David-Fox, Michael Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 365 of male bonding, the masculine equivalent of the domestic sphere. He also mentions a sense of autonomy and control that car ownership granted. One could add to this list social status and an opportunity to earn some money on the side by giving lifts to strangers. These two works resulting from Siegelbaum’s project will be read with equal interest by both specialists and the general public. Department of History Serhy Yekelchyk University of Victoria David-Fox, Michael. Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2012. xii + 396 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography of archival collections. Index. £35.00. Michael David-Fox brings a fresh perspective to the perennial challenge of understanding the formation of the Stalinist system in this study of 1920s–30s cultural diplomacy. He adopts a transnational approach, demonstrating how Soviet considerations of Western perceptions of the USSR shaped the development of institutions and practices as diverse as tourism, the Gulag, self-censorship and Socialist Realism. The West emerges here as both a competitor to be pursued and outdone, and an audience to be wooed and won. Soviet responses to the West therefore pivoted between ‘rejection and imitation, hostility and engagement’ (p. 11), creating a tension that persisted throughout the Stalinist period. David-Fox explores this tension through analyses of discourses of superiority and inferiority in the published and private writings of visiting Western intellectuals and Soviet intellectuals who travelled abroad, as well as the reports of Soviet officials who guided foreign visitors in their exploration of the Great Experiment. In this way, David-Fox uncovers new layers of nuance in terms of Soviet engagement with the West, Western intellectuals’ support of Stalin(ism), and the interplay of internal and external factors in shaping the Stalinist system. Each chapter comprises several case studies clustered around a particular period and facet of the ‘Russia and the West’ relationship. The star of the study is VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad, which emerges in chapter one as the leading institution for cultural diplomacy. It was led initially by Ol´ga Kameneva, sister to Trotskii and wife of Kamenev, who recruited non-Party intellectuals to foster relationships with ideologically distant yet influential foreign thinkers. VOKS also established ties with sympathizers, founding friendship societies across the West. Chapter two explores these SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 366 initiatives, pointing to the missed opportunities born of institutional rigidity, and the successes born of charismatic figures like Aleksandr Arosev (who later headed VOKS), and the organization’s role as gatekeeper for aspiring bordercrossers , foreign and Soviet alike. The next two chapters relocate the discussion to Soviet lands, outlining the development of early Soviet tourism: showcase sites, model institutions and VOKS-designed package tours. Chapter three describes the careful choreography of tours, which incorporated elements of mock spontaneity such as invitations from workers to take tea at their homes, with the intent of allaying visitors’ suspicions of Potemkin village-like fakery. Chapter four narrows the focus to a single tour, but one with broad implications: Maxim Gor´kii’s triumphal return tour of 1928. In his writings about the showcases he viewed, Gor´kii depicted the exceptional as the norm, thereby extending a claim intended for foreign consumption to the Soviet public. This tenet proved a fundamental feature of Socialist Realism, meaning that a connection can be drawn between engagement with the West and the development of the official aesthetic — an important insight. Chapter five addresses the Great Break (1928–32) and the life of VOKS and newcomer Intourist. Cultural diplomacy was essentially monetized at this time as Western tourists were pursued for the hard currency they fed into financing the costly First Five Year Plan. Chapter six focuses specifically on Western intellectuals who toured the USSR from this period to the mid 1930s, from British Fabians George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice and Sidney Webb, to French literati Henri Barbusse and Romain Rolland. Chapter seven continues this task for the subsequent period, from the purges to the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with examples including André Gide, Lion Feuchtwanger and the Left-Right German...