versions, one scientific and one popular version: In the first, less popular version, there will be more purely scientific material to see. With subtitles whose terminology is introduced and recorded in Pavlov’s scientific work. The second version, which is intended for the broad masses, will be relatively simple and difficult terminology will be replaced.75

Figure 2.13a Syphilis sufferers

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Figure 2.13b Child with limited movement capabilities due to a head injury (both figures from the Rome version of the film from 1932, Institute for Sci­ entific Film Göttingen)

To this day, we do not know whether the broad masses were spared the experience of watching the reflexes of ill, injured and mentally disabled human beings.76 What we can say, however, is that both versions visualized the opening of the borders to Pavlov’s laboratory experiments – first into the education of children and second into psychiatry. The horror evoked decades later by the explicit nature of the images did not appear at the time the film was issued. Instead of mentioning terrifying images, Pravda spoke of the irresistible effect of the film: Irrespective of the spectator – indeed, even against his will – one is taken on a path towards the only possible outcome, i.e., that there is no soul, the soul of man, his work, his inspiration – all of that is nothing more than a higher level of reflex. God has nothing more to do with this reflex.77 In other words, the mass hypnosis in cinema was made known in an open manner, even to the general public. In large cities, at least, the Russian population was accustomed to the opening up of scientific laboratories and their techniques. Film magazines

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reported not only on the historic use of scientific films but also on contempo­ rary usages, for example, at the Laboratorium No. 1, the photo-cinema studio at the Central Institute for Work in Moscow, where Aleksei Gastev filmed work-related movements.78 Yet another newspaper that bore the title Science and Art showcased scientific and artistic facilities next to one another as well as their respective research methods.79 Whether or not the arts were suited to performing research did not appear to be in question. One popularscience magazine, published by none other than Vladimir Bekhterev, brought the experiment-based enlightenment of the broad masses to the extreme: the name of his column in Messengers of Knowledge was “Practical Physiology for Lovers,” and he explained reflexology using the example of the training of mice: he even once explained the nervous system using detailed instruc­ tions for how to uncover nerves and muscles in frogs. Images and instructions for the building of “reflexology chambers” and “electric signal systems” encouraged readers to construct replicas and do their own experiments. If frogs were available, readers could use the detailed drawings to study the nervous system of normal and decapitated frogs.80 Here, physiological experiments functioned as a form of entertain­ ment and educational training. Much like with Pudovkin’s film guide to

Figure 2.14a Nerve–muscle dissection of a frog and reflex mechanisms of hind limbs

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Figure 2.14b Operation on a decapitated frog (journal Vestnik Znanija (tr. Messenger of Knowledge), 1925 Nr. 5, Nr. 7 and Nr. 8)

reflexological training, Bekhterev wanted his readers not only to understand what reflexes and experiments were but also to learn how to perform experi­ ments themselves. In addition to the sober tone of these do-it-yourself courses, it is particu­ larly the drawings of organ resections that bring to mind Mechanics of the Brain – here, too, the processes that could not be shown in photographs were visualized in abstract sequences that resembled the structure of the animated film drawings: both take a step-by-step approach to tracing processes that the physiologist was indeed aware of, but which he could not see. Thus, they recorded the interim steps of physiological processes that did not become visible in the mangle of practice, either because they took place within the

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Figures 2.15a,b Animated schemes from The Mechanics of the Brain

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body or because they could not be stopped. Paradoxically, early film seems to have failed in the visualization of the body’s interior and in the disruption of physiological processes, even though it promised to expand perception in space and time as a type of “living photography.”81 The comparison to Bekhterev’s popular-scientific activities is not at all farfetched. If one traces the path, one finds a number of events in Mechanics of the Brain that lead to Bekhterev. Like Pavlov, he dealt with conditioned reflexes but referred to them as association reflexes.82 He also attempted to formulate an “objective psychology” that ruled out any form of subjective self-observation; however, he did so from a contrary perspective. While Pav­ lov limited himself to inner processes that subverted consciousness, Bekhterev also included the “outer or objective signs of human experience and reac­ tions.”83 He used the term reflexology to describe his methods; this term expressed the claim to be able to extend the “examination of reactions to all organic and inorganic beings,” that is, to movements and thoughts. In other words, it merged physiological and psychological knowledge to a universal approach that promised to remedy nervous diseases as well as alcohol addic­ tion, exhaustion and membership in sects.84 Indeed, Bekhterev’s holistic hori­ zon is evident in his own education. Like Pavlov, albeit eight years younger, he studied experimental physiology in Carl Ludwig’s Leipzig laboratory; he also studied brain anatomy under Ludwig’s pupil, Paul Emil Flechsig, neuro­ physiology with Jean Martin Charcot in Paris and ultimately experimental psychology under Wilhelm Wundt. His initial successes in Russia came in the form of an array of topics, for example the identification of a type of back pain known to this day as Morbus Bekhterev as well as hypnosis tech­ niques for the treatment of alcoholism, which also enjoy tremendous popu­ larity today.85 After his return from Europe in 1895, Bekhterev immediately became a professor of psychiatry in Kazan, one of the first cities to become home to an institute for work organization after the revolution. At this insti­ tute, starting in 1923, he edited an interdisciplinary newspaper out of Petro­ grad called “The Question of Physiology, Reflexology and Work Hygiene.”86 Within 30 years, Bekhterev had not only combined psychology with neu­ rophysiology and morphology, he had also replaced psychology with reflexol­ ogy.87 In other words, the research on sleep and hypnosis – to which Pavlov had increasingly devoted himself at the time of Pudovkin’s filming – had already been the focus of his only serious Russian competitor for many years. However, at his Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg, Bekhterev was not only working on reflexological problems in child psychology;88 he had also already recognized the possibilities presented by the techniques of pho­ tography and film for reflexology. Thus, he opened his curriculum to both the natural sciences and the humanities and introduced a general course of stud­ ies that incorporated all academic disciplines, including sociology, economics, law, philosophy, literature and art history.89 As a result, at Bekhterev’s inno­ vative institute, which set its sights on the “unified scientific organization of all neuro-psychiatric medical disciplines,”90 it was possible for filmmakers to

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study next to neurologists and for neurologists to practice on film apparatuses. Ultimately, at the State Institute for Brain Research in Leningrad, he also set up a Central Laboratory for Labor Management Research, which boasted a cin­ ematographic workshop “for the purpose of the careful analysis of workers’ movements,” as well as a “Museum for the Examination of Workers’ Person­ ality, which served to popularize and showcase all scientific findings produced by labor research,” and a Department for Children’s Reflexology. This depart­ ment was located only 1 km away as the crow flies from Pavlov’s laboratory.91 For this reason, Bekhterev’s radius of influence was also considerably broader than Pavlov’s. While the latter was well-known by all – artists and politicians alike – without having to engage in the dissemination of his teach­ ings among the general public, Bekhterev maintained personal relationships with artists such as Ilya Repin and the Moscow circus artist and animal trainer Vladimir Durov.92 Some filmmakers from Pudovkin’s avant-garde environment studied at Bekhterev’s institute: Dziga Vertov, Grigori Boltan­ ski, Mikhail Koltsov and Abram Room familiarized themselves there all at once with neurophysiology, with the use of the film apparatus in the scientific laboratory, with the exploration of the brain and with Bekhterev’s hypnosis techniques – in short, with the possibilities of communicating with their recip­ ients via technology. According to reports by Viktor Shklovsky, Bekhterev gave women and Jewish artists, in particular, the opportunity to pursue a university education.93 And yet, Bekhterev’s psycho-physiology not only accepted students who had been rejected elsewhere; it also inspired truly useable film practices. For example, in addition to making films, Bekhterev’s student Abram Room carried out studies on the perception of cinema spectators in the children’s film department at the Narkompros.94 It is possible that Pudovkin learned from Bekhterev about the transmission to the human psyche of reflex teachings developed by Pavlov on dogs and apes. A report from that time proves that Bekhterev did not stop at model organisms, but rather studied human reflexes directly: “Pavlov’s laboratory works . . . on saliva reflexes, Bekhterev’s on the movement reflexes . . . of the human hand and the human leg to electric stimuli.”95 Mechanics of the Brains also depicts motor reflexes in dogs and the mentally ill; most likely, as Amy Sargeant argues, because they were easier to visualize using film than saliva secretions.96 The shots themselves supply additional evidence for this: the dogs were filmed not in Pavlov’s laboratory but instead outdoors, that is, outside of the laboratory on the meadow of a mental hospital, much like Bekhterev’s hospital (see Figure 2.8). Pudovkin’s concept of a visually guid­ able attentiveness also matched Bekhterev’s own notion: Optical conceptions are inadequate in many cases, that is, unless arbi­ trary impulses intervene in the act of seeing. In order to gain a clear idea of an object, it is often not enough to see the object; one must observe it, and this takes place by means of the arbitrary focusing and shifting of the axes of the eyes.97

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Bekhterev even outlined in detail the fact that impulses such as these triggered the pupillary reflex: “In addition, pupillary reflexes occur when a patient imagines lightness (contraction) and darkness (opening).”98 Pudovkin was able to take these explanations and apply them – without any transmis­ sion capacity from the human eye – to the lens of his camera. However, what these two scientists had most in common was the move­ ment out of the laboratory or film studio into the social space:99 Pudovkin documented scientific findings at the site of the action and processed them for the purpose of enlightening and educating the public. Bekhterev took on social problems relating to social hygiene, labor organizations and communication. In addition to reflexology’s use in labor management, he also developed it into a so-called “collective reflexology.”100 Here, we find extraordinary thoughts about interpersonal relations, which once again have suspicious parallels to Pudovkin’s mass cinema: “The object of collective reflexology is .  .  . the investigation of the emergence, development and activity of gatherings, which express their common correlative activities thanks to collective contact as a whole.”101 Like Pudovkin, he saw film as being suitable for the investigation of the effects of film – an objective investigation, as it was supposed to be carried out on groups. And yet, for Bekhterev, film was more than just a means of analysis. He presupposed the possibility of a supra-personal transmission of information that was structurally rooted in telegraphy. He imagined human bodies as signal sys­ tems whose nervous systems were connected to one another in an immate­ rial way, be it through common interests, goals or activities. And cinema, too, had a function to play in forming a community: “Examples of a collec­ tive connected by means of joint observation and concentration include the theater, concerts and all kinds of spectacles and performances.”102 Much like with radio waves, he argued that it should be possible to communi­ cate ideas, wishes, moods, conscious and unconscious thoughts from one man to another, whether in workers’ clubs, political gatherings, within societies – or in the cinema. Like a power grid, he wanted to network people with one another by means of their shared and exchanged yet still secret thoughts. The prerequisite for the communicative connection was not, for example, telephone apparatuses but rather a universal bio-energy that all humans have in common: “Reflexology teaches . . . that all indi­ viduals must be seen as energy accumulators that appear to be the result of their past individual experiences and inherited influences.”103 This immaterial energy provided highly material opportunities both for the “excitement of the atmosphere and for the development of the energy”104 with which Bekhterev’s research into labor management on mass-reflexological grounds could be further developed. And telepathy also had an efficient moment, seeing as “the more the mass sticks together, and in particular the more similar it is, the easier it is to [come to] telepathy; the faster the social contagion happens.”105 How, then, could Pudovkin’s “observation of the masses with film” take part in this telepathy, and what role did

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Pavlov’s reflex teachings play? Indeed, no matter how similar they were, these teachings nevertheless displayed some research-related and methodo­ logical differences to Bekhterev’s projects. Nature, Laboratory, Hospital and Film Studio

The relationship between Pavlov and Bekhterev is best described as one of productive competition, that is, one that emerged as a result of several fac­ tors and began when they were still at university. Bekhterev studied more quickly than Pavlov and achieved considerable recognition at a young age, as evidenced by his receipt of medals of honor, which led to his professorship at the military academy.106 In the era of the October Revolution, that is, at the time Pavlov became interested in clinical subjects such as neuroses, sleep as inhibition and psychopathology, Bekhterev had already successfully covered these areas and was poised to push through his reflexology as an official Soviet psychology.107 Bekhterev had always participated actively in discus­ sions on a genuinely Soviet psychology, while Pavlov had been consistently apolitical and only changed his stripes when he received financial support from the Party.108 For this reason, Pavlov did not attend the aforementioned First All Russian Conference for Initiatives of Scientific Work Organization and Operational Management, seeing as in 1924 Bekhterev was still tak­ ing up his outposts in reflexology, tolerated by officials who were distracted by precipitous political events, such as Lenin’s death. One could conjecture that in the following years, Pavlov became an easier cooperation partner for officials than Bekhterev, seeing as Pavlov had a more neutral approach, held politically stable positions and enjoyed a high regard in scientific and local political circles. At that point, Bekhterev’s successfully acquired monopoly position in psychology had to be undermined and replaced by something of equal weight. This would also explain the party’s actions with respect to Bekhterev’s Institute for Brain Research: instead of recognizing his authority in the field, the communist Academy of Sciences set up a parallel institution for the analysis of Lenin’s brain – the Moscow Institute for Brain Research, where, five years later, Bekhterev’s idea of a pantheon of the brain was also realized.109 The party seems to have been playing Pavlov and Bekhterev off against one another, because at the Moscow Institute, in 1925, none other than Fursikov, the former assistant of Pavlov, took on a leading post – precisely the same Fursikov who had assisted Pudovkin in the shooting of Mechanics of the Brain. This competitive situation might have been the cause of Pavlov’s agreeing to produce a popular-science film in his laboratory. Pavlov’s teachings simply stood too close to Bekhterev’s research for him to have been able to stay in the background and reject the support of the govern­ ment. Mechanics of the Brain could also be understood as Pavlov’s answer to Bekhterev’s claim to dominate reflexology research into behavior as one of reaction systems to outer stimuli. And it would be an indicator of the reori­ entation of the psychological sciences in the Soviet Union, that is, away from

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Bekhterev’s experimental–psychological reflexology toward a physiological reflex theory in the Pavlovian sense. In contrast, the relationship between Pavlov’s and Bekhterev’s experimen­ tal work provides a key aspect for the further understanding of this film as an experiment. It provides answers to the most difficult questions with regard to the connection between art and science: that is, to what extent Pudovkin’s film-practice potentially mediates between Pavlov and Bekhterev and whether it had any effect on Pavlov’s experimental practice. Although film techniques in Bekhterev’s work had been recognized early on as having a social function, for Pavlov, they remained unimportant for many years. It was only in the 1930s, as Pavlov was writing his studies on sleep, that he commented on the medium of film in general: It is a pity that cinematography appeared too late and could not be utilized by us and our physiological laboratories. Had it been as acces­ sible then as it is now, all these phenomena could have been very easily comprehended. We could now demonstrate them to you in the space of fifteen minutes and you would leave us with the deep conviction that inhibition is a concentrated process, hypnosis and sleep represent an inhibition which spreads over more or less vast areas.110 Sleep, hypnosis and film were phenomena that were by no means new and inaccessible, and they already distinguished Bekhterev’s research. With Mechanics of the Brain, the medium of film went on a journey, mediated by countless of Pudovkin’s colleagues who had studied under Bekhterev as well as his ambitious rivals. Ultimately, it received a place – albeit a small one – in Pavlov’s oeuvre. Seen in this sense, Pavlov’s interest in Mechanics of the Brain is understand­ able. Why, however, did Pudovkin choose, of all things, reflexology as the subject of a film that was designed to use psycho-physiological means to per­ form experiments on the masses? Indeed, the opportunity for fame involved in making the first film about the great Pavlov held equally great risks. To what element – besides the general functioning of the film apparatus – was Mechanics of the Brain supposed to open the eyes of his audience? Given this question, Pudovkin’s media practice becomes more than just the adaption of Bekhterev’s reflexology to the montage as a stimulus of perception. Pudovkin challenged the attentiveness of his viewer on the formal level and linked this at the same time to the content level. In doing so, the camera lens was used as a formal vehicle that divided Mechanics of the Brain into four scenes: nature, laboratory, hospital and production studio, corresponding respectively to the different sites of action where Pudovkin shot the film.111 The film begins in nature – with the feeding of zoo animals: the crocodile isn’t hungry when it’s tired; ducks never miss the food thrown to them; the sea lion even jumps out of the water basin when it is especially hungry. An ape is distracted while he’s eating, and in a parallel edit, small children are

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crawling and playing. Then the attention shifts to complicated behavior – to the everyday recreational activities of Soviet people: a girl on a swing, some boys swimming, others are roughhousing, still others ride horses. The next part takes place in Pavlov’s laboratory and depicts the relevant tests of experimental physiology on frogs, dogs and apes. Thanks to the montage, they apparently all take place under the guidance of a Soviet physiologist, although this was only, in fact, the case in one experiment. Pavlov’s famous set-up with regard to dog conditioning ultimately plays the leading role; the film shows in detail how Pavlov extracts saliva from hungry dogs with the help of a cheek fistula and then researches their digestive system as well as the mental processes of appetite formation. Later, the dogs are taught conditioned reflexes using electric shocks and differently pulsating metronomes. Between these scenes, Pudovkin once again inserted two repeating, 1-second-long titles and animated diagrams that explain the activity of the brain and local­ ize the zones in the brain in which language, perception and motor skills are found. Ultimately, parts of the brains of dogs and apes are extracted and the resulting motor reactions demonstrated. An intertitle announces enthu­ siastically: “All life, all culture is entirely built on reflexes.” The third part of Mechanics of the Brain returns from the animal kingdom to the world of human beings, into the hospital: to show the birth of a new human being and the demonstration of all its natural reflexes. The newborn child reacts to splashes of water with a defensive reflex, to a spoon touching his face with the nourishment reflex and to an approaching finger with the grasping reflex. However, all of the innate conditional reflexes do not protect the infant from starvation – in order for the child to recognize his mother’s breast, he will have to develop a sucking reflex. The feeding of the newborn child ultimately leads, in the final scene, to the model development of the optimally conditioned Soviet child, whose skill and ingenuity grow steadily from the first to the sixth year. One-year, two-year and six-year-old children are observed at the kitchen table and in the bathroom. Not only is their behavior amazingly well-developed from the very beginning; the climax of the story told here focuses on a group of children who try to solve a problem collectively as well – the challenge is to snag the rope that is hanging just a bit too high on the wall. An interti­ tle summarizes the scene for the viewer: “All life, all culture develops with the goal reflex, that is, only in those people who have a goal in their life.” And yet, remarkably, one aspect of this last scene remains unsolved despite the ideological guidance: although the film suggests that Pavlov’s laboratory conditioning is also possible in each private reality, the ideal child grows up neither in the physiological laboratory nor in a Soviet children’s home, but rather in the producer’s film studio. If we compare all the chapters and the respective uses of the camera lens, we can observe that the opening and closing of the aperture during the shots in nature and hospital emerge respectively more clearly and appear much more alive than in the laboratory and studio: the aperture closes suddenly

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after a cut from the long shot of a beach scene to the close-up view of a group of boys undressing. Accordingly, it is sharply narrowed in the observation of the birth process and later in the initial feeding of the infant. In contrast, the images in the laboratory permanently expose the viewer to a diffused light with a slightly closed aperture, whereas the situation of the children playing in the studio has – to a large extent – a lens that remains consistent. The fact that Pudovkin consciously fed back the respective scene via the set-up of his camera is almost obvious: “In contrast to the fable of a feature film, in a popular-science film, the general idea holds the entire fabric together. It must be communicated via artistically designed facts and via the montage.”112 He did not want to leave anything to chance in his three-and-a-half years of film­ ing: the director “must make use of the random material . . . , then the will of the director reshapes the reality and subordinates it in order to create a work from out of it.”113 When Pudovkin connects nature to hospital and laboratory to studio, he contributes a commentary on their status in the research and cognitive pro­ cess. Here, one is obliged to recall the basic texts of experimental physiology, such as Claude Bernard’s “Introduction to Experimental Medicine.”114 Ber­ nard’s experimental practices made their way to Russia via Russian scholars who visited his laboratory in Paris in the 1860s, first and foremost Ivan Sech­ enov, who was praised by Pavlov as the “father of Russian physiology.”115 For Pavlov, Bernard was “the original inspiration for my physiological activ­ ity.”116 He shared his vision of an experimental physiology that understood the animal organism as a machine, ruled by deterministic relations, and saw the task of the experimenter as being the uncovering of these relations by means of experiments on living animals. Like many of his Russian contem­ poraries, Pavlov indeed neglected crucial aspects in Bernard’s oeuvre – ones that could not be interpreted as purely material. And still, he believed he was following him in terms of the conception of life as an organized system: like Bernard, Pavlov saw the human organism as a regulation apparatus and examined organ activity not with regard to individual organs, but instead with regard to their functional relationships.117 In this sense, it is understandable that he saw himself as the heir to Bernard’s experimental medicine. And Pav­ lov also shared the problem facing that physiological practice, that is, that the physiologist – by reconstructing the natural processes of living organ­ isms for the analysis and control of their behaviors in the laboratory – was constructing a new reality that was different from the reality to which it was referring. Even 60 years after Bernard, Pavlov commented – without any hint of irritation – on this difference, that is, on the status of being part of one reality and, the same time, part of a reality that is different from the first: What is a scientific library? And in this small corner of reality, man worked with his mind on the challenge . . . of knowing this reality, in order to be able to correctly determine in advance what was going to happen . . . in order to be able to guide this reality.118

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In spite of this paradox, both Bernard and Pavlov considered it indisput­ able that “when a phenomenon comes up, even just one time in a certain context, we are entitled to retain it under the same conditions, so that it must keep coming up again and again in the same way”119 and that “the effects . . . of these are the same for people and animals.”120 Consequently, the behavior of objects in the laboratory can be transferred to objects outside the labora­ tory – to patients in the hospital. In this way, both researchers saw the labo­ ratory of experimental physiology as the only location that allowed them to reproduce nature, and thus they subordinated it to the hospital. The methods of the experimental laboratory, they argued, were part of a nature that was worth studying, but which did not provide the means for this study: In a word, I do not consider hospitals the gateway to scientific medi­ cine; they are the first field of observation that a physician enters; the real sanctuary of medical sciences is a laboratory. . . . When the physi­ cian leaves the hospital, he must enter into his laboratory.121 Pudovkin leaves the hospital in the last scene of Mechanics of the Brain – and enters his film studio. In a manner entirely committed to his apparatus, Pudovkin expands the involvement of experimental sciences with objectivity in nature, hospitals and laboratory by including the ‘objective’ opportunity space of his camera, that is, the reality of his medium, which includes the film studio and its tech­ nical conditions – camera and montage. In contrast to the way physiologists used film for their laboratory, Pudovkin understood that “in film, each real­ ity, human being or thing is raw material”122 that becomes correct and real through montage, “but this reality is produced, constructed.”123 Ultimately, through the linking of film studio and laboratory, he questions the ‘reality’ of both and refers to the constructed nature of these two ways of negotiating life – science and film. The perfectly conditioned Soviet child never existed in reality: it “existed merely as a cinematic reality, where it is the result of the splicing together of two film strips.”124 Experimentalization of Reality In 1924, one year before Pudovkin began shooting Mechanics of the Brain, the still young Soviet Union was shaken by an event that many had long feared, namely Lenin’s death. In the press, a debate erupted about the adequate commemoration of the great hero of the revolution. Hardly an artist abstained from participating in the competition to produce the most appro­ priate representation of this founding father of socialist society; indeed, what was at stake here was nothing less than the preservation of the conditions for their own artistic work. The question facing the avant-gardists, in par­ ticular, was the extent to which the new media of photography and film could underpin Lenin’s authority over the long term. In doing so, however,

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they found themselves at odds with the “Commission for the Immortality of the Memory of V. I. Lenin.” This body represented a Lenin cult that was designed to foster his enduring political power at all times and in all places, and to do so in the form of monumental sculptures, idealized paintings and photographs chosen and disseminated by the Commission depicting Lenin as an exemplary spokesman of the people. Indeed, Lenin was stylized as an eternal hero whose omnipresence served to legitimate the power of the ruling party.125 The avant-gardists, on the other hand, developed a concept of re­ presentation in the sense of an unfiltered presentation of Lenin.126 The only acceptable mediation between Lenin’s reality and its representation were the technical means of the artist, that is, pencil, typewriter, camera and film cam­ era. They represented a form of access to their subject that was as neutral as possible. The question that arose here was whether a reflection of reality – as it was suggested by the realists – was possible or not. And the secret lay in the media performance of the two opponents, that is, instead of the illusionistic strategies used by the realists, the avant-gardists laid open the very processes and media they used: And yet there is still a comprehensive image of him [Lenin, M.V.]. This is the presentation that exists thanks to photo-documents, books and drawings. . . . A portfolio of photographs that show him at work and in his leisure time, the archive of his books, writing pads, notebooks, shorthand notes, film footage and gramophone recordings.127 The avant-gardists derived their strategy of the presentation of reality from formalistic literature and called it Factography. Wind-Up Socialism: Factography This will be art – to see art and to communicate art, to discover a subject hid­ den to the eye, which is not equipped to see it, . . . – in other words, the art of generating the fact. Nikolai Chuzhak128

Factography is a neologism that combines two practices with one another: the writing with light of photography and the writing down of facts of lit­ erature. Accordingly, both writers and photographers and even filmmakers propagated this concept of the neutral access to reality and found multifac­ eted possibilities to implement it in practice. And yet, ‘neutral’ did not mean objectivity for all. Instead, they suggested a subjective worldview, one that echoed the point of view of the viewer: “For us Factographers, there are no facts ‘in and of themselves.’ There are effect-facts and defect-facts. The fact that strengthens our socialist position and the fact that weakens it. The friendfact and the fiend-fact.”129 ‘Neutral’ thus implied the unveiling of the active

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author and his manipulative methods, that is, his apparatuses. Writing was not understood as a reflection in the sense of representation. Instead, writ­ ing should be used as a construction in the sense of a presentation of reality. Nikolai Chuzhak, a writer and Factography agitator, called for precisely this: according to him, the factographic artist should not depict reality but rather enter into and create it.130 In this context, create means both the production of socially useful products and the enlightening form of representation that requires the active participation of the public: the conscious co-creation of visual perception by means of the uncovering of its mediated status. The concept of Factography appeared for the first time in 1923 in Vladimir Mayakovsky’s newspaper LEF (Left Front of the Arts) as “literature of the fact.” Viktor Shklovsky and Ossip Brik were the “literature of the fact” writ­ ers who also wrote for films: in 1928, Brik wrote the screenplay for Pudovkin’s “Storm over Asia,” and in 1939 Shklovsky wrote the screenplay for “Minin and Pozharsky.” Alexander Rodchenko and Dziga Vertov were the artists we can refer to as the central figures of the Factography movement.131 As a result of the heterogeneity of the factographic positions, the LEF was discontinued by the Party in 1925 after only two years of publishing activity. In 1927, Factography agitators returned with the follow-up magazine NOVYJ LEF (New Left Front of the Arts) in order to propagate – in a clearer and louder manner – the new form of perception of the Soviet reality. Once again, the newspaper was forbidden after only a short time (one year), and the Factog­ raphers lost the rivalry with regard to representation and construction to the Realists.132 However, there were some representatives of Factography who were able to successfully disseminate their basic ideas beyond the existence of the LEF. Writers such as Sergei Tret’yakov suggested visiting farms so as to document facts relating to collective production in the form of photos and protocols and to present these documents to the public on site. This way, the author would be able to do away with the contemplative distance to his object and reader, and the “informing” writer could become an “operating” one.133 For this purpose, Tret’yakov suggested the “biography of things” as a substitute for the “biography of man;” this implied showing individual heroes, that is, people in their everyday lives and in the production processes who surrounded them instead of making heroes and exceptional figures out of them.134 Ossip Brik listed “biographies, memoirs and protocols”135 as fac­ tographic texts, while Tret’yakov added the genres of “diary, travel report, sketch, article, feuilleton, reportage, study, documentary montage.”136 The photographer Alexander Rodchenko sketched the interior and exterior architecture of his home – from above and below – in order to expose all perspectives that were available to the perception of his camera. And, finally, filmmaker Dziga Vertov filmed scenes of everyday Soviet life for his weekly news show and also played with perception by playing with his apparatus. All of these works included the perspective of an eye-witness, that is to say that something was observed and recorded as accurately as possible by a certain person at a certain time in a certain place. Without taking recourse to

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a third narrative instance between the two, the idea was to have the findings explain themselves by means of the observer, who functioned as a medium; however, it also involved constantly changing the standpoint of the observer and thus revealing the flexibility of the observation. Protocol brevity, the sim­ plicity of the means of expression and the highest possible attention to detail were further strategies used by the Factographers and designed to distract from the narrative authors themselves in favor of their techniques. Brik spoke of the “collecting of the largest possible number of real facts and details,”137 while Tret’yakov encouraged artists to “show sharpness in perception. And don’t overlook even the tiniest of details.”138 In this manner, each and every medium was included to prove the factographic method of capturing real­ ity – the analysis and construction of perception – as the most appropriate. Indeed, the necessity of proving this was acute, seeing as the death of Lenin meant that the question of the representation of old and new powers became an existential issue facing artists. If we look at Pudovkin’s impulse to document Pavlov’s laboratory in this context of the factographic struggle against socialist realism, his choice of subjects can be seen as a political act in favor of his profession. Even if Pudovkin was not directly involved in the factographic debate, his film bears factographic traits. He not only exposed the presence of his medium by means of the use of the aperture; he also revealed it in the representation of Ivan Pavlov. In Mechanics of the Brain, the major physiologist is hardly seen – other than very briefly in a filmed photograph: not as a living person, not as the great Pavlov, instead as a very busy scientist, very quickly captured in a photographic document. This is no coincidence: indeed, Pavlov was the scientific authority of the “language of facts”139 and could have provided Pudovkin and the Factographers more than just the method of addressing and enlightening the viewer. He could have given him additional authority for his medium of film, especially when Pavlov himself published his “Lec­ tures on Conditioned Reflexes” in factographic form – unrevised and clearly showing his interventions as author in 1927: [I]n the book as it stands at present I intentionally allowed the chapters to remain as they left my hands at the first revision, incorporating in the later lectures the new material as it came to hand. In this manner the reader is placed in a position to obtain a much clearer idea of the natural growth of the subject.140 Indeed, as Pavlov argued, “facts are one thousand times more important than words.”141 At this point, one could go further and search out more general parallels between Factography and the experimental sciences. For example, Claude Bernard – Pavlov’s role model in his experiments with live animals – had already described the first-class observer and even compared him to the photographer.142 Bernard described the laboratory experiment as initiated

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observation and thus bridged the gap between uninvolved observation and involved production that the Factographers took as their starting point. The world had to be observed precisely; however, in doing so, it already becomes constructed, and these means of construction need to be acknowledged, unveiled and used productively.143 The experimental physician, as Bernard described him, thus becomes a structural precursor of the Factographer: always working closely to the facts, with a preference for observation over free ideas and conscious of the constructedness of all observation – those done in a laboratory and outside of the laboratory equally. Accordingly, Pudovkin unveiled the unnatural ‘development of the object’ in the laboratory as in the film studio. In addition to the already described associations between labora­ tory and film studio by means of the camera aperture, yet another common­ ality of the two locations arouses the attentiveness of the viewer: both are completely empty. There is no unnecessary furniture to be seen, no decora­ tion, no assistants walking through the image, no interruptions – in other words, it is not at all a realistic situation. The dogs wait amazingly patiently in the half-lit rooms for their appearance in the experimental set-up, and the children in the studio move haltingly through the empty children’s rooms like miniature yet simultaneously well-behaved Golems. While the camera stands quietly and pretends to be both passive and objective, the rooms being filmed betray the secret of their constructedness. Pudovkin was very aware of this: Only . . . when a quick, almost hectic rhythm is achieved in the sequence of images – one that is the equivalent of the panicked back-and-forth movement of the observing eye – only then does life appear on the screen – the life that the director has breathed into the scene.144 However, he pointed to this rhythm only in scenes on the beach, in the zoo and in the hospital. When Pudovkin came to Pavlov’s laboratory, he was already familiar with the experiment and its ambivalent constructedness. He had studied physical chemistry and worked in a chemistry laboratory. His cameraman remembered this experience as being a fundamental one for Pudovkin’s work in film: One must work according to the principles of “necessity and suffi­ ciency.” These principles were developed by Pudovkin himself as he worked in the chemistry laboratory. Certain elements caused a certain reaction in each other, if the necessary and sufficient conditions for them were prepared.145 Pudovkin was able to develop the so-called “principle of necessity” in Lev Kuleshov’s experimental film studio where he studied films after completing a degree in chemistry. This studio, which the filmmakers of 1920s casually referred to as the “film lab,” is known primarily for the so-called Kuleshov

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effects. These effects were based on perception experiments and examine the possibility of using shots of one and the same face in different contexts. Edited in front of a plate of food, the face looked hungry; edited in front of a funeral, it looked sad; edited in front of a child at play, it looked happy. When the film clips were presented to the public, the reactions proved that the same image was able to provoke and transport different emotions.146 The screening of the film became an experiment that tested the feelings of the audience: We then stuck these three strips together with glue into one film reel and presented them to an unprepared public, and the result was sur­ prising. They were so excited about how finely the artist could act. . . . But, in reality, the face was the same in all three cases. This shows how strong the effect of the montage is.147 Kuleshov’s experiments taught Pudovkin three principles: that montage is the decisive element of filmic narration; that it creates a different reality from the filmed reality and that experiments can and should be carried out on audiences. Ultimately, Pudovkin’s work was able to convince Pavlov – or, if not Pavlov directly, then at least one of his co-workers – to such an extent that after the filming of Mechanics of the Brain, he offered him a position as an assistant in the laboratory.148 And this, even though his experiments on motor skills grew out of Pavlov’s laboratory and were carried over to the experimental space of Vladimir Bekhterev, who had already determined in 1902 that “the task of true science lies not in researching the nature of things themselves but in the pursuit of mutual relations between them.”149 In other words, it was similar to the way in which the relations between Kuleshov’s assembled images had first enabled decisive statements about the people depicted. One of the most famous filmmakers and representatives of the factographic view of reality was Dziga Vertov. In 1942, as part of an advertising campaign for Russian cinema, Pudovkin expressed his admiration for his competitor: Vertov’s film, according to Pudovkin, had shown [T]he large role played by rhythm in montage. The joining together of different pieces of different lengths – sometimes shorter, faster, exciting, moving towards a climax, then slower again, longer, more calming – is extraordinarily important for the effect on the audience.150 However, during the work on Mechanics of the Brain, Pudovkin had positioned himself in opposition to Vertov, and in particular to his approach to documentary film, and had criticized the idea of the so-called filmic “life caught unawares.”151 In 1926, Vertov had almost finished filming his fac­ tographic masterpiece: Man with a Movie Camera152 was made at roughly the same time as the Mechanics of the Brain. However, Vertov had institu­ tional difficulties in Moscow and had to film in Ukraine; the last shot was

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completed only in November  1928, and the premiere took place finally in January 1929 in Kiev.153 Although Vertov had been criticized for his docu­ mentary style, he referred in a subtitle to the Man with a Movie Camera as a “film feuilleton” in order to make it clear that he saw himself as a journal­ ist more than an artist, while remaining true to his factographic principles. A  further subtitle announced the goal of the film, that is, not to entertain but rather to bring about “an experiment with film” in the cinema space. The team who worked on Man with a Movie Camera also revealed Vertov’s involvement with Factography: the music for the film was created in coopera­ tion with film theoretician Aleksei Gan, who wrote for Mayakovsky’s LEF journal, which also published Vertov’s manifestos.154 However, he not only had a personal link with the Factographers, Vertov also practically imple­ mented Tret’yakov’s concept of a cinema that takes place in the collectives. For his weekly newsreels, he travelled to a wide range of Soviet nations. In 1921, when he set up the mobile film unit for a campaign against famine, in a sense he had predated factographic projects.155 And, as Man with a Movie Camera was both a cinematic experiment and an explanation of his own procedure, it can be interpreted as a film in the spirit of Factography. So it seems logical that Vertov brought this film to Germany along with a speech on his approach to cinema – a factographic approach designed to answer the question “What is Kino-eye”?156 Kino-eye was a concept that Vertov – according to his own recollection – had already developed back in 1918, when he was musing about the [R]ole of the camera in the examination of the living world. . . . KinoEye must be understood as that which the human eye cannot see, as the microscope and telescope of time, as the remote control of movie cameras from a distance (as tele-eye), as x-ray eye, as “life caught una­ wares. . . . ” Film-eye as the possibility to make the invisible visible, to clarify the unclear, to uncover the hidden, to reveal the masked. The aim of these functions of the camera was not a naive belief in the objectivity of the apparatus that wanted to depict the world by means of is neutral lens: on the contrary, it showed the “truth with the means and opportunities of the film-eye, i.e., the film-truth.”157 Vertov explicitly high­ lighted the apparatus as the medium that structured its subjective perspective of reality, and he referred to the view of the world objectified by means of the camera as the Kino-truth. The public took note of this search for objec­ tive subjectivity, as Siegfried Kracauer confirmed in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1929: Man with the Movie Camera wants to show nothing less than life. The collective life of a city. . . . Streetcars and carriages announce the day. It is one huge movement that captures and depicts that which is frag­ mented and links all elements – the connecting rods, the people on the

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street, the pangs of birth – it connects them all so that they blend into the rhythm of the whole. . . . This is the life that ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ captures. And yet, he [Vertov] also films himself, because with­ out him, without the subject, life would not be an object for us, and object and subject belong together.158 Vertov was conscious of the extent to which object and subject belonged together long before Man with a Movie Camera and long before he set out to propagate his Kino-eye concept in film. In 1922, he initiated a KinokiRevolution in Moscow and used pamphlets to expose the fact that audience attentiveness was being controlled, but he also explained how it was being controlled: “I let the audience see the way I think it is appropriate to see one or the other phenomenon. The eye is subject to the will of the camera.”159 His medical studies no doubt contributed to his insights into the mutual depend­ ency of technology and perception: in 1916–1917, he was one of many film students at Vladimir Bekhterev’s psycho-neurological Institute in St. Peters­ burg.160 Prior to that, he had spent time at a music school, which meant that the first experiments in his so-called “laboratory of hearing” were under­ taken with sound: “Attempts to record the rush of a waterfall, the sounds of a sawmill using words and letters.” He recorded sounds using a phonograph, then edited and assembled them and created new sounds. To what extent Vertov performed experiments for Bekhterev is unclear, but he did perform experiments. His first experiment with film took the form of a jump from the tip of an artificial grotto: holding the camera in front of him, he recorded each individual movement of his face in slow-motion. Afterward, he con­ cluded the following: “On the screen, I don’t recognize my face. Thoughts are exposed on my face. I see both uncertainty and hesitation but also strength (violence to oneself) and then again joy about the victory.”161 In other words, the Kino-eye did not show external truths; instead, it showed much more internal ones, that is, not facial expressions, but moods. Vertov used physical clues to draw conclusions on mental states – much like Bekhterev’s program of psycho-physiology had intended, that is, a program that recorded the motor skills of animals in order to draw conclusions with regard to their brain functions. In other words, for Vertov, these experimental shots were also the continuation of his work under Bekhterev: He [Author’s note: Vertov writes about himself in the 3rd person] moved . . . from the primitive listening to reality to experiments in read­ ing minds, from self-experiments at the Leningrad Psycho-Neurological Institute (recording of thoughts, reactions, forms of behavior) to . . . thoughts about the visual recording of the visible world, about the vis­ ual design of the world, about the truth uncovered by means of film.162 However, the individuals behind the original linking of physical with mental characteristics, that is, of behavior and thoughts in the form of

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Figures 2.16a,b,c Vertov’s film truths (journal Kino-Fot Nr. 2, 1922, 9-10)

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Figures 2.16a,b,c (Continued)

psycho-physiological examinations, did not originate in Russia. This connec­ tion began originally in the experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany, where scientists had – long before Bekhterev – used apparatuses to try and make mental processes tangible and visible and to set them in relation to physical effects. Correspondingly, there was yet another source of inspiration for Vertov’s film-truth – one that was not entirely unknown to Bekhterev himself. In 1922, when Vertov published an article on working conditions at his weekly, called Kino-Pravda – cinema truth – in the Kino-Fot newspaper, there were three images attached: tanks, engineers assembling a Junker engine and a driver at the wheel of a car from behind.163 In other words, there were machines, machines at work and, in the last image, a hybrid situation consisting of both: a man sitting in a driving simu­ lation space with driving scenes in front of him. The first depiction shows the progress of technology; the second corresponds to the labor management set-up of Frank B. Gilbreth in the United States, who filmed and measured workers’ movements. The third situation was used to examine and test the reaction times and driving ability of car drivers; it was an experimental set-up

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that was certainly not unknown to Russian filmmakers, developed by none other than Hugo Münsterberg, the designated inventor of psychotechnics. In 1927, his drivers’ experiment was even mentioned in an article on Film as a Tool of Scientific Research: Münsterberg examined the psycho-physiology .  .  . of drivers. He sits a trainee down with a running motor behind the steering wheel (the car did not move), and asked him to look at a screen where an average street scene could be seen. Suddenly, a child runs out into the street and toward the car, and the driver has to react as quickly as possible, either by braking or turning away. An electric chronograph recorded the driver’s reaction time.”164 The text showcased the use of film for the sciences, regretted the lack of means available and showed a well-known image without any comment – an ape from Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain. On the next page there was an interview with Vsevolod Pudovkin with a question in the title: “How do you make a Kulturfilm?”165 Whether Vertov had heard of Münsterberg via Bekhterev’s laboratory, via his own friendship with El Lissitzky or from the wide Russian avant-garde com­ munity cannot be said with any certainty; it is also of secondary importance. What is important here is that his Kino-truth depicted not a purely artistic project; instead, it rather obviously reflected experimental labor-management set-ups. Kino-truth was, according to the subtitle of the third image, a rela­ tion: “Steering Wheel–Car.”166 Life caught unawares displayed itself not as a device-based, objective documentary of reality, as Pudovkin attributed to the concept; instead, it appeared as a hybrid, a neither purely realistic nor Constructivist design of the film reality. Kino-truth was an analytical truth. It saw and showed things that existed but could not be seen by human eyes. In the same way that Gilbreth’s workers saw their movements for the first time on film to study and improve them. In the same way that the tractor driver trained in a driving simulator in a non-real driving situation. In the same way that Vertov’s cinema audiences trained their attentiveness in the darkened film cinemas to form the Kino-eye. Much like in labor management, film provided a simulation of that which the human imagination considered to be reality, but which it could not create alone. It was like the reality outside the laboratory and cinema, but it was not this reality itself. And Vertov’s films analyzed the world for the eyes they taught to see it. Pudovkin insinuated – most likely out of a sense of collegial competition – that Vertov had an almost naive belief in the possibility of showing life the way it is and argued, in contrast, that “especially when shooting ‘life’ . . . the montage should be anticipated already when shooting.” He described the later as “rhythmic montage,” praised Vertov’s work as a “unification of

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pieces unconnected to one another” and emphasized the director’s organiza­ tional planning efforts: If the director’s task is to work a sense out of the filmed episode, then it is not sufficient to merely demonstrate this sense and to leave it to the viewer to find his own orientation in the chaos of coincidences; instead, he must organize the chaos on the screen.167 Pudovkin completely ignored how much Vertov constructed his Kino­ world. Vertov’s certainty with regard to the media-based conditionality of all perception and representation didn’t spare even his own name: born as David Abeljevich Kaufman, he renamed himself “Dziga Vertov” after the mounting device that had to be turned in order to get the images to run (turn=vertet) and Dziga after the sound that the film roll makes when it runs through the camera, that is, the montage device or projector (dzdzdz): “This is my way to create a new perception of the world. This is how I decipher the world unknown to you time and again.”168 For Vertov, film analysis was highly fac­ tographic, that is, the representation and construction of perception. However, Pudovkin’s criticism was not only political in nature. He actu­ ally meant something completely different when he spoke of experimenta­ tion with film as well; he sought to achieve more than just analysis with film, more than construction via demonstration, and thus he went beyond the Factographers. Vertov’s film-created knowledge can be seen as an analyti­ cal precondition for Pudovkin’s application of montage for the steering of attentiveness. Who Turned the Clock: Secret Films

Paradoxically, both Pudovkin and Vertov eventually came up against pre­ cisely those individuals who sought to criticize avant-garde film for its sup­ posed lack of realism. Pudovkin was criticized for the lifelessness of the laboratory, which differentiated his work clearly from Vertov’s ‘ambush’ camera and which ultimately complicated the release of Mechanics of the Brain. After the film was screened at the Communist Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Aron Zalkind, a communist educator, lamented in the press: Allow me to mention one defect of the film, which is unavoidable and unfortunate considering this first coming-together of science and film: the laboratories and experiments are depicted in quite an empty man­ ner, without any dynamic material that might have been able to animate and freshen up this “complicated” science. . . . In fact, experiments such as these are anything but isolated, particularly when they are carried out on living organisms. . . . Additionally, it would not disturb the sci­ entific public if these parts of the film were interrupted and made livelier by means of scenes taken from real life, especially since reflexology has

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devoted itself to uncovering dynamic-animated processes. In its pre­ sent condition, the film cannot be shown to mass audiences without a lecturer.169 As a result of this criticism, the film was not, in fact, accompanied by a lec­ turer; however, it most likely was given those many intertitles that interrupt Pudovkin’s montage. Pudovkin himself was no friend of intertitles: The task of the director is to construct the film in such a way that the content, which should generalize the idea of the film, is also designed optically and not just conveyed via summarizing texts, as is the case with some popular-science films today.170 There were probably too many people Mechanics of the Brain was supposed to reach and not enough specialists who could comment on the subject. This presumably led to the decision to provide the film with an accompa­ nying brochure that would be able to answer questions, in addition to the explanatory intertitles, especially after the film. Indeed, the aim was to show the film at as many different institutions as possible, such as schools, clubs, workers’ factories and workers’ and mass conferences.171 In any case, if we take Pudovkin’s film theory seriously, the intertitles destroyed the reflexo­ logical function of his montage; indeed, it wasn’t the effect of the images but rather the distancing information of the texts that explained Pavlov’s condi­ tioning. Once again, we turn to Pavlov to help us understand this situation: “Man . . . possesses a first signal system but also a second signal system, the verbal signal system. . . . when the second signal system is in operation, [it hinders] the first signal system.”172 In other words, the use of Pudovkin’s montage as a stimulus specification had to be deemed false. Left unrecognized in its reflexological function, the medium of film was praised for the opportunities it presented with regard to representation: Science uses the essentially demonstrative qualities of film and reaches the largest number of masses with gratitude. But the role and function of film is not exhausted in its capacity for popularization. Film is just beginning to serve science directly as a recording apparatus that allows us to capture details of laboratory experiments that would remain hid­ den to the human eye.173 One product of this discovery of film for scientific purposes – and one that was used less for the recording of experiments than for their distribution – was the so-called Kul’turfil’my (Cultural Films). They originated – at least conceptually – in Germany.174 Grown out of the educational film movement of the 1910s, Cultural Films were simultaneously films about science and films about technology. With precisely this parenthesis, they claimed to

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constitute nothing less than culture itself: indeed, they were designed to examine “questions of morality, national identity, physical health and the protection of children.”175 In 1924, a comprehensive collection was published in Berlin, the same city in which Ladovsky had found the templates for his perception apparatuses: “The Cultural Film Book” contained highly disparate contributions from physicians, actors, directors, film technicians, educators and politicians, all of whom attributed very few borders to the genre: For us (and all educated individuals), each cultural film that educates and ennobles the public, each film that carries an ethos, is a Cultural Film, and we would hope that our readers would create their own list of the best Cultural Films in the world.176 Accordingly, the production of Cultural Films in the Soviet Union was oriented toward the “shotgun” principle, that is, it was directed toward all possible audiences in need of enlightenment, mostly, however, toward the uneducated. Here as there, it would appear that people believed in the improve­ ment of human beings via enlightenment and thus through knowledge and also considered cinema to be particularly conducive to inducing enlighten­ ment. Thus, films were made about the consequences of alcohol abuse, about the many remote regions of the Soviet Union, such as Svaneti in Georgia, as well as about tractors and family planning.177 This allowed them to show audiences not only technical and scientific innovations but also the official party ideology. When Mechanics of the Brain was being propagated in the film press, it was considered to be a Cultural Film – and, according to the many articles on the film, it even had a role-model function: “How do you make a Cultural Film?” was the title of an interview with Pudovkin and dealt with all sorts of practical problems regarding how to handle non-actors and how to work at locations outside of organized studios, that is, in laboratories, on the beach, with animals, children and experimenting scientists.178 In this journal for filmmakers, Pudovkin limited himself in this realm to descriptions of his experiences shooting on location. There was no talk of filmic reflexology in cinemas or of his ambition to make the mass audience the object of filmic experiments. For filmmakers, the Cultural Film was much more a problem of production than reception. The situation was different for the authors of a newspaper published by the Association of Revolutionary Cinematography, for which Viktor Shklovsky and Boris Arvatov also wrote. In 1925, in this newspaper, the reception of different films was examined starting from the question of how the masses reacted to films from the capital in the first place. The easiest way to find this out was by means of sociological surveys in the form of distributed questionnaires, similar to the ones used increasingly frequently at the time by European ergonomists.179 They achieved less surprising results: tastes could be differentiated between workers and intellectuals, and the majority of worker audiences spoke out against Western-capitalistic films.180 The surveys

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undertaken either during or directly after the screening were much more hon­ est and differentiated. In the case of these so-called Attempts to Research the Spectator, one obviously assumed the presence of an effect of film on perception, which disappeared again a short time after the screening. It is no coincidence that the word used to describe watching films was “séance.” Consequently, in order to capture the impression of the film ad hoc in a séance, the aforementioned article also took some time to explore the set-up of the experiments; the idea was to change only one variable and leave the other parameters constant. They were not overly rigid rules: the constants were, for example, the film that was shown and the social class of the audience it was shown to, while the screening venue varied. Or vice versa, the same audience was shown a series of different films in the same cinema. The audience opinions were then registered as follows: 1. Name of the film, 2. Location and time of the screening, 3. Type of viewers (social class, age, amount and general character), 4. Registra­ tion of the behaviors of audience members during the screening based on notes taken (with regard to where and why laughter was heard, or joy, applause, fear, tears, jumping for joy, etc.), 5. Different notes writ­ ten by audience members on the quality of the film during and after the screening, 6. Discussions about the film (and who is talking), 7. Opinions of those individuals observing the audience, and, finally, 8. the opinions of those observing the film.181 In addition to generating “collective film reviews” – which merely involved the evaluation of the questionnaires – the hope was that the results would help to increase the viewer’s influence on cinema production. And yet, how could one speak of an increase in audience opinion when what was collected were spontaneous expressions rather than reflected ones? The subsequent article in the same newspaper gives us an idea of the true interest motivating these efforts, which was in no way the active participation of audiences in the cinema program. Instead, it was about the filmic captur­ ing of experiments; however, these experiments did not take place in the laboratory but rather in the cinema. By “recording the reflexes of the face,” the goal was to explore the objective impact of films – which means that there was no initial need to conduct interviews with the audience. The idea was to gain photo and film footage. What could statements from audience members possibly reveal, especially when these people were peasants who could hardly articulate their feelings? And how could films be made in the city for the “peasant mentality,” which was hardly something one could even attempt to estimate?182 The answer to these questions was as simple as it was ingenious: via the direct recording – that is, without language as an intermediary – of facial expressions and physical reflexes. As a justification for their elaborate plans, which were explained in detail in the course of the article, reference was made to Darwin’s idea that brought together muscle movements in the

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Figure 2.17a Village children at the film screening (Terskoi 1925, 11)

Figure 2.17b Farmer “type” (Terskoi 1925, 10)

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face with certain emotions – and with reflexology: “We can use the observa­ tion of expressive facial muscle movements and the observation of reflexes as material for the purposes of conducting research into the feelings of rural auditoriums.”183 Initially in the form of photographs, this material was col­ lected surreptitiously so that it would remain a secret to cinema audiences. In order to do this, the apparatus was set up in advance in an area with ten viewers; after that, the right focus settings were determined and the entire apparatus “covered up somehow.” The medium of photography, however, posed some fundamental problems: the audience reacted with a certain delay to events on the screen, so that the triggering of the flash – and thus the photo – was almost never punctual. In addition, the photo flash had an effect on the facial expressions of the audience, seeing as it distracted their attention from the screen. As a result, reliable findings were simply not guaranteed. How­ ever, the story was entirely different with film footage. Filming audiences involved the use of fast lenses, and there was no need for any flash, plus it did not depend on the reaction time of facial muscles.184 As ergonomic scientists had already recognized – and which Pavlov would notice a few years later as well – the film educators recognized film’s ability to register moments, that is, the manner in which it made it possible to examine and optimize facial expressions by means of slow-motion, close-up and stills over and over again. And, like Bekhterev – and unlike Pavlov – these scientists observed facial reflexes as signs of mental processes.185 Also, the official objective of these experiments was no longer the creation of enlightened cinema audi­ ences. Instead, what they sought to achieve for themselves and for the pro­ ducers of Cultural Films was a “territorial album of film subjects, styles and necessary techniques.”186 Before cinema audiences knew it, the film was over and their emotional world had been revealed. Although Pudovkin did not participate in these secret cinema experiments, his Mechanics of the Brain can nevertheless be seen as an almost didactic example of this set-up, and indeed not only with regard to the experimentation in the production of the film. The sociologists eager to observe Siberian peas­ ants in the cinema had recognized – as Pudovkin had also done – the effect of the film on the perception; after that, they had made a systematic use of it for the purposes of precisely that which the avant-garde artists had promised, that is, to examine the “findings not on oneself but on people themselves (in a tangibly real, objective and non-subjective practice).”187 If Pudovkin had cinema set-ups such as these in mind so as to filmically capture the “doctrine of the reflexes,”188 then this was precisely the point at which he went beyond Vertov and the Factographers: Mechanics of the Brain experimented just as explicitly during the filming process (i.e., on the production level) as on the level of reception (i.e., in the cinema). Instead of analyzing the world via the apparatus so as to show it in the cinema, the film produced the way of see­ ing itself, and it did so on-site, outside of a film laboratory and within the cinema space. In other words, when Pudovkin showed audiences a precisely calculated film about human behavior and observed them at different points of

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amazement, laughter or tears, while at others they felt fear or boredom, he was already no longer examining the attentiveness of the audience, he was creating it: “In each scene of the film, one feels the expert hand of the director . . . , as well as the great thoughtfulness and care of the depiction,” cinema audiences raved: “All of this leads us to the conclusion that the behavior of man . . . not only possesses a certain scientific value but also an artistic one.”189 This artistic value appeared to distinguish itself – as it had done a few years prior – by means of aesthetic sophistication. It was characterized by the skillful use of scientific practices. Ultimately, Pudovkin used the film not only for experiments but also as an experiment in the public sphere – as an applied scientific experiment in cinemas. Psychotechnics – Manipulation Beyond Language “I don’t know what happened, I didn’t understand a thing, but the film is excel­ lent and I feel great.”190 Lev Kuleshov

Here, too, as was the case already with Ladovsky, the transfer of practices from experimental psychology and physiology to filmmaking was nothing new. And here, too, the man behind it was none other than Hugo Mün­ sterberg, the founder of applied psychology as psychotechnics. Even though Pudovkin did not refer explicitly to psychotechnics, the conditions under which Mechanics of the Brain was made correspond entirely to Münster­ berg’s design: in other words, instead of experimenting in the laboratory, Pudovkin experimented in the social sphere and thus stood in the service of the so-called ‘cultural tasks’ and not of science alone. As a result, all filmic experimental procedures were not entirely stable; instead, they had to toler­ ate endless risk factors that threatened the success of the experiments while at the same time harboring an even larger level of potential. The goal of psy­ chotechnics – which was to change human behavior – lay ultimately in the future, in the uncertainty of the first application. Pudovkin also used Pavlov’s conditioning practices in the production of the film, while the reception of the film was shaped by Bekhterev’s reflexology and thus followed Münster­ berg’s call on artists to make use of the means of analytical sciences. All of this took place in Pudovkin’s work based on the conviction that he could have an effect on the souls of film viewers. Indeed, his conviction was fully in line with Münsterberg and went so far as to insist on the ability to have an effect on audiences via an apparatus.191 And so it is not surprising that Münsterberg also came to the medium of film and anticipated the description of the Cultural Film without even know­ ing it. At any rate, he saw art as he saw alcohol and hypnosis (and in this, he would have been in agreement with Bekhterev) as a means of suggestion, a type of placebo that not only distracted from the daily burdens of workers’

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existence: art also undercut conscious perception. And film was the most effective means of this undercutting, because it worked on the basis of apparatuses and with direct access to the brain.192 In 1916, Münsterberg wrote the following in what is probably the first work of film theory to take into account findings from experimental psychology, called The Photoplay: “If we really enter into the spirit of the play, our attention is constantly swayed in accordance with the intentions of the director.”193 In other words, film does not merely communicate content between filmmaker and viewer; by reproducing the functions of the brain in its very technique, film was able to guide these functions so that human attentiveness suddenly emerged in an analogous manner to the camera: “The lens in our eye is set at precisely the correct distance.”194 Accordingly, close-ups blocked out everything from the image that was unnecessary to human consciousness and thus also objectified what was taking place in the process of human perception: Wherever our attention becomes focused on a special feature, the sur­ roundings are adjusted and everything in which we are not interested is eliminated, thus heightening – by means of the close-up – the vividness of that which our mind is concentrated on.195 In 1915, far from being satisfied with theoretical derivations, Münster­ berg worked at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood on a series of test films that were released in cinemas under the title Testing the Mind. Consisting of several parts, including “Are You Fitted for Your Job?”, “Does Your Mind Work Quickly?” and “Can You Judge Well What Is Beautiful and What Is Ugly?”, these film tests were seen by two million cinemagoers, at least according to Münsterberg.196 Nothing is known about the effects of the films. Without a doubt, however, Münsterberg would have been able to confirm the following: lighting, close-ups, montage, contrasts and film architecture – “there is .  .  . no lack of means by which our mind can be influenced and directed in the rapid play of the pictures.”197 At this point, one could situate Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain in a more detailed manner within the history of research into perception. How­ ever, this would change nothing with regard to the film’s most important characteristic, that is, that a film produced at the junction of art and science can become a political instrument capable not only of disseminating propa­ ganda and ideology but also of actually constructing society. As a Cultural Film, Mechanics of the Brain began to network the brains of cinema view­ ers – in the sense proposed by Vladimir Bekhterev – to a collective that had formed, on the one hand, by means of common subject preferences and, on the other hand, by means of comparable mimic reflexes. In the same vein as Bekhterev’s telepathic mass reflexology, which saw the masses simultane­ ously as objects of research, but which brought forth the masses in the first place by means of the methods of reflexology, Mechanics of the Brain cre­ ated a network of peasants and worker viewers who were to be enlightened.

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Like cinema educators, one only had to acknowledge “that across the entire globe, the same state of the soul could be derived in remarkably similar ways”198 to be able to induce these conditions in a wide array of cinema viewers in equal measure. Thus, after all of this, the much-heralded scien­ tification of all areas of life cannot be dismissed as an ideological pose; the designation of Soviet society as a science society is also insufficient. Coop­ erative activities among politicians, artists and scientists simply worked too well and operated too closely with one another in terms of their convictions. Indeed, the scientific foundation of all areas of life was more than just a party program: it was a fearless practice. Film not only allegedly networked the thoughts of its viewers, it did so in practice as well, especially when thousands of peasants were subjected to the same film. In other words, it was not important whether this networking showed meaningful effects or enjoyed recognition. The only thing that counted was that it took place: “The authentic science of life replaced the study-room science of the bour­ geois world.”199 In a more consequent manner than Ladovsky – who still fed back the effects of his architecture into the laboratory in order to examine the results – Pudovkin applied his cinema experiments in a confident manner, without needing to confirm them, and with a firm belief in their function­ ing, much like the confidence Pavlov had when he unequivocally assumed the transferability of the conditioning of dogs to the conditioning of human beings. At this point, the following questions arise: What was waiting at the end of this conditioning and training of the mind as practiced by Ladovsky and Pudovkin? What kind of man resulted from the application of scientific practices outside the experimental laboratory and thus without any form of cross-checking? If in both of the cases examined thus far, that is, in Soviet architecture and Soviet film, the focus was on a form of experimentalization of human beings that was as unnoticed and unconscious as possible, that is, on a form of automatic walking and perceiving, then was it not also possible to undercut these media themselves – in favor of even more direct access to the human psyche? Notes 1 Dokuchaev 1928, 53. 2 Unless otherwise noted, the adjective “reflexological” will not be used here in the narrower sense of “reflexology” as defined by Bekhterev; instead, it is used in a general sense, that is, concerning the doctrine of reflexes as was founded by Sechenov in Russia. 3 For more on the flood and its consequences, see Todes 2000, 89 et seq., and Sar­ gant 1958, 37 et seq. Daniel Todes’ comprehensive research forms a large part of the foundation for the representations of Pavlov contained here, see Todes 1997, 2000, 2002. Thorsten Rüting’s dissertation on Pavlov was also helpful, see Rüting 2002. The biography of a colleague of Pavlov’s also provides an eye­ witness account: Babkin 1949. 4 Todes 2000, 90. 5 Pavlov 1929, quoted here in Todes 2000, 91.

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6 Thanks to Michael Hagner for the reference to this film and for the first preview copy. The official cinema version used here originates from the Moscow State Film Archive Gosfilmofond. Shooting began on May  1925, and the film was released in November 1926. It was written and directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, with cinematography by Anatoli Golovnya. See Pudowkin 1983, 623, and Leyda 1960, 174, 205–206 and 431. 7 All quotes in this paragraph are taken from text panels in the film. 8 The information on the length of the film is contradictory: BAG. cites 1,890 minutes, see BAG. undated. The production report claims 1,878 minutes, see Janginov 1975, 62. Pudovkin’s German written edition cites 1,850 minutes, see Pudowkin 1983, 623. 9 For more on the production conditions at ‘Mezhrabpom Rus,’ see Bulgakowa 1995, 185–194. The quote is taken from a letter from the production company at the end of 1925, which Kuleshov’s daughter Jekaterina Khokhlowa published, see Bulgakowa 1995, 195–196. 10 Sargeant 2000, 38. 11 The film was previously titled The Behavior of Human Beings, see Gromov, 26. It remains unclear what circumstances led to using the second title The Mechan­ ics of the Brain. In newspaper articles about the film, both titles are used without any accompanying explanation. 12 Quote from the film. 13 Sargeant 2000, 47. 14 Pudovkin 1926. 15 Sargeant examines this question extensively and doubts that Pavlov was inter­ ested in using film to popularize his theories, see Sargeant 2000, 40–42. 16 For more on the concept of the New Man, see Chapter 3. 17 With the exception of Amy Sargeant, who analyzes the film at least on eye-level with Pudovkin’s feature films. She examines the publications dealing with Mechanics of the Brain and concludes that they appear mostly only in the context of larger overviews, Sargeant 2000, 36 et seq. 18 Pudovkin 1926, 6. 19 Cf. Kepley 1995–96, among others 20 The film as a losing deal is reported in Erofeev 1926, as found in the German edi­ tion in Schlegel 2003, 47. The lack of funds is mentioned by Golovnya, accord­ ing to whom the film team consisted mostly of the cameraman and the director, see Gromov 1980, 27. Another reason for the film’s difficulties can be seen in the financial situation of the production company, see Bulgakowa 1995, 185. 21 Kenez 1988, 416. 22 A. N. Tjagaj 1927, 31. Thanks to Jurij Abramoviç Vinogradov, archivist in the Pavlov estate at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, for pointing out this brochure. Tjagaj worked at Mezhrabpom Rus as a “popularizer” of scientific films, see Janginov 1975, 56. 23 Sargeant, 35 and Yangirov 1975, 59. 24 The film financing campaign was developed to improve contacts between the center and periphery. Propaganda trains transported propaganda films to rural populations and, in turn, provided the power center with documentary material from the provinces. Cf. Kenez 1992, 85–86 and 1988, Taylor 1971, Youngblood 1991. 25 Kenez 1988, 415–416. These numbers are low compared to numbers from the film industry in the West; however, in the context of other entertainment sectors in Russia, they are high enough to confirm the great value of cinema for the rul­ ing powers. 26 Tjagaj 1927, 8. One could also use the word “experience” in place of the word “experiment.” However, seeing as the publication refers mostly to Pavlov’s

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31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

Networking experiments and most definitely not to his experiences, this translation appears more appropriate. The double meaning of the word is already anchored in the justification of the medical experiment, see Bernard 1961 [1865]. The motto “Nullius in Verba” (“don’t take anybody’s word for it”) was introduced in the 1660s by the Royal Society and implied that things and the observation of things can be trusted, not words. cf. Dear 1985, Hacking 1996 [1983]. Thanks to Simon Werrett for his notes on interpreting the quote. Cf. Sargeant 2000, 37 and 52, footnotes 43–47. In Great Britain, Pudovkin’s feature films were also banned. A copy of the film Brain Functions (Gehirnfunktionen) can be found at the Insti­ tute for Scientific Film (IWF) in Göttingen (since 2012 at the Technical Informa­ tion Library/TIB Hanover), Germany. Pavlov archivist Jurii Abramoviç Vinogradov spoke of the trip to the United States in a discussion at the Museum of the Institute for Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg in June 2002. To this day, the film version has not been found, nor has the history of this censorship been mentioned in any relevant literature. Instead, new film versions of unknown origin continue to emerge. Amy Sargeant notes that Mechanics of the Brain is also not mentioned in biographies of Pavlov, see Sargeant 2000, 37. The reception history of this popular-scientific film awaits an exhaustive study. Arnheim 1932, 15. Emphasis in the original. Christoph Hoffmann notes that Arnheim ignored the entire discourse on the experimental psychology of film, that is, not on Pavlov’s theory of reflexes alone, and thus purported to have founded precisely this discourse, see Hoffmann 2001, 237. Krakauer, Balasz and Bazin – like Arnheim – also examined fundamental questions regarding the medium of film, primarily feature films, art films and documentaries. David Harrah calls Pudovkin’s montage theory the first systematic film aesthet­ ics, which only had to be worked out theoretically by Arnheim. Here, too, there is no talk of a confrontation with reflex theory, see Harrah 1954, 163. Thanks to Michael Hagner for pointing out this difference. For more on Gestalt psychology, cf. Ash 1995. Pudovkin 1946, quoted here in the German edition of Vsevolod Pudovkin. Die Zeit in Großaufnahme (Vsevolod Pudovkin. Time Close Up), Berlin 1983 (quoted hereafter as Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983), 30–31. Pudovkin 1925a, 11. Gromov 1980, 26. Pudovkin 1946, quoted here in the German edition in Vsevolod Pudovkin. 1983, 30. Advisors Prof. Fursikov and Prof. Voskresensky were both colleagues of Pavlov. Fursikov held the position of director at the State Institute for Brain Research at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, see Zalkind undated, in RGALI, F. 2003, op. 1, ed. khr. 110, l. 3, Art. 14. Pudovkin 1928, quoted here in the German edition in Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 44. Cursive in the original. Pudovkin 1925a, quoted here in the German edition in Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 46. “Business relations,” quoted here in Todes 2002, 246. Pavlov on the relationship between excitement and inhibition in Pavlov 1926, 320. Cf. also Sargant 1958, 39 and Todes 2000, 74. For more on the scientific history of inhibition in brain research, see Smith 1992. Pavlov 1926, 325: “A frequent change of positive and inhibitive reflexes places especially the more excited dogs into the highest stages of general excitement.”

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44 Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 181. 45 Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 87–88. 46 Ute Holl describes in her dissertation Kybernetik und Kino (Cybernetics and Cinema) some of the origins of cinematography in experimental psychology, Holl 2002. Media theory sees film in general as the result of perception research, cf. Kittler 1986, Zglinicki 1956, among others. For more on the scientific history of attentiveness, see Michael Hagner 1998. 47 For more on the short circuit between perception and apparatus in psychological lab experiments, that is, between visibility and making visible, see Geimer 2002b and Hoffmann 2001. 48 Oparin 1925a, 17. Also Oparin 1925b, S-kii 1927 and Sukharevskij 1927. 49 These thoughts are inspired by the explanations of Christoph Hoffmann on the Phi-Phenomenon, see Hoffmann 2001. 50 Benjamin 1936, in Illuminations 1996, 229. 51 Ibid., 232. 52 Ibid., 231. 53 For more on the general reference of Soviet filmmakers to Pavlov, see Sargeant 2000, 34. For more on Eisenstein and reflexology, see Bulgakowa 1989. Vertov references Pavlov many times in his diaries, see Tode and Gramatke 2000, 42, 85, 200. 54 Benjamin 1980 [1926], 27. Thanks to Hans-Christian von Herrmann for point­ ing out the role of Asja Lacis in this context. 55 Benjamin and Lacis in Benjamin, Selected Writings 1927–1930, 1928, 205. 56 Benjamin 1936, in Illuminations 1996, 229. 57 Pavlovian Wednesday Colloquia. 1956 [1949], 240. For more on one of the early publications on sleep as inner inhibition, see Pavlov 1923. 58 Pavlov 1923, 21. 59 Thanks to Andree Korpys and Birk Weiberg for the technical details on camera technique and aperture disk in early cinema. 60 Golovnja 1926, 4. Arshin is a Russian unit of measurement and corresponds to approximately 71 cm. 61 For more on camera techniques at the time, see P. Pavlov 1926 and Korn 1925. 62 Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 124. 63 Pudovkin 1927b, 5. 64 Thanks to Hans-Jörg Rheinberger for this emphasis. 65 Pudovkin 1925a. Quoted here in Sargeant 2000, 48. 66 Pudovkin 1928, quoted here from the German version in Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 44. Italics in the original. 67 Pudovkin 1925a, 44. 68 Pudovkin, undated: Zametki na rasrosennykh listakh (Notes on Loose Sheets). In: Vsevolod Pudovkin. Sobranie Sochinenii v trekh tomakh 1974–76, Vol. 3, 264. 69 Pavlov 1926, 325. 70 Tjagaj 1927, 20. For more on the Institute for Brain Research in Moscow, see Richter 2000, Spivak 2001 and Hagner 2004. 71 It would be interesting to examine Krasnogorsky’s work within behavioral research and behaviorism, which has been neglected due to linguistic barriers even by colleagues such as Watson and Boring, see Windholz and Lamal 1986. 72 A longer version of Mechanics of the Brain containing the missing scenes can be found in the archive of the Vienna Film Museum. The official cinema version contained here belonging to the Gosfilmofond could no doubt have been edited for international distribution after the fact. 73 Tjagaj 1927, 25 et seq.

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74 Ibid., 26. 75 Pudovkin 1926, 7. None of the secondary texts consulted for this book men­ tion that Pudovkin’s film was intentionally produced in two versions. The two official versions differ by two entire shooting locations and roughly 20 minutes. Tikhonov reports that the UFA film Verjüngung (Rejuvenation) examining Stein­ ach’s operations would also appear in two versions and thus places the Mechan­ ics of the Brains in the context of Cultural Films, see Tikhonov 1922, 21. For more on Cultural Films, see Chapter 3b. 76 A clarification of which film versions were actually released to cinemas has yet to be compiled. 77 Zalkind, A.: Mekhanika Golovnogo Mozga (Mechanics of the Brain), Pravda 1926, April 14, No. 85 (3314), 6. 78 Scientific cinematography in Russia was reported on in the magazine Kino-Fot, among others, No. 2, 1922, see ibid. on Gastev p. 8. 79 Nauka i iskusstvo (Science and Art) 1926, No. 1, 1–8 and 9–14. 80 Cf. Vestnik Znaniya (Messengers of Knowledge), 1925 No. 5, No. 7 and No. 8. Columns of G. N. Sorokhtin. The journal was published twice a week. 81 Oparin 1925a, 17. 82 Ivantsov 1926, 102 and Bekhterev 1926, in particular 111 et seq. 83 Baumgarten 1924, 72. 84 Baumgarten 1924, 72. For more on reflexology, see Bekhterev 1926. 85 Cf. Bekhterev 1893 and 1904, among others. For more on this lab in Kazan, see Métraux 1986b. Bekhterev’s general career was recounted, while he was still alive, by his professor Ostankov 1926. For more on the timeliness of hypnosis as a treatment alcohol dependency, see, for example, Semper Ardens Center, www. semper-ardens.de (please note, however, that Pavlov is incorrectly referred to here as the pioneer in this kind of therapy). 86 Baumgarten 1924, quote 79, on the institute in Kazan 85 et seq. 87 Bekhterev 1925. 88 Bekhterev 1908. 89 The historians working at the Bekhterev Institute in St. Petersburg have not yet examined his work with art and film; see Akimenko 1999 and 2000. The onedimensional depiction of the work done at the institute is also reflected in the relevant literature; see Ponomareff 1986. 90 A summary of the history of the institute can be found in a report of the Peo­ ple’s Commissariat for Health at GARF: R.S.F.S.R. Narodnyj Komissariat Zdra­ vookhraneniya (Russian Socialist Federative Republic. People’s Commissariat for Health). 1932. Quote p. 4. Starting in 1919, the institute was renamed the “Pathological Reflex Institute”; and in 1926, it was once again renamed as the Clinical Hospital V. M. Bekhterev. 91 For more on the labs, see Baumgarten 1924, 71–75, quotes on p. 74. Bekhterev founded the Institute for Brain Research in 1919; it was casually referred to as the “Brain Institute.” 92 Repin portrayed Bekhterev and met regularly with him. The letters to Vladimir Durov are found in Durov’s former animal theater “Ugolok Durova” (Durov’s Corner) in Moscow. 93 Holl 2002, 284. These connections have not yet been thoroughly examined. Ute Holl analyzed the linkages between Vertov and Bekhterev, thus taking an important step toward a comparative analysis of artistic and psycho-physiological experiments, Holl 2002, 291 et seq. Jörg Bochow points to the relationship between Kuleshov and Bekhterev but doesn’t move far beyond the assertions they made, see Bochow 1995, 15 und 103. 94 Sargeant 2000, 35.

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95 Ivantsov 1926, 102.

96 Sargeant 2000, 47.

97 Bekhterev 1911, 1941. For more on Bekhterev’s research on attentiveness, see

also Bekhterev 1883.

98 Bekhterev 1911, 1579.

99 See Joravsky 1989, 273 et seq.

100 Bekhterev 1928a. The explanations regarding Bekhterev’s work contained here owe much to the descriptions contained in Ute Holl 2002, 254 et seq. 101 Bekhterev 1928a, 19. 102 Ibid., 21. 103 Ibid., 24. 104 Ibid., 31. 105 Ibid., 45 and 46. For a broader understanding of collective reflexology, it is necessary to mention Gustav Le Bon, a doctor, anthropologist and founder of mass psychology. He described the transmission of emotions in mass gatherings extensively, and Bekhterev refers to him a number of times, cf. Le Bon 1895. 106 Taken from a discussion with Marina A. Akimenko, the editor of Bekhterev’s estate, Petersburg June, 2002. 107 Razran 1958, 1191. Pavlov’s new interests were reflected in three treatises, among others, see Pavlov 1953. An article written by Pavlov shows how close the fields of activities of these two men actually were; in the article, he criticizes current physiological research on brain activity and – ignoring Bekhterev – decides to take on the task of completing the research himself, see Pavlov 1910. 108 Ibid. and Todes 2000. 109 For more on the pantheon, see Bekhterev 1928b. For more on Bekhterev’s brain research plans and the activities of the Communist Academy, see Spivak 2001. For more on brain research in Russia, see Richter 2000. On the Moscow Insti­ tute for Brain Research and the analysis of Lenin’s brain by Oskar Vogt, see Hagner 2004. 110 Pavlov undated, quoted here in Sargeant 2000, 38. 111 The film studio is not named as a shooting location in the credits, even though it was surely used as part of this professional production. Jay Leyda refers to the stu­ dio filming, see Leyda 1960, 206. The term nature is used here collectively to refer to the space that surrounds the laboratory, hospital and studio, that is, the social exterior spaces, such as the zoo and the kindergarten, in which animals or chil­ dren are observed – none of whom had yet been exposed to Pavlov’s conditioning. Thus, nature stands for the unconditioned ‘natural’ state of man and animal. 112 Pudovkin 1927, quoted here from the German edition Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 50. 113 Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 121 and 125. 114 Bernard 1961 [1865]. 115 Koshtoyants 1965, 119. In addition to Sechenov, Ilja Cion and Ilja Tarkhanov also worked in Bernard’s laboratory, both being professors of physiology at St. Petersburg University. Pavlov studied for two years with Cion, see Todes 2000, 28. 116 Pavlov 1975 [1925], 77. 117 For more on Bernard’s experimental practice, see Bernard 1865, Part 1. Ber­ nard’s role in Russian physiology is examined by Joravsky 1989, 28, 82, 123 and 148. The person who brought over his experimental physiology to Russia was Bernard’s colleague, Elias Cyon, who was also a professor to Pavlov in St. Petersburg. 118 Pavlov 1918, quoted here in Todes 1997, 205. 119 Bernard 1961 [1865], quoted here in LaFolette/Shanks 1994, 199.

152 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156 157

Networking Ibid. Ibid., 196. Pudovkin 1929, in RGALI, F. 2060, op. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1942. Anatoli Golovnya (Pudovkin’s cameraman), in Gromov 1980, 28. In connection with shots for another film, Pudovkin explained: “The fall never occurs in reality, it exists only as a cinematic reality, and there it is the result of the splicing together of two film strips,” Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 91. For more on this debate and the cult of Lenin, see Dickerman 1997, 70 et seq. Even N. K. Krupskaya participated in this debate – and criticized the monumen­ talization of Lenin. For more on this controversy, see Lachmann 1973, 89–100 and Chuzhak 1972 [1929]. Rodchenko 1928a, quoted here in 1991, 234 and 237. Chuzhak 1972 [1929], 22. Tret’yakov 1928a, quoted here in the First Edition in Nowyj Lef. No. 12, 4. Chuzhak 1972 [1929], 34 et seq. Like many other movements of the era, Factography was a sub-concept of the Proletkult, a cultural mass organization that also formed the theoretical back­ ground for the cinematification campaigns, see Chapter 3. Cf. Stephan 1981. Benjamin 1934, 81. Tret’yakov 1929, 66 et seq. Brik 1927a, 32. Sergei Tret’yakov 1928b, 4. Brik 1927b, 48. Tret’yakov 1925, 33. For more on Pavlov’s “language of facts,” see Todes 2002, 77 et seq. Pavlov 1927, preface to the Russian edition, XI. Todes 2000, 77. Bernard 1961 [1865], 41. Ibid., 39. Pudovkin 1961 [1928], 108. Golovnya in Gromov 1980, 29. Pudovkin reported about these experiments in a lecture at the Filmliga in Amster­ dam, RGALI, F. 2060, op. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1942. Ibid. Leyda 1960, 206. Bekhterev 1902, 6. Pudovkin during his speech at the Filmliga in Amsterdam, RGALI, F. 2060, op. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1942. Pudovkin 1925a, 11. According to Sowkino, the film consisted of six parts and had a length of 64 minutes and 32 seconds with Jelisaveta Svilova (Vertov’s future wife) as assistant director, Michael Kaufman (Vertov’s brother) as the cameraman, Music by Organ (created by Vertov, Aleksei Gan and others) and poster designed by Stenberg brothers. World premiere was held in Kiev and Moscow, then Hanover and Ber­ lin, see Tode and Gramatke (eds.) 2000, 227. Tode and Gramatke 2000, 225–227. His manifesto “Kinoki. Coup” appeared in LEF No. 3, 1923. Tode and Gramatke, 69. Ibid., 228. The excerpts on the film-eye are taken from Vertov’s diaries: “How it all began,” 1940. in: Tode/Gramatke, p. 91.

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158 Kracauer 1929, 2. 159 Vertov 1926, in Beilenhoff (ed.) 1973, 17. 160 This phase in Vertov’s life has received little investigation. Ute Holl was the first to undertake a comprehensive examination of the connections between Bekhterev’s psycho-neurology and Vertov’s film experiments, see Holl 2002, 284 et seq. 161 Vertov 1940, in: Tode/Gramatke 2000, 91. 162 Ibid., 162. 163 Article “On i Ja” (“He and I”), in: Kino-Fot No. 2, Moscow 1922, p. 9 and 10. 164 S-kii 1927, 4. For more on Münsterberg’s use of film for driving tests, see Mün­ sterberg 1996 [1916] and Hale 1980, 221, footnote 53 in chapter 9. 165 Ibid., 5. 166 Vertov in Kino-Fot No. 2, 1922, 10. 167 Pudovkin 1925a, 11. 168 Vertov 1923, in Beilenhoff 1973, 20. 169 Zalkind undated, in RGALI, F. 2003, op. 1, ed. khr. 110, l. 3, Art. 14. 170 Pudovkin 1927, quoted here in the German edition in Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 50. 171 Zalkind undated, in RGALI, F. 2003, op. 1, ed. khr. 110, l. 3, Art. 14. For more on the brochure, see N. N. 1927. Bibliografiya: A. N. Tjagaj. “Mekhanika Golovnogo Mozga”, 29. 172 Pawlowsche Mittwochkolloquien (“Pavlovian Wednesday Colloquia”) 1956 [1949], 240. 173 Zalkind undated, in RGALI, F. 2003, op. 1, ed. khr. 110, l. 3, Art. 14. 174 For more on the German Kulturfilm, see Beyfuss and Kossowsky (eds.) 1924 as well as Sarkisova 2003 and Ziegler 2003. 175 Uricchio 1990, 374. 176 Beyfuss and Kossowsky 1924, preface, VIII. 177 Sarkisova 2003, 60/61. 178 Georg Pabst’s Secrets of a Soul (1926) was also considered to be a Cultural Film and displays some common characteristics with Pudovkin’s Mechanics of the Brain: both focus on a scientist – in Pabst’s film, it was Sigmund Freud – who did not want to participate in the filming, both worked with two scientific advisors and both had an accompanying brochure. Hanns Sachs wrote on Pabst’s filmic musings about psychoanalysis. 179 See in particular German labor sociology in Rabinbach 2001, 228 et seq. 180 Dubrovskii 1925, 7. The article appeared in a larger scope is an earlier edition of the newspaper. 181 The observers mentioned here were the sociologists that carried out the survey, ibid., 9. 182 Terskoi 1925, 10. 183 Ibid. Of course, these expressive films would have to be located within the long history of physiognomy and in particular of Jean Martin Charcot’s and Duch­ enne de Boulogne’s use of photography. Given the question being focussed on here with regard to the function of experiments in cinema, however, it would take us far beyond the scope of the current discussion. 184 Vertov had already “used a hidden film apparatus to observe and film in secret” in the first of his KINOGLAZ series in 1924. See Tode and Wurm 2006, 97. 185 Bekhterev 1926 (German), 159 et seq. and Bekhterev 1910. Bekhterev’s facial experiments can also be connected to Kuleshov’s concept of the Naturshiks, of non-actors. 186 Terskoi 1925, 11. 187 Pudovkin, undated: Zametki na rasrosennykh listakh (“Notes on Loose Paper”). In: Vsevolod Pudovkin. Sobranie Sochinenii v trekh tomakh 1974–76, Vol. 3, 264.

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188 Pudovkin 1928, quoted here from the German edition in Vsevolod Pudovkin 1983, 44. Italics in the original. 189 Sucharevskii 1927, 12. 190 Kuleshov: O Scenariyakh (On Scenarios), in Kuleshov 1979, 52. 191 For more on the psychotechnical opportunities of artists, see Münsterberg 1928 [1924], 601–616 and 627–658. For more on the effect of art and propaganda in Münsterberg’s work, see Hale 1980, 136 et seq. 192 Cf. Münsterberg 1996 [1916], 41 et seq. 193 Ibid., 52. 194 Ibid., 55. 195 Ibid., 57. 196 Münsterberg 1996 [1916], 143 and Hale 1980, 221 Footnote 53 in Chapter 9. 197 Münsterberg 1996 [1916], 53. 198 Terskoi 1925, 10. 199 Kerzhentsev 1924, 65. Kerzhentsev was a communist ergonomist and created a time league that subjected all workers to a common schedule and thus also net­ worked them. For more on Kerzhentsev, cf. Korickij, Lavrikov, Omarov (eds.) 1990, 145 et seq.

3

Grafting Alexander Bogdanov’s Circular Blood Transfusions, Moscow 1924–1928

In the Laboratory The experimentalization of human perception and orientation fits seamlessly into the long history of attempts to create and design the New Man. These attempts were in no way uniquely Russian, and they were often accompanied by associated projections of New Societies: French revolutionaries called the New Man “L’Homme nouveau,” Friedrich Nietzsche called him the “Super­ man” and the National Socialists called them “Völkische Lichtgestalten” (national figures of light). Although these conceptions lay as far apart from one another as they possibly could, they all nevertheless promised the possibility of perfecting man both mentally and physically with the help of new scientific, economic, social and technical novelties.1 In post-revolutionary Russia, there emerged a special concept of man that was given the name Collective Man; he diverged from other models in that his goal was to gener­ ate multifaceted unity rather than difference among the diverse members of the Soviet community. Whether it was Ladovsky’s architectural feeding-back or Pudovkin’s filmic networking, there were many practical approaches to the realization of this New Man; and in Russia, as in most other countries, he was conceived of primarily by philosophers. Other approaches included not only famous large-scale projects, such as the electrification of the nation, the reversal of rivers and Soviet space travel, but also smaller, downright mysterious activities, such as the experiments carried out at the Moscow Institute for Blood Transfusion, where Soviet psychotechnics found yet another application – albeit one that runs somewhat contrary to the examples explored in this book so far. Ultimately, however, the goal of the blood transfusions undertaken at this institute was also to change the human psyche in order to improve the behavior of man and adapt it to new social conditions. This institute will now act as the third location to be examined in the quest to under­ stand the consequences of avant-garde and psychotechnical experiments. The question to be answered in this chapter is the following: which scientific and artistic practices, experimental objects and techniques had to be inter­ linked in order to be able to bring about the optimization of bodies, brains and genes under the name of human collectivism? DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185-4

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One Final Attempt: On Events, Promises and Results

In March 1928, eight students gathered at Moscow State University (MGU) to discuss an article published in the Moscow Evening newspaper, written by a certain Alexander Bogdanov, who was known to the students primarily as a social revolutionary and a comrade and adversary to Lenin.

Figure 3.1 Alexander Bogdanov (Belova 1974)

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Bogdanov had just written publicly about something that could not have been more out-of-the-ordinary, especially in the era of five-year plans: his article explored an entirely new and unique method of improving and pro­ longing life by means of reciprocal blood transfusions.2 The protocols accom­ panying the transfusions contain notes describing the resulting overall mental and physical enhancement, increases in work capacity and self-confidence, as well as improvements in muscle strength, vision and hearing. Hair color was reported to have become more beautiful, and the nervous system more balanced, irritability was reduced, sleep became more relaxed, general flex­ ibility improved, pain was reduced and facial complexions appeared fresher and healthier. In fact, one test person’s toe-bone deformation disappeared entirely. In all cases, a more relaxed and lighter approach to the inconven­ iences of daily life was noted, and in some cases there was talk of a healthier appetite and a more effective budgeting of brain performance, which is to say that writing and reading skills accelerated.3 Inspired by these somewhat fantastical prospects, the students collectively decided to undergo a transfusion themselves and went to the State Institute for Blood Transfusion, which had been founded in 1926 specifically for this task and was the world’s first center for transfusion research in Moscow. At this institute, the curious students were initially not permitted to undergo the treatment for various medical reasons, most likely because they did not pos­ sess the desired blood groups or the necessary physical constitution. How­ ever, one of the students, a 21-year-old geophysics major named Koldomasov, was called back to the institute only a few days later. An inactive tuberculosis infection had been found in Koldomasov’s blood and Bogdanov suggested they undertake a two-way blood transfusion, arguing that his own advanc­ ing age made him immune to tuberculosis and thus that he could transfer this immunity to the young man. Both men had the same blood group O. And so, on March 24, 1928, roughly 1 liter of Koldomasov’s blood was transferred to Bogdanov; Koldomasov, in turn, received roughly the same amount from his donor.4 Where did Bogdanov acquire the breathtaking courage and practical con­ ditions for an experimental set-up that was so unique in the history of medi­ cine? With its broadly based promise of a cure, how did this set-up fit into a decade marked by the rationalization and collectivization of production processes – one in which the talk was not of physical infirmity, but instead always of surprisingly fast-paced work? Seeing as the history of medicine does not provide us with any other experiments that are comparable in nature and scope, the question must be resolved by means of an explanation given by Bogdanov himself. As it turns out, his blood transfusions were a reaction to impulses from many different areas, which to a large extent exit the path of medical historiography. What is most striking, however, is that in his writ­ ings on blood transfusions, he leaves one project unmentioned, namely the artistic-experimental practice of the Proletkult (an acronym for proletarian culture), the theoretical foundation for which Bogdanov was significantly

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responsible and which immediately preceded his medical experiments. Indeed, only after we look at the activities of the Proletkult will it be possible for us to situate anew his experiments on human bodies and bring together artistic and medical practices. What were the consequences of these experi­ mental cultures – ones that were explicitly situated at the border between life and death? What kinds of relationships did humans and nonhumans enter into in these physiological collectives?5 What kinds of ‘beings’ were nego­ tiated in them? At the end of this examination, two different possibilities of understanding and changing life will become clear. And, as the thesis of this final section will show, psychotechnics will be proved to have been their structural foundation. “Blood,” wrote Bogdanov, [I]s the universal metabolic tissue and the common medium of nutri­ tion and excretion of all other tissues. In the greatest measure, it can transport . . . new elements and combinations that [extend] the body’s life beyond the bounds of what was provided by its individual history. Indeed, the goal of two-way blood transfusions was precisely this extension of the organism beyond the limits of its individual fate. Bogdanov concludes the only programmatic publication on his experimental medical activities – which appeared under the title The Struggle for Viability in 1927 – with the words: “This [extension of the basis of life] can develop and, through repeated acts of blood conjugation, accumulate more and more up to limits that can­ not be foreseen.”6 Bogdanov carried out a total of 11 successful experimental blood transmissions on himself within two years, each in the firm belief that he could stabilize his own body more and more by adding a steady flow of ever new elements. The decisive factor for the optimal combination of donor and recipient was the different ages of the two; that is, the blood of a young person was exchanged with that of an older participant. This was because older organisms were thought to have immunity to certain diseases, while young organisms were thought to possess elements that were already dead in the older organisms. This way, both organisms could complement each other in such a way that “mismatched deficits or evidence of excesses in the blood mixture were evened out and the life milieu made more harmonious.”7 At first, it looked as if Bogdanov’s hopes had been fulfilled. By Octo­ ber 1927, his institute had carried out 213 transfusions with 158 patients. In addition to that, his self-constructed apparatus gained widespread use as a result of the founding of transfusion centers in all Soviet republics.8 However, the goal of linking the members of as many different professions as possi­ ble with one another faced the difficulty of activating donors in intellectual circles and in the educated middle class, not least because the Soviet health system was free and the institute couldn’t pay its donors.9 It is therefore not surprising that Bogdanov’s promises went beyond any talk of money and spoke of blood exchange rather than blood donations.

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Figure 3.2 Professions of potential donors (Huestis 2001, 288)

Tables containing the findings of experiments showed that of the 213 treat­ ments, only 19 were actual two-way transfusions that weren’t even listed separately. In other words, we cannot describe these as being “two-way” procedures. Still, the question remains as to the true necessity for these infrequent and obviously quite effective mutual transfusions in which Bogdanov repeatedly participated himself. At first glance, there was nothing that would have spoken against carrying out these reciprocal blood transfusions on a larger scale: indeed, in workers’ circles, there was most definitely no lack of potential blood donors. And yet, Bogdanov had to consider the danger of autosuggestion, which had costly

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Figures 3.3a,b Transfusions up until October 1, 1927 (Huestis 2001, 284)

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consequences. After a short period studying science and completing a degree in medicine, he recognized the experimental routines well enough to know to rule out autosuggestion as far as possible by means of counter-checks. For this purpose, he kept his patients at the facility for many days, controlled their subjective (self-)observations by means of physical examinations and lab tests and continued these “controls” even weeks after the transfusion, so as to prevent a deterioration in health after the clinical treatment and diet has ended.10 The institute was relatively well financed by the People’s Commissariat for Health, and it boasted of an almost comfortable infra­ structure in comparison to neighboring facilities: three departments – lab, operating room and hospital – gave Bogdanov the opportunity to perform professional research into his innovative procedure from the selection and allocation of donors and recipients by means of blood tests all the way to the carrying out of the transfusions and the subsequent medical care.11 However, the creation of this institute met with more than just scientific interest at the People’s Commissariat for Health.12 All of the latest medical developments accompanying the discovery of blood groups in 1901 and the spread of the technology of direct blood transfusion by means of sodium citrate solutions had already been simplifying the application of blood transfusions for several years.13 World War I then proved their tangible functional use and, as a result, prompted Bogdanov to argue the following with unmistakably drastic words: Imagine what criminal negligence it would be if war were to threaten us, while our opponents had the advantage of this priceless method of saving those with blood loss or poison gas injury, and of speeding the recovery of those debilitated by wounds or disease.14 Just before his death, Lenin gave Bogdanov his blessing for the research into blood transfusions. After that, it was up to Stalin to free up the financ­ ing for it. Ultimately, the precarious situation of the institute is further proof of its high and ultimately propagandistic standing: indeed, it was located in the same building as the most prominent scientific Soviet project of that era. At the center of Moscow, it occupied the first floor of the building owned by the merchant Igumnov, which had been built by Igumnov in 1895 in a mag­ nificent 17th-century neo-Russian style: on the second floor was the institute where Lenin’s brain was examined for its genius. A few years later, that institute also became home to Bogdanov’s and May­ akovsky’s brains. In other words, medical research into blood transfusions was of tremendous political interest, and the founding of an independent institute made this research possible, not least thanks to the selfless physi­ cal commitment of the initiator of the transfusions, “to accelerate things.”15 Ironically, it also accelerated the end of something which Bogdanov had hoped to prolong, that is, his own life. He failed during his twelfth blood exchange with Koldomasov – if not as a result of his own transfusion model, then definitely due to the inadequate level of medical knowledge at the time.

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Figure 3.4 Bogdanov’s Institute for Blood Transfusions at the home of the Igumnov merchant family. The building also housed the Institute of Brain Research. In 2001, when this photo was shot, it was home to the French Embassy Source: (Photo Margarete Vöhringer, 2001)

His body did indeed seem to have formed the desired new antibodies against the invading foreign elements during each transfusion. And yet, certain blood factors were still not traceable at the time, which means that he succumbed ultimately – after the 12th transfusion – to a shock due to an overproduction of immune alloantibodies. In other words, his immune system reacted too strongly to the foreign red blood corpuscles.16 His battle for life lasted 15 days, and it was accompanied until the very end by exhaustive self-observation. Unexpectedly, at least according to the protocols, Bogdanov then entered into the state – that is, death – which had been described by the scientist months prior as “a disruption of inner harmony”17 and as “a general disorganiza­ tion,”18 and which he prophesized would soon no longer exist. Koldomasov, on the other hand, who also fought for his life over the course of many days, survived the transfusion and was, in fact, cured of the tuberculosis and lived to the age of 76 years in inhospitable Novosibirsk.19 After this catastrophic event, the medical application of circular blood transfusion came to an end.20 However, research into one-way transfusions and into the life in blood expe­ rienced a boom in Russia.

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Experiments and Apparatuses as Discursive Effects

The equipment needed to carry out two-way blood transfusions had to be specially developed, seeing as it involved the flow of blood in a unique cir­ cular exchange procedure – not, as it was back then and continues to be today, in the more common one-direction flow.21 The Bogdanov publication mentioned above, much like the report covering the first year of the insti­ tute’s work, referred only to the fact that the transfusions were carried out by means of a silver tube and the always controversial sodium citrate dilution for the prevention of blood clotting.22 First of all, this citrate–blood mixture favored the popularization of the indirect transfusion procedure, seeing as it made it possible to keep the blood for several hours and care for donors and recipients in separate rooms, instead of treating them – as in the case of direct transfusion – at the same time being directly next to one another.23 For the circular blood transfusions, it appears that the direct procedure could never have been considered, since it taxed the body of each participant too much. And yet, it was not the compatibility of the blood exchange that interested him with regard to the citrate–blood mixture. As in countless set-ups up to that point, his transfusion apparatus was also designed primarily to achieve the maximum possible in terms of “the speed of his action and of the preci­ sion of his control.”24 For what purpose did Bogdanov require the citrate– blood mixture if not for an indirect transfusion procedure? In 1921–1922, Bogdanov traveled at Leonid Krasin’s behest as an eco­ nomic expert to London.25 While being there, he undertook research into instruments – very likely with the knowledge of, if not under contract by, Krasin himself. Two years later, Krasin would become responsible for the embalming and conservation of Lenin’s dead body, which meant that he had an open ear for medical innovations, in particular those that were well-suited to propaganda. Where exactly Bogdanov’s search for apparatuses took him in England is unknown; however, in his publications, he often quotes Geof­ frey Keynes, a British surgeon who was writing comprehensively about the technology of blood transfusion at the time. We can assume that Bogdanov consulted him.26 Yet another driving force might have been Percy Lane Oliver who, after the discovery of the citrate–-blood mixture, organized the settingup of transfusion centers and blood banks in London in the early 1920s.27 Both of these men favored indirect blood transfusions. On the other hand, Bogdanov, in the description of his circular equip­ ment, referred expressly to another indirect procedure, namely that of Oswald Robertson, who carried out blood transfusions with citrate–blood on the English battlefront in World War I.28 However, he modified Robert­ son’s equipment somewhat by using the citrate in different concentrations, that is, in “a concentration larger than the calculated minimum and a diluted solution” and also by simplifying the container; both of these measures were designed to accelerate the transfer of blood.29 In the same breath, however,

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Figure 3.5 Indirect blood transfusion (Keynes 1949, 379)

Bogdanov differentiated himself from one direct procedure, namely that of Oehlecker, which promised even more speed, seeing as it accelerated blood exchange with the help of air pumps.30 Such a set-up seemed merciless to him: donators and recipients were directly connected to one another during the blood transfusion, so that any inattentiveness could lead to an input of air and thus to dangerous blood clots. At the same time, indirect transfusion carried the risk of contamination and even the deterioration of the blood, which had to be brought in transport containers that were very difficult to isolate quickly from donor to recipient. Neither of the two procedures satisfied Bogdanov, as he appeared to want to connect the advantages of both with each other. In other words, effectiveness was not the primary drive behind him compiling his apparatus, nor was it the further development of a transfusion model that was patient-friendly. So why did both seem to him to be equally relevant? The answer to this question is not found in any publications, but rather in a text concept written in French from Bogdanov’s personal estate: La greffe

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Figure 3.6 Positioning of patients during direct blood transfusion, according to Oehlecker (Steffan 1932, 285)

du sang (The Grafting of the Blood). It is an answer that was obviously not meant for the broad public, seeing as its intended recipient was not named. However, the language used was all the more open: With regard to the technology of the method, it is very simple and makes use of two apparatuses simultaneously for direct transfusion. . . . By connecting the veins in a symmetrical way, we allow the two appa­ ratuses to function in opposite ways.31 As role models for this set-up, Bogdanov referred to individuals different than those in the publications quoted prior: “The most comfortable appa­ ratuses are the model by Aveling from England and Collin from France.”32 After a detailed description of the devices and the highlighting of their advan­ tages and disadvantages in terms of speed and precision, Bogdanov described the modifications he used for his own purposes on Collin’s apparatus, a cyl­ inder with pistons and two tubes: In the experiments on human beings, you can completely exclude the risk of an air embolism. For that, it was enough to carry out the opera­ tion under water, which prevents the flow of air. One sits down opposite

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the two people being treated and uses two tubs whose form and size make it easy to lay down the opposing forearms of the two patients on each side with the apparatus that connects the correlative veins. The tubs are filled with water or an aseptic salt solution. This set-up [in the original ‘Le dispositif’, M. V.] also makes it possible to avoid the chill­ ing of the blood by keeping the temperature of the bath at 37° Celsius. Bogdanov’s ingenuity appeared boundless when it came to the improve­ ment of efficiency, that is to say controllability and speed and the simultane­ ous reduction of strain on patients. The reason for this lay in a quantitative expansion of blood transfusions for medical purposes. Indeed, he was inter­ ested in more than just donating blood in one direction. He invented bilateral exchange procedures: “One can combine the same subject in a successive manner with many others: in this manner, almost the entire amount of his blood would be renewed.” To do this, Bogdanov coupled the advantages of the two transfusion methods practiced in his time to one another, that is, the efficiency of the direct exchange process and the high physical compatibility of the indirect method with the body. He wanted to connect several donors with one another many times and use donors and recipients in an alternat­ ing manner and transmit blood in both directions. And yet, it was not the repeatability and the reciprocal nature of the exchange alone, but instead the simultaneity of the combinatorics that was the decisive moment in this new setup: “The result is approximately the same when one builds a chain of several individuals connected with the same number of transfusion appara­ tuses.”33 Only in light of this chain-like setup of his patients – the blood graft­ ing announced in the title of this chapter – is it possible to understand the use of direct blood transfusion by means of citrate blood. The indirect procedure would have been able to achieve a chain such as this only metaphorically; Bogdanov, however, was searching for a truly physiological implementation. For his experimental device, he indeed made use of the latest technology of his time; however, in terms of its application, he went far beyond it. He created opportunities for this technology that were not derived from logic and the development status of the apparatuses alone. Indeed, it was not the apparatus-related opportunities that inspired the experimental set-up; instead, the set-up was the outcome of a practice that was not yet feasible and conceived only in theory. This belatedness – the a posteriori nature – of the technical implementation was, however, not a problem specific to Russia. It runs through the entire history of medicine beyond Russia and especially with regard to the development of blood transfusion. A few key caesuras in the cultural history of blood provide an indication that circular transfusions are not solely indebted to the Russian Revolution and the euphoria for science instrumentalized along with it. For example, one can already find harbingers of Bogdanov’s experiments in animistic con­ cepts, such as, for example, the blood-victim rituals of the Mayans, Inkas and Azteks, who saw blood as a “means of catharsis, a way of purifying

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sin and avoiding punishment”34 and who hoped the ritual would induce the transfer of the power of the gods to them and, along with it, an improvement in their physical constitution. The practice of bloodletting, which had been carried out since Greek antiquity and lasted until the 19th century, can be understood as a healing-therapeutic implementation of this ritual: patients had their blood let to combat all forms of physical and psychological suffer­ ing, from pneumonia to arthritis and depression. A loss of blood was con­ nected with the weakening of certain symptoms; what followed was often an alleviation and improvement of the well-being of the patient by means of the automatic regeneration of the loss in blood volume.35 Although it was never proven in medical terms, this traditional practice merged in Hippocrates’ and later Galen’s humoral medicine, according to which man consisted of four bodily fluids – blood, yellow gall, black gall and mucus – which, in the case of illness, had come into disequilibrium and simply had to be brought back into harmony by means of a withdrawal of liquid.36 Humoral theory added a decisive shift in thinking to bloodletting with its replacement model – a shift upon which Bogdanov, too, based his mutual blood exchange: the ideal of a state of equilibrium in the physical body. The first known – yet historically unproven – blood transfusion between two individuals took place in 1492 and was designed to lengthen the life of Pope Innocent VIII: three ten-year-old boys donated their blood to the pope, who was on his death bed. But instead of the rejuvenation they hoped for, the only result was the death of the Pope and the children.37 In this act of blood transfusion, there was not much left of the Eucharist narrative, the symbolic drinking of Christ’s blood, which embodies the precondition for the connec­ tion of God-like and human nature, and for eternal life.38 Instead of taking in symbolic blood, Pope Innocent had sought to “refresh” his old blood in an entirely material way by means of real young blood. The 17th chapter of the third Book of Moses states “For the life of the flesh is in the blood,” thus continuing for Christianity what Greek myths had already spoken of, that is, that blood was a holy substance to which magical powers were attributed. Indeed, blood was the site of life and thus needed to be preserved.39 And yet, time and again, anatomical discoveries inspired a constant flow of new and always materialist variations on this idea in which holy blood, too, in con­ trast to all of its importance, was wasted. In this way, Christian symbolism was soon overtaken by medical realities. When William Harvey discovered blood circulation in 1628, it started a wave of popularity in transfusions. Previously, the assumption had been that blood moved in all directions and was distributed in pores throughout the body. Harvey proved that blood flowed in a circular motion, and that it flowed in a targeted way only in one direction within a closed system.40 After that, countless injection experiments took place in which one found out that blood could be taken out of the closed system: it was also discovered, however, that things could be inserted from outside, such as opium. On the other hand, blood transfusions were also carried out between animals. Both

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operations resulted in not only purely physical reactions, but also psychologi­ cal ones. For example, in 1666 in England, a blood transfusion was carried out between a hunting dog and a smaller dog, whereby initially so much blood was drained from the smaller dog that it hardly had any strength even to whimper; after that, by means of a direct vein connection to the hunting dog, the smaller dog was given blood from the hunting dog. The result was that the small dog sprang back to life as if he had just taken on not only the life force of the hunting dog but also the behavioral patterns of that dog. Of course, this gave rise to countless ideas related to the doctrine of Vitalism, which imputed an animation of all physical components: could, for example, character traits – such as talents, skills, moods and thoughts – also be passed on to another via blood?41 The next decisive step was made in 1667 by a personal physician to Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Denis, who performed research on the transmis­ sion of blood and character traits between animals and human beings. A mentally disturbed man named Antoine Mauroy was given blood from a calf, in the hopes that the blood would, “due to the freshness and gentle­ ness of the animal, perhaps lessen the heat and the surges in blood [of the patient].”42 After two transfusions, Mauroy almost died, but it appeared as if he had actually lost his negative sides. Instead of an overwhelming temper, violence and confusion, he suddenly displayed a clarity and gentle­ ness never seen before in him. Denis celebrated himself as the inventor of blood transfusion, and competing enterprises mushroomed up everywhere. The Royal Society in England, in particular, took great effort to justify its own claim to have invented blood transfusion. The competition was soon settled by other means. Indeed, one evening, Mauroy appeared once again with his battered wife at Denis’ practice. She begged him to perform yet another transfusion, claiming that Mauroy had lost his good behavior entirely. After some hesitation, the doctor fulfilled her request. However, as he was about to give Mauroy the third dose of lamb’s blood, the patient broke down and died. Denis’ adversaries were triumphant, and it didn’t take long before Mauroy’s wife sued the doctor for gross negligence. Dur­ ing the trial, however, it was revealed that Mauroy had been poisoned with arsenic by his wife and thus that Denis was completely innocent. The Paris­ ian medical community, however, was not moved by this turn of events and remained so upset about the incident that the court decided that every future blood transfusion would have to be approved by the medical faculty. Shortly thereafter, blood transfusions in England were carried out only with official permission. In Rome, the Pope banned the promising yet compli­ cated procedure in most of Europe after two failed experiments.43 Thus, the procedure of blood transfusion was banished to the theoretical realm for the next two centuries. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the history of blood transfusion continued, thanks to an English obstetrician named James Blundell, who was eager to combat high mortality rates in mothers due to

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hemorrhaging while giving birth. Of course, without any knowledge of the different blood groups, these transfusions were unsuccessful in many cases. And yet, they led to two decisive innovations that would also be valid for Bogdanov: Blundell used only human blood for human beings and transfused the material itself instead of its essential characteristics.44 After that, it took about 100 more years of wild experimentation until the transfusion of blood was able to be systematized, following the discovery of blood groups at the beginning of the 20th century. This, in turn, prompted Bogdanov to muse that “many dreams of days gone by are now revived,” in particular “the dream of the elixir of life.” Blood transfusions were indeed no iniquitous excep­ tions, and this is proven by their long history of radicalism and risk-taking in experimentation with human beings and the associated broad therapeutic claims. On the contrary, Bogdanov adopted a critical stance to his predeces­ sors – including Pope Innocent, Harvey, Blundell and Landsteiner – and all their major promises, yet still saw himself as their heir: “They did not have the technology for such experiments, nor did they have the knowledge.”45 In this manner, by inventing new apparatuses, he stood in the tradition of all those courageous medical men who developed blood transfusions on their own initiative and never as a result of a therapeutic routine. And yet, at the same time, he had an advantage over them, namely knowledge and technol­ ogy. Bogdanov outlined what this knowledge was by referring to two of his fields of interest: he understood the blood transfusions, on the one hand, as being the result of the processing of all the latest medical research and, on the other hand, as the practical consequence of his theoretical and philosophical work until then. And it was precisely the latter that appeared central for a set-up that did not result from the possibilities offered by technology; instead, it allowed these possibilities to emerge in the first place. Thus, the begin­ nings of circular blood transfusion cannot be said to lie solely in the history of medicine, nor can they lie solely in the history of technology. Instead, we must move beyond the laboratory and look for these beginnings in other disciplines and media. From Books, Hospitals and Minds Bogdanov was a model Russian intellectual of his era and thus took a mul­ tidisciplinary approach to his work: for example, he had already studied the natural sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology) in Moscow and medicine in Kharkiv, where he first began engaging with the concerns of unskilled workers in left-revolutionary circles. As a result of this, he was banished and ended up meeting all the most important political actors of his time, including Anatoly Lunacharsky, Leon Trotsky, Maxim Gorky and Lenin and even took part substantially in the first Russian Revolution in 1905. With Gorky and Lunacharsky, he organized Party schools in 1909 in Capri and in 1911 in Bologna, which were designed to educate workerpropagandists for Russia.

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Figure 3.7 Lenin, Bogdanov and Gorky playing chess in Capri (Belova 1974, 25)

He also helped to form the group “Vpered!” (forward), which was heavily criticized by Lenin. After the 1917 Revolution, he was among the founding members of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences and head of that organi­ zation until 1923.46 He was also editor of Pravda for a time and taught at Moscow University. In contrast to all other avant-gardists presented until now, Bogdanov was not an ambitious political player interested just as much in science as in art. Instead, he was active – as the only rival to Lenin, who could be taken seriously – at the very center of power. Born Alexander Alex­ anderovich Malinovsky, he published under countless pseudonyms, including “Maksimov,” “Rjadovoj,” “Verner” and, most often, under the name of his wife’s father, “Bogdanov.” Starting in 1894, he gave lectures and published articles on questions of political economy and natural philosophy, published

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the Russian translation of Marx’s Capital, wrote two science-fiction novels and ultimately developed Tektology – a monistic organization theory, the goal of which was nothing less than to unveil the relationship of everything to everything else.47 Science Fiction and Philosophy

As early as 1908, the universal scholar Bogdanov included circular blood transfusion in his first science fiction novel Red Star, which bore the subtitle: “A Utopia.”48 After his philosophical clash with Lenin had reached its high­ point and after Lenin began to compose an entire written reply to his foe,49 Bogdanov appeared to be reacting to his unfortunate political predicament when he temporarily relocated his concept of collective socialism to fiction, that is to say, to Mars. In other words, the science-fiction novel became the replacement venue for the realization of a socialist society as Bogdanov imag­ ined it. It was a society, however, that he could not implement due to his adversary, Lenin: “I had no means of carrying out experiments. So I decided to express them in the form of utopian foresight.”50 As a result, the words of one of the protagonists in his novel often sound as equally engaged and serious as his own scientific text on blood transfusions. To an unsuspecting guest from planet Earth, the socialist and Mars physi­ cian Netti explains the method of “renewing” the living organism by increas­ ing the quality of life and lengthening the life span: You know that nature, in order to increase the viability of the cell or the organism, complements the individual being by means of another. In order to achieve this, the individual organism melts from two into one, and in this way it is given the ability to live and procreate, the “immortality” of protoplasm. By means of the conclusion of the analogy, Bogdanov was able to move from the behavior of protoplasms to the assumption of the same behavior of human blood serum: We go even further and set up blood exchanges between two human beings, by which each can give the other a number of things that improve the conditions of life. This is simply a simultaneous transfusion of blood from one person to another and back, by means of a suitable two-way device interconnecting their blood vessels. With all suitable precautions, the process is entirely safe. The blood of one person continues to live in the body of the other, mixing with blood and bringing about fundamental renewal in all his tissues.51 This promise was not a utopian one, even though it was written in a novel set on Mars. Much like in the description of the experimental intentions at the State Institute for Blood Transfusions, Bogdanov was very realistic in his

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literature when it came to the question of the rejuvenation of the elderly: according to him, it was possible, [Y]es, but not entirely, because blood is not the only thing in the body and is itself affected by the body. Therefore, for example, a young per­ son does not get old by receiving blood from an old person. Whatever there is in it of weakness or aging is quickly overcome by the young body, while a great deal that was lacking in the other body is absorbed by it. The energy and flexibility of its vital functions also expand.52 In a manner that differed from those of his contemporaries, many of whom worked exclusively as medical practitioners, Bogdanov was entirely aware of the limited possibilities and risks of his experiments; especially when he – in an incomparably courageous manner – implemented a utopian project using them and thus created a scientific reality out of science fiction. In this sense, Red Star is interesting not for the precariousness of its scien­ tific statements that seep in when one knows that an experimental practice was first carried out on Mars; instead, what is much more interesting is the equal treatment of a concrete, feasible scientific experiment and the suppos­ edly fantastical science fiction project. Bogdanov appears not to have differ­ entiated between fiction and science as if they were two disciplines that give rise to different questions, methods and insights. Instead, for him, the science fiction novel and the scientific text were two analogous genres that allowed him to negotiate his rational considerations, which remained constant in both cases. The only difference was to be found on the side of the recipient – the reader of a science fiction novel does not expect to be confronted with realistic visions of the future. Years later, Lenin noted this too in a letter to Gorky in which he dismissed his foe’s second science fiction novel, Engineer Menni, as “a further case of the machismo and idealism,” in which, however, it was “so concealed,” that “neither the workers nor the stupid editors at Pravda can recognize it.”53 This begs the question, however: what was there to recognize? Bogdanov was entirely aware that his mutual blood transfusions, even if they were ever to emerge in a scientific paper, would be brushed off later as being utopian; for this reason, he began The Struggle for Viability with the following words: The future historians, in any case, will acknowledge one good feature of today’s cultural progress in comparison with that of earlier times, and that is the boldness in setting tasks. . . . We now intelligently approach tasks that not long ago would have been considered mad, or suitable only for utopian fantasies, and we resolve them practically and scientifically.54 In 1913, he had further developed his experimental–medical approach and given it a weightier role in the publication of each edition of Tektology, his

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theoretical magnum opus: “Already with the first edition of Tektology, I set my sights on the realization of blood transfusions.”55 Tektology, which has its etymological origins in the Greek ‘tekton’ (builder), represents the attempt to derive universal organizational structures from all things, both organic and non-organic – and, further still, all phe­ nomenon of the material and immaterial world – and, in turn, to use these structures to develop organization systems that can be operationalized. “Eve­ rything is organization,”56 announced the author, and “every human activity is . . . organizing or disorganizing.”57 However, this does not mean that “we humans are organizers of nature, of ourselves”; no, nature, like the inorganic world, is organized and thus – organizing.58 ‘Organization’ was seen as an interminable process common to all phenomena of life and, as such, was able to mediate between ideas and experiences as between that which is alive and that which is inanimate, between things and human beings: This way, we are able to move from the facts of experience and the ideas of modern science to the merely uniform, monistic view of the uni­ verse. It presents itself to us as an endlessly expanding fabric of forms of different organization types and stages, beginning with elements of the ether that are known to us all the way to human communities and solar systems. All these forms create in their mutual interdepend­ ence . . . that organizational process of the universe that disintegrates into an endless amount of parts and nevertheless depicts an uninter­ rupted and indestructible whole.59 In order to illustrate the organization of all constituent parts of life, Bog­ danov referred to different natural and human sciences and justified his approach by means of the opportunities it presents: if it was possible to create connections between things taken from different realms, then these themselves were necessary and proof of their unity.60 Such connections – ones that brought forth and/or destroyed systems – were primarily structural analogies, connections and disconnections as well as so-called conjunctions, ingressions, disingressions and borders.61 According to Bogdanov, these were the things that allowed the world to be broken down into parts so as to, in the next step, put them back together and synthesize them again in the “true unity of organizational methods,” in a meta-science that “united in its meth­ ods the abstract symbolism of mathematics with the experimental character of the natural sciences.”62 If there were connections and differences between different complexes, there had to also be common methods, one could add. In his 1926 preface to the German edition of Tektology, Bogdanov explained in an explicit manner how these common methods could be discovered: The task is reduced to the least number of most frequently recurring elements; numerous complicating moments are turned off; this way, the

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solution is naturally made easier, and after it is found, the transition to a narrower task takes place by once again considering the concrete data that was previously discarded.63 The result was the establishment of a control apparatus that would bring about the largest possible organization in all processes and disciplines with regard to all things and ideas: “If a system in equilibrium is exposed to an influence that alters one of the conditions of equilibrium, then processes emerge within the system that are aligned in such a way that they work against this change.”64 But the question remains as to what the purpose was of such processes that related to all real and possible tasks, inasmuch as they could be seen as being organizational? One of the issues of the tektological method that had to be organized was age. Bogdanov described it in a stand-alone chapter in the second edi­ tion of Tektology from 1917 as the sole “essential problem”65 that did not serve to illustrate the Tektological method, as did the previous chapters; instead, it served as an example of its practical application. If age is “only a special case of a generally organizational fact . . . of the contradictions of system divergence, then the question can also be posed tektologically.”66 In other words, if one wanted to revitalize an aged body tektologically, a method would have to be found that joined the organized and disorganized elements in such a way that they could develop mutually toward the posi­ tive. Bogdanov discovered this connection in zygosis, a concept taken from biology. In addition to sexual zygosis, he also named direct physiological zygosis as a comparable concept, that is, the transfer to organs and tissue, which included the injection of blood serum and blood transfusion.67 Thus, he gave mutual transfusion a key role within his Tektology, that is, the role of practically implementing a universal theory. He thereby also provided its justification: “The transfer of methods proves in an objective, irrefutable manner the possibility of their development to a unit, to the monism of organizational experience.”68 This monism of methods was reflected, on the one hand, in the many disparate sources Bogdanov used and synthesized for his reflections; on the other hand, it was also reflected in the different areas in which he was active, including philosophy, politics, literature, physiology and art.69 His experi­ mental, medical activities have been ignored to a great extent, except for the recognition that is given to him as founder of the Institute for Blood Transfu­ sions, which continues to operate to this day.70 As a result, the continuities in Bogdanov’s work are hardly noticed, which, in turn, lead to over-valuation of individual projects, if not also to false assessments.71 Bogdanov’s claim to universality, on the other hand, virtually demands that we look at his indi­ vidual projects in relation to one another and work out the connections that he made – or left out – between them. Indeed, only with an overview of Bog­ danov’s complete oeuvre do the decisive impulses for his unique experimental practice emerge in a flash-like manner.

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Kenneth Michael Stokes situates Bogdanov as a systems theorist in the tradition of Western skepticism and rationalism from the Enlightenment to the social sciences of the 19th century – Positivism, Marxism, Darwinism and Monism. Above all, the latter is interesting with regard to the question of the transferability of tektological thought to scientific experimentation: indeed, Monism gave Bogdanov the idea of the world as a unity of experiences and of the indivisibility of mind and matter.72 Bogdanov even borrowed the name for his magnus opus, Tektology, from Ernst Haeckel, who referred to it as the “science of the relationship of the organisms of organic individuals of differ­ ent order.” And with Wilhelm Ostwald, he developed his Tektology further into a meta-science designed to unify all individual sciences and toward the idea of the universe as a manifestation of energy in different forms.73 This is also where he got his broad use of the concept of transformation and the conviction that society was obliged, by means of an energetic imperative, to use as little energy as possible.74 Several approaches can be found in Ostwald, who enjoyed a level of popularity in Russia that anticipated Bogdanov’s impressively strong interest in a rational-organized science and society, and which brought him to a systems-oriented way of thinking, which he shared at the time with Taylorism and physiological Homeostasis, among others.75 The latter, in particular, is key for Bogdanov’s blood transfusions and spotlights a physiologist who was influential on Ivan Pavlov, namely Claude Bernard.76 In addition to the mechanistic reception of Bernard in Russia, Bogdanov can be seen as a successor of his truly holistic approach. At the center of this approach stood the theory of the milieu interieur with which the environ­ ment and inner world of human beings were in an equilibrium brought on by a regulatory circuit of bodily fluids, nerves and gasses. Thus, any interference from outside could be balanced out, and the inner world repeatedly brought back into equilibrium.77 If this consistency was maintained and the milieu interieur only briefly disrupted here and there, while everything else remained controllable, it was possible to understand the precise and regulated processes in the body. However, Bogdanov understood the human organism by means of much more than only with reference to its inner regulatory mechanisms; he applied this understanding in a practical manner by creating via circular blood transfusions an exchange of many inner milieus that were designed to compensate and guard against disruptions from outside equally for several organisms. The question thus remains what exactly these disruptions from outside were against which Bogdanov sought to protect the body. Was it the ones that prompted the hero of Red Star to disappear at the end of the novel, seeing that “the contradiction between my inner life and the entire social milieu, in the factory, the family, society, among friends” had brought him to the edge of despair?78 If we want to understand Bogdanov’s social, political and philosophical difficulties and thus his methodical ingenuity, it is necessary to consider yet another German intellectual, namely Karl Marx. Bogdanov correlated his Marxist theory of social change to the biological theories of change in the

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new science of psychology.79 According to Georgii Gloveli, Bogdanov’s con­ temporaries feared that his Tektology was an attempt to replace the philoso­ phy of Marx.80 In contrast to them, he ascribed the social classes to different levels of organized experience rather than to property. In a corresponding manner, he saw differences in class as emerging not by revolutions, but rather by the education of social members in their organizational abilities. And, in contrast to Lenin’s dictatorial regime, Bogdanov planned a holistic com­ munity that would be able to overcome the turmoil of the October Revo­ lution by itself. In doing so, he used a concept of labor for which Marx had already mentioned the word metabolism: “Labor is, first of all, a pro­ cess between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.”81 In accordance with this, one could be excused for thinking that Bogdanov might have taken Marx quite literally when he set up – in real life – a ‘metabolism exchange’ between human beings by means of mutual blood transfusions. At the same time, however, his blood transfusions reveal a key difference to Marx that was more fundamental than all similarities: the “circular” in Bogdanov’s set-up stood in irreconcilable opposition to the principle of the dialectic.82 If anyone had noticed it at the time, Bogdanov would have immediately been accused of blasphemy against Marxist social­ ism and banned, much like his science-fiction hero was banned from Mars to Earth and devoted himself there to a special kind of tektological conjunction rather than to politics or science: Admittedly, Netti’s love was a noble and loving mistake, however, a love such as this was possible; . . . For us, it meant a guarantee for the actual convergence of the two worlds and for their future merging into a single unexpectedly beautiful and strong world.83 In spite of all the continuities, it was a long way from theoretical frame­ work to experimental practice, even if its author claimed, in the name of “common mechanisms of heterogeneous phenomena,” to be able to compare the “exchange of ideas . . . with the exchange of blood, as a form of vital collaboration of two entities, of mutual replenishment with new elements of viability.”84 He paved the way by reading medical books. Eternal Life: Rejuvenation Experiments

Not only did Bogdanov sift through the history of blood transfusions look­ ing for similar approaches, at which point he described those few bloodexchange experiments that had already been carried out, he also compared contemporary theories of aging and analyzed current rejuvenation methods. His medical background consisted of a short course of studies at the Moscow Faculty of Natural Sciences which, because of his participation in revolution­ ary activities, he continued via correspondence with a focus on psychology in

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Kharkiv and completed there in 1899. In exile in northern Russia, he prac­ ticed as a doctor in a psychiatric clinic for three years; and during World War I, he was a military doctor, which exhausted him to such an extent that he subsequently had to recuperate in a sanatorium.85 Even though Bogda­ nov was very familiar with the medical literature of his day – and not only with the literature on blood transfusions, but also on general biology and related sciences – he had a significant deficiency in one area, that is, a tremen­ dous lack of experience. He was not involved in either medical or scientific research, nor was there any mentor from whom he could have learned.86 All of the experiments he reported on were known to him only theoretically from books. And he read these books with a particular interest for the extension of growth processes and rejuvenation projects, the two sides of his argumenta­ tion in favor of mutual blood transfusion. For this reason, most of his medi­ cal explanations are either so incomplete that they must be misunderstood, or they are partly false or too simplistic; however, they nevertheless consist­ ently depict his direct path toward his bilateral method of blood transfusion. What first inspired Bogdanov was research on the behavior of singlecell organisms (protozoa), which extended their lifespan independently by means of their constant reorganization, that is, through their fusion with one another. Bogdanov transferred this observation to higher organisms and suspected that such an ability to reorganize could also be found in the behavior of liquid tissue, that is, in the blood.87 A key pioneer in such con­ clusions was the prominent French chemist Auguste Lumière, who had not only researched the immortality of cells but also invented color photography and cinematographs in 1895.88 In an extremely ruthless manner, Bogdanov was already prepared to test Lumière’s conclusions directly on human beings without performing any prior experiments on animals.89 What’s more, he also read, like many of his Russian contemporaries, the many publications on Western rejuvenation projects.90 For example, in Paris in 1908, Ilya Mech­ nikov, Nobel Prize winner and co-inventor of immunology, assumed that the ageing of the body was a result of a poisoning through digestive products and suggested, among other things, a yoghurt diet. His thesis that lactic acid inhibited certain decaying processes in the digestive tract continues to be rec­ ognized today.91 Charles Edouard Brown-Sequard, the successor to Claude Bernard at the Collège de France, saw the cause of ageing in the loss of cer­ tain inner secretions, and in the 1880s, he experimented with subcutaneous injections of semen–gland extracts. The increase in vitality observed after the injections was indeed often doubted, and yet the theory of inner secretions proved to be instructive at least for the hormone therapy it subsequently inspired.92 As a consequence of this, countless physiologists working after the turn of the century researched the functions of sex hormones, the most famous among them being Eugen Steinach and Serge Voronov. Lesser known were the experiments done by Elau Javorski with blood injections that prom­ ised to “grant new youthfulness and protect against ageing” – experiments that Bogdanov considered unsustainable and which he condemned, seeing

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as they devalued old blood in favor of new.93 In other words, he knew fully well how to distinguish between exalted promises and promising research. Steinach, a Viennese physiologist and the founder of Sexology, suspended the vas deferens, which prevented the formation of spermatozoa and caused an increase in hormonal secretion, which in turn was designed to refresh sexual behavior and extend life spans. Steinach’s work became so popular that his neighbor, Sigmund Freud, counted among his patients, and in 1922 the Ger­ man film production company UFA produced one of the first Cultural Films about him, which even made it to Soviet cinemas in 1925 under the title Rejuvenation.94 Steinach’s method has since come to be known as a vasec­ tomy and serves as a form of sterilization rather than rejuvenation. Bogdanov was particularly impressed by Serge Voronov, a Russia-born French physiologist and Director of Experimental Surgery at the Collège de France, who became famous with spectacular rejuvenation research on animals and humans. In 1920, Voronov’s lucrative career began with the transplantation of ape testicles into ageing men. He lived in a château on the Italian Riviera and owned a menagerie consisting of hundreds of apes. There he claimed to be able to reverse ageing by six to 10  years and rejuvenate physical and mental abilities by ten to 15 years. The basis for this possibility was the stimulation of all organisms by means of sex hormones produced in the transplanted testicles.95 Voronov operated on a total of 2,000 testes; how­ ever, in the end, it turned out that almost half of his patients – plus before/ after photographs in his reports – had been heavily manipulated.96 Bogdanov was fascinated by Voronov’s courage, but he also criticized his experiments and deemed them incomplete and limited in their potential scope: “The correlation of organs in chain connection has enormous sig­ nificance. To strengthen some functions, when we cannot strengthen others proportionately, can be useless and sometimes even harmful to the body.”97 Despite this criticism, Bogdanov took Voronov seriously enough to distin­ guish his universal approach against the latter’s destructive experimentali­ zation, which only removed organs and exchanged them with one another without recognizing the living organism as a “self-reproducing” machine, as a “dual equilibrium system.”98 Even worse, in order to allow a living organ­ ism to live better and longer, another organism from Voronov’s menagerie had to die. Bogdanov, who saw life as constant change and living processes as “energy transformations,” could not accept such a waste of energy. The living organism should [D]irect itself toward a vital minimum of sexual and brain weakening . . . , only then will it lead to the use of the reserve viability of the other systems and to the improvement of the body as a whole.99 However, as he himself admitted, these rejuvenation possibilities “still needed more study of the interrelations of these functions with others, hor­ monal and otherwise.”100 Blood, Bogdanov continued, was the only source

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that made it possible to examine these correlations, because it presented the internal medium that reflected the entire structure of the body and thus influ­ enced all other tissues101: “It is the carrier of immunity and other means of the defense of the body. Hormones circulated in [the blood], regulating the progress of all its work and development. It is in continuous communication with all other tissues”102 and provides the cells with its essential nutrition. “In essence, blood is not only the perfected form of lymph, but also, so to speak, the generalized form.”103 Blood made it possible to study and solve “all the individual problems,”104 and age was only one among these many individual problems. Each of the colleagues mentioned above, on the other hand, saw ageing as a special deficiency and tried to bring about rejuvenation by means of adding certain missing elements. Bogdanov took up almost the entirely opposite stance by calling for the exchange between young and old organ­ isms, especially since he often categorized the aged body as being the richer of the two, seeing as it might be carrying immune substances that were missing in the younger body. The examples provided here serve merely to illustrate that the experimental impulse of bilateral blood transfusions was embedded in a medical discourse in which fantasies of rejuvenation and experimental audacity went hand in hand, even beyond the Soviet context. Bogdanov’s Soviet successors were no less bold, whether in experimenting with human beings, in their efforts to achieve rejuvenation or in the research of universal remedies. Alexander Bogomolets, a student of Mechnikov and the second Director of the Institute for Blood Transfusion, continued research into gerontology and rejuvenation and, by 1941, had developed a drug (antireticular cytotoxic serum, ACS) that was first and foremost designed to prolong Stalin’s life. He created it by injecting connective tissues, such as bone marrow and lymph fluids, taken from accident victims into the bloodstream of animals, preferably horses and rabbits. He then re-injected the blood, which was now rich in antibodies, back into the human blood­ stream and hoped to thus provoke a stimulation of the immune system, which actually did occur. However, not much else occurred. ACS proved unable to heal certain symptoms, nor did it help repeatedly or reliably in the case of the same symptoms. And yet, it was still used in WWII to accelerate the healing of wounds and bone fractures as well as to remedy psychologi­ cal disabilities, pneumonia, eczema, asthma and ulcers. In other words, it represented yet another universal panacea whose effectiveness could not be proven, yet which did not harm patients as a placebo either. In any case, ACS was not able to save Stalin or Bogomolets – the latter died seven years before his powerful patron, and the use of his miracle cure came to an end with his death.105 A more successful attempt – and a rather clever one with regard to the development of an elixir of life – was made by Sergei Yudin, who used the blood of corpses! In the early 1930s, Yudin discovered that blood did not always clot in the body after death, so he began draining corpses of blood and conserving it by adding sodium citrate.

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Figure 3.8 Drawing blood for the purposes of conservation according to Sergei Yudin’s method, Moscow 1924 (Yudin 1960, 356)

It was no coincidence that his laboratory was located in Moscow’s largest trauma clinic, the Sklifosovsky Institute, where he made his discovery that the blood of sudden-death victims quickly liquefied again after coagulation and could be removed before it could accumulate bacteria. By 1938, Yudin had carried out 2,500 cadaver blood transfusions, only seven recipients of which died and 125 showed reactions such as fever and the chills. Together with Bogdanov’s initiative for an infrastructure of transfusion centers throughout the entire Soviet Union – which were organized centrally and independently of hospitals, unlike in the West, and thus were able to reach the sparsely pop­ ulated areas of the nation – Yudin’s blood preserves provided the material for the development of the world’s first blood bank. They also formed the

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foundation for the saving of many soldiers’ lives in WWII.106 Colleagues in the West were surprised by the good results; however, at the same time, they were shocked when they read the few available reports describing the practice.107 For conceivable reasons of piety, a similar use in Christian countries would have been unimaginable. However, in socialist Russia, which at the time of Stalin sought to achieve a science that was as independent as possible – one that simultaneously ignored and outdid the West – the idea was entirely wel­ come. Plus, it was only one of countless equally brutal and cocky experimen­ tal practices that didn’t emerge with Stalin’s dictatorship, but which received fresh impulses and new financial means from the regime.108 In order to provide another example that disproves the insistence on the independence of science being conducted in Stalin’s Russia – we need only look at Yudin’s source of inspiration, Vladimir Shamov: as early as in the 1920s, Shamov in Kharkiv, Ukraine, observed that certain tissues, that is, muscles or glands, continued to live on for hours after the death of an animal. In a manner comparable to the experiments with dogs that took place in England in the 17th century, Shamov drained the dogs of up to 90 percent of their blood and then re-injected it into them and discovered that the almost-dead dogs recovered and “that blood in a dead body remains viable for up to ten hours after death.”109 We have no choice at this point but to confirm the immense popularity of injection therapy. Beyond that, a Moscow-based experimental biologist also worked with injections without blood; he was also looking for an unspecific drug. Alexey Zamkov, husband of the famous Social Realist sculptor Vera Mukhina, performed research on the euphoric effect of sexual hormones in the urine of pregnant women.110 He injected himself repeatedly intramuscu­ larly with such urine and developed – after performing contra-experiments on women and men – a therapeutic agent, Gravidan, which was supposed to have positive effects on a wide variety of defects. After the founding of his own Institute for Uro-gravidanotherapy (1932) and the building up of a network of 324 medical facilities to which they delivered their medications (1934), the number of positive reports increased and were, as with Bogdanov, very extensive: they included everything from the healing of eye diseases and post-surgical infections to the treatment of disorders of the nervous system, mental illness and the alleviation of lovesickness. This bodily fluid seemed suitable for bringing about proper physical and physiological functioning and a general increase in efficiency. The press was full of praise: thanks to Gravidan, the number of accidents in factories sank.111 Other Soviet injection projects attempted to do the same with protein compounds.112 The list of injection experiments could be continued here, both with synthetic or endog­ enous substances. They would indeed all serve to raise the question already suggested by circular blood transfusions: where did this holistic approach – one that took into account all functions of the human body, but at the same time did not necessarily result from medicine alone – come from? Looking back, it must be concluded that neither the re-reading of the medi­ cal voices that Bogdanov was listening to in the early 1920s nor his Tektology

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sufficiently reveals why he saw the acute need for his type of experimental culture, that is, for the stabilization of a state of equilibrium in the human body. It would appear as if he were tackling a larger problem than simply the rejuvenation of an individual human organism. His search for a general, universal tissue points our attention toward a larger task than that of hygiene alone. Bogdanov’s own publications indeed do not address this explicitly, but if we take into account his mode of all-encompassing thought, it becomes clear that he was eager to keep his public image clean of one particular event. When he projected the development of his mutual blood transfusions back to the beginnings of his literary career, Bogdanov left out one practice that directly preceded his medical experimental culture. When the hour of his Tektology came in 1917 with the February Revolution, he brought up artistic transformations rather than blood transfusions: After these lines were written, the Revolution broke out in Russia. . . . If consciousness is supposed to express life and serve it, then it is clear that the era of Tektology has come and that work on it is the most urgent of all scientific-theoretical tasks.113 In Bloodstreams and Streetcars The interweaving of philosophy, medicine and social theory as shown in Bog­ danov’s thought – in the creation of a society on Mars that regulated educa­ tion systems and blood transfusions alike, or in Tektology, which provided a building block for the description of observations of nature and the fight against ageing – is very much obliged to his most famous physiological pre­ decessor. William Harvey’s discovery of blood circulation had already had an effect beyond the field of research into the human body and helped to influence the idea of a closed circulation of things and people in physiology, natural history and political economy. According to Joseph Vogl, blood cir­ culation was the template for the understanding of sovereignty, seeing as “the Prince must know his own heart, as it were, as a ‘god-like model of his own power.’ ”114 Both heart and power function in an unnoticed and inexorable manner, and they were indispensable for the regulation of the entire organ­ ism – and intimately connected with it: “The blood flowing in is what causes the heart to beat.”115 As Harvey described, it was not a sovereign who exer­ cises his power in a hierarchical manner and not a central organ that arbi­ trarily steers physical processes. He saw an arbitrarily functioning exchange between heart and blood vessels, a mutually dependent relationship between sovereign and people. Society became a fabric of exchange relationships that was not created by the sovereign; instead, the sovereign represented its steer­ ing element. All the way up to the 18th century, the comparisons between blood circulation, trade and money in circulation spread to the most differ­ ent fields of knowledge. Unnoticed by the human body, Harvey’s inexora­ bly pumping heart moved the blood quasi automatically through the veins

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and offered Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau alike a model for the description of political organizations, as well as for the less obvious planning of road, canal and communication networks and of urban architecture and economic systems. Thus, according to Vogl, Harvey’s study of physiological functions refers “to a doubling of the political body .  .  . in which the authority of sovereign power . . . around government knowledge [added] is oriented to the functions, circulatory systems, power balance and indirect guidance.”116 Hence, the analogy between science and society in Harvey cannot be reduced to a metaphor. On the contrary, it confirms – in the best of cases – a con­ scious relationship of the identity between scientific theory and the political design of society: in other words, science shapes society.117 Bogdanov was no doubt aware of this identity: in fact, he was so much aware of it that he did not suffice himself with the development of theories and the working out of their practical opportunities on the pages of a novel. Nor did he understand scientific practice as a model for the ideal socialist society. Instead, he tried to realize it immediately as a tangible framework, as the constitutive base for society. In keeping with this, his blood transfu­ sions were not the model of a proletarian science; instead, they depict much more one of the many constituent parts of scientific behavior, that is, that of medicine. As was known since Harvey, the other constituent parts consisted together of economics, politics, education and architecture and, what was not yet visible in Harvey’s age, art. Proletkult: Organization of Knowledge and Experience

In Petrograd, one week before the October Revolution began, 208 delegates gathered at the “First Conference of the Proletarian Cultural-Enlightenment Organizations” to debate the question of the necessity and possibility of a comprehensive cultural revolution. The consequences of this gathering, which indeed preceded the social revolution but was soon overtaken by it, were far-reaching: on the one hand, it initiated the debates which focused on the modification of Russian culture in the early years of the Soviet Union in a variety of disciplines.118 On the other hand, at this conference, the basis formed of a mass movement, called the Proletkult, which, within the next years, would grow to almost a half million members, and in 1920 counted a comparable number of activists as the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks themselves.119 “The creative revolution of world culture” was the motto of the spokesman of the Proletkult, “by means of spontaneous education and conscious crea­ tion instead of social struggle” and party control, so as to shape the subject, which was necessary for long-term social transformation.120 With the help of his brother-in-law and new Commissar for Education and People’s Enlight­ enment, Anatoly Lunacharksy, Bogdanov introduced non-lexical forms of instruction to the facilities mentioned here, which were designed to make it possible for revolutionary workers to recognize and develop their own logic,

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aesthetics and ideology by means of the practical and creative handling of the material.121 In short, the subject would become able to recognize his own structure on the basis of insights gained with regard to the structure of things – both natural and technological – and then to transform himself. Bogdanov definitely derived the certainty that the ‘New Subject’ actually possessed this ability to transform from his experiences in left-revolutionary workers’ cir­ cles. The fact that it was necessary was suggested not least by the fact that almost 80 percent of the population was illiterate.122 The Proletkult organization began as a loose federation of workers’ clubs, factory councils, work theaters, studios, workshops, newspapers and maga­ zines. In a very short space of time, it had amassed a nationwide network of 300 branches organized on the basis of self-governance.123 Filmmakers, pho­ tographers, poets, theater directors, labor scientists, teachers, philosophers and natural scientists – a wide variety of disciplines and professions felt wellserved in the Proletkult. This led to the most heterogeneous formulations of ‘Proletarian culture,’ but it simultaneously revealed three key attitudes in the biggest common denominator: (1) the idea of cultural hegemony, (2) the idea of institutional autonomy (of the party and labor union) and (3) the call for cultural transformation.124 The first refers to a concept of culture that encompassed everything – from language and morality to science and aes­ thetics, literature and art – that was relevant to the daily life of the proletariat beyond decidedly political and economic concerns. For example, ‘culture’ was seen here as a complement to politics and economics and was supposed to go together with revolutionary changes in these realms. At the same time, culture was at the basis of all other spheres, because of the fact that it served nothing less than the construction of the ‘proletarian consciousness’: that is, culture had an “organizational function,” and thus the proletariat would have to develop its own “organizational tools.”125 The Proletkult was not a revolutionary idea thought up by Bogdanov; instead, it had a meaningful, almost European pre-history. A  correspond­ ence between Gorky and his social democratic cohorts that went unpublished until recently – one that dealt with the organizational problems of the party schools in Capri and Bologna – brings up the central position assigned to cultural questions and art in the educational program of party propagan­ dists even in the pre-era of Bolshevism: in addition to “party organizational tasks” and the “party theory,” the “philosophy of the proletarian struggle” also came up. It consisted of the “Knowledgeable Image of the World,” the “Artistic Image of the World,” “Russian Literature in the 19th century,” “Contemporary Art in Europe” and “Socialist Culture.” One cannot marvel enough about the importance placed on contemporary art in years of finan­ cial hardship felt by the social-democratic movement. If the party organizers were successful in creating the prescribed cultural horizon of knowledge, they would be able to pursue their primarily intended tasks, that is, “propaganda in workers circles (Krushkakh) and mass gatherings, party literature, the for­ mation of clubs, people’s universities, libraries and book publishers” – indeed,

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everything that Bogdanov would later subsume under the Proletkult. In other words, even before he convened the Proletkult, Bogdanov had already thought through his comprehensive education concept with such famous thinkers as Maxim Gorky, Karl Kautski, Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Trotsky, all of whom participated in the party schools.126 The poets of the Proletkult, including Michail Gerassimov, Vladimir Kirillov and Vassili Alexanderovsky, implemented Bogdanov’s call for a collective culture by, for example, abstaining from the use of the subjec­ tive narrative attitude. Like the Factographers, they negated the role of the author and wrote from the likeable, community-oriented “we” perspective instead of the first-person perspective.127 Labor scientist Aleksei Gastev became the most famous Proletkult author, although he would go on in the course of the 1920s to concentrate less on literary work and more on his activity at the Central Institute for Work.128 Instead of voices, his poems communicate instructions. For example, even before his collection of poetry called “A Pile of Papers” began, Gastev provided instructions for reading in the form of “technical instructions:” he indicated that the poems should be read out loud [I]n unified blocks, as if one were operating an apparatus. The mode of recital had to be expressionless, without any pathos, pseudo-classical rhetoric and especially without any intonated parts. Words and sen­ tences should follow each other in the same tempo.129 And yet, Gastev did not at all correspond to the idea of poetry formulated by Bogdanov, although he expressed himself as much as possible in a de-personalized way. Bogdanov preferred a holistic taste in art, as well: “Yet there can be no doubt but that proletarian art must enclose in the field of experience the whole society and Nature, the whole life of the universe.”130 Indeed, Gastev would have even been much too impersonal for him, inas­ much as he put himself in the position of the machine instead of in the posi­ tion of the community – an approach that would have struck Bogdanov as uninteresting and much too one-sided: “The narrowing down of poetry to social agitational themes has an unfavorable effect even on its artistic side, which is essentially its organizing force.”131 What would Bogdanov – the man who extended life – have done with such rabid Gastev sentences as “Heart in Chains” and “Twenty Cities – Rejects,” if what he was looking for was “harmony between form and content”? It was precisely the avant-garde, to which Gastev also belonged, that Bogdanov rejected: The greater part of the new currents in art is included in the decadent “modernism” and “futurism”. . . . It is necessary to learn the technique of art, not from these organizers of the decadence of life, but from the great masters of the arts. . . . – the revolutionary romanticists and the classics of different times.132

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Ironically, however, it was precisely these decadent artists who put his artistic transformations into action. It was the post-Revolutionary Russian avant-garde that was known for its radical opening into life, as Vladimir Mayakovsky announced emphatically: “Exercise your artistic strength to the point .  .  . at which you are capable of participating in the work of the world. Give the world new colors and forms!”133 After the revolution, the leftists among them went into produc­ tion, to the collective farms and factories, to the “direct participation of the writer in the construction of his days.”134 The Futurists organized poetry eve­ nings for the workers and prepared celebrations marking the anniversaries of the revolution. Theater presentations took place in factories, and many street parades, kiosks and billboards showed the signature of the avant-gardists. The new abstract art in the form of exhibition corners was even spread to schools. The Factographers also fit well into the theory of the Proletkult when they lived among the collective farm workers and pinned their literary observations to their bulletin boards, much like the avant-garde filmmakers who drove to remote provinces on special film trains and shot films there, which they then also screened there, too. Constructivists and Productivists got involved in industrial design and created fabrics, porcelain, furniture, cutlery, etc.135 The most radical among them, Nikolai Chuzhak, coined a term for the removal of barriers to art in everyday life: zhiznestroenije – the construction of life – which was the post-revolution task of Russian art, and he can’t have meant only agit-prop: “The new . . . science of art envisages the

Figure 3.9a Agit-prop street scene (Barron and Tuchman 1980, 76)

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Figure 3.9b Mass spectacle, reenactment of the storming of the Winter Palace, Petro­ grad, November 1920 (Barron and Tuchman 1980, 77)

change of reality by means of its redesign.”136 Art was understood as a means of shaping life rather than as a reflection of life. The avant-gardists made use of this understanding with visual shocks, whether through film, architec­ ture or graphic constructions; they challenged the perception of viewers and taught them to question their perspective on the world and in this sense to be able to act in a more conscious and effective manner within the radically new life circumstances of the Soviet reality. Whether their shock methods had any kind of effect on the psyches of their viewers or not, against the backdrop of the Proletkult, they offered practices for the transformation both of the life circumstances of the revolutionized Soviet man as well as of the people them­ selves: “The master of color and light just as much as the initiator of mass movements – they all should become Constructivists for the common task of the organization and steering of the masses consisting of many millions of people.”137 In other words, ‘life-constructing’ art comprised both the active intervention of the artist in the building of socialism and the process of the emotional-mental influencing of people. When Nicolai Ladovsky performed research into the perception of build­ ings using psychotechnics and thereby brought applied science to the lab­ oratory of the artist; when Vsevolod Pudovkin went into a physiological laboratory to bring his cinema technology to the latest heights of reflexol­ ogy and when Alexander Bogdanov reconciled his theories on extending

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life with a consideration of art and practiced both in the laboratory of an experimental physician, then the call for a ‘transformation of the subject’ for the purpose of reorganizing all areas of life not only motivated the radical attempt to modify science, philosophy and art in terms of infrastructure. In the programmatic synchronized conformity of all disciplines to the ‘cultural revolution,’ it not simply prepared the breeding ground for a wide variety of interactions between art and science – be it at art academies such as VChUTEMAS, at theaters such as Meyerhold’s or at scientific facilities such as Bekhterev’s psycho-neurological institute. The call for a ‘transformation of the subject’ structured all of these events around a common experimental object: the New Man. Transformations Toward the New Man Indeed, it is often difficult to resist the dream and the utopia. But the fantasy can be reined in by means of experiments.138

The ‘utopian’ label is often applied to the grand objectives of Soviet philoso­ phers, artists and scientists: The state or, more precisely, the party utopia, which makes itself known in all areas, the utopia of the Proletkult and the avant-garde utopia, are the three voices that can be most notably heard in the utopian field of post-revolutionary Russia, even if this field was also larger and multivoiced, polyphonic.139 Whether politics; ideas; thoughts; sketches and plans; literary, technical or artistic visions – everything in the years after the revolution appears as a fantasy, especially to the research into utopia that has been blossoming for decades. If, however, in an era in which it becomes possible to call everything utopian – where, indeed, one has to look hard for what was not utopian – isn’t it impossible to avoid the suspicion that this concept is no longer effec­ tive, that it has become exchangeable and stands for nothing anymore? Even life expectancy, scientific experiments, war communism and five-year plans fit the notion of a utopian age, which continues to get broader and more general, regardless of whether their utopias could be realized or not. A his­ tory of ideas on utopia seems not to have to expose itself to this question, even if it goes to the very core of the definition of the area of research: in this sense, that which is utopian comes etymologically precisely from “nowhere land,” it is found in the near future, it is a “fantastical idea without any real basis, a dream, a fantasy.”140 Instead of recognizing this contradiction, utopia research soon suggests that all events that stand out in whatever way – in fantastical novels or in philosophical projections, even before they are implemented – are utopian. How much, however, remains of a utopia when you give it a place and time in which it can be realized? Is a utopia, once

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implemented, still utopian? Or is it rather a utopia that has been given up and betrayed? Shouldn’t we, in the face of failed projects, instead of minimiz­ ing them as being utopian, ask about the political, social and conceptional borders that were used for their realization? Such a project, which cannot even really be described as a failure, was that of the New Man, or even homo sovieticus – a Soviet man that was anything but homogenous and nevertheless genuine. Like previous ideals, the Soviet one distinguished itself by means of an unshakeable belief in the improve­ ment capacity of man and by means of the delimitation against an outdated image of man.141 This rejected image of man lay, however, neither way back, nor was it principally of any other nature than the new one. Not much sepa­ rated the two other than a revolution and an ideology, which, instead of educating a New Man, insisted that he should self-educate – precisely as the Proletkult promised to practice. For example, Alexandra Kollontai, a central figure of the Soviet women’s movement, pushed through – in the wake of the New Man – the wishes of the New Woman: in 1917, the right to vote for women was introduced, and in 1919 she founded the Women’s Unit of the Communist Party and was named Commissar for Public Health. She sought to improve the role of women in society by propagating a new form of love. In her opinion, “the unification of attraction and camaraderie” could only emerge by means of the constant changing of sexual partners, driven by pas­ sion and without any “domestic slavery.” Only by pursuing the fulfillment of her free physical desires could the New Woman be able to unfold as a com­ munist.142 Reproduction, on the other hand, would have to be state organized independently of individual interests and in keeping with certain hygienic standards, as would childcare and education. The latter, especially, should not remain in the realm of wishful thinking. If we were to believe Kollontai, Soviet children would indeed be placed in state hands: “There were homes for infants, daycare facilities, kindergartens, children’s colonies, children’s homes, hospitals and recreation centers for sick kids, restaurants, breakfast and lunch at school, free distribution of school books, warm clothing and shoes, etc.”143 One of these homes in Moscow called itself the “Kinderheim Laborato­ rium” (Children’s Home Laboratory) and pursued the desired self-education in a scientific and especially economic way using psychoanalysis. Indeed, psy­ choanalysis had shown the existence “in the human psyche, in addition to the conscious life of the soul, of the large area of the unconscious”144, and, in order to study and foster this area, one needed to do nothing else but noth­ ing when raising children. Instead of providing ways of behaving and instead of teaching morals, respect and understanding, one would let the biologi­ cally founded, infantile sexuality of the New Children run free, and that also meant the development of their purity. There were no orders or punishments given, and no affection showed.145 Caregivers dealt primarily with observing the children and completed character sketches, diaries or notices “about the physical performance . . . , about the number of hours slept during the day

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and night, the condition of the skin, appetite and overall mood.”146 This form of education was no longer called pedagogy; instead, starting in 1923, it was referred to as Pedology, and it was represented by none other than Aaron Zalkind, the critic of the Pudovkin film. In addition to women and children, Soviet men were also subject to the self-improvement experiments of the Socialists. From Gastev’s scientific work organization to the Stachanov movement at the beginning of the 1930s, which declared the “one-best-man” as the norm so as to fulfill the five-year plan, the New Men were required to learn how to work faster and longer without becoming tired or ill, and in their free time to also pursue continuing training. Of course, within the framework of all these transformations of the old into the New Man, one did not leave out Soviet eugenics in order to fulfill Trotsky’s proclamation: Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semi-conscious and then the sub-conscious processes in his own organism, such as breath­ ing, the circulation of blood, digestion, reproduction, and, within nec­ essary limits, he will try to subordinate them to the control of reason and will . . . . Even purely physiologic life will become subject to col­ lective experiments. The human species . . . will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training.147 The project to redesign man – the one that was most commonly cited due to its uniqueness – was the intersection of man and man-ape that experi­ mental biologist Ilya Ivanov carried out starting in 1926 on behalf of an ape-breeding farm at the Pasteur Institute in Africa. Ivanov attempted to arti­ ficially inseminate female chimpanzees with human sperm, which he was not able to carry out successfully in Africa due to a lack of mature subjects. He returned to the Soviet Union with one lab animal, more specifically to the ape station in Sukhumi, Georgia, where he sought to perform his experiments in the reverse direction, that is, with women willing to participate in the experi­ ment and the sperm of the imported ape named “Tarzan.” However, Ivanov failed once again due to adverse circumstances – not due to a lack of state or scientific support: his sperm donor died in 1929, and the hybridization of the New Man remained forever untested.148 One of the biologists who supported Ivanov’s project was the geneticist Alexander Serebrovski, who formulated a more realistic suggestion on practi­ cal eugenics in 1926. He planned to create a database – called the Genofond – with which to collect the genetic data of the proletariat. It was designed to make available the material for the selection of optimal sexual partners

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who would procreate by means of artificial insemination rather than in a traditional manner. This practice, too, was never implemented, seeing as the politically motivated criticism of the “biologification” of social concerns at the beginning of the 1930s led to a reorientation of Serebrovski’s field of work.149 Nevertheless, precisely this failed attempt provides the ideal means by which to clarify how tangible the realization of apparent utopian approaches became in the post-revolutionary years. And it hints at what a further communist, Emmanuil Enchmen, meant in 1919 when he foresaw a “New Biology,” although he expressed it in obscure words: The author of the Theory of New Biology will tell the organism how the communist economy will be founded on a system of “physiological passports” for all human organisms; moreover, each such passport shall numerically specify the tension and strength (‘the coefficient of conser­ vation of reactions’) of the most essential reactions (chains of reflexes) of the specific human organism. . . . The passport will also specify the coefficient of joyfulness, of stenism, for that year or for a fixed interval of time in the communist economy.150 The “personal profiles” lead back to the psycho profiles introduced by Ladovsky in 1926, while the presentation of all reactions and feelings reminds us of Pavlov. The most obvious here, however, are the characteristics of Proletkult literature: Enchmen does not refer to the addressee of his pam­ phlets as a comrade, proletariat or neutral reader. He refers to them as “the organism.” Thus, his text is not for conscious intellectuals nor for workers willing to learn, but rather for reading organisms, however unconscious. Not just the author but also the recipient is depersonalized in a very radical man­ ner. In order to achieve this unconscious reading ability, Enchmen suggested providing the “living organism” with so-called “analyzers” rather than con­ cepts and theories. These analyzers were designed to bring about a break that would prompt the “organism” to “completely change his structure.”151 What exactly these analyzers might be was not revealed by the reading of Enchmen nor any of the texts in his environment. The answer can be found – typi­ cally for him – in Bogdanov’s practice of mutual blood transfusions: almost explicitly, the blood here appears to act as an analyzer. In other words, when transferred into in a foreign blood circulatory system, it caused such dis­ turbances there that the structure of the organism not only changed, it also improved itself, as it were. Entirely unnoticed by the organism participating in the exchange of blood, and much like a chain of chemical reactions, the new structure created a balanced existence and a more efficient management of life – for precisely that which, after years of civil war, was so necessary for the sake of the communist economy. Of course, Bogdanov was also accused of utopian thought; on the one hand, because he had developed his medical experiments initially within a science fiction novel, and, on the other hand, because he was close to the

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group known as “Vorwärts,” which was, in turn, imbued “by the Nietzs­ chean notions of the New Man.”152 Despite the fact that Bogdanov himself never dealt extensively with Nietzsche’s writings, many people repeatedly interpret into his work Nietzsche’s ideas of the Superman and his “unlim­ ited possibilities” and “moral relativism.” There are good reasons for the nominative absence of Nietzsche, such as those explained by Boris Groys, for example: [I]deological censorship under Stalin at the beginning of the 1930s . . . made it extraordinarily difficult, if not entirely impossible, to quote authors who had not made it in the official canon. . . . Nietzsche was among the authors excluded from Stalin’s socialist canon.153 And yet, Bogdanov published earlier than that. His writings on extend­ ing life appeared in the 1920s, a time in which Trotsky was able to freely announce the biological Supermen. Conceptually, too, it does not seem that Bogdanov was interested in the creation of an all-encompassing “God-like creature,” which becomes clear when one looks at his practice of blood trans­ fusions, in addition to his ideas: a network of blood-exchanging people, a collective of circulatory systems simply rules out the Superman, that is, a man who is supposed to be characterized by “boundless energy, daring, hardness, physical vitality.”154 Bogdanov eliminated, by means of the mutual linking of people, the difference between him and others, between physician and patient, between power-holders and workers, and he created a Superhuman form of organization – a systematic making-equal of teacher and pupil, one that called into question the possibility of perfection of the individual. Thus, he stood in opposition to some of his contemporaries, such as Lunacharksy and Gorky, who were considered to be so-called “god builders” and who projected a socialist “man god.”155 Instead, he created an equilibrium, and this means also a balance between strong and weak individuals. The fact that he did so in such differing fields of activity as novels, philosophy, the Prolet­ kult culture program and ultimately also in the medical laboratory calls for a different explanation than one bound to mere utopian thinking. In order to be able to understand the vision of the New Man in Bogdanov, it is necessary to see social concepts, cultural programs and medical practices in relation to one another: “In the distant future, eugenics may give the advantage to better developed types. But for those alive now and in the near future, there is not much hope in that. Are more radical and direct methods possible?”156 The Proletkult marked the turning point – the pivotal point – in Bog­ danov’s work: he found himself at the beginning of his short yet unique practical experience as an experimental physician and at the end of his theo­ retical projection of a new society in the form of Tektology. He saw the October Revolution as a disruption of the equilibrium in the “system soci­ ety.” Whereas war was about the “simple maintenance, expansion and/or partly violent absorption of this or that nation-state system,” the revolution

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demanded the “rebuilding” and “changing of their organizational forms.”157 Proletkult was the cultural process that Bogdanov added next to the politi­ cal and economic transformation processes in a complementary and balanc­ ing way. Proletkult functioned with regard to politics and economics as a corrective and precondition and simultaneously presented itself as a system within which equilibrium processes took place. In this way, in this system, according to tektological logic, all disciplines enter into a relationship with one another on equal footing, and all judgmental differences are lifted so that there are only tektological connections in motion. That is, until the system society somehow, at least temporarily, became stabilized in the equilibrium of “socialist collectivism.”158 Art as a creative process was given a special role in this realm: “Under­ lying artistic creation is the principle of inner unity and harmony. .  .  . In art, the organization of ideas cannot be separated from the organization of things.”159 Thus, art was primarily responsible for harmonic equilibrium, and it overcame the most important of all differences, that is, the still often incor­ rectly assumed border between ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ nature.160 Looking back at the examples presented here from the realm of art, the following preliminary thesis would appear to be valid: as a tektological organization plan, the Proletkult supplied the structural, infrastructural and epistemologi­ cal horizon for the cooperative activities between the avant-garde arts and the sciences. According to Bogdanov’s cultural theory, the avant-garde arts transformed – in tektological solidarity with the life sciences – the old man into the New Man; and this meant, last but not least, that they healed the wound re-opened by the revolution between physical and psychical nature, between collective reality and individual perception. The result of this heal­ ing process was not designed to be, as it were, works of art, but rather a higher work capability. Like life, art became a process of energy: Seen from a physiological standpoint, work performance is a spending of the energy of the worker. .  .  . The recovery of the spent energy is carried out by satisfying the needs of the worker. Thus, work perfor­ mance and the satisfaction of needs are mutually coordinated dimen­ sions whose changes are mutually dependent.161 If we recall here the circular blood transfusions, then we can hypotheti­ cally formulate that, although Tektology formed the theoretical basis for both the blood transfusions and the Proletkult, it was not the practical implementation of theoretical speculation that significantly brought for­ ward Bogdanov’s experimental innovation and thus also not utopian think­ ing. Seen chronologically, Bogdanov’s circular apparatus appears indeed as a discursive effect of his Tektology. And yet, considering the avant-garde experiments conceived in the Proletkult, it becomes much more a media strategy, it becomes an attempt to infiltrate all the previously artistically developed and integrated media, whether they be written, image or spatial

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forms or via blood transfusions. While written, image and spatial forms communicated visually, blood functioned as a medium that was both the information itself and the carrier of that information all in one: blood did not require a visual intermediary to communicate between transmitter and receiver. Bogdanov’s New Man was thus neither a product of fantasy nor an inhuman god creature. He was a Collective Man bound to a media process: Man is a world, but he is a partial world, not a cosmos, rather a microcosm, not everything, but only a part and a reflection of the whole. . . . What makes man a microcosm is his communication with other living things.162 In a Proletarian Format – Psychotechnics Without Taylor In the early 1920s, the Proletkult was subordinated on Lenin’s orders to the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment and Education, at which point Bogdanov stopped his work in the movement.163 It is likely that the limits placed on the freedom of organization, for Bogdanov, led to a disruption of the reciprocal relationship between economy and culture, seeing as “the art­ ist is only capable of organizing his figures in a harmonic manner when he is free to do so without any coercion or influence.”164 A “loss of social work energy” might be the result, and “this means the weakening of the society in its battle with nature.”165 Bogdanov decided to pursue his ‘struggle with nature’ to maintain work energy on a different front, that is, in the medical realm. Lenin and Stalin supported his decision benevolently; both were prob­ ably glad to know that Bogdanov would be out of their respective areas of responsibility. In fact, however, Bogdanov remained true to his political interests and hid them effectively behind medical arguments. If we take his tektological princi­ ple of the transferability of all laws to all areas seriously, his blood transfu­ sions aimed equally at the transformation of the subject, albeit in a different way than the Proletkult avant-gardists. In the closed circulatory system of blood exchange, there was no longer a ‘transformat’ between the subject to be modified, that is, a mediating form was no longer required to bring about the desired transformation of the subject: The conjugation between human beings is known to us in two forms until now: first, we know sexual conjugation. .  .  .; secondly, we see the commonality of experience, the conjugation of experiences through language, facial expressions, art and other types of expres­ sion and reception.  .  .  . Medicine has added a third form to these two, and this third form remains, for the time being, one-sided and partial; it is still, however, the form of a direct physiological con­ jugation. These are the different ways of transmitting organs and

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tissues: skin grafting in the case of burns, blood transfusion, the injection of blood serum, etc.166 If, in the previously presented photographic, filmic and architectural trans­ formations, the focus was on forms that were designed as definite signs to inspire the viewer to certain behaviors, here, only the disappearance of these forms can be determined. Instead, in their place, transformation was under­ stood literally as ‘bringing the transmitted into form’: blood as a carrier of information, injected directly into the body, formatted the subject without the intermediary level of representation. By circumventing perception, the ‘New Subject’ was no longer transformed; instead, it was formatted, that is, the gap between mental and physical was closed not psychophysically but physiologically. While the avant-garde artists still shared the proletarian sub­ jects “through the invisible threads of mutual understanding,”167 thus leading to socialist collectivism, the scientist was now given the organizational task in the mutual blood transfusion – and led to “physiological collectivism.”168 The effect of this physiological collectivism was an entirely new art form, in which the subject and object of the transformation coincided: “The charac­ teristic aspect of this form is the fusion of organizational work with the work of carrying it out.”169 The proletariat, which was then fused into a blood brotherhood with the collective, had no mental or physical deficiencies, a straight inner behavior and all-round superiority – and was in no way aware of the nature of his condition. For Bogdanov, it was no longer about the intended avant-garde and enlightening recovery – by means of proletarian culture – nor of an ‘alienated’ being in Marxist terminology; instead, it was about the creation of a new, as yet unknown being in a proletarian format, to borrow from Bogdanov’s own terminology. The scientist as the creator of this special-format Proletariat was none other than Bogdanov himself. He was able to become “the artistic spokesman of the proletariat, the organizer of his own forces and consciousness in artistic form,” inasmuch as he is [T]ruly and honorably infused by the aspirations and ideals of the col­ lective, by the way in which it thinks . . ., the way it rejoices with its friends . . . the way in which it leads with its sufferance; in other words, when his soul is fused with the collective.170 Seen from this perspective way, we can reassess Bogdanov’s blood trans­ fusions against the backdrop of Proletkult learning methods and avant­ garde experiments as the continuation and expansion of the latter: “It is the friendly, lively exchange that functions beyond ideology, in the physiological sphere.”171 Bogdanov’s primary focus appears to have been not the medically possible rejuvenation of dead material, but rather the transformation of liv­ ing material. After the Proletkult was abolished, he discovered something he called “Soviet burnout” and defined it as the result of the everyday, weari­ some post-revolutionary life full of ups and downs. A world in which “the

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simultaneous struggle of cultural patterns with all their ideological conflicts . . . baffles the average person”172 and unbalances their psyche. And yet, this was no sudden or even Soviet phenomenon; rather it was the consequence of industrialization and the division of labor. According to Bogdanov, the latter forces the worker to carry out the same simple movements daily: “Is that even still a man? It is – a machine!”173 he exclaimed in a polemic against Taylorism, which he caricatured as a method “in which someone would like to develop one single finger to record-breaking strength.” This form of physi­ ological optimization of labor represented by Gastev in Russia must have appeared downright ridiculous to Bogdanov – so much so, that he described in detail its effects on human blood: For the several small muscles to reach maximum potential, the blood flow to them will have to be increased, as will the nerve centers innervat­ ing them. . . . The uneven distribution of blood that would be required can only partly and to a limited extent be achieved by the vasomotor centers with the reflex apparatus of “attention”. Further concentration of effort causes rapid and forceful heart contractions and expanded activity of the entire supplying apparatus.174 The result of this was none other than premature ageing. The consequences of industrialization, according to Bogdanov, are not negative alone, because “the senseless mechanized work was given up to real machines, and workers were able to become human again.”175 Thus, workers became the helms­ men of machines, they became engineers whose work was primarily organi­ zational and mental, rather than performance-oriented, which had led to a mental overload of the worker: “The more human beings conquer nature, the more the sum of the collective experience grows to such gigantic dimensions that it becomes impossible for a psyche to imagine them in their entirety.”176 Thus, Soviet Burnout came to affect especially “older people, workers in positions of responsibility and organizers of life who were overwhelmed with work.”177 The different forms of this overload were “weakness, diminished work capacity, and a fair degree of gastrointestinal atony shown by stubborn constipation. Besides that, he had attacks of somnambulism,” plus “general emaciation and particularly nervous exhaustion”178 – in other words, both mental and physical disorders. Bogdanov must have been convinced of this, seeing as psyche and body influenced one another: “Among other things, our experience has shown that the state of consciousness is closely related to the physical health of the brain.”179 Only for this reason was he able to try to heal mental illnesses via blood transfusions. And how promising this procedure must have appeared at the time, when even the former disciple of psychoanalysis, Aron Zalkind, sent him manic and depressive patients for blood transfusion treatments.180 Under pressure from an approaching new dictatorship, Bogdanov most likely saw the necessity of transforming his workers “in a hurry,”181 that is,

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more effectively than psychoanalysis or the psychotechnic experiments of the avant-gardists would have liked. He might have even seen the latter as con­ tributing to the much lamented Soviet Burnout, inasmuch as they fostered the disorganization of the body when they shook up the senses with shock effects and thus manipulated the reflex system. Because, [I]f this system is disturbed . . . , the motor reactions of the body, con­ scious and unconscious, are in mass conflict, inappropriate and abnor­ mally numerous. The person is agitated, twitchy, uselessly tense, and so on. All of this is a waste of nervous energy, and upsets the function of other organs.182 However, one could subsume the connections between the artistic experi­ mental culture of psychotechnics and Bogdanov’s medical experiments as complementing each other: avant-garde artists deconstructed life as a whole; broke it down into different parts of the human body; trained perception, movement and hearing respectively and separate from one another and believed, in doing so, in a subject that could reorganize its own body and its functions consciously and independently. In this way, Pudovkin dealt only with the visual perception of image movements. Ladovsky reconstructed the effect of architectural forms in the laboratory alone by means of perception experiments without, however, taking into account the act of listening in urban spaces. Bogdanov, on the other hand, realized that this fragmentation had damaged the “vital coordination” and suggested mutual blood trans­ fusions as a means of reconstruction: the reconstruction of life as a unity of conscious and unconscious activities, always with the belief in a physi­ ology that could almost automatically reorganize and harmonize life as a social, psychological and physiological whole: “The more automatism there is, the fewer fluctuations there are, and the easier it is for the organizer to become master of his task.”183 While avant-garde artists had tried to change the nature of the human subject by means of experiments with their cul­ ture, Bogdanov sought to change their culture by experimenting with their physiological nature. The decisive point was not – as the comparison with Voronov’s rejuvenation experiments showed – to overcome death by medi­ cal means. Much more importantly, Bogdanov instrumentalized this medical idea and kept his failure with the Proletkult a secret so as to introduce noth­ ing less than a new social order by medical means, that is the physiological collectivism that incorporated both science and art for “an organization of living figures.”184 If we take up Bogdanov’s definition of blood once again, culture in the Proletkult appears to slip into exactly the position within society that blood takes up within the human body. The task of both was to transform life, to connect people either via common experience in production or by means of the circulation of blood. Ultimately, both blood and culture were, by definition, the smallest common elements of their respective environments:

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blood was the material that all humans had in common, and culture was created together by all jointly, whether with or without a political function within a society and whether in accordance with a romantic aesthetic or a modern one. And yet, there is one not-insignificant difference: cultural transformations of the Proletkult accessed the senses from outside, while blood transfusions transmitted their information in a closed circuit from the interior of one body into the interior of the body of another. In other words, in Bogdanov’s opinion, psychotechnics, like work science, took up the productive role of the ‘false experimental practice.’ All attempts to change the psyche and use it to manipulate the physical body of overburdened workers and their abil­ ity to move and act were, in his eyes, doomed to fail. First of all because they were too particular, and second of all because they approached human beings from the wrong side: the attempts made by Ladovsky to feed back findings into the laboratory and the attempts made by Pudovkin to net­ work the brains of his cinemagoers by means of common film experiences approached the human organism from outside, and they sought an effect by means of the visual perception in order to bring about the change and improvement they were trying to achieve. In the final analysis, both men overextended the very thing they were trying to relieve: the psyche. Bogda­ nov, on the other hand, found a way that came from the inside, from one blood circuit to another and – ignoring visual perception – communicated via blood to the psyche. Thus, Ladovsky and Pudovkin stand on one side, while Bogdanov stands on the other. And they stand for two complementary possibilities of influencing human beings: while the first one assumed the psyche via visual perception, movement, the nervous system and the brain, Bogdanov tried to do this via the blood circulatory system and thus primarily via the body. In both cases, the focus was indeed on the optimization of the relationship between psyche and body, of interior and exterior, of body and society – however, they did so in an epistemic different manner. The two approaches do not exclude one another: they mirror exactly the two approaches of psychotechnicians, which are subjective and objective psycho­ technics, that is, the influencing of the human senses, on the one hand, and the shaping of their technical–organizational environment, on the other.185 Ultimately what is shown here are two different models for understanding society: one that is focused on the psyche and one focused on the physical. One model sees society as the effect of external stimulus transmission, and the other conceptualizes society as the result of the circulation of internal body elements; one that needs impulses for the transmission of informa­ tion, and one that allows this information to emerge in the first place via a continuous flow. In this case, society is seen as nervous appearance or as a collective blood count. For the composition of this blood count, Bogdanov foresaw a procedure taken from plant biology: “Blood is a special tissue of the organism, and each transfusion must be understood as an animal

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grafting.”186 After feedback and networking, grafting was the scientific tech­ nique designed to enable the connection between human beings who actu­ ally didn’t belong together; because “man is a mirror image of society,”187 and a collectivized society demanded, of course, a collective man. Notes 1 For more on the “New Man” in Russia, see Plaggenborg 1996 and Heller, Niqueux 2003, 240 et. seq, Koenen 1998, Sinjawskij 1989. An exhibition at the Museum of Hygiene in Dresden, Germany, showcased the cultural and scientific dimensions of the idea of the New Man: Lepp, Roth, Vogel 1999. 2 Huestis 1996, 143.

3 Bogdanov 1927a, 125–136; Huestis 2001, 177.

4 Huestis 2001, 6–7.

5 See Bruno Latour 2001, 103–110.

6 Bogdanov 1927a, 153–154.

7 Ibid., 153.

8 Starr 1999, 92.

9 Huestis 2001, 285–289.

10 Bogdanov describes the precise process of the blood transfusions from the first test to the carrying out and subsequent observation of the patients in 1927b, Engl. in: Huestis 2001, 217–270. 11 Huestis 2001, 223.

12 Ibid., 219 et. seq.

13 Blood groups were discovered by Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943), who received

the Nobel Prize for his work in 1930. 14 Ibid., 220. For more on blood transfusions in WWI, see Schlich 1996. 15 Belova 1974, 41; Huestis 2001, 6. 16 For more on Bogdanov’s death, see Keynes 1949, 153; Schiff 1933, 109; Huestis 1996, 146; Starr 1999, 92. 17 Bogdanov 1927a, 103. 18 Ibid., 110. 19 Huestis 1996, 144. 20 Bogdanov’s death was greeted with shock by the political community. Highranking politicians, such as Lunacharskij, Semashko, Bukharin and Krupskaya, expressed their condolences, see Bucharin’s eulogy 1928. 21 Huestis 1996, 145. 22 Bogdanov 1927a and 1927b; Huestis 2001 154 et seq. and 227. Bogdanov’s transfusion technique is not mentioned in any of the secondary literature on the history of blood transfusion referenced in preparation for this book. The Bogda­ nov Archive at the current Institute for Blood Transfusion in Moscow contains none of Bogdanov’s apparatuses: experts there assume they were all destroyed. 23 Keynes 1949, 372et seq.

24 Bogdanov undated: La greffe du sang, 18.

25 This trip took place as part of the negotiations for the Treaty of Rapallo.

26 Keynes 1949 [1922]. For more on Bogdanov’s reception of Keynes, see Huestis,

2002, preface and 5 et seq., and also the index on Keynes: 139, 159, 163, 165, 168, 172.

27 Starr 1999, 92; Keynes 1949, 347.

28 Huestis 2001, 227.

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29 Ibid.; Bogdanov replaced Robertson’s bottle with a so-called “Bobrov bottle” that had only two access points to the piston tank and, according to the descrip­ tion, corresponded to a bottle that was only used in the early 1940s as a “Medi­ cal Research Council Solution” in England; see Keynes 1949, 37 et seq., 373 and 377et seq. Keynes also published on Robertson’s procedure in his first edition of Blood Transfusion 1922; see also Huestis 2001, 227. 30 Ibid. 31 Bogdanov undated: La greffe du sang, 17. Thanks to Henning Schmidgen for the German translation of the French texts. 32 James H. A. Aveling (1825–92), British physician and obstetrician; he invented a transfusion instrument that consisted of two silver tubes connected in the middle by a rubber hose to a squeeze-balloon. Collin could not be identified. 33 Both quotations in Bogdanov undated: La greffe du sang, 19. 34 Ibid., 20. 35 Starr 1999, 34 et seq. 36 Ibid. and Schury 2001, 28 et seq. 37 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 153. Seeing as the transfusion was handled by a Jewish physician, it is possible that the experiment was also an invention of Christian doctors to damage the reputation of their Jewish colleague. For more on the cultural history of blood, see Seeman 1962 and Schury 2001. 38 Schury 2001, 56. 39 Ibid., 18. 40 For more on Harvey, see Starr 1999, 23 et seq., Fuchs 1992, 42 et seq., and Vogl 2005. For a comparison of Harvey and Galen, see also Fuchs 1992, 29–39 and 54–73. 41 This experiment was carried out by an English medical student named Richard Lower, see Starr 1999, 24–25. 42 Denis quoted here according to Starr 1999, 18. 43 Starr 1999, 30–33. 44 Ibid., 57. For more on the history of blood transfusion in the 19th century, see Schorr 1956, in particular on clinical application, 69 et seq. 45 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 152. 46 Bogdanov was Director of the Academy from 1918 to 1923. In 1924, it was renamed against his will as “Communist Academy,” see Gare 1994, 68. 47 Bogdanov’s science fiction novels were the first in the genre in Russia: Krasnaya zvezda (The Red Star, 1908) and Inzhener Menni (Engineer Menni, 1912). Among his first writings on economics are: Kratkii kurs ekonomicheskoj nauki (Short Course in Economics, 1897). His first philosophical writing was: Empiriomonizm. Stat’i po filosofii. (Empiriomonism. Philosophical Essays, 1904). A comprehen­ sive Bogdanov bibliography was created by Biggart, Gloveli, Yassour in 1998. 48 The novel went on to become Bogdanov’s most popular work. In 1920, it had its theatrical premiere; in 1923, it was translated into German and in 1929 into Esperanto, see Adams 1989. 49 Lenin expressed criticism of Bogdanov in Materializm i empiriokriticizm: Krit­ icheskie zametki ob odnoj reakcionnoj filosofii (Materialism and Empiriocriti­ cism. Critical Notes on a Reactionary Philosophy, Moscow 1909) and accused him of wanting to reconcile Marxism with Mach’s idealistic neo-positivism, see Stokes 1995 und Grille 1966. 50 Huestis 2001, 173. 51 Bogdanov according to the German edition of Der rote Stern (The Red Star) 1972a, 72, emphasis in the original; Bogdanov quotes this himself in The Strug­ gle for Viability 1927a; see Huestis 2001, 173. 52 Ibid.

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53 Lenin quoted here according to Adams 1989, 10; Lenin was obliged to dis­ miss Bogdanov’s novels, seeing as they excluded the possibility of ideal socialism on earth and depicted the first socialist state as a barbaric, military system of repression. 54 Huestis 2001, 31. 55 Bogdanov 1927a, 122–123. Tektology was published in German as “Allgemeine Organisationslehre, Tektologie,” Vol. 1/2, Berlin 1926/1928 (cited hereafter as Tektology Vol. 1 or Vol. 2); the Russian original Vseobshchaya organizacionnaya nauka: Tektologiya was published in 1913 and 1917 in St. Petersburg/Leningrad. 56 Bogdanov Vol. 1, 23. 57 Ibid., 19. 58 Ibid., 21. 59 Ibid., 23. 60 Bogdanov Vol. 1, 28. 61 Gare 2000, 241. 62 Bogdanov Vol. 1, 79. 63 Ibid., 7. 64 Ibid., 186. 65 Bogdanov Tektology Vol. 2, a.a.O., p. 84. 66 Ibid. 67 Bogdanov refers here to Alexis Carrel and his kidney transplants between ani­ mals, Tektology’ Vol. 2, 88. 68 Tektology Vol. 1, 46. 69 Secondary literature on Bogdanov’s work is almost infinite. However, most pub­ lications focus on Bogdanov as a philosopher, economist and systems theorist, see Belykh, A.A. 1990; Biggart, John; Dudley, Peter; King, Francis (eds.) 1998a; Douglas, Charlotte. 2002., among other. Only a couple of studies examine his role as a cultural revolutionary and science fiction author, see Gare, Arran. 1994. 70 When this book was written, the former “Institute for Blood Transfusions A.A. Bog­ danov” was called: Natsional’nyj Meditsinskij Issledovtel’skij Tsentr Gematologii (National Medical Research Center for Hematology) and was located in a new and modern building complex at the edge of Moscow, see www.blood.ru. An institute was founded in Russia to perform research into Bogdanov’s life’s work: Международный институт А. Богданова, г. Екатеринбург (International A. Bogdanov Institute, Ekat­ erinburg), until recently online under www.bogdinst.ru/DefaultEng.htm. 71 As a result, Bogdanov’s blood transfusions in science fiction novels are histori­ cized by literary experts only as an idea, not as a practice, see Adams 1989. His medical practice is interpreted as a Christian attempt to acquire eternal life, and his final experiment as a successful suicide attempt, see Stokes 1995, 335. 72 Vucinich 1976, 226; Adams 1989, 10; and Williams 1980, 393/394. For an overview of the sources of inspiration behind Bogdanov’s theoretical approach, see Stokes 1995. 73 For more on Haeckel and Ostwald, see Adams 1989, 11 et seq. 74 Douglas 2002, 77/78. 75 See Adams 1989, 12. 76 For more on Bernard and Pavlov, see Chapter 2.2. 77 For more on the milieu interieur, see Bernard 1865, Part 2. 78 Bogdanov 1972a, 126. 79 Gare 2000. 80 According to a conversation with Georgii Gloveli in Moscow, Nov. 2002. 81 Karl Marx 1974 [1890], 192. 82 Thanks to Horst Bredekamp for the reference to this difference. 83 Bogdanov 1972a, 126. Emphasis in the original.

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84 Huestis 2001, 202.

85 For more on Bogdanov’s medical education, see Gloveli 1998, 41; Douglas

2002, 78. 86 Huestis 2001, 19. 87 Ibid., 64 et seq. 88 Lumière 1921. 89 Huestis 2001, 10–11. 90 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 152 et seq. 91 For a short biography of Mechnikov, see Jahn 2000, 899; for a description of his method, see Bogdanov in Huestis, 207–208. 92 Ibid, 470, 788 and Bogdanov ibid. 93 Tektology Vol. 2, 95 and extensively in Huestis 2001, 194–198. 94 Tikhonov 1922, 21. 95 Huestis 2001, 107. 96 Ibid., 20 and 103 et seq.; Tektology Vol. 2, 85 et seq. For more on the history of rejuvenation efforts in medical science, see Stoff 2004.

97 Huestis 2001, 107.

98 Ibid., 52.

99 Ibid., 114.

100 Ibid., 118. 101 Ibid., 144 and 149. 102 Ibid., 248. 103 Ibid., 143. 104 Ibid., 34–35. 105 McGrady 1969, 288–292. 106 For data on the Soviet transfusion network and Yudin’s method of gaining blood, see Leinemann 1941, 25 et seq.; Starr 1999, 91–97; Huestis 2001, 24. 107 Cf. Judine 1933, Yudin 1934, 1937, 1960. The use of cadaver blood in Russia is well documented not only in Paul Rothe’s Film “Blood Transfusion,” 1942, but also in Drew 1944, Vaughn 1967 and quite extensively in Gavrilov 1968. 108 All of these experiments have not yet been examined systematically in connec­ tion with one another; instead, they are merely mentioned in a scattered manner in overviews or individual studies. Worth noting here is the research of Kyrill Rossiianov, among others, 1997 and 2000. 109 Shamov quoted here according to Starr 1999, 93; also see Leinemann 1941, 26 et seq. 110 According to an institute report in GARF: Pasport Gosudarstvennogo Nauchno­ Issledova-tel‘skogo Instituta Uro-Gravidanoterapii, 1932, F. 482, op. 28, d. 206. 111 For more on Zamkov, see Naiman 1997, 2000 and 2002. 112 For more on Ignatii Kasakov’s Lysotherapie, see Naiman 2002, footnote 83. 113 Tektology Vol. 1, Preface, 18. 114 The statements on Harvey and the effects of his circulatory model follow Vogl 2005. Quote Vogl 100. 115 Ibid., 101. 116 Ibid., 103. 117 This thought was inspired by Shapin and Schaffer 1985. 118 For more on this controversy, see Sochor 1988 and Grille 1966. For Lenin’s understanding of culture, see Gorbunov 1972. 119 According to Anweiler, Ruffmann 1973. For more on the conference, see Lebedev-Poliansky 1918. 120 Malinovsky 1913, quoted here in Stokes 1995, 233. 121 Bogdanov 1976 [1918], 7 et seq. The two universities founded by Bogdanov failed due to organizational difficulties. And yet, reports from students were

Grafting

203

almost euphoric. Bogdanov also prepared an encyclopedia of the worker. Until now, the Proletkult has not yet been comprehensively examined as a project for the communication of knowledge; instead, it has been mostly looked at as a practice of artistic and political enlightenment, see Bogdanov 1920, Günther 1973, Fitzpatrick 1992 and, in particular, Mally 1990, whose publication offers the broadest access to the topic. 122 Cf. Chapter 1, 77. 123 Gorsen, Knödler-Bunte 1974. 124 Mally 1990. 125 Bogdanov, chapter Programma Kul’tury, in Bogdanov 1918b, 54–56, 62–63. 126 According to letters in the Capri estate of Maxim Gorki, archived in the Fon­ dazione Lelio e Lisli Basso-Issoco in Rome. The roughly 400 documents reveal the wide group of people involved in the party schools as well as the financing from Gorki and the Russian singer Chaljapin. They also document the working through of the Proletkult by Bogdanov, according to written information pro­ vided by the secretary of the archive on May 21, 2004. 127 Heller and Niqueux 2003, 246. 128 Cf. Chapter 1, 75. 129 Gastev 1999 [1921], no page numbers. 130 Bogdanov 1923, 349. 131 Ibid., 350. 132 Gastev 1999 [1921] and Bogdanov 1923, 353. 133 Mayakovsky 1923, 55. 134 Chuzhak 1972 [1929], 60. 135 Heller, Niqueux 2003, 247 et seq. and Mally 2000. 136 Chuzhak 1972 [1929], 60. 137 Aleksei Gan quoted here in Lodder 1983, 98–99. 138 Jakob 1998 [1997], 12. 139 Heller and Niqueux 2003, 249. On utopia in Russia, see also Groys 1995, 1996, and Stites 1989, Wolter and Schwenk 1992, and many more. 140 Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen (Etymological Dictionary of Ger­ man), 1997, 3rd Ed., 1493. 141 For a quick overview of the history of the New Man, see Lepp, Vogel 1999, 11 et seq. For more extensive overview, see Plaggenborg 1996, Koenen 1998, Sinjaw­ skij 1989. 142 Kollontai 1920, 48 and same 1980; Heller, Niqueux 2003, 242–243. 143 Kollontai 1920, 45. 144 Schmidt 1924, 9. 145 Ibid., 16. 146 Ibid., 7–8. 147 Trotzky 1972 [1924], 211. 148 Rossijanov 2000, 345–351. 149 Ibid., 351–352. 150 Enchmen quoted here in Naiman 1997, 76. 151 Heller und Niqueux 2003, 250–251. 152 Groys 1995, 53. For more on Nietzsche in Russia, see Glatzer Rosenthal 2004, among others. 153 Ibid., 50. Bogdanov does indeed quote Nietzsche, but he does so in a way that leaves it unclear whether he sees him critically or affirmatively; see Bogdanov 1924b, 13. 154 Glatzer Rosenthal 2004, 189.

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155 The accusation of “bogostroitel’stvo,” that is, of god-building, was levied by Lenin against the Vorwärts group, in particular against Gorky and Lunacharsky, see Grille 1966, 35–36. 156 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 37. 157 Bogdanov, Tektology Vol. 1, preface to the first edition of the second part, 18. 158 This Socialist Collectivism corresponded to the counter concept of Gorky, Lunacharsky and Bogdanov, that is, the left fraction of the Bolshevists with which they opposed Lenin. 159 Bogdanov Tektology Vol. 1, 20. 160 Ibid., 27. 161 Bogdanov 1921, 196. Emphasis in the original. 162 Bogdanov 1924b, 16; Emphasis in the original. 163 Gare 1994, 87. 164 Bogdanov 1972b [1918], 78. 165 Bogdanov 1921, 197. 166 Bogdanov Tektology Vol. 2, 88. Emphasis in the original. 167 Bogdanov 1972b [1918], 78. 168 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 170 and Belova 1974, 41. 169 Bogdanov 1972b [1918], 81. 170 Bogdanov 1972b [1918], 82. 171 Bogdanov 1972a [1908], 84; quoted here Huestis 2001, 5. 172 Bogdanov as quoted in Huestis 2001, 119. 173 Bogdanov 1918c, 5. 174 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 93. 175 Bogdanov 1928c, 5. 176 Bogdanov 1924b, 42. 177 Bogdanov in Huestis 2001, 248. 178 Ibid., 251 and 258. 179 Ibid., 309, footnote 189. 180 Ibid., 260. 181 Ibid., 125. 182 Ibid., 127. 183 Bogdanov 1924b, 22. 184 Bogdanov 1972b [1918], 76. 185 For more on objective and subjective psychotechnics, see Chapter 1.3a. 186 Bogdanov, undated, La greffe du sang, 16. Author’s emphasis. 187 Bogdanov 1924b, 45.

Conclusion Feeding Back, Networking and Grafting as Cultural Techniques

Feeding back, networking and grafting were cultural techniques. They con­ sisted of practices that served the purpose of communication, including read­ ing, writing and arithmetic. They also brought together knowledge generated by different media and disciplines: films encountered physiological instru­ ments, architectural forms encountered perception apparatuses and trans­ fusion instruments encountered science-fiction literature.1 The perception experiments carried out by artists, the models of human beings developed by the life sciences and the blueprints for society created by philosophers and politicians came together to give rise in equal measure to works of art, urban landscapes and medical treatments. Outwardly irreconcilable artistic and scientific procedures arranged themselves around a common object – the New Socialist Man – and became virtually inextricable in their mixture of interests. Their common goal was to find adequate forms of communication for the socialist collective and to use these forms to foster a new society out of an old culture in which, at the time, illiteracy and the diversity of languages could not have been greater. Rapid movement through futuristic street mazes, secret learning in dark movie theaters and unconscious relaxation via blood transfusions promised to collectivize man by way of non-spoken communica­ tion – across all peoples and levels of education. However, what these paved the way for, above all else, was the formation of psychotechnics that operated less by means of the psyche than via cultural conditions: they were, in fact, simply cultural techniques. Psychotechnics in Art and Science The general conclusion of the analysis put forward here with regard to the cooperation of artists and scientists is first and foremost that art can occur as the result of entirely ‘non-artistic’ motivations and that science can pro­ ceed in a very ‘non-scientific’ manner.2 This book described in great detail precisely how these overlaps in disciplines occurred. In a slightly less general manner, that is, relating to the tangible post-revolutionary context, the anal­ ysis showed that the Russian avant-garde can hardly be understood without DOI: 10.4324/9781003411185-5

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also examining its historical connection to the psycho-physiological sciences, just as, conversely, one cannot speak of a single and primarily ideological ‘Soviet science.’ Indeed, both art and science must be studied in their his­ torical complexity, which entails scrutinizing them according to both their theoretical concepts and actual practices. Only then does it become clear how much theory was formulated and how much ideology was necessary to launch a research project. Most notably, however, it turns out that actual practices came into operation long before any theories were ever formu­ lated – and that these practices decisively determined the development of concepts, no matter what discipline they ended up being applied in. In this sense, all of the examples presented here point to a unique use of artistic and scientific practices for the development of social and hygienic projects. In other words, art as a practice became more than mere art: it became a means of enlightenment, research, entertainment and manipulation. That is to say, it became everything that experiments could be. In addition, the sciences were experimented in a public space – granted, not an entirely free one, yet it was still the open public space of society – that had very little in common with the widespread notion of a structured research facility. In the very form of their interconnectedness, experimental practices showed the potential of cultural undertakings that can never entirely do without the arts nor without the sciences, irrespective of whether their products are called psychotechnics or cultural techniques. Consequently, the concentration on experimental practices presented in this book does not seek to shed light on any new aspects relating to the Russian avant-garde and the Soviet sciences. The focus here – in addition to gaining new quantitative knowledge by means of new correlations and materials – is much more on a fundamental historiographic revaluation of art and science. Indeed, as seen in this light, the Russian avant-garde was not a movement of unfulfilled theories and utopias: instead, it was a movement of experimental practices. According to this approach, the Soviet sciences cannot – and should not – be defined as being ideological and misguided, when, in fact, they followed a logic of application that had been formulated by psychotechnics for the first time in both concept and method, that is, to experiment beyond the laboratory. For example, it involved realizing theo­ ries in experiments that lose all their utopian grounds for suspicion in the process; it meant applying experimental practices to areas for which they were completely new and thus highly risky: it involved not just psychologists and physiologists but also, more importantly, the integration of lay people – artists, teachers, factory managers, lawyers – into psychological practices. Indeed, these examples show that the oft-cited ‘Soviet experiment’ is noth­ ing more than an inflationary metaphor used to describe what was, in actual fact, the scientifically anchored and technically implemented program of an applied experimental culture – one that was so promising and unstable that it could encounter destruction and chance at any moment and, in fact, did meet these two in numerous failed projects.3

Conclusion: Feeding Back, Networking and Grafting as Cultural Techniques 207 Who Experiments? Test Arrangements With Technical and Human Apparatuses In Russia after the October Revolution, psychotechnics became the first practice-oriented life science to get caught up in a state of exceptional social circumstances that sought to create something fundamentally new in society, art and the very concept of man. While Münsterberg had quite accurately anticipated Soviet exigencies with his emphasis on practice and its focus on the future, psychotechnics was able to strike the very core of these lofty plans. This science, which was not yet realized to its full capacity, found a home where it was needed and could unfold at that very moment. Thus, the most important characteristics of the post-revolutionary years were able to be stated just as equally – and in keeping with Münsterberg – for psychotech­ nics. It provided scientific practices for all possible non-discipline areas, espe­ cially for the arts. In contrast to analytical psychology, psychotechnics served a pragmatic purpose, that is, not the examination of new knowledge, but rather its application. It did not question the appropriateness of this appli­ cation; instead, it asserted its service-oriented approach as ‘objective.’ This was also underlined by its designation as a technical science; psychotechnics stands for an apparatus-oriented culture that observes behavior from the out­ side without the use of introspection, but rather with the help of apparatuses. Thus, it fostered the technical configuration of everyday life, which had been emphasized by Gastev and others engaged in the study of labor sciences: this was a configuration that was ultimately designed to lead to workers fitting machines better – yet simultaneously learning to withdraw from these machines as well. For example, Ladovsky’s architectural confusions did not encourage con­ trolled movements, but instead fostered ostensibly confused automatisms. In the same way, Pudovkin’s filmic experimentalization of perception contrib­ uted to propaganda disruptions and activated an unconscious, quasi hypnotic way of seeing. Bogdanov went the furthest by reversing the access of psychotechnicians and by regulating his objects – their perception, movement, psyche etc. – from within instead of from the outside. His closed blood circulation – in which supposedly everything that could not be made visible was trans­ ported, thus rendering impossible all intervention from outside in the first place – made the purpose of the projects clear: the goal was the self-control of workers, farmers, politicians etc. In other words, the aim was to train inexperienced, lay socialists, who needed to be impelled toward their own (self)-responsibility and (self)-confidence. The various constellations of artists and scientists might appear to represent bizarre and failed attempts, especially in their many demands that these constellations be controllable, monitored, disciplined and efficient: however, as we have seen, they should instead be regarded as application-oriented experimental cultures rather than utopias. The contours of the psyche, which was the object of investigation that attracted artists and scientists into a common experimental space, were so

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blurred that the psyche as such could not, in fact, be technically affected by any of the protagonists mentioned in this book. In contrast to academic psychologists and philosophers, these figures did not work with abstract or dualistic concepts of the psyche, but rather with materialistic ones. These practice-oriented artists and scientists devoted themselves to the respective localizations of the psyche and tried to influence it indirectly: Ladovsky manipulated the psyche as the motor function of space proportions; Pudovkin manipulated the psyche as visual perception via lighting condi­ tions and Bogdanov manipulated the psyche via blood and its composites. An examination of what actually makes up the essence of the psyche hardly took place: instead, what was shown all the more clearly were the diverse efforts to somehow codify the psyche, that is, to catalogue experimental procedures and their notation systems. Thus, it becomes less decisive whether or not the ‘New Man’ was already a utopian projection before efforts were made to create him. Instead, what is more important is how they tried to bring him to actually see, walk and think. Much like a test object – one that can be both unknown and scientifi­ cally modeled and whose marginal conditions are fixed while his develop­ ment remains open – the Soviet man was observed, examined, measured, his abilities and impotencies appraised and his living area marked out. All of this took place in the social space as if it were a huge, thoroughly structured labo­ ratory. Unknown elements were excluded, and that which could not be seen was faded out. The goal was to make individual walking, seeing and thinking repeatable, transferable and capable of being anticipated: but above all else, the aim was to have it serve the development of the collective. Correspondingly, the central element in this New Man, the psyche, can be understood as a flexible experimental object. The technical configura­ tions that made it tangible were established and describable – whether in the form of Ladovsky’s psychotechnics, Pavlov’s psycho-physiological measuring techniques or Bogdanov’s physiological therapy. The psyche itself, however, remained not only invisible and intangible; it also became so agile that one could describe it as being almost omnipresent. When mental processes can be guided via motor functions – as well as via perception, the nervous sys­ tem and ultimately even via blood circulation – then the openness of the experimental object becomes clear, as does, above all, the central role of the experimental technique. It defined and structured that which in Soviet Russia had no form and no representation. Thus, it enabled almost everything that needed new forms to become an experiment: the New Psyche, the New Art, a New Society, the New Man and a New Nature. Ultimately, it was experi­ mental technology itself that had to be researched most: much in the same way that Ladovsky constructed psychotechnical apparatuses for years before he was able to carry out perception experiments; much like Pudovkin devel­ oped his own application of the camera aperture in order to manipulate the eye of his film audience and much like Bogdanov who had to invent a circular transfusion device to carry out two-way blood transfusions. It was machines

Conclusion: Feeding Back, Networking and Grafting as Cultural Techniques 209 first of all, not people, that were optimized so long as their objects were not yet visible and had yet to be discovered or created. The question as to whether these objects – be they ‘New,’ collective or mentally optimized human beings – were ever created or are even going to be created is still open today. However, their movements – which have been conditioned for decades – can by all means be studied at the sites of their historical experimentation, that is, in the subways and streets of Moscow. An Outlook We cannot speak of definite and locally shaped psychotechnics without also inquiring into the condition of psychotechnics elsewhere and examining the direction in which it has developed since then. Indeed, different social sys­ tems and ideologies entail correspondingly different scientific structures. And yet, they also involve striking similarities. In fact, psychotechnics was able to blossom in such opposing systems as capitalism and communism. It also developed rapidly in war-time situations such as World War I  in Germany and during the Civil War in Russia, only to disappear suddenly everywhere after World War II – at least as a term for a specific discipline. As this book demonstrates, the examination of actual practices shows that psychotechnical procedures are still very much alive today, albeit scattered in a broad range of areas. Psychological practices still form an essential part of driving license exams, eye tests, manager training, vocational aptitude tests, job interviews, advertising, product design, store design and even the development of graph­ ics and film software. The testing of visual and ergonomic effects also made its way into many disciplines and applications. What it promises, on the one hand, is the predictability and adaptability of human abilities and, on the other, the development of ever new technologies for these abilities. A similar thing can be said of avant-garde art. The historical connections of the Russians to the German Bauhaus alone make it necessary to examine this training facility, whose architects, graphic artists and painters spread to prominent positions in the United States after World War II.4 Thus, the psy­ chotechnics of the arts is first discovered in their loudest manifestations, and the consequences of the transfer of knowledge can hardly be overestimated: indeed, the political relevance of Russian avant-garde artists is shown not least in the fact that they were restricted in their work in one way or another as soon as their psychotechnical methods no longer suited everyday poli­ tics. The same goes for the scientists. Like all politically relevant professional groups, both were subjected to Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Meyerhold, Tret’yakov, Gastev, Spielrein and Bukharin are the most well-known victims of this era. Thus, in the Soviet Union, psychotechnics in both science and art met a premature end. In contrast, outside of Russia, the task ever since has been to keep our eyes open with regard to actual practices: in perception experiments in museums, public spaces and media, in vision and balance exercise for pilots and soldiers, in the development of computer monitors and

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other user interfaces. Indeed, the era of unconscious conditioning extends far beyond the Soviet context. As much as everything has a story that never ends and is told over and over again, it is essential that our historical investigation never comes to an end. The history of psychotechnics, in particular, hardly made it past World War II. Today, it lies idle, depicted in history books as a short-lived fad. In addition, hardly any profession is as underestimated as the one that creates art. And yet, especially when it comes to the examination of perception, the seeing of historical linkages between visual artists and researchers should not be allowed to remain trapped within disciplinary borders. Indeed, when investigating perception, we must continually change perspectives. Other­ wise, Bogdanov’s clairvoyant promise, written from the all-seeing perspective of his Martian, shall remain forever a riddle, even though it encapsulates the implications of psychotechnics so beautifully: “Down there, blood flows. . . . Here, however, yesterday’s worker has become a contemplative viewer.”5 Notes 1 For more on a possible description of the concept of cultural techniques, see Siegert 2001. 2 For more on the distinction between the categories of ‘art’ and ‘science’ and their critique, see the introduction, p. 8 et seq. 3 For more on the concept of experimental culture, see Rheinberger 2003a. 4 For more on the Bauhaus, see Chapter 1.3. 5 Bogdanov 1972a [1908], 31.

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Index

Academy for Artistic Sciences 28, 34,

59–61

agit-prop 186

Alexanderovsky, Vassili 185

All Union Society for Psychotechnics 73

Angle Estimator 66–68 aperture 94–95, 104–106, 109–110,

125–126, 130–131, 208

architecture 1, 3, 6–7, 10–13, 19,

25, 29–79, 195, 207, see also

individual architects; Bauhaus 7,

28, 58, 61, 209; as operation, not

utopia 50–57; vs psychoanalysis

34–42; psychotechnical architecture

as technology 74–79; space in the

psychotechnical lab 43–50

Arnheim, Rudolph 104

artificial insemination 190–191 Arvatov, Boris 140

ASNOVA 29, 33–34, 42, 81n26 Association of Revolutionary

Cinematography 140

avant-garde, Russian, definition of 11–12 Aveling, James H. A. 165, 200n32 Balázs, Béla 103

Balikhin, W. 31

Bauhaus architecture 7, 28, 58, 61, 209

Bekhterev, Vladimir 2, 71, 108, 114,

117–118, 120–124, 132, 134,

136–137, 143–145, 188

Benjamin, Walter 107–108

Bentham, Jeremy 74–75, 77

Bernard, Claude 126–127, 130–131,

175, 177

Bernstein, Nicolai 71

blood transfusions 11, 13, 157–169,

171–183, 191–199, 205, 207–208

Blundell, James 168–169

Bogdanov, Alexander 2, 4, 11–13,

71, 156–159, 161–166, 169–185,

187–188, 191–199, 207–208, 210

Bogomolets, Alexander 179

Boltanski, Grigori 121

Brain Functions 103, 115–116

Brain Research Institute 114

Brecht, Berthold 8

Brik, Ossip 129

Brown-Sequard, Charles Edouard 177

Bukharin, Nikolai 209

business psychology 18, 22n77

censorship 102–103, 192

Central Institute of Labor 62, 70, 73,

185

Charcot, Jean Martin 120

Chelpanov, Georgi 60

Chuzhak, Nikolai 128–129, 186

Collective Man 155

Commission for the Immortality of the

Memory of V. I. Lenin 128

conditioned reflexes 98, 100, 104, 106,

114–115, 120, 125, 130, see also

Pavlov; reflexology

Constructivism 28–29, 34–36, 50–52,

54–59, 78, 81n20, 137, 186–187

cubism 51

Cultural Films 139–140, 143–145, 178,

see also Mechanics of the Brain Darwinism 102, 141, 175

Denis, Jean-Baptiste 168

Dokuchaev, Nicolai 48, 58

Duchamp, Marcel 68–69

Durov, Vladimir 121

Eikhenbaum, Boris 2–3, 6

Eisenstein, Sergei 11, 63, 108

Enchmen, Emmanuil 191

Index End of St. Petersburg, The 102

eugenics 61, 190–192 experimental physiology 125–127, 151n117 experimental psychology 6, 11, 14–17,

27, 58, 60, 63, 73, 86n117, 91, 120,

136, 144–145, 148n30

Factography 128–138, 143, 185–186 Fechner, Gustav 16

film 91–146, 186–187, 195, 207,

see also individual films and film­ makers; Cultural Films 139–140,

143–145, 178, see also Mechanics

of the Brain; experimentalization

of reality 127–144; Factography

128–138; manipulation beyond

language 144–146; montage theory

103, 105–113, 139; Pavlov’s reflexes

behind and in front of the camera

91–105; reflexology in and with

113–127; secret films 138–144

First All-Russian Initiative Conference

on the Scientific Organization Labor

and Production 2, 9

Flechsig, Paul Emil 120

Formalism 2–3, 6, 21n30, 63, 81n25,

82n42

Foucault, Michel 6, 10, 74, 76–78

Freud, Sigmund 35, 178

Fursikov, S. 109, 123

Futurism 61, 81n24, 185–186

Gabrichevsky, Alexander 60

Galison, Peter 7, 28

Gan, Aleksi 133

Gastev, Alexei 62, 70–73, 78, 117, 185,

190, 196, 207, 209

Geimer, Peter 7

Gerassimov, Michail 185

Gestalt psychology 85n108, 87n133,

104

Gilbreth, Frank B. 48, 136

Ginzburg, Mois 29, 54–55

Gloveli, Georgii 176

Gorky, Maxim 169–170, 172, 184–185

Groys, Boris 192

Haeckel, Ernst 175

Harvey, William 167, 169, 182–183

Heidegger, Martin 6–7

Higher Artistic Technical Workshops 9,

19, 25–31, 34, 43–51, 53–55, 58–59,

75, 80n5

237

Hippocrates 167

Hobbes, Thomas 183

Hudson, Hugh D. 53–54

Institute for Artistic Culture 9

Institute for Blood Transfusions 11, 155,

157, 162, 171, 174, 179

Institute for Brain Research 121, 123,

161–162

Institute for Labor Protection 73

Institute of Artistic Culture 58–59 Ivanov, Ilya 190

Izvestiya ASNOVA 32–33, 82n30 Kandinsky, Wassily 11, 58–61, 73

Kapterev, Pavel 60

Kaufman, David Abeljevich see Vertov, Dziga Kautski, Karl 185

Keynes, Geoffrey 163

Kinderheim Laboratorium 189–190 Kino-eye 133–134, 137

Kino-truth 133, 136–137 Kirillov, Vladimir 185

Kollontai, Alexandra 189

Koltsov, Mikhail 121

Koshin, S. 54

Kracauer, Siegfried 133–134 Kraepelin, Emil 16

Krasin, Leonid 163

Krasnogorsky, N. 114, 149n71 Krinsky, Vladimir 58

Kruft, Hanno-Walter 74

Kuleshov, Lev 92, 131–132, 144

Küppers, Sophie 33

labor management 13, 18, 55–56, 58,

62, 71–73, 88n166, 89n172, 122,

136–137

Lacis, Asja 108

Ladovsky, Nicolai 3, 10–12, 25, 29–30,

33–43, 46, 48, 50–51, 55–56, 58–67,

69–74, 78–79, 91, 144, 155, 187,

191, 198, 207–208

Lamtsov, I. 52

Landsteiner, Karl 169, 199n13

Langman, A. 52

language 6–7

Le Corbusier 11, 25, 33, 43, 64, 66

Lenin, Vladimir 2, 27, 71, 114, 123,

127–128, 161, 163, 169–172, 176,

194

Leontiev, Alexei 58

Lewin, Kurt 63

238

Index

Liglazometr 43–44 Lissitzky, El 11–12, 28–29, 33, 38, 137

Locke, John 183

Londes, Albert 106

Ludwig, Carl 120

Lumière, Auguste 177

Lunacharsky, Anatoly 50, 108, 169,

183, 192

Luria, Alexander 63, 71

Luxemburg, Rosa 185

Lyalin, O. 52

Mach, Ernst 106

Malevich, Kazimir 11, 59

Malinovsky, Alexander Alexanderovich

see Bogdanov, Alexander

Man with a Movie Camera 132–134

Marey, Étienne-Jules 106–107

Marx, Karl 171, 175–176

Marxism 10, 12, 175–176, 195

Matyushin, Michael 5, 11, 59–60, 71

Mauroy, Antoine 168

Mayakovsky, Vladimir 26, 42, 108,

129, 133, 161, 186

Mechanics of the Brain 11, 92–116,

118–119, 121, 123–127, 130–132,

137–140, 143–145, 149n72, 190,

207

Mechnikov, Ilya 177, 179

Melies, Georges 109

Melnikov, Konstantin 29

Métraux, Alexandre 15, 27

metro stations 1, 19n1, 38–42, 55,

83n58

Meyer, Hannes 58

Meyerhold, Vsevolod 62, 108, 209

Mezhrabpom Rus 98–99

Minkus, M. 52

Moede, Walter 66–70

Monism 175

montage theory 103, 105–113, 139

Mosso, Angelo 106

Mother 102, 108

Moussinac, Leon 103

Mukhina, Vera 181

Münsterberg, Hugo 13–19, 63–66, 137,

144–145, 207

NARKOMPROS see People’s Commissariat for Education and Enlightenment neurophysiology 120–121 New Man 13, 101, 155, 188–190,

192–194, 199n1, 205, 208

New Woman 189

Nietzsche, Friedrich 155, 192

October Revolution 9–11, 26, 42, 63,

123, 170, 176, 183, 192, 207

Oglazometr 45–46, 67

Optometer 66–67 Orchard, Harry 13–15 OSA 34

Ostwald, Wilhelm 175

Panoptism 74–79 Pavlov, Ivan 11, 91–92, 96–100,

102–103, 105–106, 108, 111–114,

116, 120–121, 123–127, 130–131,

139, 143–144, 146, 175, 191

People’s Commissariat for Education

and Enlightenment 26–28, 32, 50,

60, 194

People’s Commissariat for Health 161

‘personal cards’ 48–49 Petrov, W. 52

physiological psychology 16, 59, 104

physiology 3, 10–11, 13, 27, 58, 91,

120, 144, 151n117, 174, 182, 197;

experimental 125–127, 151n117;

neurophysiology 120–121; psycho­ physiology 11–12, 58–60, 71–72,

121, 134, 137, 144

Ploglazometr 43–44, 67

Popov, V. 74–75, 77

Positivism 175

practical psychology 9, 13, 18

Proletkult 2, 20n24, 152n131, 157–158, 183–198, 203n126 propaganda 12, 38, 99, 102, 147n24

Prostrometr 25–26, 46–48, 50, 55, 66,

69

Proust, Marcel 8

psychoanalysis 34–42, 50, 59

psychology 3, 9–11, 14–18, 25, 27,

58, 70–72, 78, 80n9, 108, 120, 123,

176–177, 207; applied 14, 16–17,

58–65, 87n122, 144; business 18,

22n77; experimental 6, 11, 14–17,

27, 58, 60, 63, 73, 86n117, 91, 120,

136, 144–145, 148n30; Gestalt

85n108, 87n133, 104; physiological

16, 59, 104; practical 9, 13, 18

psychophysics 3, 16, 27, 55, 60, 195

psycho-physiology 11–12, 58–60,

71–72, 121, 134, 137, 144

Psychotechnical Laboratory for

Architecture 11, 19, 25

Index psychotechnics 3, 6, 9, 11–19; and architecture see architecture; and blood transfusion see blood transfusions; and film see film Pudovkin, Vsevolod 3, 11–12, 92,

98–99, 102–106, 108–109, 111–115,

117, 121–122, 124, 126–127,

129–131, 137–140, 143–146, 155,

187, 190, 197–198, 207–208, see

also Mechanics of the Brain

Punin, Nicolai 30–31 Rationalism 29, 34–36, 48, 50–51,

55–58, 65, 74, 77–78, 91, 175

Red Star 171–172, 175–176, 182, 191,

210

reflexology 91, 113–127, see also conditioned reflexes rejuvenation experiments 176–182 Repin, Ilya 121

Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg 8

Robertson, Oswald 163

Rodchenko, Alexander 11–12, 19,

29–30, 33, 59, 129

Room, Abram 121

Rossolimo, Grigory 73

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 183

Royal Society 168

Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences 9,

28, 60–62, 64

Sargeant, Amy 121

Schrage, Dominik 65

Scientific Labor Organization 46, 50,

71–72

Sechenov, Ivan 91, 100

Senkevitch, Anatole 40, 48

Serebrovski, Alexander 190–191 Shamov, Vladimir 181

Shklovsky, Viktor 121, 129, 140

Silchenkov, A. 53

Sirotkina, Irina 5–6 Sklifosovsky Institute 180

Smolenskaja, P. 51

socialism 10, 72, 78, 127, 130, 176,

181, 190, see also Marxism

Society for Experimental Psychology 73

Soviet Burnout 195–197 Spielrein, Isaak 70–73, 209

239

Stalin, Joseph 9, 179, 181, 192, 194,

209

Starr, Frederick 50

State Institute for Artistic Culture 59

State Institute for Rhythmic Education

55

Steinach, Eugen 177–178 Stern, William 16

Stokes, Kenneth Michael 175

Strindberg, August 8 Structuralism 63

Surrealism 8

Svirskij, J. 52

Tatlin, Vladimir 11, 26, 28, 30, 59

Taylorism 70–71, 175, 196

Tcherikover, L. 52

Tektology 172–176, 181–182, 192–193 Tillberg, Margareta 5, 27

Titchener, Edward 69

Tret’yakov, Sergei 129–130, 133, 209

Trotsky, Leon 2, 9–10, 71, 169, 185,

190, 192

Uglazometr 46

utopias 8–9, 13, 28, 56, 58, 74, 85n95,

171–172, 188–189, 191–193,

206–208

Vertov, Dziga 108, 121, 129, 132–138,

143

Vienna Circle 7, 28

VKhUTEMAS see Higher Artistic Technical Workshops Vogl, Joseph 182–183 Voronov, Serge 177–178, 197

Vpered! 170

Vygotsky, Lev 60, 62–63, 71

working conditions 4, 72, 87n131,

136

Wundt, Wilhelm 14, 17, 27, 59, 120,

136

Yudin, Sergei 179–181 Zalkind, Aron 138–139, 190, 196

Zamkov, Alexey 181

Zhivskul’ptarkh 29–30, 34