Art of the Commune: Politics and Art in Soviet Journals, 1917-20

Abstract

n October 1917 the Bolshevik Party overthrew the Provisional Government of Russia, established in February, and replaced it with a Council of People's Commissars committed to destroying capitalism and the bourgeoisie and to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a prelude to the ultimate creation of a fully society. The previously exiled radical political opposition had become the ruling establishment. Issues of modern art and society were suddenly no longer hypothetical and utopian. They had to be confronted. Hence, amongst the organs of power in the new government was the Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narodnyi komissariat po prosvesheniiu-Narkompros), responsible for education and culture, with a separate Department of Fine Arts (Otdel Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv-IZO). The profound political and social changes posed real questions for artists and their associates. What was art? What relationship should exist between art and the new state, between art and the Bolshevik party? Was avant-garde art inherently bourgeois in fact, or did it represent the emergence of an alternative and potentially revolutionary outlook? Could proletarian art itself be created only by authentic workers, or could it also be produced by artists who embraced a proletarian world view? Debates on these complex issues found expression in diverse journals published in the territory of the former Tsarist empire. The two most important publications promoting the ideological position of the Communist party and the government were obviously the newspapers Izvestiia [News], published by the Supreme Soviet, and Pravda [Truth], issued by the Central Committee of the Party. Both publicized important government measures relating to artistic questions, such as the decrees nationalizing private art collections and Lenin's Plan for Monumental Propaganda, and a handful of statements on art, particularly the importance of art for propaganda and agitation. Naturally, the amount of space devoted to artistic questions was severely limited, because the government's prime concern from 1918 to early 1921 was to consolidate the Revolution and successfully fight the Civil War. After the decree of November 9, 1917, banning the counter-revolutionary press,'. only political publications that recognized the government were permitted. These included newspapers such as Maksim Gorkii's Novaia zhizn [New life], the anarchists' Anarkhiia [Anarchy], and the Socialist Revolutionaries' Znamia truda [The banner of work], all of which concentrated on political and ideological questions. When aesthetic matters were broached, Gorkii emphasized the didactic role of art and promoted more traditional values, while artistic innovators such as Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich were published in Anarkhiia, suggesting that there were links between the avant-garde and the short-lived anarchist movement after the Revolution. One political body whose chief role was cultural was Proletkult, or the independent proletarian cultural and educational organizations (Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii), which were set up at the instigation of Aleksandr Bogdanov in November 1917 in Petrograd, and rapidly spread throughout Russia, attracting 400,000 members by 1920. Independent of the Party and the Government, Proletkult was specifically organized to create socialist forms of thought, feeling and daily life,2 and a culture that would reflect the values and aspirations of the proletariat. It promoted working-class education and the emergence of a proletarian intelligentsia, arranging classes for adults, organizing schools, studios, clubs, and theaters, and publishing numerous journals such as Gorn [The furnace] (Moscow, 191822), Proletarskaia kultura [Proletarian culture] (Moscow, 1918-21), and Griadushchee [The future] (Petrograd, 191821). None of these magazines was profusely illustrated, although their covers often carried images produced by members of the Proletkult or works of art of an agitational nature, some of which possessed a slightly folk-art flavor. The journals tended to present a rudimentary and essentially unified concept of illustrative art, based on Bogdanov's Marxist theory, according to which the cultural struggle was as important as the political and economic fight for the achievement of socialism: