Kachurin, Pamela Making Modernism Soviet: The Russian Avant-Garde in the Early Soviet Era, 1918–1928 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 164 Lutzkanova-Vassileva’s study remains inconclusive in regard to the degree of the poets’ agency and undecided whether the artworks are passive records of trauma or radical critiques that succeed in productively sublimating it. Notably, the book is haunted by two radically divergent interpretations of schizophrenia as a prominent trait of both capitalism and postmodern art. When like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, MN, 1987), Lutzkanova-Vassileva wishestoaffirmtheradicalismofpostmodernschizophrenicart,shenotestheir rhizomatic structures, their desire for social critique, and their propensity to scramble all codes. But when the author leans toward treating her case studies as mere traces, testimonies of trauma, she paradoxically appears to be closer to Fredric Jameson, who declared in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC, 1991) that postmodern culture replicates and reinforces the logic of capitalism. Paradoxically, because it is precisely this assumption about postmodern art’s inefficacy that Lutzkanova-Vassileva’s book intends to target. Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures Julia Vaingurt University of Illinois at Chicago Kachurin, Pamela. Making Modernism Soviet: The Russian Avant-Garde in the Early Soviet Era, 1918–1928. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2013. xxiii + 145 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. It is a well-known fact that in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917 and during the ensuing Civil War, avant-garde artists ran the Art Department of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Otdel izobrazitel´nykh iskusstv, Narodnyi komissariat prosveshcheniya — IZO Narkompros). Having been neglected and spurned by the tsarist establishment in the pre-war period, these creative figures now took centre stage and became responsible for deciding and implementing artistic policy, organizing art galleries and museums, purchasing works of art, reforming art education and publishing journals. They acted as the creative arm of the Communist Party and the new state, committing themselves to specific approaches and types of activity. But in 1921, they had to adjust to very different circumstances as the government took back control of culture and instituted NEP (the New Economic Policy) which established state capitalism and some degree of free enterprise. Then in 1928–29, artists faced the new challenges of Socialism in one country, Collectivization and the First Five-Year Plan. The story of how the avant-garde responded to the various shifts in official policy, accommodating REVIEWS 165 new demands and beginning to ‘speak Bolshevik’ as Stephen Kotkin puts it (Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilisation, Berkeley, CA, 1995), forms the fascinating subject of Making Modernism Soviet. Dr Kachurin’s riveting book presents a highly detailed and well researched study of three institutions that were essentially set up by Russian avant-garde artists and acted as strongholds of avant-garde values: Moscow’s Museum of Painterly Culture (Muzei zhivopisnyi kul´tury) directed by Wassilii Kandinskii and Aleksandr Rodchenko among others; the Vitebsk People’s Art School set up by Marc Chagall and the home of Kazimir Malevich’s UNOVIS group (‘Utverditeli novogo iskusstva’ — ‘Champions of the New Art’); and finally the State Institute of Artistic Culture also known as GINKhUK (Gosudarstvennyi institut khudozhestvennoi kul´tury) directed by Malevich in Petrograd (subsequently Leningrad). The avant-garde credentials of all three organizations were impeccable and all three were eventually shut down as Stalin’s regime began to exert total control over all spheres of activity, including art and culture. Kachurin argues that in the 1920s, the avant-garde figures who ran these organizations ‘developed strategies not only to survive but also thrive in the new Soviet context’ (p. xvii). One might quibble that ‘thrive’ is perhaps putting it too strongly, but Kachurin’s study does reveal that many artists managed to adapt effectively to the twists and turns of the new order and did more than merely survive. Malevich, for instance, proved to be extremely adept and politically savvy in developing tactics to ensure that GINKhUK was allotted sufficient funds to maintain an independent existence for four years (1923–27). The quotations from his reports to various official bodies demonstrate his ability to present information in the most favourable light possible. Patronage, as Dr Kachurin emphasizes, also played a crucial...