Subversion in the Soviet Animaton of the Brezhnev Period: An Aesopian Reading of Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s Pushkiniana
by
Irina Chiaburu
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History
Approved, Thesis Committee
Dr. Margrit Schreier, PhD Advisor
Dr. Marion G. Müller, 2nd Reviewer
Dr. Johan F. Hartle , 3rd Reviewer, (external)
Date of Defense: January 13th, 2015 1
Table of Contents Introduction...... 2 The Cultural Liberalism of Khrushchev...... 9 The Re-emergence of the New Soviet Intelligentsia...... 12 The Cultural Renaissance and Emergence of the Cultural Public Sphere...... 21 The End of Cultural Thaw and Brezhnev Reaction...... 32 The Manege Affair...... 32 Stagnation: A Historical and Political Overview of the Period...... 38 The Late Socialist Condition...... 42 From Parallel Events to Parallel Culture...... 45 The New Language of Soviet animation. Aesthetic of Uslovnost' and the Curse of Uncontrollable Subtext...... 55 The Beginnings or the World Belongs to the Brave...... 56 Under the Wing of the State, or Ideinost', Partijnost', Narodnost' ...... 57 The all Union Studio or the Factory...... 60 The Thaw, or in Search of Artistic Truth...... 65 The Poetics of Uslovnost', or less is more...... 66 After the Thaw or Maturity...... 82 Theorizing Subversion...... 88 Institutional Political Discourse: Subversion as Preparation for a Revolution...... 91 The Anti-hegemonic Discourse of Subversion: Subversion as Hegemonic Disarticulation -Rearticulation...... 96 The Artistic Avant-Garde Discourse: Subversion as Challenge to Hegemonic Visuality. 100 Post-structuralist Academic Discourse: Subversion as Deconstruction ...... 110 A Unified Approach to “Subversion”:...... 114 The Situation of Subversion: David and Goliath...... 114 The Purpose of Subversive Action: Undermining, Weakening, Putting to Question, Delegitimizing ...... 117 The Logic of Subversive Strategy...... 118 Instrumentalizing “Subversion”: Aesthetic Anti-Censorship Practices as Subversive...... 120 Extra-textual Strategies of Sidestepping Censorship...... 123 Textual Strategies of Sidestepping Censorship ...... 124 Andrei Khrzhanovsky's Pushkiniana through the Aesopian Glass...... 132 Methodology:Lev Loseff's Model of Aesopian Language...... 132 Preliminaries: The Question of Appearances, or Design as Aesopian Marker...... 146 Pushkin's Historical Context as Aesopian Vehicle...... 149 Alexander I and Nikita Khrushchev...... 149 Nicholas I and Leonid Brezhnev...... 154 Pushkin as Aesopian Vehicle for Soviet Intelligentsia...... 160 Passions of Pushkin according to Khrzhanovsky...... 168 Pushkiniana and Soviet Intelligentsia of the Sixties...... 198 Conclusions...... 213 2
Introduction
In the introduction to his fascinating book Yellow Crocodiles and Blue Oranges, David MacFadyen asks a curious and engrossing question: what is it about Soviet animated films that has allowed them to survive “with equal success under both communism and capitalism?”1 There are plenty of reasons to be surprised by the fact that Soviet animated films have retained their popularity in post- Soviet contexts, despite the much changed social, political and ideological landscapes. One of the most obvious reasons that this was not an inevitable development was that the animation industry was part of the state controlled culture industry, which made it a subject of ideological censorship. This censorship, it should be pointed out, concerned itself not only with what should not be shown, written or said, but also with what should, often actively interfering with the creative process. One would assume that under such stringent and invasive ideological control the final products of the Soviet animation industry – the films – would be at best irrelevant outside their ideological context, and at worst apparently propagandistic. And yet, Soviet animated films seemed perfectly at home in the new reality, having lost none of their relevance and still capable of touching and moving different generations of viewers.
According to MacFadyen, a possible explanation for this peculiar phenomenon can be found in the interpretation of the official ideology that this “younger cousin” of cinema developed and practiced. In contrast to the monologic and logocentric ideological practice of the state, Soviet animation was “fundamentally emotional, not wordy propagandistic enterprise.”2 MacFadyen argues that oscillating between the “prudish and big-hearted” aesthetics of Disney’s studio and Socialist Realism, Soviet animators produced a different type of Marxist subjectivity—a cross between socialism and phenomenology. According to him, Soviet animators managed to “represent and promote a different type of socialist selfhood, a new type of protagonist and person.”3 Emanating multiplicity and tolerance, this new subjectivity evoked a different form of socialism, which, in turn, made the shortcomings of the official doctrine particularly apparent.4
What MacFadyen seems to suggest is that Soviet animation artists found a way of extricating themselves from the often disagreeable ideological commonplaces imposed upon their art by the
1 MacFadyen, David. Yellow crocodiles and blue oranges. Russian animated film since World War Two. McGill- Queen's University Press, 2005, p. xii. 2 MacFadyen, p. xii. 3 MacFadyen, p. xix. 4 MacFadyen, p. xix. 3 official arbiters of Soviet ideology and aesthetics; they, moreover, did so not by openly opposing the state ideology, but by humanizing it and thereby subverting it. Long interested in the question of individual resistance, especially resistance carried out by those in positions of little power, especially through seemingly unheroic and non-confrontational acts of disobedience, I was intrigued by this proposition. It suddenly made the challenges faced by the artists laboring under totalitarian state patronage very tangible: How does one negotiate one's position as an artist and a thinking, feeling and sentient being in a system of ideological censorship that operates on the principle of “what is not allowed is prohibited and what is allowed is mandatory”?5 If MacFadyen's proposition were true, and artists employed in the Soviet animation industry did find ways of maneuvering through ideological prescriptions and proscriptions, I wanted to know how they were able to bypass the censorship apparatus. Thus, inasmuch as MacFadyen construes subversion as an alternative discourse of socialism presented in Soviet cartoons, I understand it as playing upon the weaknesses of the system of censorship. Whereas MacFadyen's study, therefore, is primarily concerned with the alternative socialist worldview expressed in post-World War II Soviet animated films, my inquiry focuses on artistic practices of “cheating” Soviet censorship. For reasons explained shortly, I limit my inquiry to the Brezhnev era.
Characterized by the political monopoly of a single party, centralized control of the economy, the militarization of society, ideological indoctrination and a monopoly on education, media, science and culture, the USSR was a totalitarian state.6 This fact, however, does not mean that when approaching Soviet culture or society one cannot dissociate it from politics. By “dissociating,” I certainly do not mean considering them as completely independent from political structures, but rather avoiding deterministic assumptions about the nature of this dependency. It would obviously be an oversimplification to think that because the Soviet government was totalitarian, it was efficient, or in full control of each individual's private and public life. It would be wrong to conflate state ideology with the responses of individual citizens to it. As Vladimir Shlapentokh points out, even at the level of administrative organs, “there were always attempts by low level officials to ignore the directives from the center, cheat the rules and in rare cases sabotage the orders. This was true at all stages of Soviet history, including Stalin's times.”7 In other words, as Lynne Viola emphasizes in the introduction to a compelling volume devoted to instances of resistance to Stalinism in the 1930s, “[n]either state nor society were uniform, unitary, homogeneous entities; nor
5 “Что не разрешено, то запрещено, а что разрешено, то обязательно” (Translation mine). 6 Schlapentokh, Vladimir. A normal totalitarian society: how the Soviet Union functioned and how it collapsed. M.E. Sharpe, 2001. pp. 3 -13. 7 Shlapentokh, p. 11. 4 were the two separate and exclusive. Instability, constant flux, division, conflict, and multiple roles and identities characterized each, while interaction, interconnectedness, hybridity, and overlap characterized the whole.”8 It is thus important for anyone approaching Soviet culture as an object of research to steer away from all too familiar generalizations about 'autocratic' and 'totalitarian' societies,9 as well as the conceptual binaries that, until less than two decades ago, dominated descriptions of Soviet reality. Alexey Yurchak offers the following examples of such convenient, but misleading oppositions: 'the Party and the people,' 'repression and freedom,' 'oppression and resistance,' 'truth and dissimulation,' 'public self and private self,' 'official economy and second economy' and 'official culture and counter culture.'10 The last one of these binaries has special relevance for the current project—the latter hopefully providing sufficient evidence for how artificial, untrue and, even more importantly, unfruitful the conceptual divide between official and unofficial/counter culture is.
As Stephen Lowell and Rosalind Marsh have observed, the cultural pluralism that surfaced with the onset of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost’ suggests that ‘stagnation’ might be a bit of a misnomer for what was happening in Soviet arts and culture under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership.11 Despite the efforts of the latter to undo the consequences of his predecessor's more tolerant cultural policies, many trends in art, literature, social and political thought that had begun during Nikita Khrushchev's 'thaw' continued into Brezhnev's 'stagnation.' And not only did they, according to Lowell and Marsh, continue, but they intensified, following the bifurcation of the Soviet cultural realm into official and unofficial spheres.
Although the formation of the unofficial Soviet art scene can be traced back to the early 1950s,12 its consolidation into a parallel culture occurred around 1970, when it became clear to the initially optimistic members of the liberal and reform-minded Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties that the frail dialogue with the official power (the dialogue that started during Khrushchev's 'thaw') had come to a definitive end. Becoming an unofficial artist, writer or historian had, of course, many drawbacks in terms of financial stability and personal security; however, it also offered the great advantage of
8 Viola, Lynne. “Introduction,” In V.L (ed.): Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s. Cornel University, 2002, p. 3. 9 Kelly, Catriona. “Introduction: Why Cultural Studies?” In Kelly C., Shepherd, D., Russian Cultural Studies. An introduction. Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 3. 10 See Yurkchak, Alexei. “Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything was forever, until it was no more.” In Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, vol. 45, no.3, 2003, pp. 480-510. (p. 482.) 11 Lowell, Stephen, Marsh,Rosalind. “Culture and crisis: The intelligentsia and literature after 1953.” In Kelly C., Shepherd, D., Russian Cultural Studies. An introduction. Oxford University Press,1998 pp. 65-91. (p. 65.) 12 Boris Groys, “The other gaze: Russian unofficial art's view of the Soviet world,” In: Postmodernism and postsocialist condition: Politicized art under late socialism.University of California Press, 2003, pp. 55-90. (p. 55.) 5 allowing one to dodge official censorship—the autonomy that accounted for the continuation and intensification of the “thaw” trends that Lowell and Marsh write about.
Despite what the dichotomy of official/unofficial suggests, the two realms were not completely separate from each other. Artists and writers from either side of this divide often met at unofficial showings and readings, as well as private gatherings; those with the official status and the benefits that such status entailed, often tried to help out their unofficial colleagues with money, food and at times jobs. Thanks to the elaborate network of samizdat publishing and distribution, the works and ideas originating in the autonomous unofficial realm became relatively available not only to the official artists, but also to many citizens, at least in Moscow and Leningrad, that held an interest. Moreover, some official artists, such as Andrey Sinyavsky, published both in the official and unofficial realms. Labeling these culture spheres 'official' and 'unofficial' thus belies the extent to which they overlapped.
It was this overlap, I argue, that conditioned and nurtured the artistic practices that form the focus of this study. Whereas the official artists provided the unofficial ones with materials, food, clothing and even small jobs, the unofficial artists provided their official colleagues with artistic standards. Being autonomous, the unofficial culture became, in a way, a cultural lab, where new and daring thoughts and ideas were tried out. Because of the existing overlap between the official and unofficial artists, the official ones, who were both familiar with and sympathetic towards the developments pushed by their unofficial colleagues, could not ignore them if they wanted their work to possess some cultural relevance. Working under the conditions of censorship, however, they could not express their creative ideas as openly as the unofficial artists; therefore, they had to develop strategies and devices that would allow them to preserve their personal integrity and artistic reputation and, at the same time, avoid confrontation with the key ideological institution of the Soviet totalitarian state – the censorship apparatus. Sometimes these strategies worked, sometimes they did not, but for many of the official artists who were trying to balance the artistic standards of the unofficial culture with the often asinine requirements of Brezhnev's official one, part of the creative process was the attempt to baffle the censor in order to keep their work intact.
In very general terms, this project is about such strategies and devices. It is, naturally, also about the people who resorted to using them and, consequently, the people whose job it was to not be fooled by them. It is about the challenges the Soviet censorship faced in the last decades of the Soviet Union, but also, by extension, about the difficulties attached to the effort of policing meaning in art 6 in general. Finally, this project is about individuals who, cornered by restrictive and seemingly immutable structures and often motivated by personal rather than political interest, i.e., hoping to preserve public and professional reputations rather than damage the state, found ways of circumventing and thereby subverting control.
In the first two chapters, I outline the historical, cultural and social developments which, by the 1970s, had led to the “hide-and seek” games the official, yet liberally minded, creative intelligentsia played with the censorship becoming worth the risk and the effort. I show how the Soviet system of education established by Stalin, the experiences of the World War II and Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization nurtured a new type of Soviet intelligentsia, which came to be known as shestidesyatniki – “the people of the sixties.” This group's self-image, and in particular the importance it attributed to personal integrity, independent thinking and individual responsibility, led the shestidesyatniki to actively engage with what they perceived as a social, political and cultural transformation that began with Khrushchev's 'secret speech.' Despite this group's initial intention to work with the state, their efforts, and I will explain why, were perceived as threat to the regime. The dissertation then moves to how Brezhnev's forceful effort to stabilize the ideological foundations of the country, through policies which primarily focused on undoing the concessions his predecessor had made to the new intelligentsia, alienated the latter from the state and forced many official artists to move to the cultural underground. Finally, in explaining the dynamic between the official and unofficial realms of Soviet culture, I consider the pressures that the porous boundaries between the two cultural realms asserted on members of the new creative intelligentsia who were still official in status, but inclined to the unofficial.
The third chapter looks to how Khrushchev's 'thaw' affected Soviet animation and argues that the changes that revolutionized the poetics of Soviet animation in the 1960s not only allowed it to acquire the status of art, but also offered directors, animators, set and character designers, camera and light operators, musicians and other specialists typically collaborating on a film project with myriad aesthetic opportunities for proving ineffective censorship's predominantly textual (i.e. dialogue based) and linear approach to narrative. Although beginning with a sketch of the genesis of animation art in the USSR and the process of its transformation into an industry, the focus here is on the developments that took place between the 1960s and 1980s. I devote special attention to the concept of uslovnost',13 which, on the one hand, changed the way animation artists thought about their medium, and, on the other, helped the artists convince the authorities that what the latter
13 MacFadyen translates it as “reduction”; see p. 85. 7 condemned as 'formalism' was the very essence of animation as a medium and therefore could not be avoided. Finally, I touch upon the problems that the relative tolerance for formal experimentation in the case of Soviet animation inflicted on the censors, suggesting that, whereas these challenges made the response of the censors to anti-censorial strategies and devices hard to predict, they simultaneously made it more likely the artists would succeed in these strategies.
The fourth chapter revolves around the notion of “subversion.” Using Thomas Ernst's diachronic analysis of the concept, I derive a theoretical framework that enables me to construe as subversive the practice of strategic aesthetic manipulation of artistic texts by their authors in order to avoid censorship. I first present the divergent traditions of “subversion” uncovered by Ernst in the process of analyzing the key discourses in which the concept circulates today. The discourses in question are the institutional discourse of politics, the artistic discourse of the avant-garde, the subcultural discourse and the post-structuralist discourse. Whereas Ernst builds his analysis around the differences between what “subversion” is understood to mean in the respective discourses, I argue that focusing on what these different interpretations of “subversion” have in common is more fruitful for understanding what the phenomenon of subversion is. Working with the descriptions generated by Ernst, and supplemented by my own research, I propose that all “subversions” in Ernst's analysis share the following features: a) the situation in which subversion is a preferred mode of resistance; b) the purpose of subversive action; c) the logic of subversive strategy. I describe the situation of subversion as that in which “the weak” either lack any legal means of “wrestling” with “the strong” or perceive the means that they have as ineffective. As far as the purpose of the subversive action is concerned, it is not to reform or eliminate grievances, but rather to expose the weaknesses or inadequacies of the enemy who produces and reproduces them. Finally, the strategy through which these weaknesses are exposed is not that of critique, but rather making use of them, turning “them” to the “weak” one's advantage. I then proceed to demonstrate how the practices that form the focus of my project fit into this conceptual frame. In the final pages of the chapter, examples of some of the strategies and devices in question are offered, together with explanations of how they exploited various weaknesses in the Soviet system of censorship.
The final chapter attempts to show how one of the most common anti-censorship devices, known as Aesopian language, might have worked. In order to do so, I attempt an Aesopian reading of three films of Andrey Khrzhanovsky—an artist who is well known both for his continuous engagement with the theme of artistic freedom and for having been faced with difficulties from Brezhnev's censorship. The films in question – Я к вам лечу воспоминанием (I am Flying to You as a Memory, 8
1977), И с вами снова я (And I am again with you, 1980) and Осень (Autumn, 1982) – form a trilogy about the life and work of the famous Russian poet, publicist, literary critic and dramatist Alexander Pushkin and are based on Pushkin's texts and sketches. Operating with Lev Loseff's model of artistic Aesopian language based on the interplay of screens and markers at different levels, I demonstrate how this seemingly biographical trilogy is as much a poetic essay about the famous poet's relationship with the state as it is about the conflict between the liberal creative intelligentsia and Brezhnev's regime.
Although my investigation takes a different path than MacFadyen's, raising different questions and relying on different types of traces and evidence, it has the same mission—“It is high time,” MacFadyen urges, “we afforded some dignity and self-determination to the people who made Soviet culture, rather than emphasizing or prejudicing the crude political processes that hope to claim that culture as their own.”14
14 MacFadyen, p. xix. 9
The Cultural Liberalism of Khrushchev
The years of Nikita Khrushchev's reign, 1953-1964, have gone down in Soviet history as a period of 'enlightened totalitarianism.15 Khrushchev was hardly an enlightened despot in the same way as, for example, Ekaterina the Great16, but his cultural policy, which relaxed party's regulation of creative production and circulation, and increased financial support for the arts, engendered a cultural boom which well justifies the epithet. Another, more widely recognized sobriquet for the Khrushchev era is “thaw” – an appellation that captures the atmosphere of change, euphoria and hope characteristic of the period remarkably well. Interestingly, “thaw” was also taken up by conservative members of the party; for them, however, it came to connote slush, chaos and anxiety.
After the death of Stalin, Soviet supreme leadership, was faced with multiple challenges. In addition to problems relating to politics, the economy, state security, ethnic relations, culture, and global power17, the new leadership feared that information regarding the abuses of power perpetrated by the previous regime would leak.18 Since all of the leaders were implicated in the wrongdoings of Stalinism, their fears were understandable.19 Thus, in order to save their ideological face and avoid having to provide uncomfortable answers under public pressure, the new old leaders hurried to distance themselves from the previous regime, and especially from that regime's reliance on terror. One way to do this, was to take a critical stance with respect to Stalin's absolutism, suggesting that the injustices that took place under the auspices of the previous regime could be blamed on a single person's absolute power. It was therefore proclaimed that the masses, rather than single leaders made history20, and by virtue of this proclamation, the new policy favoring collective leadership over the leadership of a single person was launched. Starting with structural reforms directed at reviving the internal democracy of the party, this policy, at first directed against the cult of an individual, quickly turned into a campaign against the individual and his enduring legacy.
15 Sjeklocha, Paul and Mead, Igor. “Liberalization of the arts in the Khrushchev's era.” In: Unofficial art in the Soviet Union. Berkeley, 1967, pp. 60-85. (p. 64.) 16 Khrushchev was not an avid reader, and liked to present himself as a thinker with practical bent. (Service, Robert. A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. Penguin, 2003, p. 349.) 17 Service, Robert. A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. Penguin, 2003, pp. 314-330. 18 Shortly after Stalin's burial, Ministry of Internal Affairs released the doctors accused being a part of the so-called “doctors plot” and revealed that the plot was a scam. The “doctor's plot”– a product of Stalin's anti-semitic attitude and growing paranoia – alleged that prominent Moscow doctors, who were entrusted with health of high party officials, conspired to kill their patients. (Service, p. 332) 19 Kruschev, Malenkov, and Beria. 20 Service, p. 332. 10
The process of dismantling the cult of Stalin was launched during the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist party in February 1956. At a closed session of the Congress, Khrushchev spoke for four hours about some of the atrocities perpetrated or authorized by his seemingly infallible predecessor. The speech, which was prevented, naturally, from being published in full, did find its way into the official press in a form of a summary. Additionally, leaders of local party organizations were ordered to brief their members on the content of the speech. The speech, as one might imagine, produced a furore, both because of the terrifying facts that it disclosed and what it as a gesture implied: although the truths revealed by it were stupefying, the fact that it was delivered by the first secretary of the Soviet Communist party held a promise of change to come. And a confirmation of this promise was soon to be found in the new state policy, which in the West quickly came to be known as the policy of de-Stalinizaiton.21
The policy of de-Stalinization intended to reverse or modify that of Stalinism. Thus, the principle of collective leadership was reaffirmed, restoring the party to its once held central position; the relationship with the West grew warmer; and terror as a method of mass control was publicly denounced and its apparent signs eliminated. Naturally, these changes had far-reaching consequences for society and culture.
One of the immediate consequences of the official denunciation of terror was the opening up of many labor camps, resulting in the release of political prisoners and the rehabilitation of many of them. This gesture, which allowed the official and non-official realities of Stalinist socialism to meet, forced the accomplishments of the preceding decades into a different light and sparked ideologically unfavorable discussions about the meaning and value of the individual life in the context of a broader society's interests.
Along with the political prisoners, many writers who became victims of the cultural purges of 1946- 194822 were also rehabilitated and some of their works became available to Soviet readers.23 This was also true of previously censored works of otherwise reliable authors. Art works of the early Soviet avant-garde, locked away in cellars of Soviet museums at Stalin's order, were once again made available to the general public. Collections of European modernists held by various state museums were allowed to be put on display. The first such event was the exhibition of French art
21 Service, p. 340-41. 22 The purges fueled by ideological campaigns against cosmopolitanism and administered under the supervision of then secretary for culture Andrei Zhdanov. Also known as 'zhdanovschina.' 23 Ahmatova, Zoschenko, Mandel'stam, Pasternak, David Bergelson 11 spanning the period between the 14th and 20th centuries, which took place in 1955. It was followed by a retrospective of Pablo Picasso in 1956 and a series of exhibitions including works of Renoir, Monet, Degas, Gaugin, Cézanne, Matisse and other representatives of “ bourgeois decadent formalism.”24
When the party officials gave their permission for the first of these exhibitions, they assumed that the works to be exhibited were of little historical and cultural relevance for Soviet citizens, and therefore could not be of any real danger to the ideological status quo. If anything, the officials reasoned, these works would serve well as examples of the moral corruption inherent in the Western culture.25 To make sure that the students found the “correct” frame to interpret what they had seen, public discussions were organized at the Moscow State University and the Institute of Cinematography to, put bluntly, drive the nail home. However, the students did not readily succumb to party dramaturgy, signaling to the ideological bureaucrats that, contrary to their expectations, the morally corrupt art of the West resonated well with the Soviet viewers; moreover, it provoked them and incited lively and heated discussions concerning the essence and meaning of art.26
Attempting to undo the consequences of Stalin's internal policy through the wave of rehabilitations was one aspect of de-Stalinization. Improving the relationship between the USSR and the rest of the world was another. An integral part of the latter was opening up the country to foreign visits and cultural exchange. One of the earliest signals of change in foreign policy was a week of French cinema, which took place in Moscow and Leningrad in the fall of 1955. In 1959, a second International Moscow Film Festival reopened after a 23 year long break. Although the grand-prix that year was given to a Soviet film, the importance of the festival in acquainting Soviet critics, film-makers and audiences with alternative visual languages and aesthetics connot be overstated. Arguably the most resonant international cultural event of the decade was the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students hosted in Moscow in 1957. There, 34,000 of young representatives of the political left from 130 countries27 congregated, bringing with them myriad new perspectives, experiences and objects.28
24 Sjeklocha & Mead, p. 73. 25 Sjeklocha & Mead, p 73. 26 This inability of the officials to predict the public response to “bourgeois decadence”, even if caused by wishful thinking, gives a good glimpse at the increased distance between them and “the people”. It also anticipates the far reaching consequences of Khrushchev's cultural thaw. 27 Zubok, Vladislav. Zhivago children: The last Russian intelligentsia. Belknap Press, 2011, p. 104. 28 Including fashion for blue-jeans, sneakers, rock-n-roll. 12
Such encounters with 'the other,' including 'the other' of one's own history, made possible because of Khrushchev's new policy, allowed for the 'normality' of a highly normalized society to be questioned. This and the open intellectual atmosphere of the early Thaw fostered and nourished a new Soviet generation – the people of the sixties – a community that had “the desire to think and reflect about life and its complexities” and “sought to understand the reality behind every word.”29 At first this group, animated and reassured by the promise of change, felt compelled to work with the regime in order to help it to reform. However, following several 'freezes' attempted by Khrushchev and the onset of Brezhnev's policy of 'stagnation,' they assumed a critical stance, giving birth to dissident and semi-dissident discourses and practices.30 If one seeks to address the topic of subversion in the late Soviet union, then this group –together with its history and culture – is the likely point to begin.
The Re-emergence of the New Soviet Intelligentsia
In the late 1950s, Western observers started writing in a hopeful and excited way about the emergence of individuals in Russia who displayed self-consciousness similar to that of the intelligentsia in previous centuries.31 This section elaborates on what they were likely to have meant by the “self-consciousness of intelligentsia from the previous centuries” and why these individuals sparked so much enthusiasm and interest.
Russian intelligentsia as a social stratum with a shared identity consolidated around the 1860s, during the period of the great reforms of Alexander II.32 What was unique about this new stratum was that it was held together by the bond of 'consciousness'.33 Its members came from different social and professional backgrounds, but they all shared a particular outlook and this only condition was taken as sufficient for becoming and remaining a part of the group.34 Characteristic of this particular outlook were secularism, liberalism and a commitment to the European way of life.35 But,
29 Zubok, pp. 162-163. 30 One should be careful here: As suggested below, not all members of this rather large group went underground. Many went along with the regime. Refusing to become a radical, shouldn't be equated with approval of the regime's policies. It was because of the more mild, 'cooperating' members, that the more radical intelligentsia survived: it was the less radical intelligentsia, including 'the enlightened bureaucrats”, who found jobs for the radicals and supported them. 31 Kochetkova, Inna. The myth of the Russian intelligentsia: Old intellectuals in the new Russia. Taylor &Francis, 2009, p. 24. 32 Kochetkova, p. 16. 33 Malia, Martin. “What is the intelligentsia?” (1961). (cited in Kochetkova p. 17) 34 Malia labels this group “unreal class' ( Kochetrkova, p. 17. ) 35 Kochetkova, pp. 16-17. 13 what characterized this imaginary community best was “the shared feeling of an extraordinary sense of apartness from the rest of the society and […] the self-perception as the embodied 'consciousness' or 'intelligence' of the nation”36.
The Russian intelligentsia saw itself as possessing unique characteristics, such as intellect, the ability to be critical and reflexive, outstanding morality and outstanding creative talent; it understood its social position to be between the power and the masses; and, finally it believed that it had a special historical mission, which consisted of preserving, developing and transmitting culture and reforming social order for the well-being of the people.37 As Natalia Velikaya has rightfully pointed out, the self-perception of the Russian intelligentsia was grounded in the myth of the hero: a half-god and half-human, who commits himself to the “struggle with the gods for the sake of liberating the ordinary people from their oppressors.”38
Living up to their high mission, many members of the Russian intelligentsia welcomed the idea of social and political reform and supported the idea of Revolution. Unlike Bolsheviks, however, the majority of the revolutionary intelligentsia showed no sympathy for the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat, aspiring instead toward a more liberal democratic society. Its members considered development of civil society the necessary condition for a healthy political change and continued defending the autonomy of the public sphere even after the Bolsheviks took full power by organizing into trade-union like societies, supporting private publishing and with stubborn determination to keep universities autonomous from the state.39
As Stuart Finkel points out, the public sphere as such was an integral part of the Bolshevik ideological project, but what the Bolsheviks aspired to was a particular kind of public sphere—the plebiscitary-acclamatory form of regimented public sphere40, which Jürgen Habermas described as characteristic of dictatorships in highly developed industrial societies. 41 Although such a public sphere would, in form, be similar to the bourgeois kind, namely “replete with a variety of press organs, higher educational institutions, professional unions, voluntary organizations, and cultural societies,” it would be purged of any heterogeneity.42 The intelligentsia, with its faith in independent
36 Kochetkova, p. 17. 37 Kochetkova, p. 33. 38 Kochetkova, p. 31. 39 Finkel, Stuart. On the ideological front. The Russian intelligentsia and the making of the Soviet public sphere. Yale, 2007, p. 7. 40 Finkel, p. 12. 41 Finkel, p. 12. 42 Finkel, p. 12. 14 critical thinking and respect for individual opinion, obviously presented a serious challenge to the desired homogenization of what was to become the Soviet public sphere. Gradually, the relationship between Bolsheviks and the intelligentsia seriously soured.
Although a member of intelligentsia himself, the chief ideologue of Bolshevism, Vladimir Lenin, declared the educated classes “lackeys of capitalism” and therefore incapable of espousing the revolutionary drive.43 But the new regime needed knowledgeable people to rebuild, industrialize and educate the huge country devastated by wars and political turmoils besetting it since the beginning of the 20th century. Lenin's regime thus made attempts to win the old intelligentsia over by offering employment to some members of this 'ideologically unsound' stratum, in particular doctors, managers, engineers, army officers and senior administrators. Employment by the state, when food was becoming more and more scarce, was at least an option to consider. However, not everyone was willing to embrace the new role that the regime was offering the intelligentsia – namely to act as its servants. Although the populist faction of the old intelligentsia accepted the October Revolution as a harbinger of hope and positive change, the liberal-nationalist opposition would not simply abandon its unique social role, at least not right away.
Following the 1917 split in the Bolshevik coalition44 and the intensified criticism of Bolshevism by political and intellectual opposition, Bolshevik policy toward any dissent hardened: the closing of non-Bolshevik newspapers was followed by arrests and the deportation45 of university professors, as well as scientists and other members of the intelligentsia who were unwilling to make peace with the Bolshevik regime. Those who stayed and agreed to work with the Bolsheviks would eventually experience a ghastly betrayal. One of the central tenets of Bolshevik ideology was class struggle, but, since most of those who had wealth and property escaped either shortly before or shortly after the revolution, Soviet Russia did not really have a class which could rightfully be called bourgeoisie.46 Next in line for the position of class enemy of the proletariat was, unsurprisingly, intelligentsia.
Besides expelling the incorrigibles and 'integrating' the rest, the Bolsheviks' strategy of dissolving
43 In response to Maxim Gorky's petition, he wrote: “The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit." 44 Left Socialist Revolutionary Party left following the dissolution of the elected Assembly after the latter refused to recognize dominance of the Bolsheviks. 45 The famous philosophers' ship, for example. 46 Read, Christopher. “Stalinism Triumphant.” In: C.R. The making and breaking of the Soviet system. An Interpretation. Palgrave, 2001, pp. 82-115. ( p. 91.) 15 the old Russian intelligentsia included the discontinuation of the old intellectual tradition: children of the Russian intelligentsia were not admitted to Soviet universities. The term “intelligentsia” itself came to be redefined: the new Soviet intelligentsia came to include anyone who labored not with the hands, but with the brain. In the hierarchy of this newly defined social group, the industrial intelligentsia occupied the top position. They were followed by lawyers, educators and doctors. In the 1930s, the notion was extended to include village school teachers and millions of white collar workers.47
In contrast to the previous Russian intelligentsia, Soviet intelligentsia held only one possible view of the world and history – namely, Marxist-Leninist. It emerged from and connected to the masses, and did not distinguish between physical and intellectual labor. It hated enemies of its class48 and everything that remained from the old world. And ulike Russian intelligentsia, which defined itself in terms of its independent and oppositional stance towards the state, the new Soviet intelligentsia, was well integrated into the state.49
By turning the educated classes, whether culled from the old intelligentsia or the emerging new, into salaried, professional civil servants, the regime did away with the uncomfortable heterogeneity of the independent bourgeois public sphere, which had begun to develop in Russia after the October revolution. In fact, by regulating the public sphere, the regime found a long-term solution to the problem of political opposition by acquiring the means to block the development of the civil society. Thus, when the Western observers in the 1950s wrote optimistically about the emergence “from the ranks of the proletarians of mental labor individuals who displayed self-consciousness similar to that of intelligentsia in previous centuries,”50 they were celebrating what they perceived as a possible return of the independent public sphere, which in turn held the promise of democratic political change in the Soviet Union.
But, who were these individuals with self-consciousness of the 'old' intelligentsia? How did they come about and, most importantly, what was their role in fostering independent publics discourses?
47 Kochetkova, p. 23. Kochetkova quotes a paragraph from Komsomolskaya Pravda (1939): “ The whole world is following how the greatest phenomenon in history of humankind—a hundred and seventy million people are becoming the intelligentsia; the number of intelligentsia in industry, amongst kolkhoz workers and white collar workers and members of their families is inexorably increasing: the distinctions between intellectual and manual labor are dissolving.” 48 Since Soviet intelligentsia was defined as mental laborers—they were technically proletarians, so their enemies were the bourgeoisie, which in the Soviet union came to include the 'old' intelligentsia. 49 Kochetkova, p. 22. Kochetkova makes an interesting observation that studies of Soviet intelligentsia, approach it from institutional perspective. (Kocehtkova, p. 23) 50 Kochetkova, p. 24 16
They were an educated community formed by people who came from different generations and backgrounds, but who shared a world view, a set of values and an understanding of their ethical and ideological mission. Because they became socially, culturally and politically active around the 1960s, they were christened shestidesyatniki, or, 'people of the sixties'. They are often referred to as “the last manifestation of Russian intelligentsia”51 and Vladislav Zubok calls them “Zhivago's children.”
Zubok divides this group into three generational sub-groups. The oldest – were war veterans, who grew up in the 1920s, entered higher education before the war, were drafted and survived the war. They remembered the Great October Revolution and the events that followed it; they were among the first beneficiaries of Stalin's compulsory education system and were taught by members of the old intelligentsia. The war revealed to them with a reality different from that of the official propaganda: they saw the devastation of the countryside, produced by collectivization, met their compatriots, learned their stories and exchanged ideas; they experienced the military incompetence of the Kremlin, contrasted with the heroism of the common people. They discovered the material civilization of Western and Central Europe and many of them brought home books and records. The war had made them hopeful of a positive change after the victory and heightened their sense of civil duty and importance.52 When the war was over, they re-entered universities motivated by the desire to make sense of the world that they had seen, with a strong belief in their own potential. In the classrooms, the veterans encountered the middle generation of “Zhivago's children” – the post-war students.
This middle generation was born in the 1930's. Many of the them were children of old Bolsheviks, who had lost their fathers in political purges and grew up to see Stalin as their surrogate father. Many of them joined the war when they were teenagers. Just as with the veterans, the war has taught these young people civil responsibility. The first generation of the university graduates knew that they would have to take the positions of perished professionals and push the country toward Communism. Unlike the veteran intelligentsia, the postwar students grew up when the Stalinist propaganda machine was in full swing, so they believed in communism, despised wealth and self-
51 Kochetkova, p. 2. 52 Soviet officers identified themselves with the legendary Decembrists—the Russian officers, who during the campaign for liberation of Europe from Napoleon were infected with French revolutionary ideas and upon their return home started drafting first Russian constitution. At the coronation of Nicolas the first they refused to swear their allegiance to the new tsar, proclaiming that they would only swear to the new constitution. Nicolas either executed these untimely revolutionaries, or exiled them to Siberia. The coronation was taking place in December, hence the sobriquet —Decembrists. 17 interest and studied in order to obtain enough knowledge to help with the construction of the best society in the world. Totalitarian state was the only kind of political organization that they knew and they believed that Soviet leadership knew best what direction the country should follow. Thus, although not anti-semitic themselves, they accepted the Kremlin's anti-semitic campaign, saw nothing wrong with the creation of “people's democracies” in Eastern Europe and were convinced that their country was the vanguard of the humankind. However, the last years of Stalin's rule confused them: for example, they could not understand party-imposed bans on the development of genetics, cybernetics and contemporary linguistics.53 Nonetheless, these developments did not lessen their devotion to Communism; instead, they suggested to this generation of “Zhivago's children” that a partition between the official ideology and the eternal ideals of Communism had to be created in their minds in order to preserve their faith and sanity.54
The youngest, and the most radical generation of the “Zhivago children”, according to Zubok, grew up in the last years of Stalin's life. They learned from books about both the revolution and the war and came to realize grave discrepancies between the ideals they were preached and the reality that surrounded them. Inspired by the examples of the revolutionary heroes of 19th century Russia, including the terrorist group the People's Will, who assassinated Alexander II, they concluded that the ideals of the revolution had been betrayed and proceeded to form secret societies, in which they plotted a new revolution against the tyrannical Stalinist regime.55 The response of the state to such organizations, signaled to these young radicals that the struggle with the regime was dangerous and futile. Consequently, many of them sought refuge in art or self-education, either by forming independent study groups,56 where unofficial philosophical and artistic currents were studied and discussed, or by exploring cultural and intellectual works on their own. One of such forbidden fruit was Jazz, around which arguably the first Soviet subculture of stiliagi (style-apers) was formed. Sliliagi presented a challenge to the Soviet life at the level of the everyday: they dressed themselves in bright and extravagant clothes, while the official aesthetic demanded modesty and frugality; they listened to forbidden Western music (jazz) and danced to it in a mock boogie style, which horrified the 'normal' citizens; they spoke their own language, replete with borrowings from English; and they were not shy about carnal aspects of love. Stiliagi's greatest contribution to the community of Zhivago's children was their open protest against the most established values of Soviet life: namely the condemnation of wealth, the primacy of communal well-being over personal pleasure, and, most 53 Zubok, p. 38. 54 Zubok, pp. 37-38. 55 Zubok, p. 38. 56 For example, the group of philosophy department of Moscow State University ( MGU) or another at the Academy of Arts. For more detail see Zubok p. 40. 18 obviously, conformity. Their loud stylistic provocation bore a more substative and rare fruit: it pointed to he possibility of being different and thinking independently.
The new old intelligentsia, the shestidesyatniki or the “Zhivago's children,” was thus a heterogeneous group comprised of individuals from different backgrounds and generations. Although the first two groups seem to have had more in common with one another than with the third group, they all share common traits which link them together. First, all of them were beneficiaries of the free and compulsory education, which they received in the top Soviet universities of Moscow and Leningrad. Despite the stringent party control over the process of higher education – curricula, syllabuses, professors, and libraries – Soviet university graduates, whether engineers or philologists, having experienced the devastation of war, terror and misery, developed their own perspective on education. As Zubok puts it: “The educated cadres trained for Stalin turned out to be a vibrant and diverse tribe, with intellectual curiosity, artistic yearnings, and a passion for high culture. They identified not only with the Soviet collectivity, but also with humanist individualism.”57 Thus, inspired by the revolutionary idealism and romanticism, the began dreaming about a just and humane Russian Society, instead of accepting their intended and well- defined role as apparatchiki in the bureaucratic Soviet machine or serving the State as scientists, educators, physicians, or elite youth in the military, security, propaganda and cultural institutions, envisioning themselves, instead, as the harbingers of the much needed change.58 This acute perception of the need for change is the second feature that all members of the shestidesyatniki had in common.
The third common characteristic of shestidesyatniki was their sense of agency. While the youngest generation of shestidesyatniki viewed education as a tool of personal development, both the veterans and the post-war students approached education as the necessary means by which they could prepare for and which would enable them to “build Communism”.59 This sense of being entrusted with a special mission, combined with faith in the power of thinking, gave birth to a sense of political agency,60 which Bolsheviks and in particular Stalin's regime tried so hard to suppress. Whether a veteran, post-war student or stylistic provocateur, shestidesyatniki believed that one
57 Zubok, p. 21. 58 Zubok: pp. 21-22. 59 Zubok, p. 22. 60 The first generation of the university graduates knew that they were the future of the country; their country needed them to replace the large number of specialists who perished in the War. This sense of being special empowered them at the same time as installed an acute sense of responsibility. 19 could and should reason independently and act in accordance with hisor her best understanding.61
Finally, all of “Zhivago's children” shared a passion for art and literature. Appreciation for high culture was considered an important component of education both by Stalin and old Russian intelligentsia. Living in Moscow and Leningrad, “the children” immersed themselves into the diverse and rich cultural milieu that these two cities, by far most culturally significant at the time offered. Discussions of literature, including literary criticism, music and visual art, became a common feature of shestidesyatniki' social life, whether they were physicists or lyricists62. Thus, one could say, that the new Soviet intelligentsia was an unexpected product of Stalin's enlightenment project: free higher education based upon the ideals of self-cultivation, self- improvement, and deep respect for high culture.63
Despite the great age variation among its members, shestidesyatniki are often referred to as a single generation because of their shared values, system of ideas and beliefs, and experiences. As mentioned earlier, World War II was one of such shared experiences; another was the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's secret speech at the 20th party congress, followed by the policy of de- Stalinizaiton. Unlike World War II, which directly affected only the two elder groups, the latter affected everyone, and fostered with it cohesion within the group.
The death of Stalin produced shock, disorientation and a sense of closure. While most of the country, including the new Soviet intelligentsia, was still mourning the demise of its seemingly immortal leader, the news about the Doctors' Plot was released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This news set off the chain of astonishing truths about the Stalinist regime that would be revealed in the course of the following years – the most remarkable among thses being, of course, Khrushchev's 'secret speech.'
By making some of the atrocities of the Stalinist regime public, Khrushchev most certainly did not intend to place the legitimacy of the Soviet regime in question; instead, he sought to undermine the god-like reputation of his predecessor, whose enduring legacy threatened to overshadow Khrushchev's own political career. The speech, however, dealt a serious, and possibly deadly, blow to the entire Soviet ideological edifice, despite Khrushchev's careful efforts to attribute the cruelest 61 It should be pointed out that neither here nor elsewhere in this project, do I mean to homogenize shestidesyatniki as a group: it, most certainly, was less uniform than Zubok portrays. However, for the purpose of this reseach, Zuboks's large strokes suffice, as they serve well to help to understand what the general characteristics of the group were. 62 “Physicists and lyricists “ was the sobriquet that shestidesyatniki used to describe themselves. 63 Zubok, p. 21, p. 63. 20 manifestations of Stalinism to Stalin's personality flaws. Aside from being merely shocking, the secret speech engendered a lot of unwanted questions about the role of the party in crimes attributed to Stalin: Why, for example, was the party unable to intervene and prevent the disasters fueled by Stalin's failing personality? How was it possible for a single person to be so effective in executing his inhumane plans? 64 Having not been instructed on how to tackled such questions, party officials at various institutions and universities, where not able to provide any answers.
Suspicious of party bureaucracy, the new intelligentsia turned to the original texts of the Soviet revolution: to the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and the Russian socialists of 19th century; they also re-read Marx and Engels and came to the conclusion that the idea of revolution was corrupted by the bureaucratization of the party. This realization spurred a series of anti-institutional actions among students in capitals, as well as criticism of the bureaucratic administration of the arts among the creative intelligentsia.65 Students and artists alike demanded more individual freedom and trust on the part of the state.
Besides raising suspicion regarding bureaucracy, the secret speech foregroundedthe importance of individual integrity and the absolute value of telling the truth. By condemning Stalinist rule of terror, the speech implicitly promised that terror as a method of governance would not be employed by the new regime, thus helping to foster the political environment in which expressing honest oppinions became easier. Shortly after the speech was delivered, complete strangers and even opponents would begin to openly share what they thought and how they felt about the regime.66 Here is how one student witness characterized the change in his environment: “Something extraordinary is happening. Everybody is arguing—and moreover, absolutely everyone is beginning to think.”67 As Ludmila Alexeeva pointed out, such openness would have been unthinkable only a few weeks prior to the speech.
Finally, the content of the speech was dilidently communicated to all party members throughout the country and a much-edited summary came to be published in the official press. This caused it to become not only the founding document for Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinizaiton, but also a publicly binding one. References to the speech would be made again and again as a means of opposing the state's repeated attempts to play down the message of the speech. 64 Zubok, p. 63. 65 Publication of Literary Moscow—the first anthology of literature put together and published by the writers alone. Publication of The Levers, a short story by Alexander Yashin, Not by bread alone, a novel by Vladimir Dudintsev. 66 Zubok, p. 63. 67 Zubok, p. 63. 21
Thus, even more than the war, the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's “secret” speech were instrumental to the generational cohesion of shestidesyatniki. When considering the process of consolidation of surrounding the social and political identity of this social community, the role played by the so- called “компании”, (“kompanii”), or companies, should also not be disregarded. First appearing shortly after Stalin's death, companies soon became a staple feature of cultural life in Moscow and Leningrad in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Numbering anywhere between twenty and fifty people, a company served as a platform for the exchange of information and open discussion. Typically convening in the private apartments of its members (those who could boast a private flat), companies functioned as “publishing houses, salons, billboards, confession booths, concert halls, libraries, museums, counseling groups, sewing circles, knitting clubs, chambers of commerce, bars, clubs, restaurants, coffeehouses, dating agencies and seminars in literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, economics, genetics, physics, music, and the arts.”68
While the historical reality provided the new Soviet intelligentsia with common experiences, companies offered a physical space where the individuals affected by these experiences could meet one another and make sense out of their changing social and political environment. It was inside the companies that shestidesyatnichestvo – the distinct tradition of the new Soviet intelligentsia – took shape. Adherents to this tradition professed to value integrity, altruism, fidelity to the truth, faith in independent thinking, a lifelong commitment to learning, respect for the sanctity of human life and an appreciation for high culture and art—values certainly extracted from the tradition of the old Russian intelligentsia, which was accessible through classic literature and art.69 What set shestidesyatniki apart from the old intelligentsia was their devotion to the Communist ideals and optimism concerning the likelihood of their witnessing the arrival of the new era.
The Cultural Renaissance and Emergence of the Cultural Public Sphere
By the time Khrushchev began his ascension to power, he could not ignore the shestidesyatniki and their growing social and political power. The Soviet state still depended upon its educated elites and
68 Alexeeva, Ludmila, Goldberg Paul. The Thaw Generation: Coming of age in the post-Stalin era.University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. p. 83. 69 Although Stalinism did its best to destroy ethos of old intelligentsia, its icons were canonized by the regime. “Prose and poetry by Pushkin and Gogol, Herzen and Belinsky, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Nekrasov, and Blok remained an essential part of Soviet education, even if the ethical and philosophical ideas in them contradicted Soviet practices. Theseworks, in many ways prophetic, acquired fresh meaning during the Thaw, when they were staged in theaters and interpreted in films. ” ( Zubok, p. 168-169.) 22
Khrushchev understood the importance of having their support. Trying to distance himself from Stalin, on the one hand, and simultaneously bound by the promises of the secret speech contained in his public denunciation of terror, Khrushchev decided to win over the new intelligentsia. His response to the “challenge of retaining totalitarian power over an increasingly sophisticated and literate society”70 was to allow culture freer way. To him, a man who espoused very little interest in matters of art or literature, culture was but a superstructure and therefore of little consequence to the base. History, however, proved it otherwise. Thanks to Khrushchev's inability to adequately gauge the political potential of the cultural renaissance, Soviet Russia experienced the emergence of the literary public sphere, or, rather, the cultural public sphere—a powerful alternative to the political public sphere of totalitarian and late-20th century neo-liberal societies.71 In what follows, I will attempt to explain why Khrushchev's concession to giving culture more freedom precipitated developments that in the eyes of the regime “threatened to usurp the party leadership's role in diagnosing and prescribing for the ills of Soviet society.”72
As the word “concession” implies, Khrushchev was not the one to initiate the cultural Thaw. At the 19th Congress of the communist party, held in 1952, Georgy Malenkov, in his report to the Central Committee, criticized the work of Soviet writers for its mediocrity, unimaginativeness, and absence of conflict.73 His criticism was well-grounded: post-war Soviet cultural policy, directed against all non-Russian, non-communist, non-proletarian writers and artists, as well as all sympathizers of foreign culture, had left Soviet literature impeccably sterile. And the absence of conflict highlighted by Malenkov as one of the key problems in contemporary Soviet literature, was in fact a very direct outcome of this policy. The mastermind behind it, the secretary of the Central Committee at the time Andrei Zhdanov, declared that, because the Soviet Union was a classless society, all conflicts were impossible. According to him, the only possible conflict in the Soviet Union was between good and best.”74 Between the Socialist Realist method of regulation of artistic production75 and this doctrine, writers did not have much space for creative maneuvering. As a result, most of them had
70 Sjeklocha, Mead, “Liberalization of the arts in the Khrushchev era.” In Sjeklocha, Mead), Unofficial art in the Soivet Union. Berkeley, 1967, pp. 60-85. 71 McGuigan, Jim: “The cultural public sphere.” In: European Journal of Cultural Studies, 8, 2005, pp. 427-443. 72 The Soviet writer, p. iv. 73 Malenkov, Georgy. “Otchetsnyi doklad Tsentral'nogo komiteta VKP(b) XIX s'ezdu partii: Dal'nejshij po'em materialinogo blagosostoyanija, zdravoohranenija i kul'turnogo urovnya zhizni.” XIX sjezd VKP(b) – KPSS. Dokumenty i materialy.<
The first member of the creative community to respond to the proclaimed crisis was a Leningrad poet Olga Bergholts. In an article published in the Literary Gazette, the same year as Malenkov's critique, she addressed the curious absence of the lyrical subject from Soviet lyrical poetry. She pointed out that although there were plenty of “human beings of all types and professions”, “a lyric hero with an individual relationship to the world” was absent.76 She called for the restoration of 'human' quality to Soviet literature by re-introducing human emotions into ideologically correct but perceptibly dehumanized accounts of Soviet reality. Furthermore, she called upon Soviet poets to listen to their inner voice unhampered by the pronouncements of Socialist Realism.77
In the same year (1953), Novyi Mir [Новый Мир] published an article by Vladimir Pomerantsev entitled “On sincerity in literature.”78 The writer criticized contemporary literature for its lack of real human conflicts and problems. Raising the question of the role of literature in Soviet society, he argued that, in order to restore literature's relevance to life, writers should begin to address difficult and real questions. Addressing literary critics, Pomerantsev criticized their default criteria for the evaluation of the quality of a literary work – namely its patriotism and the political relevance of the topics addressed. A literary work, he argued, had to first and utmost be evaluated on the basis of its aesthetic properties. A book should educate by engaging and not simply documenting events from an 'objectively' correct position. Literature should confess and not only preach. In other words, literature should be sincere and not ideologically correct.79 Importantly, the critical message of the article,seemingly directed at writers and literary critics, implied a third addressee – Party officials, who, throughout the text, are subtly blamed for their role in the creation of the crisis, heavily involving themselves in matters outside of their area of competence.80
Pomerantsev's article moved the debates about reforming literature into a full swing. The recommendations concerning what could be done in order to revive Soviet literature included the reconsideration of the relationship of mutual antipathy between artists and critics. The critics were
76 The Soviet writer and Soviet Cultural policy. p. 5. (published in Literaturnaya Gazetta 16th April, 1953.) 77 Sjeklocha & Mead, p. 65. 78 Sjeklocha & Mead, p. 65. (A summary in English can be found at: http://www.sovlit.com/sincerity/) Full text in Russian: http://royallib.ru/read/pomerantsev_vladimir/ob_iskrennosti_v_literature.html#0)/ 79 Pomerantsev. “On sincerity in literature.” <
Now, it is easy to see how Khrushchev's speech and its lessons – the importance of personal integrity, the absolute value of telling the truth and the distrustful attitude toward bureaucracy – fit into these debates. Encouraged by the discovery that their demands resonated well with the party's new policy and confident that the times were indeed changing, the reform-minded members of the guild of Soviet writers charged ahead.
The spring and summer following the speech saw a surge in literary activity: new literary publications such as Neva, Mocow [Москва] and Our Contemporary [Наш Современник] appeared. Friendlier policies toward the rest of the world were commemorated in the publication of many translations of contemporary and past works of foreign authors. The most radical gesture on the part of the writers was probably an anthology of texts, Literary Moscow, [Литературная Москва], which included the lyrical poetry of Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak's essay on translation of Shakespeare and an experimental poem by the voice-of-the-epoch-to-be Robert Rozhdestvensky. The most daring aspect of this project was the fact that it was published without the official approval of the corresponding committee of the Union of Writers. The second volume of this publication, which came out some months later, was daring not just as a gesture, but also in its content: the volume featured Alexander Yashin's “Levers” [«Рычаги»], Nikolai Zhdanov's Journey Home [Дорога домой]and Yurii Nagibin's Light in the Window [Свет в oкне] – all of which pointedly attacked the evils of Soviet bureaucracy, careerism and hypocrisy. At the same time, Novyi mir published Daniil Granin's Personal Opinion [Собственное мнение] and Vladimir
81 The Soviet writers. p. 7. 82 The Soviet writers, p. 7. 25
Dudintsev's Not by bread alone [Не хлебом единым], which addressed the same issues. Denouncing the inhumanity of Soviet bureaucracy, these texts glorified individual heroism and the determination to live according to one's own ideals.83 These texts were literary responses to Khrushchev's official attacks on Stalin. While the party leadership was still hesitantly absorbing the consequences of the shock dealt by the erratic Secretary of the Central Committee, Soviet writers, whose conscience was painfully awakened by the secret speech, took upon themselves to serve as the leaders of social and political change.
In a CIA report on the Soviet writer and Soviet cultural policy, produced in 1959, an interesting comparison is made between the social role of literature in the Soviet Union and that of human interest journalism in the United States. This parallel seems quite appropriate. According to the statute of the Union of Soviet writers, Socialist Realism “[a]s the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, […] demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.”84
Human interest journalism, or journalism with a human face, also aims at the concrete—more tangible – representation of reality and aspires to educate and transform its audiences by appealing to their feelings and emotions. Thus, the parallel between the social function of Soviet literature and that of human interest journalism in the US is not only justifiable; what makes it particularly valuable is that it conveys the extent to which Soviet literature was embedded in Soviet politics without draining the former of its critical potential.
One has to remember that the at the core of Bolshevik ideology lay the utopian idea of building a new kind of society comprised of a new type of individuals.85 According to the main ideologue of the Bolshevik state Vladimir Lenin, the first step toward achieving this goal was providing or even forcing education upon 'the masses.' Besides combating illiteracy, the education was entrusted with
83 To most of the people looking through these texts today, their radicalism is largely imperceptible: the stories take place in typical for Socialist realism settings and feature Soviet peasants, workers, engineers, and party activists, who struggle to accomplish something that would make life of their communities better. But, unlike Stalinist Socialist realist books, whose main characters are usually socialist achievements, these ones focus on human characters—their feelings, aspirations, doubts and inner conflicts. They are also written in a 'genuine' language and not formulaic language typical of party decrees and official “news”. 84 Sinyavsky, Andrei. “Chto takoe sotsialisticheskij realizm.” Antologia Samizdata. <
Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first people's commissar for education, and a man of remarkable sophistication in matters of culture, was convinced that “even the best mental training has little influence on the will unless it be accompanied by the development of the finer human feelings.”86 He was, of course, referring to the transformative potential of art, and the best use for this potential, according to him, was agitation. Differentiating between propaganda and agitation, Lunacharsky wrote that agitation unlike propaganda “[...] appeals to feelings of its listeners and readers thus affecting their will directly. It intensifies the content of revolutionary sermons, making them shine in brighter colors. Who can doubt that the more artistically successful agitation is, the stronger its effect on listeners? Don't we know that an orator or a publicist who are also artists find their way to hearts of people much easier than those without any artistic talents?” 87
This is why Lunacharsky recommended that the party should use all forms and possibilities of art in order to imbue agitation with power. “Not just a poster, but also a statue and a painting […], could be used as visuals for comprehending the communist truth.”88 Unlike a poster—the undoubtedly revolutionary art form – painting and sculpture, would add true artistic depth to agitation, allowing it to work at the deepest level of thought and feeling.89
As the head of the Commissariat for Education, Lunacharsky encouraged cultural development from the inside, offering support to a wide variety of artistic movements and styles. He believed that out of the “struggles” between different artistic groups, an authentic and rich new culture for the new state would emerge. He believed that the socialist state held great promise for artistic development and maintained that the role of such a state should be that of an enlightened and benevolent patron – encouraging and supporting all that is living in art. He wrote: “Government will never hinder new developments, even if they appear questionable, in order to avoid the mistake
86 Lunacahrsky, “Self-education of working class.” 87 Lunacharsky, Anatoly. “Revoljutsia I iskusstvo.”(1920) Nasledie A.V. Lunacharskogo. <<(http://lunacharsky.newgod.su/lib/russkoe-sovetskoe-iskusstvo/revolucia-i-iskusstvo>> “Агитация отличается от пропаганды тем, что она прежде всего волнует чувства слушателей и читателей и влияет непосредственно на их волю. Она, так сказать, раскаляет и заставляет блестеть всеми красками содержание революционной проповеди. Можно ли сомневаться в том, что чем художественней такая проповедь, тем сильнее она действует? Разве мы не знаем, что оратор–художник, художник–публицист гораздо скорей находит путь к сердцам, чем не одаренный художественной силой человек?” (Translation mine). 88Lunacharsky, Revoljutsia, “Коммунистическая партия — должна вооружиться всеми средствами искусства, которое, таким образом, явится могучим подспорьем для агитации. Не только плакат, но и картина и статуя, — в менее летучей форме, но овладевая более глубокими идеями, более сильными чувствами, — могут явиться, так сказать, наглядным пособием при усвоении коммунистической истины.” ( Translation mine). 89 Lunacharsky, Revoljutsia. 27 of killing something worth living, but too young and weak.”90 He strongly believed that by eliminating the pressure of the market, socialism offered a great potential for the creative expression and artistic development of individuals, who would then actively participate in the making of their very own culture appropriate to the unique historical and economical conditions.
In 1929, following Stalin's consolidation of power, Lunacharsky was removed from his position as the head of education and culture. Under Stalin's supervision, the social and political function of art in the Soviet state was reformulated: It was no longer a tool for individual development, but an instrument in the hands of the Leader, with which he was going to shape the reality. The political power of art only increased.
In 1932, following Stalin's idea of classless society, all independent artistic groups were disbanded and a system of “classless” creative unions, such as the Union of Soviet Artists, Union of Soviet Writers and Union of Soviet Composers was instituted.91 An integral part of each creative union was a party section, which was called to act as the “ideological fist of the party.”92 Being an ideological fist meant that the section was entrusted with communicating the will of the party, elaborating theory in accordance to this will, and watching out for any deviation from this theory. The theory was, of course, Socialist Realism, which was given a form and was finally adopted at the first congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934.
More than an aesthetic, which it eventually largely came to be,93 Socialist Realism was a new system of organization of artistic production, more specifically its bureaucratization and centralization. By fully subordinating art to the political will, Socialist Realism eliminated any distance between the art and life, thus fulfilling the dream of all artistic avant-gardes.94 Contrary to this dream, however, it stripped the artist of the presumed and much hoped for position as the vanguard visionary, bestowing this role instead upon the political leadership of the country. By blending art and political will, Socialist Realism stripped art of its own history, meaning a history independent from the state, but it most certainly elevated its status, as well as the status of the artist. Official artists were treated as political elites: they received hefty honorariums, enjoyed preferential
90 Lunacharsky, Revoljutsia. 91 Many artists actually welcomed this unifying gesture, which put an end to endless strife between the groups characteristic of the period. 92 Bown, Mathew C. Art Under Stalin. Holmes & Meier Pub, 1991. p. 88. 93 Aesthetic theory of socialist realism was being created and debated throughout the 30's and reached its classical phase in the late 40's. 94 Groys, Boris. “The Stalinist art of living.” The total art of Stalinism. Avant-garde, aesthetic dictatorship and beyond. Verso, 2011. pp. 33-75. (p. 36.) 28 treatment and lived in luxurious flats. The down side of being on the same par with the political elites, however, was having to walk the tight rope between matters of aesthetics and political treason.
Along with this special status came a particular self-image and sense of social and political responsibility. Stalin baptized Soviet writers “engineers of human souls,”95 and it is not surprising that members of the writing community, as well as other members of creative intelligentsia, soon came to perceive themselves as such.96 The self-consciousness that this epithet fomented certainly played a role in turning the discussions about aesthetics in the 1950s to the social and political responsibility of the artist. It also did not allow the 'incorrigible' members of the liberal creative intelligentsia to give in to the ideological pressure in the late 1960s – 1970s.
Thus, just as the Russian avant-garde of the first decades of the 20th century paved the way for Socialist Realism, Socialist Realism paved the way for the political and social engagement and confidence that art, in particular literature, so quickly acquired in the 1950s. It is hardly surprising, then, that the writers responded to the rapid political change in the way they did – by assuming spiritual leadership. To use the rhetorics of Soviet propaganda, rooted in the mercilessly uncompromising logic of dialectic materialism, the social and political ascendancy of art, lead by literature, was in the aftermath of Khrushchev's cultural policy, inevitable.
While Socialist Realism imbued art with political power – from the top – and instilled in artists the sense of social moral responsibility, Soviet education system prepared the audiences to enthusiastically welcome art as the vanguard of political change. As has been noted before, the Soviet approach to education, grounded in the idea of creating a new type of human being and the assumption that exposure to “beauty” is able to produce deep positive changes in moral and emotional dispositions, placed a strong emphasis on the development of the finer senses of Soviet citizens. Despite the stringent ideological control over texts and art works available to Soviet citizens, most high school students, not to mention university graduates, were familiar with major classical works of Russian and world literature that fit the requirements of the Socialist Realist canon. The unavoidable difficulty of deciphering which of the classics fulfilled the requirements of Socialist Realism led to the fact, that Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Nekrasov, and even Blok 'making it' into the Socialist Realist canon. Thus, by the 1950s, thanks to the efforts
95 Groys, p. 37. 96 Lovell and Marsch, p. 56. 29 of the party, not only were most of the Soviet citizens literate, but many of them also were very well versed in art and literature. As has already been noted, the appreciation for art was one of the common characteristics uniting shestidesyatniki. In fact, one of the key tenet of shestidesyatnichestvo was the idea that culture, understood as high art, and life were inseparable. The inspiration for such position was found in the tradition of old Russian intelligentsia, which viewed literature as a school of life. Interestingly, Soviet literary criticism was built upon the same premise – above anything else, literature was a great ideological and moral teacher.
Thus, it is understandable that, in the ideological chaos that resulted from Khrushchev's secret speech, many people turned to literature – old and new – for guidance.97 The abundance of literary texts and artworks that became available through the rehabilitation of repressed writers and artists, as well as the translations of foreign authors and events that happened in the frame of cultural exchange, offered a multitude of perspectives and ideas concerning the meaning of life, human destiny and other issues of comparable depth and importance. Thanks to the reorganization of censorship, which was probably the most significant of Khrushchev's cultural reforms, editors of journals, senior literary editors, directors of theaters and artistic councils of film studios were allowed to make decisions concerning what to publish, produce and stage, but had to be prepared to bear full responsibility for the outcome.98 Consequently, the cultural sphere became relatively independent of state control, and that much more 'trustworthy' and attractive.
An interesting symptom of the growing social power of literature were the poetry reading events at the monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky, the official poet of the Revolution, who, incidentally, shot himself during Stalin's reign. The monument was unveiled in 1959 on Maxim Gorky Street in Moscow. Large crowds of mostly, but not exclusively, young people gathered regularly to listen to young poets recite their lyrical poetry. Poetry as a genre readily offered the possibility of cathartic experience to all those craving emotional truth and authenticity. It also allowed for the immediate and affective communication of otherwise uncommunicable experiences. The monument to Mayakovsky soon received a nickname – “Mayak,” which in Russian means “lighthouse”. Like companies, “Mayak” became a place where people could meet, exchange information, share reading material and discuss.99
97 Zubok, Vladislav. Zhivago children: The last Russian intelligentsia. Belknap, 2009. (p.70.) 98 Woll, Josephine. “The politics of Culture, 1945-2000.” In Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), The Cambridge history of Russia. Cambridge, 2006, vol. 3, pp. 605-636. (p. 612.) 99 Zubok, p. 171. 30
Further evidence for art's social and political relevance at the time was the active involvement of general audiences in debates concerning matters of aesthetics. The avalanche of new forms, themes and subjects that became available thanks to Khrushchev's cultural policy necessitated serious adjustments to the frame of Socialist Realism. In this process of the re-invention of Soviet art, artists, writers and audiences stood together and apart from the state.100 It is only too tempting to point out similarities between these developments and a development of what Jürgen Habermass has identified as the public literary sphere. Soviet literature indeed became a mirror in which political and social change and its moral and psychological consequences appeared more clearly and available to interpretation. This interpretation, moreover, emerged in free and open discussions among individuals, wether in private flats, near the Mayakovsky monument or in the pages of literary journals.
To regard Khrushchev's cultural liberalism and its fruits with suspicion, party officials did not have to be familiar with Habermas' thesis that, in Western societies, the literary public sphere has developed into the political public sphere. To them it was clear that less control over culture and arts in a totalitarian society poised a serious threat to the ideological organization of the regime. As Boris Groys so rightfully observed, the Soviet state of Stalin's making was a total aesthetico- political project and the only artwork permitted to emerge from it was socialism.101 Such a project necessitated a centralized organization, in which the political leadership, “connoisseurs of the only necessary poetics and genre – the poetics of the demiurgic construction of the new world,” were “as entitled to issue orders on the production of novels and sculptures as they were to direct the smelting of steel or the planting of beets.”102 Besides commissioning, the party leadership was entitled to deliberate on the matters of aesthetic theory and art criticism, thus ensuring the continuity between ideology and life through representation.
The role reserved for the artist in such a system was not to deliberate, but to execute the will of the party. If artists were given free reign and allowed to depict reality as they saw it and not as the party wanted them to, they would disturb the unity of the totalitarian spectacle, inviting political heresy. In other words, conservative party elites understood well, that the campaign to close the lag between literature and life, instigated by Malenkov in 1953, threatened to render ideology irrelevant in the late 1950s. Therefore,in order to protect the Soviet ideological and political edifice from the 100 A good example of this solidarity is the fact that a two day plenum of the Moscow branch of the Union of Writers (1957), where publications of the previous year ( Dudintsev, Granin, Yashin) were to be “disciplined”, was attended by 'nonprofessionals' who allegedly created unhealthy disturbances. 101 For more, see Boris Groys: The total art of Stalinism. ( p. 36.) 102 Groys, p. 36. 31 storms they attributed to Khrushchev's irresponsibility, the party leadership used every opportunity to curb the artistic renaissance of the Thaw. Finally, in 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power in a coup, and the “thaw” was officially over. However, to the frustration of the new regime, the much hoped for reversal to pre-Thaw “normality” would prove impossible.
As much as Khrushchev failed to adequately assess the significance of his public denunciation of Stalin, the consequences of de-Stalinization and the possible repercussions of giving the post- Stalinist culture freer reign, he and his colleagues, failed to understand that the apparent opposition between the creative intelligentsia and the regime was only that – apparent, and not substantive. Literati and other artists campaigning for more freedom of artistic expression had no intentions of subverting the regime. They all were new Soviet intelligentsia and thus believed in the virtues of Communism and respected its values. What they wanted was to help the regime to reform. At most, they defended individualist human values and indicted corruption, inhumanity and injustice – all of which were within the limits of the policy of de-Stalinization. The creative intelligentsia most likely “conceived of themselves as not the opponents of the regime, but as bearers of its conscience.”103 As will be shown in the following chapter, it was the regime's refusal to submit to the forces of history and ride them, rather than try by all means to contain them, that rendered ideology irrelevant. The regime's unwillingness to accept the change and deal with it positively caused a crack in its ideological foundation. To extend the metaphor, following cultural and political crackdowns, which started under Khrushchev and intensified into the succeding administration, this crack would become inhabited by cultural and political dissidents, growing ever wider from frequent 'stay-overs' by semi-dissidents and progressive bureaucrats. Finally, this crack would bring the Soviet political edifice down.
103US Office of Current Intelligence. The Soviet writer and Soviet cultural policy. 1959, p. iv. 32
The End of Cultural Thaw and Brezhnev Reaction
The Manege Affair
The key turning point for Khrushchev's cultural Thaw was an art exhibition which opened in the Manege exhibition hall on December 1st, 1962. Amidst of the steady decline of Khrushchev's political authority both at home and abroad, this event became the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
By the beginning of the 1960s, the containment of the liberal intelligentsia, in particular the creative portions of it, became a serious concern for Khrushchev and his administration. Failures in the international political arena – the Cuban missile crisis and the Berlin wall – gave all the more reason for consolidating the ideological front at home. A series of concerned letters reporting ideological rot in the midst of the Soviet intelligentsia104, urging that sound measures be taken against the potential danger to the ideological stability of the state, were sent to Khrushchev and the presidium by the KGB105 in 1961. Following these recommendations, the poetry readings around the monument to Mayakovsky were forbidden on the grounds that they provided a platform for anti- Soviet propaganda. A group of underground poets who attended these meetings was arrested, and more crackdowns on students and the creative intelligentsia followed, but, to the great disappointment of the party conservatives and KGB leadership, Khrushchev was as unclear and inconsistent with respect to what was to be done as ever. At the party congress in 1961, Khrushchev delivered yet another speech directed against Stalin and his policies. Although this speech did not produce as much of a sensation this time, it did surprise and disorient conservative political elites. To the progressive intelligentsia, it brought hope of the likely continuation of the cultural Thaw; consequently, the Soviet cultural sphere continued to diversify and expand, despite the KGB's determination to bridle this process.
The years preceding the Manege exhibition – 1960-1962 – can easily be considered the most vibrant period of the Soviet cultural Thaw. Although poetry meetings around the Mayakovsky monument were banned, young poets continued to speak to their audiences via radio and television. In the fall of 1962, the Moscow Komsomol, with the support of the Sports Committee, organized a poetry evening in the Luzhniki Sport Arena, the largest arena in the country; incredibly, 14,000
104 See Gorjaeva,p. 315-325. 105 Zubok, p. 195. 33 people came to listen. Also with the support of the city Komsomol, youth cafés such as Youth, Aelita and Bluebird opened in Moscow. Democratically managed by student councils, these cafés offered many student underground bands, mostly playing jazz, opportunities to perform publicly. Often, these musical performances were followed by poetry readings and art exhibitions.106 Despite the increasingly tense relationship with the the West, the policy of cultural diplomacy continued, which meant that many Soviet writers, journalists, film makers, musicians and theater groups traveled in the United States, Italy and other European countries, while their Western counterparts toured the Soviet Union. The greatest victory for the liberal creative intelligentsia was likely the all- liberal governing board of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union, which was elected by secret vote in 1962. Following this development, even the more conservative literary publications became more open to daring, “formalistic” work. In the fall, Novy Mir, with the approval of Khrushchev himself, published Sozhenitsyn's One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich—a story about life in one of Stalin's prison camps.
By the optimistic members of the intelligentsia, these developments were interpreted as good signs despite Khrushchev's continuous fluctuation between 'thaws' and 'frosts,' he tended in favor of the former. Emboldened by this realization, many artists let down their guard. Talking to students and professors at the Sorbonne, for example, one of the poets of the shestidesyatniki generation, Andrei Voznesenky, called Akhmatova, Babel and Pasternak the best Soviet writers. In an interview to Italian newspapers, Vasily Aksyonov, one of the writers of the new generation, proclaimed that he possessed an inexplicable fascination with the United states.107 Another such optimist – Alexandr Tvardovsky – during his discussion of the future of Soviet literature with Khrushchev, openly expressed the opinion that party censorship had become obsolete in the new changing context, and boldly suggested to the head of the Soviet state that it was about time to lift it. Even more unbelievable, Tvardovsky was confident that his recommendation would be heeded.108 Thus, despite the growing concerns of the KGB and its seriousness about bringing Thaw-enabled cultural processes under control, the “outrage” in the Soviet cultural field continued.
To the great disappointment of the conservative party and cultural elites109, Khrushchev was not
106 Zubok, p. 197. 107 Zubok, p. 203. 108 Zubok, p. 200. 109 In identifying the sides in the struggle over Soviet cultural policy, one should not forget about old cultural elites. The severe attacks to which Socialist Realism was subjected in the late 1950s and early 1960s threatened not only the life-long accomplishments of the so-called Soviet Academic artists. They also threatened to limit, if not deny them, the privileges that they had enjoyed when Socialist Realism reigned. Conservative cultural elites therefore had just as much at stake as conservative political elites. And, as has been mentioned, under Socialist Realism, cultural elites were treated 34 nearly as interested in culture as he was in agriculture. It was becoming increasingly clear that a well-framed show-and-tell event was needed in order to draw the Soviet leader's attention to the dangerous trends in Soviet art; the Manege exhibition was precisely such an attempt. To make this event work, it had to be appropriately framed. The recent failures in foreign diplomacy110 and the ongoing public debate concerning the new generation and its relationship with the older one – the problem of fathers and sons111 – provided the perfect context! Exploiting Khrushchev's sense of political insecurity, the conservative elites hurried to link the decline of Soviet political influence in the international arena and the failures to contain cultural liberalism at home. During the time when the Soviet military was retreating from Cuba, Vladimir Serov, Evgheny Vuchetich and other leading representatives of the Socialist Realist school of Soviet painting sent Khrushchev a letter about the political danger of formalism. According to this letter, foreign ideological forces had been infiltrating Soviet culture through art, film and literature, in particular through the aesthetics of formalism. The letter insisted that, in order to rescue Soviet art and stabilize Soviet ideology, it was time to put cultural policies from the period between 1946 and 1953 back in place.112
To drive the point home, such Cold War rhetoric relied on a notion of generational conflict, suggesting that foreign enemies targeted the weakest link of Soviet society—the young, who had not yet matured enough ideologically to be able to resist the poison of liberal ideas. By infecting the sons, the enemies of the Soviet state planned to antagonize them against the fathers and make them rebel.113 This framing was perfectly timed to resonate with the public debate about the new generation and its relationship to the old one, which was initiated by the Soviet literati in the early 1960s. This debate mostly revolved around the following question: “Who was the new young hero of Soviet literature? What changes could one perceive between the young people of the 1960s and their parents? What did the younger generation believe in?”114Despite the intuition of the liberal intelligentsia and Western analysts that the new generation was radically different from that of their parents with respect to their attitudes toward personal responsibility and critical thinking, and, moreover, that it felt contempt for the generation that supported Stalinism, the opinion polls failed to support even the claim that there was a generational profile.115 However, formulating the question of generational differences in terms of the conflict between fathers and sons, and associating sons as political elites. 110 The Berlin Wall (1961), and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). 111 Zubok, pp. 206-209. 112 Zubok, p. 209. 113 Zubok, pp. 206-208. 114 Zubok, pp. 206-208. 115 Zubok, p. 207. 35 with the liberal creative intelligentsia, suddenly made the political aspect of cultural liberalism visible to Khrushchev: in this conflict, which was ultimately over political legitimacy, he was most certainly not one of the sons, and was therefore in danger of being dethroned. It seemed that finally, after years of failing, those interested in ending the Thaw had a good chance of succeeding.
On November 26th, just a few days before the Manege exhibition, an exhibition of Soviet abstract art opened in a wing of the House of Teachers, just off the Taganka square in Moscow. This exhibition featured sculptures by Ernst Neizvestny and the paintings of some members of the Beliutin group.116 This event received was well-publicized in Western media—both in newspapers and on television. Such enthusiastic support of the Soviet 'formalist tendencies' by the foreign media definitely lent credence to the concerns expressed by Serov and others in their letter. At the Politburo meeting shortly after the opening of the exhibition, Khrushchev exploded in a tirade against formalism in Soviet art: he even threatened arrests and to revoke the results of recent elections in artistic unions.117 Nonetheless, on November 30th, Beliutin received a call from the head of the party department on culture with a request to transfer their works from the House of Teachers to Manege exhibition hall, where these could be examined by Soviet leaders. To Beliutin and his fellow artists, this was a sign that formalism was about to be recognized by the Soviet state. But, in fact, nothing could have been further from the truth.
When Khrushchev entered the exhibition hall, he was well prepared for action: reportedly, the first question he asked was: “So, where here do you keep sinners and where saints?”118 His response to what he found inside the exhibition hall stunned even those who were accustomed to his unrefined ways. He rushed from one room to another, haranguing the artists and threatening them with exile, arrest and hard labor; he called the exhibited artworks “dog shit” and their creators “pederasts.” This was the kind of humiliation that the liberal creative intelligentsia was certain would not be possible after the initiation of the Thaw.119
The exhibition lasted only 25 minutes. The artists who participated were expelled from the party and the Artists' Union; they lost their jobs, and had their works “arrested”; even the deceased
116 A group of artists that gathered around Ilya Beliutin. The group was experimenting with abstract form and a variety of painting techniques. 117 Zubok, p. 210. 118 “Где у вас тут праведники и где грешники?” (From Tamara Tsereteli's interview with one of the witnesses of the event Nina Moleva ( the widow of Beliutin). “ Nina Moleva: “Razvrom v Manege- pobeda Suslova.” Kul'tura, 30 November, 2012. <
'formalists' did not escape the wrath of Khrushchev—Chagall, Malevich, Kandinsky, Rodchenko and Gabo were all removed from display yet again and stored away for almost two decades.120 Purges resumed on those involved in radio, television, art institutes and the guild of graphic artists, making it clear that the Manege incident marked the beginning of the end of the Thaw and that the promises of change that Khrushchev's secret speech contained would not be fully realized.
On December 17th, slightly less than three weeks after the Manege exhibition, Khrushchev gathered 400 writers, artists, filmmakers, critics and cultural apparatchiks in the reception hall at Lenin Hills. In an informal setting – the guests were seated at small tables and food was served – Khrushchev presented his thoughts about the new trends in Soviet art. His preferences were quite clear: Leonardo da Vinci was praised for his clear and understandable style121; folk songs and the lyrical songs of Soviet composers for their easily recognizable melodies; Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and Uzbek folk dances for their smoothness of movement and decency.122 Correspondingly, the abstract painting of Boris Zhutovsky, the sculptures of Neizvestny, jazz music and the twist were severely criticized for their lack of a clear message, melody and decency respectively. “Let us support the old ways!” was the message of the leader. Poet Yevtushenko's attempts to defend the “new ways” were brutally interrupted by Khrushchev and discarded. Although the relatively informal setting of the meeting suggested that the method of comradely persuasion was not abandoned, the possibility dialogue between the progressive intelligentsia and the state had clearly been foreclosed.
In March 1963, another meeting between the state and its intelligentsia took place, this time leaving no ambiguity regarding the future of the cultural Thaw. The receptacle of Khrushchev's wrath this time was the poet Andrei Voznesensky—one of the key symbolic figures of the shestidesyatniki. Voznesensky made the mistake of opening his address with the following: “Just like my favorite poet, my mentor, Vladimir Mayakovsky, I am not a member of the communist party.”123 This was only the first half of the intended statement, but Khrushchev would not let Voznesensky finish. He interrupted with: “Not being a member of the party is nothing to be proud of! [...] Do you represent our people, or slander our people? I cannot peacefully listen to those who praise our enemies! [...] We have
120 Zubok, p.211. 121 “Вы на его картины посмотрите... он итальянец, я не был в Италии, а смотрю – и все понятно. Почему? Потому что с душой рисовал!” (Look at his paintings... he is an Italian; I have never been in Italy, but when I look at them, everything is understandable! Why? Because he painted with his soul!” (Translation mine) cited in Minchionok, Dmirty. “Kak nam bylo strashno!” In Ogoniok, no. 52, 2008 <
produced certain conditions, but we will not tolerate anti-Soviet propaganda! Not a party member! Look at him! He wants to create a party of those who are not party members! No, you are a member of a party, but it is not the same one that I belong to!”124
When Voznesensky managed to utter his full opening sentence – “Just like my favorite poet, my mentor, Vladimir Mayakovsky, I am not a member of the Communist party, but just like him, I cannot imagine my life, my poetry, and every word without Communism” – Khrushchev exploded: “Lie, lie! All of this is a lie! […] I have had it! You can say that the Thaw is over! It is not even the morning frost! For you and your ilk it will be real frost! We are not the ones who were a part of the Petőfi group! We are the ones who helped crush the Hungarians!”125
Voznesensky had fallen out of favor before the March meeting. This happened because of one of the interviews that he had given to a Polish newspaper, in which the poet stated that the new generation of Soviet citizens identified itself with the 20th and 22nd Congresses of the Soviet Communist party and was respectful of the revolutionary tradition of Leninism.126To the provocative question posed by the journalist – whether the new generation was spitting on the old one – Voznesensky carefully replied that there were remarkable revolutionary people in each generation.127 However, for the purpose of this meeting, neither the content of what Voznesensky had said in that interview, nor the intention behind it had really mattered. Khrushchev, concerned about his political standing, was doing just what the conservative party elites wanted him to do: lashing out against the liberal cultural intelligentsia, the rebellious sons; Voznesensky was simply made an example of, as the embodiment of the enemy.
This meeting in the amphitheater of the House of the Unions was decisive in alienating the liberal intelligentsia from the state. Khrushchev's tone, his ignorance and his open bullying sent a message that was difficult to misunderstand—the Thaw was officially over. Followed this, purges were resumed and the infamous 'prorabotki' – humiliating and self-debasing self-criticism – taking the form of public “confessions,” or private apologetic letters to the leader. The big names, such as Voznesensky, Evtushenko, Neizvestny and Aksionov, were pardoned, provided that they acknowledged their “mistakes” and apologized. Others were expelled from creative unions and lost their jobs. Some of these took small jobs on the side, while others adopted a harder line by going
124 Zubok, p. 214. 125 “Нет, довольно. Можете сказать, что теперь уже не оттепель и не заморозки – а морозы. Да, для таких будут самые жестокие морозы. Мы не те, которые были в клубе , а мы те, которые помогали разгромить венгров.” (Translation mine) cited in Minchionok, “Kak nam bylo strashno!” 126 Zubok, pp. 213-214. 127 Zubok, p. 214. 38 underground.
At the Central Committee plenum in June 1963, Khrushchev proposed to abolish salary increases for scholars and scientists with degrees and professed his faith in the working class.128 T h e i ntelligentsia had clearly fallen out of favor with the regime and the cultural revolution that it had committed itself to was now in the process of dissolution. However, as has already been mentioned in the previous chapter, the forces and processes that the Thaw had set in motion could not simply be wiped out. Instead, the attempts to tighten the ideological control rendered an impossibility the revival of a freethinking intelligentsia that was morally committed to Soviet communism.129 Despite Khrushchev's proclamation that the cultural Thaw was over, it was not; it simply went underground and out of official view. In other words, the Manege affair and the political brouhaha that it provoked gave birth to unofficial Soviet culture, which would flourish in capitals, especially in Leningrad and Moscow, until the mid 1980s, when the policy of Glasnosti would allow it to once again emerge publicly.
Probably the most tragic fact about the Manege affair was that it broke out over a misunderstanding: the artists thought that by exhibiting their progressive works they were helping Khrushchev to fight conservative forces, but Khrushchev, “alerted by the cold war crises,” interpreted the exhibition as “an attempt from inside to humiliate him and undermine his power and reputation.”130 Unfortunately, Khrushchev's firmness in dealing with the unruly intelligentsia in the aftermath of the Manege exhibition could not save his political reputation. In October 1964, he was forced to step down from his post and was replaced by his seemingly less ambitious and more party oriented protégé Leonid Brezhnev.
Stagnation: A Historical and Political Overview of the Period
Just as with the period of Khrushchev's reign, the years of Brezhnev's administration have earned a vividly descriptive sobriquet—“Stagnation.” At the time that Brezhnev, together with Nikolay Podgorny and Alexei Kosygin, assumed the leadership of the Soviet state, many citizens felt relieved and hopeful for the long awaited stability of institutions and consistency in both internal and external policy.131 128 Zubok, pp. 219-220. 129 Zubok, p. 224. 130 Zubok, p. 195. 131 Service, p. 378. 39
However, in the mid 1970s this sentiment gave way to an acute nostalgia for the the chaotic and confusing decade that preceded Brezhnev's era. To model the pace of economic, political and social change during the “Stagnation,” Christopher Read uses the following compelling illustration: If a person fell asleep in the 1960s and slept until about 1985, upon awakening, he or she would have found that relatively little had changed: the prices for bus fares, goods in shops, theater tickets, and museum admission had remained largely the same; the frequency of public transport had not improved, and the same ideas about acceptable and unacceptable behavior in public were still held.132
What likely captures the spirit of Brezhnev's understanding of the process of stabilization best is the policy known as “stability of cadres.” In 1965, Brezhnev proclaimed the regime's trust in its cadres and in effect married all contemporary party officials and bureaucrats to their posts till death do them part. Brezhnev was neither a visionary nor a charismatic leader, and was honest in acknowledging this.133 Unlike Khrushchev, and most likely informed by his predecessor's example, Brezhnev avoided confrontations over legislation and conscientiously built up support from inside the party apparatus. Ensuring that his colleagues and members of the nomenklatura – the body of party-approved officials in key administrative position in all spheres of the country – were forever settled in their positions was a certain way of securing their favorable attitude and loyalty. While the word “nomenklatura” was an invention of the 1920s, it was really in the 1970s that it came to mean the privileged caste.
An understandable decision from the strategic point of view, the policy of “stability of cadres” certainly had negative repercussions for the political, economic and cultural development of the country. First, it turned the Soviet state into a gerontocracy. Brezhnev's era saw the unprecedented continuity of office for government and party elites. Brezhnev himself served a term second only to Stalin—eighteen years. By 1980, the average age of the central political leadership was sixty-nine years.134 Although seventy percent of the party members joined after 1953, under Brezhnev only seventeen percent of the Central Committee and Central Auditing Commission combined came from this generation.135 This meant that the understanding of economics and politics that the majority of the country's decision makers shared was formed before 1953, so change was most 132 Read, pp. 180-181. 133 See Service, p. 384. 134 Service, p. 404. 135 McCauley, Martin. “The Brezhnev era.” In McCauley, The Soviet Union 1917-1991. Longman, 1993, pp. 286-344. (p. 293.) 40 certainly not what they were comfortable with. In fact, it was stabilization that they were interested in, or, more precisely, keeping everything as it once was. Because they kept faithful to this ambition, in the early 1980s, the Politburo turned into a “world of its own,”136 oblivious to the external world and ignored by it in response.
No major administrative reform had been launched since 1964. Nor was there a serious attempt at reforming the steadily declining Soviet economy, except for an attempt by Alexey Kosygin to restructure industrial planning in a way that would give more managerial freedom to producers. Despite the visibly beneficial effects that Kosygin's experimentation with the relative decentralization of industrial production had on the Soviet economy,137 this was put to an end in 1970, not least of all because of the Prague events of 1968. A new twist on Kosygin's reform was being planned in the early 1970s, but in 1973, owing to the increase of oil prices on the international market, low internal production numbers ceased to be an issue for the Kremlin leadership: the steadily decreasing performance of national industry and agriculture could then be compensated by purchasing food, machinery and consumer goods from abroad with the money earned from the export of natural resources.138
Another problem that “stability of cadres” fostered was widespread corruption at all levels. The Soviet centralized economy, in which a large proportion of national output was absorbed by military-industrial expenditures, was characterized by a continuous imbalance between the supply of consumer goods and services and the demand for them.139 Such a situation offered a whole host of opportunities for nomenklatura: no longer fearing for their positions and having access to the country's resources, they began building power networks within their districts, regions and republics.140 Corruption under Brezhnev reached unprecedented proportions and assumed various forms: besides bribery, speculation, petty theft and the embezzlement of funds, there were whole production lines running secretly under the supervision of local party leadership.141 A sophisticated and well functioning mechanism of unofficial allocation of governmentally produced goods and
136 McCauley, p. 293. 137 The industrial output of the eighth five-year plan (1965-1970) increased by 485%, while agricultural by 171%. Basically, the country was producing four times as much as during the previous four five year plans. (“Reformy kontsa 1960-1970 godov: sushnost', metody, tseli, itogi.” In Dusenbajev, Ajdar, Voevodina Natalja, Ekonomicheskaja istorija Rossii. <
By discouraging reforms and encouraging corruption, Brezhnev's personnel-oriented approach to politics invited further social stratification of the nominally egalitarian Soviet society. At the top of Brezhnev's society was of course nomenklatura; those who belonged to this group enjoyed preferential treatment in everything from medical care provided by the best doctors, to softer legal measures in cases of administrative abuses of power.144 At the bottom of the social hierarchy of the so-called “state of workers and peasants” were Soviet peasants, who, despite significantly improved living conditions in villages, were still the least socially protected group: they received the lowest wages, could be forcefully relocated, as in the case of the so called “future-less villages,” and were denied full residency rights in cities. Despite the latter, many of them did move to cities in search of better opportunities and became a new industrial underclass – the limitchiki – who lived beyond the city boundaries and worked unskilled, low-paid, low status and physically demanding jobs.145
The workers were not faring much better in terms of their civil rights; in the 1970s they stood little chance against factory management. In 1979, the Moscow civil rights watch group, also known as the Moscow Helsinki group, after the Helsinki agreement, published a report about commonplace violations of the right to work in the Soviet Union, where they exposed the problem of low wages, drawing attention to different payment rates for the same work in different locations, and various forms of forced and semi-forced unpaid labor, such as overtime hours, subbotniks, and the dispatchment of groups of workers to fields to help kolkhozniks with the harvest.146 In the same report, the state trade union organization was called “a tool for direct subordination of working
142 Legal measures against instances of economic crime were very slack and often legislation was ignored altogether. See Charles Schwartz: “Economic crime in the USSR” (In: International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 30, April 1981). In fact, Brezhnev himself was reported to have said; “Nobody lives just on his wages” (In Service, p. 384). 143 Kelly, p. 254 144 Schwartz, p. 284. 145 Kelly, p. 252. 146 Moskovskaja helsinskaja gruppa. Narushenie sotsial'no-ekonomicheskih prav cheloveka v SSSR. Pravo na trud. (1979.) << http://www.mhg.ru/history/15D71AB>> 42 citizens.”147 Soviet officially recognized professional unions were state and party organs concerned with issues of production, work discipline and ideological education, rather than the improvement of work and living conditions of the workers.148 The Soviet law didn't allow strikes and any attempt at collective protest was snipped in the bud; the same was true of organizing independent trade unions.149
Thus, the fact that the Soviet Union in the 1970s to the 1980s was not a country of workers and peasants was quite obvious to the majority of its citizens. Just as obvious was the fact that Soviet society was not at all egalitarian. In a book entitled Socialism and neo-Stalinism, which was published in New York in 1981, Alexander Zimin wrote that Soviet society was not in the least socialist and that its antagonistic classes were only too apparent: the exploiters – members of nomenklatura and the exploited – prisoners, peasants, workers and the intelligentsia.150 Against the backdrop of political and economical stagnation, flourishing corruption and growing social stratification, the ideological proclamations about social equality, individual sacrifice for the sake of the common good, and the unity between the party and the people appeared jarringly inappropriate. The increasing discrepancy between the official ideological discourse and private experience resulted in a cultural condition for which Alexei Yurchak, paying tribute to Fredric Jameson, coined the term “late socialism.”
The Late Socialist Condition
Late socialism is a condition in which ideology turns into hegemony of representation, which, perceived as both unbelievable and immutable, gives birth to a cynical and politically apathetic subject; at the core of said subject's relation to power and its official representation lay strategies of simulated and not earnest support for the official ideology. In other words, the cynical subject of late socialism does not take the symbols of the ideological system at their face value, but, at the same time, seeing these symbols as omnipresent and unchangeable, chooses to pretend that he or she does not see the falsity of the official claims.
147 Moskovskaja helsinskaja gruppa. Narushenie. 148 Alexeeva, Ludmila. Istorija inakomyslija v SSSR. Novejshij period. Vest', 1992, p. 316. 149 The first independent trade union to be organized was the free trade union in Donetsk. It lasted for only a couple of months, at which time its organizer, Klebanov, was arrested and placed in a psychiatric hospital upon being declared mentally ill. (see Alexeeva, p. 316). 150 Alexeeva, p. 321. 43
The hegemony of representation is a system akin to Gramsci's apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes and Althusser's ideological state apparatus, but unlike these it “is not simply a collection of diverse and manifold institutions, discourses, and practices united under one dominant ideology,” but a system in which “all official institutions, discourses, and practices are always-already produced and manipulated from the center as one unique discourse.”151 It “can be visualized as a symbolic order of tightly interconnected signifiers that were exclusively state controlled and permeated most aspects of everyday life in the official sphere.152” Verbal formulas, visual images, mass rituals, topics in the media, literature, popular culture and tightly structured events of daily public life such as the use of public transport, work, study and shopping all serve as examples here.153 What's more, all signifiers in the hegemony of representation are connected inter- textually and inter-discursively. As Yurchak puts it: “Each slogan which appeared on a facade or a poster was semantically connected not only with most other slogans, but also with the whole symbolic order of interconnected signifiers.”154
The effect that this tightly organized ideological order of signifiers had on most citizens was twofold: first, it appeared absolutely severed off from reality – a form devoid of any real content – and second, it was omnipresent and seemed immutable—everyone was confronted by the nauseatingly familiar master signifiers at all times and was sure that everyone else throughout the vast territories of the USSR was experiencing the same. Yurchak proposes that the only reasonable response to the official representation of reality, perceived as both ridiculously at odds with the experienced reality and unshakeable, was to ignore it. Ignoring, however, did not mean not participating in the official rituals of the Soviet life: instead, it meant participating in them only formally. Consider the following example Yurchak gives in order to illustrate what formal participation in the Labor Day parade in Leningrad entailed:
The apotheosis of such parades in Leningrad was to walk across the central Palace Square in front of the city's party leaders, who stood on a high platform and waved back at the marching masses. People shouted hoorays as official slogans blared from the loudspeakers, and the thundering roar of hundreds of thousands of cheers sounded impressive and unanimous. […] On closer look, however the parade's display of 'unanimous support' broke down into a multitude of parallel events. The parade itself, being perceived as an unavoidable official event, became also an easygoing, exciting, and happy celebration during which many norms of public behavior were suspended: one could scream loudly, be drunk in public, and exchange playful remarks with
151 Yurchak, Alexei. “The cynical reason of late socialism: power, pretense and the anekdot.” In Public Culture. 9, 1997 pp. 161-188. (p. 166.) 152 Yurchak, p. 166. 153 Yurchak, p. 167. 154 Yurchak, p. 167. 44
complete strangers as long as one carried and shouted official slogans.155
Thus, to participate formally meant to appear to participate in the official event, while in fact turning it into a backdrop against which meaningful unofficial life unfolded in a series of “parallel events.” Attending a Komsomol meeting, but in fact spending the whole time reading a novel or playing cards under the table is another example of formal participation, when an unavoidable fact of Soviet life is used as an opportunity to engage in unofficial and personally meaningful activities. Yurchak's conceptualization of the relationship between the late socialist subject and official Soviet discourse makes tangible the fact that the apparent conformity of the majority of the Soviet population during the last decades of the Soviet Union does not necessarily mean that this majority did not understand the lies of the official discourse. Nor does it mean that they supported the ideological status quo. This majority, simply adapted to the cognitive dissonance they were confronted with by learning to pretend not to recognize the preposterousness of official claims. This strategy, which Yurchak calls “pretense misrecognition,” in combination with the cultural production of parallel events, allowed individuals to both be left alone by the system and to lead a life as psychologically normal as possible.
For Yurchak, a good indicator of misrecognition being the dominant mode of normal subjects' relation to the official reality is the impressive corpus of political anecdotes that emerged during late Soviet socialism.156 Contesting the view that the practice of telling anecdotes should be understood as an instance of political resistance, he proposes that the ritual of “reeling out anecdotes” served primarily as a conscience relief measure: by sharing a political anecdote, an individual both attested to a very good understanding of the ideological incongruences and to the fact that he or she had good reason to keep pretending. Thus, the ideological subject of late Soviet socialism is not a naive, but a cynical one, characterized not by false consciousness, but by pretense mis-recognition.157
In addition to providing a helpful lens through which to better understand the predominant political apathy of late Soviet socialist society and the continuous tendency toward minimizing time spent in the official sphere and maximizing unofficial or private time, Yurchak's model provides the basis for the claim that the majority of late socialist Soviet subjects, in his words “the normal subjects,” possessed a sensitivity for implied criticism of the system, i.e. they could grasp and decipher even
155 Yurchak, p. 164. 156 The Brezhnev period is also known as “the golden age of Soviet anecdote”. (see Zand, Arie. Political jokes from Leningrad. Silvergirl, 1982. (cited in Yurchak, p. 176.)) 157 Yurchak, pp. 174-175. 45 very subtle and indirect references to the system's deficiencies. I will return to this in chapter four.
From Parallel Events to Parallel Culture
What remains to be mentioned about Yurchak's late socialist Soviet society is that it consisted of three types of subjects: besides “the normal subject,” whom Yurchak characterizes as “a person who had learned from experience that he or she could lead a 'normal' enough life – self-manageable, enjoyable – away from the official sphere, provided he or she took no active interest in it, i.e., did not get too involved in it either as a supporter or a critic,”158 there is the activist and the dissident. The strategy of pretense mis-recognition is applicable only to the “normal subject's” relation to official ideology; neither the activist, nor the dissident pretend to mis-recognize: an activist in fact believes the official claims, while the dissident openly confronts them by consistently exposing their untruthfulness. Although differences between these types of subjects in terms of their responses to the official discourse are clear, there are also some similarities, or rather continuities; For instance, the logic of the “parallel event”, associated with the “normal” subject, bears a striking resemblance to the logic of unofficial Soviet culture, the realm of the dissident: both are driven by the desire for autonomy from the official sphere, which, in turn, stems from deep dissatisfaction with the system and the perceived inability to change it.159
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's social theory of fields, Ann Komaromi conceptualizes unofficial Soviet culture as a cultural field that emerged out of the larger context of Soviet society. The principal feature of this field is the “autonomy from official discourses and institutions assumed by all who act on the field.”160According to Komaromi, the Soviet unofficial cultural field developed in response to the Brezhnev administration's renewed hard line in cultural policy making it nearly impossible for the most liberal and free-thinking members of the Soviet intelligentsia to play by the rules. Consequently, they dropped out of the game to “create their own on the side.”161
158 Yurkchak, p. 164 n4. 159 Even in the case of the dissidents, who were but a fraction of the unofficial Soviet culture, there was no clear program for change: “The opposition enunciated its protest in the very language of the system against which it protested. Put simply, rather than advancing its own political platform that would offer an alternative type of regime, the dissidents’ critique focused on the internal imperfections of the Communist system itself: whether there was a betrayal of Lenin’s original vision of the proletarian state or, in less lofty terms, whether the state violated the rights guaranteed to citizens by the Soviet constitution” ( Peter Steiner, p. 4). 160 Komaromi, Ann. “The unofficial field of late Soviet culture.” In Slavic Review, vol. 66, no. 4, 2007, pp. 605-629. (p. 607.) 161 Komaromi, p. 615. 46
As has already been mentioned, an open dialogue between the regime and its creative intelligentsia was brusquely ended by Khrushchev at the meeting in the amphitheater of the House of the Unions, in March 1963. Although in the beginning of his political ascension, Brezhnev made some concessions to the steadily expanding educated classes by officially recognizing abstract art, allowing some previously banned films to appear on the screen and letting Pravda publish editorials and articles calling for the reform of Soviet communism in the spirit of “eternal human values,” and even for “expanding the ethos of the intelligentsia among the entire Soviet people,”162 Brezhnev's policy of political stabilization presupposed the restoration of the ideological base of the Soviet totalitarian state, which implied an intensification of political control over the cultural sphere.
In 1963, the short-lived discussion between high ranking liberals and conservatives concerning the function of art in in the Soviet state ended in the latter's victory, thus putting an end to the brief attempt to devise a better system for regulating Soviet censorship. At the plenary session of the Central Committee, which took place in June 1963, it was admitted that Soviet culture has gotten completely out of hand and that this crisis had to be corralled before greater harm was done to the security of the Soviet state.163 It was therefore affirmed that the party-mindedness of Soviet literature and art was of decisive importance and, in order to ensure that the creative intelligentsia complied, a triumvirate involving Glavlit (the General Directorate for Protection of State Secrets in Press), the KGB and the Central Committee of the Communist party was shortly established.
As anticipated, the role that Glavlit took upon itself stretched far beyond the protection of state secrets; in reality it acted as the ideological watch-dog, ensuring strict implementation of the party line. Until 1969, Glavlit and its local organs were in charge of all preliminary censorship in the USSR. A 1967 government manual for the the censoring procedure contained such a variety of ideological directives and limitations that virtually any art work could be made to belong to the category of “ideologically unreliable.”164 Besides filtering texts for their ideological soundness, Glavlit was also responsible for reporting all “questionably” minded authors to the KGB. Cued by Glavlit, the KGB – at first the directorate dealing with counter-intelligence and internal political control and since 1968 a special directorate for artistic, religious and political dissension – carried out further investigations into dangerous artistic and cultural trends. The KGB reports were then sent to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party for consideration.
162 Zubok, p. 260. 163 Goryajeva, Tatyana. Politicheskaja tsenzura v SSSR. 1917-1991. Rosspan, 2002, p. 315. 164 Goryajeva, p. 329. 47
Writers responded to the return of Glavlit with a series of protests against its increased power, combined with the persistent absence of clear regulations with regard to its activity. Solzhenitsyn wrote a letter to the fourth all-union convention of Soviet writers, in which he drew attention to the damage that the tyranny of political censorship had afflicted upon Russian literature. He proposed that all censorship in the context of fiction be abolished, because literature cannot develop in a space limited by what can and what can not be written about, especially when these categories are never stable. Interestingly, he also asked that the statute of the Union of Soviet Writers includes a means of protection for all members that the Union can guarantee in the case of unjust accusations from the side of Glavlit.
Probably the most remarkable instance of the intelligentsia's protest against censorship was a draft of a law concerning the freedom of obtaining and circulating information, sent to the Central Committee during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. In essence, this document, which was signed by over a hundred people – artists and scientists – advocated the abolishment of all preliminary censorship and strict regulation of the activity of the censoring bodies through the clear delineation of what is prohibited, so that anything that does not fall into the above category, should be allowed. Needless to say, the regime did not take these gestures well. Its response to Solzhenitsyn's letter was an organized campaign against the author in mass media, and the response to the draft of the freedom of information law entailed only increasing vigilance on behalf of Glavlit and the KGB.
In 1969, the straight jacket policing structure of ideological control over the official cultural field was cranked up a notch: the responsibility for ideological soundness of cultural production was placed directly upon the shoulders of chief editors, and other leaders of cultural groups and institutions, which meant that, from that point on, literary and other journals, film studios and theaters were to carry out preliminary censorship themselves. Although in a more liberal climate such a decision could be evaluated as a step toward greater artistic freedom, in what Brezhnev's administration described as “conditions of severe ideological struggle,” this measure simply turned the entire official cultural field into a Glavlit.165
The consolidation of the system of political censorship was only one aspect of the new regime's policy of reigning in the new Soviet intelligentsia; weeding liberally-minded individuals from key administrative positions in the cultural sphere, intense ideological working through, or 'prorabotki,'
165 Goryajeva, pp. 338-339. 48 political trials for “pedagogical” purposes such as the trial of Joseph Brodsky in 1964 or of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1965-1966,166 hounding in the official media, and severe punitive measures, such as labor camps and internalization in psychiatric clinics, and ultimately exile for those unwilling to comply, all constituted the “new deal” that the Brezhnev administration had to offer the liberal creative intelligentsia.
In a note sent by the KGB to the Central Committee in December 1965, the creative intelligentsia was accused of anti-Soviet activities, hostility toward the Soviet life-style, antagonism toward common people, bourgeois-mindedness, and other moral anti-socialist “sins.” The Committee's attention was drawn to the fact that literary texts published in Novy Mir were “politically harmful” and of dubious literary value, that the journal Yunosti (Youth) did not heed criticism and that works of Soviet writers were being published in reactionary bourgeois journals abroad.167 As Goryajeva points out, the tone of this note, as well as its rhetoric, bear an eerie resemblance to similar documents produced between 1930 and early 1950s. Developing new strategies of containment for the change-oriented intelligentsia, the new regime was drawing inspiration from the obvious political experience, which, considering the career backgrounds of most members of Brezhnev's administration, is hardly surprising. To use the metaphor of fathers and sons again, Brezhnev's era was the era of fathers – officially, that is – who had finally successfully reasserted their power and were determined to restore order to their present and dignity to their past by putting everything back in place. This attempt to undo Khrushchev's Thaw by reversing time gave birth to the following joke:What do Brezhnev’s eyebrows represent? Stalin’s mustache at a higher level.168
The metaphor of fathers and sons helps to better frame the genesis of the unofficial Soviet cultural field, at least the one proposed by Komerami, i.e., the sons dropping out of their fathers' game in order to invent their own. As already mentioned, the first migration from the official to unofficial cultural field occurred shortly after the Manege affair and Khrushchev's response to it. The second mass exodus of intelligentsia to the cultural underground took place shortly after the invasion of
166 Goryajeva, pp. 324-325. 167 Goryajeva, p. 325. 168 In the second half of the 1960s consistent attempts were made to rehabilitate Stalin: Brezhnev took Stalin's title of Secretary General and renamed the Presidium as, once again, the Politburo. All references to the atrocities of Stalinism were now routinely censored. One of the most grotesque examples was a plan to publish a long laudatory article in Pravda, accompanied by a large photograph, on the occasion of Stalin's 90th birthday, in December 1969. The events to commemorate the birth of the leader included a conference in his honor. Fortunately, East European leaders and the cultural and technical intelligentsia on the inside interceded and only a short article about the errors and perversions connected with the cult of personality was published. The laudatory article, however, did come out in a Mongolian newspaper Unen. Because of the 7 hour difference between Moscow and Ulan Bator, the decision to cancel the print did not reach the publishers in time (see Martin McCauley, p. 291). 49
Czechoslovakia, when all hope for socialism with a human face had to be abandoned. The generational metaphor also accounts for the unofficial cultural field's heterogeneous composition; not only did it include artists, authors, rock musicians and film makers, but also political and legal activists, historians, economists, engineers and natural scientists. This diversity is probably best represented in the body of self-published – samizdat – texts, which are likely the most significant material contribution by the unofficial culture of late Soviet socialism to history; this body of texts includes memoirs, historical research papers, economic treatises, novels, poetry, audio tapes and news bulletins.
But what was the unofficial field of Soviet culture and how did it relate to the official one? What united this heterogeneous group of players and thus positioned them on the field of unofficial culture was their common belief in autonomy. However, unlike in Bourdieu's model of a cultural field, autonomy in the context of unofficial Soviet culture should be understood not in relation to other social fields, namely as autonomy from economic or political fields, but rather as autonomy from the official institutions and discourses. This game of autonomy – the game of the Soviet unofficial field – was played primarily by means of uncensored production, samizdat, and through the circulation of literary and academic texts, artworks, films and music. Other common practices characteristic of the unofficial field of Soviet culture included the organization of unofficial groups and social activities, the writing of open letters, public demonstrations and the engagement of readers in the reproduction and distribution of texts.
While these autonomous practices were common and the political dissidents and unofficial artists alike relied upon them, the notions they implied of what in fact constituted autonomy from the official ideology varied. “What distinguishes the field of [Soviet] unofficial culture from Bourdieu's autonomous field of culture,” writes Komerami, “is the plurality of conceptions of autonomy from Soviet ideology – from censorship or simply from autocratic use of power [...].”169 The former conception of aesthetic autonomy and artistic freedom, which according to Komeromi was best developed by literary critic and writer Andrei Sinyavsky, gave meaning to practices of unofficial art, while the latter, the autonomy of pure (legal) principle formulated by mathematician and poet Alexander Esenin-Volpin, gave weight to political and legal dissidence.
Komerami then proceeds to make an interesting point: the unofficial Soviet culture was as much constituted by its relation to the official culture as it was by its players' positions relative to each
169 Komerami, p. 620. 50 other.170 In other words, if one remains within the framework of Bourdieu's field theory, the unofficial Soviet culture, just as much as the official one, was a social field of conflict and competition; therefore, the best way to conceive of it would be not in terms of an oppositional, counter culture, as it is often presented, but rather in terms of a parallel, autonomous culture, not unlike the parallel Soviet economy.171
Another point that Komerami makes, and which is of relevance to this project, is that the borders between the unofficial and official cultural fields were permeable in a number of regards. First, many of the unofficial artists and political activists were employed in the official realm; for example, before the trial, Sinyavsky, besides publishing in samizdat and later in tamizdat under the pseudonym of Abram Tertz, was also an official literary critic, and Esenin-Volpin, when he wasn't composing unofficial poetry, or deliberating about the autonomy of legal principle, was a mathematician. Moreover, in the 1970s a new method of obtaining officially censored texts developed—the so called khamizdat. Literally “boor publishing,” this method involved people who had access to the texts confiscated by the KGB; these were usually children of highly placed Soviet bureaucrats.
Second, while the production of samizdat texts was certainly an occupation of unofficial artists and political dissidents,172 their distribution and in particular consumption encompassed a much larger network. In response to the increasing demand for samizdat texts, which resulted from the expanding vacuum in the officially available cultural production, new methods of reproduction and dissemination were employed, such as photography, which was used for reproducing and circulating literary texts as much as images; the services of professional typists, who significantly increased the output of paper copies; and sometimes, even, photocopying facilities, which started appearing in official institutions in the 1970s.173
Keeping an eye on the distribution of the censored texts became even more of a challenge when
170 Komerami, p. 625. To illustrate this point she gives an example of Viktor Krivulin's account of the 'second culture' in the USSR; a member of the unofficial cultural scene in Leningrad and also its historian, he writes that, in the early 1970s, the center of samizdat, and, thus, the “real” unofficial culture, moved to Leningrad. In Moscow, he writes that the border between official and unofficial culture was becoming less and less clear, while in Leningrad, the unofficial artist preserved the unofficial tradition best. Komerami interprets this move as Krivulin's attempt to increase his own cultural capital (Komerami, p. 625, 627). 171 Goryajeva suggests that exodus of “difficult” artists into the unofficial realm relieved pressure from the officials, and thus that unofficial Soviet culture served as a pressure valve, much like the unofficial economy (Goryajeva, p. 340.) 172 Because one of the ways samizdat distribution operated was by engaging readers both in reproduction and distribution, some samizdat texts were modified (see Komeromi, p. 624). Therefore, one could even say that some samizdat texts were produced by the readers and authored collectively. 173 Goryajeva, p. 343. 51 tape recorders became available to many Soviet citizens. Magnitizdat – magnetic publication, or audio tape recordings – became yet another form of samizdat, bringing prohibited music and the poetry that accompanied it to many homes. To make the task of the censorship apparatus even more tricky, samizdat works that managed to leak to the other side of the iron curtain and were published there often became the subject of radio programs aired by radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet union, such as, for instance, Radio Liberty.174 Thus, even though the possession and distribution of samizdat texts was dubbed an anti-Soviet activity and, thus, punished accordingly, the KGB had to exert a monumental effort in order to keep up with the intensity of unofficial exchange. The audiences for unofficial culture grew, especially in Moscow and Leningrad, and while information files on unofficial or difficult writers, musicians, artists, political and legal thinkers, directors, etc. were kept in the appropriate KGB directorate, the containment of the unofficial culture within its own borders became nearly impossible.
As public venues, such as the square around the Mayakovsky monument and the youth cafes, came to be closely monitored for anti-Soviet activities, the “other-thinkers” and their supporters moved to private spaces. Thanks to Khrushchev's housing reform, most Soviet citizens now had private apartments, which made the idea of the company easier to realize. Just like in the early years after Stalin's death, companies once again served as platforms for intellectual exchange, discussion, the sharing of unofficially produced and circulated texts, performances of unpublishable and 'unstageable' plays, exhibitions, readings and later, with the arrival of the first video cassette players, foreign film screenings. Importantly, companies gathered official and unofficial artists, writers and thinkers, and in the process defied the imposed divide between the official and unofficial Soviet cultural realms.
Moreover, it was typically in companies that “an impoverished, indigent artist” could find someone who “might be able to give him work”, “a persecuted nonconformist”– moral and material support, while an editor could become acquainted with a talented author. Many members of the creative Soviet intelligentsia, who openly embraced the “Thaw” and its causes, chose, for one reason or another in the aftermath of the resumed prophylactic measures against the imminent ideological subversion through culture (which marked the beginning of Brezhnev's cultural Stagnation), to avoid open confrontation with the regime; instead, they put their efforts into building a comfortable niche in which they could still remain within the system, i.e., on the right side of the KGB, but
174 Goryajeva, p. 342 and Steiner, Peter. “On samizdat, tamizdat, magnitizdat, and other strange words that are difficult to pronounce.” In Poetics Today, vol. 29, no. 4, 2009. 52 would not be subdued by it. These individuals held their openly dissident colleagues in great esteem and often saw it as their moral obligation to support them. One way of doing so was to help their more radical “brothers” with the procurement of art materials such as oil paint, marble, canvas, etc, which could only be obtained by members of the Artists' Union from specialized shops. In literary circles, the officially recognized authors, who worked as editors of literary journals, would routinely offer the “unpublishables” reviewing jobs and translations. They would also typically give feedback on texts that they could not possibly publish.175 Finally, support often meant just giving money, clothing and temporary housing.
The official artists who sympathized with the values and ideals of the unofficial culture, as well as the so-called enlightened reform-minded bureaucrats, who shared and supported the ideas of the political dissidents, often played a greater role in challenging the official culture and political status quo than the dissidents.176 As has already been mentioned, unofficial Soviet culture existed in parallel to the official one; it was a field of its own, whose agents played the game of autonomy with regard to official discourses and institutions. Even though one could certainly not underestimate the dangers that playing in the unofficial field entailed, as long as the players avoided being caught, playing in the unofficial field was in some respects easier—samizdat texts were not subject to censorship, so one could in fact communicate directly what one thought and experiment with form and content as much as one wished. The situation was very different for the artists, scientists and political functionaries who worked within the system under the close scrutiny of the Soviet state, but who, at the same time, sided with the ideas that circulated in samizdat. As with the majority of late Soviet subjects, they understood very well the falsity and ridiculousness of late Soviet ideology and the standards that it set for artistic production, but, unlike Yurchak's “normal subjects,” could not pretend to mis-recognize it, because they still considered themselves “the people of the 60s” and thus adhered to the moral values of shestidesytnichestvo, in particular, moral integrity, fidelity to the truth and the high calling of art.177 Therefore, for these unofficially minded official artists and institutionally positioned liberal intellectuals, the game was somewhat trickier: they had to play by the rules, but at the same time preserve their personal and artistic integrity. In order to do so, they had developed different strategies, which would allow them to confuse the censors and allow a daring work to appear publicly with as few corrections as possible. In the case of artistic work and texts, these strategies included the use of Aesopian language—a code of allusions to suggest parallels, inflections, especially on stage, and juxtapositions of image and
175 Laird, Sally. Voices of Russian Literature, 1999, pp. 30-33 (cited in Woll, pp. 620-621). 176 Service, p. 415. 177 See chapter one. 53 sound. These strategies, which are but a few of those employed by official artists, are central to this research project, and will be dealt with in more detail in chapter four.
Thus, Brezhnev's stabilization course and personnel-oriented approach to politics produced a situation that resulted in political and economic stagnation, social stratification and widely spread corruption. Despite General Secretary Brezhnev's claims that under his leadership the Soviet people entered the era of “developed socialism,” the period between the late 1960s and early 1980s is better captured by Yurchak's notion of “late socialism,” the key features of which include general political apathy, disbelief in official ideology, a default suspicion and skepticism toward everything official, and a tendency to maximize private time and minimize time spent in the official sphere.
While the relationship between the state and the intelligentsia soured toward the end of Khrushchev's era, under Brezhnev it entered a conflict phase. In response to the regime's uncompromising efforts to tighten the ideological bolts in the cultural apparatus, many members of the progressive intelligentsia chose to exit the field of official culture and formed their own alternative—the unofficial cultural realm. The policy of ideological stabilization in cultural production, executed through the triumvirate involving Glavlit, the KGB and the Central Committee, led to a situation in which the “official standard in no way satisfie[d] either the intellectual needs of the average person, nor the creative aspirations of the artist […].”178 Amidst such circumstances, many daring, talented and experimentally-minded artists, writers and intellectuals, quite understandably opted for samizdat. Descending into the cultural underground of samizdat not only liberated them from the burden of censorship – self-censorship being its worst manifestation – but also granted a certain status, because the other side of the default suspicion of anything official characteristic of the of late Soviet socialism was the enthusiastic embracing of anything that possessed an aura of unofficialdom. As dissident writer and playwright Ludmila Petrushevskaya put it: “If a play was widely advertised it meant it was not worth seeing, no one went. Whereas crowds and crowds would turn up for something that hadn't been advertised at all; everyone would hear about it by word of mouth.”179 Another good example is given by Golomshtok: The half empty halls of the ubiquitously publicized official exhibits, and the rooms packed full to bursting at any unofficial exhibition, are perhaps the clearest indicator of the moral status of the unofficial artist in the USSR, that 'privilege' for which almost any of his materially prospering colleagues will envy him.180
178 Golomshtok, p. 53. 179 Laird, p. 31 (cited in Woll, p. 620). 180 Golomshtok, p. 58. 54
Despite what the names suggest, the borders between unofficial and official Soviet cultures are often hard to make out. Although unofficial culture existed in parallel to the official one, through the well developed unofficial networks, its products managed to reach large general audiences, especially in Moscow and Leningrad. Through the support willingly offered to unofficial artists and intellectuals by the official ones, the unofficial culture was in fact supported by the official one. Moreover, the sheer existence of the unofficial culture, especially since the mid 1970s, often acted as an imposed incentive for the officials to allow the publication of mildly problematic works, because, alternatively these works would be published in samizdat.181
By the mid 1970s, it was the unofficial culture that dictated the artistic standards with which the official artists who cared about their reputation, and in many cases personal integrity, had to reckon with. Unlike their unofficial counterparts, these artists faced the delicate challenge of getting their work past the meat grinder of censorship without it losing most of its relevance. In order to accomplish this tricky task, the official artists had developed a repertoire of techniques and devices, which often allowed them to successfully circumvent the control of party functionaries and bureaucrats. By thus managing to 'smuggle' the ideas, values and voices of the unofficial culture into the official realm, these individuals managed to subvert the institution of Soviet censorship— the stronghold of Brezhnev's regime and the Soviet totalitarian system.
181 Woll, p. 621. 55
The New Language of Soviet animation. Aesthetic of Uslovnost' and the Curse of Uncontrollable Subtext.
Having considered the changing cultural, social and political contexts, all of which are important for building the interpretative frame through which I propose to “read” Andrei Khrzhanovsky's films, I would now like to turn to the changes that were taking place in the theory and practice of Russian animation between the late 1950s and early 1980s. In this chapter, I demonstrate how these aesthetic developments transformed the medium of animation and equipped it with potent poetic means of expression – a language – which allowed directors to engage with their historical reality in serious and critical ways, leaving the bodies responsible for censorship uncomfortably baffled.
At the turn of the 1960s, a new period in the development of Soviet animation began. Just as with Western- and Eastern-European animation some years earlier, Soviet animation became more timely and more engaged with contemporary problems and issues. It shifted its focus from the timelessness and remoteness of the epic to the contemporaneity and personal involvement of the modern tale. It changed its approach from didactic and moralistic to affective and philosophical. It became self-reflective, playful and curious about its own expressive possibilities. It became auteurist and ceased being merely for children.182
Reflecting upon this change in 1985, Fyodor Khitruk, whose film A Story of One Crime (1961) is said to have inaugurated a new phase in the history of Soviet animation, wrote: It is hard to establish the cause of this evolution: was it the artists who engendered a new approach to stylistics, or was it the time itself that dictated the necessity of new forms and means of expression? What is absolutely certain, however, is that this new phase was precipitated by all the preceding accomplishments of animation. We arrived at today's aesthetics and technology by following a parabolic path from the earliest films such as the Music Box and the Post, through Lefty to the Tale of Tales183.”184
Later, in the same essay, however, Khitruk asserts that animation, “whether it is a case of a single artist or a creative group, [..] can be successful only when it has a nourishing environment, namely a
182 Sergei Asenin, Volshebniki ekrana. Iskusstvo, 1974, p. 39. 183 The Music Box (1933) was directed by Nikolai Khodataev, the Post (1929) by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, Lefty (1964) by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, and the Tale of Tales (1979), by Yurii Norshtein. 184 Fyodor Khitruk: “Mul'tiplikatsia v kontekste kkhudozhestvennoj kul'tury.” In Prokhorov A., Rauschenbakh B., Khitruk, F.(eds.), Problemy sinteza v khudozhestvennoj kul'ture. Nauka, 1985, p. 20. "Трудно установить причину этой эволюции – то ли художники породили новую стилистику, то ли требования самого времени и обрашение к новым темам вызвали к жизни новые формы и средства выражения. Однако этот новый этап был подготовлен всеми предыдущими достижениями мультипликации. Мы пришли к сегодняшней эстетике и технологии через параболу: от первых фильмов, таких как «Органчик» и «Почта», через «Левшу» к «Сказке Сказок»" (Translation mine). 56 suitable cultural context.”185 The very possibility of seeing the Music Box and the Post, not to mention of being allowed to produce such films as Lefty and the Tale of Tales was of course directly linked to the softer cultural policies of Khrushchev's Thaw and the changes in the intellectual, artistic and political milieus that it engendered. Before looking more closely at how these changes affected Soviet animation, I would like to sketch the “parabolic path” that Soviet animation took from its inception to the Story of One Crime, which, as has already been mentioned, marked the beginning of the new era.
The Beginnings or the World Belongs to the Brave
The history of Soviet animation begins in the early 1920s, when the Soviet artistic avant-garde project was in full swing. Its earliest enthusiasts, Dziga Vertov, Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komissarenko and Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, were all part of the Soviet artistic avant-garde, and so was Soviet animation—it was political and dedicated to seeking out new forms for the rendering of contemporary content. Searching for such new forms, Soviet pioneers of animation turned to other Soviet graphic arts, such as political caricature, posters and the then rapidly developing art of book illustration.186 Two of the earliest preserved examples of Soviet animated films illustrate this well: Soviet Toys (1924), produced by a group associated with the famous documentarist Vertov,187 visibly draws upon the form of the political cartoon, while Interplanetary revolution (1924), a film by the dynamic graphics research group led by Khodataev, clearly pays tribute to the aesthetic principles of the political poster. Finally, Post (1929), created by one of the founders of the famous Leningrad school of book illustration Tsekhanovsky, is a wonderful example of a film that grew out of the tradition of book design.
The beginnings of Soviet animation, as well as of animation within other national contexts, can, thus, be described in terms of experimentation, a diversity of approaches, and vision. Inspired by the essentialist conception of art characteristic of the period, these pioneers were devoted to
185 Khitruk, Mul'tiplikatsia, p. 21: "[...] мультипликация в лице отдельного художника и целого коллектива может быть успешной только тогда, когда для нее есть благоприятная питательная среда, т.е. соответствующий культурный контекст" (Translation mine) 186 Semion Ginzburg, Risovannyj i kukol'nyi fil'm. Ocherki razvitija sovetskoi mul'tiplikatsionnoi kinematografii. Iskusstvo, 1957, p. 77. 187 Before debuting with a 'proper' animated film, Vertov employed the technique of animation in order to render complex visual facts more schematically and understandably. The first of such renderings is found in the twentieth issue of Kinoweek (1918), where Vertov used animation to show military operations on the Czech front. A second example can be found in the seventeenth issue of Kinopravda (1923), where he returned to the trope of the animated map—this time a map of the All-Union Agricultural and Home Industry exhibition. Vertov’s unpreserved animated short Today (1923) is also said to have been an animated map. 57 understanding the specificity of the new art medium, which for them meant not only finding an appropriate expressive language, but also the content and genres specific to this new expressive language.188
During the second half of the 1920s, there was increased interest in the new medium and many animation studios appeared in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev and other cities. Most of the large film studios, such as Mezhrabpromfil'm, Mosfil'm and Sovkino, opened their own animation units. It is interesting that, despite such literal proximity to the 'most important of all arts,' animation received very little attention from the party until the 1930s: even in the case of film studios, which hosted animation units, animated production was never mentioned in any of the thematic plans or yearly reports.189 Thus, during the first decade of the existence of Soviet animation, its pioneers were left to explore and experiment as they saw fit. Seemingly perfect for the limitless exercise of artistic freedom, such independence also produced a certain distress among the animation artists, because the less inspiring consequences of such freedom were outdated equipment, the fluctuation of staff, and no distribution.190 As unlikely as it might sound today, therefore, in the late 1920s, Soviet animation artists started demanding that their art be accorded its due attention by the state. Finally, in the early 1930s, the artists' demands were heard and Soviet animation was taken under the wing of the Soviet state.
Under the Wing of the State, or Ideinost', Partijnost', Narodnost'
The obvious benefit of becoming a state industry was the guarantee of steady financial support, which excused the artists from the oppressive banality of non-artistic problems; the obvious disadvantage was the equally reliable interference in the creative process by the state. As has already been mentioned,191 the essence of cultural policy in the Soviet Union was determined by the party and was based upon the latter's understandings of the place and role of art in Soviet society. Based on this understanding, the party decided upon the main tenets of artistic life: in other words, what defines art, where its limits are and which artistic currents should be supported.192
188 Nikolai Khodataev, “Rozhdenije dinamicheskoj grafiki.” In S. Asenin (ed.), Mudrosti' vymysla. Mastera mul'tiplikatsii o sebe i svojom iskusstve. Iskusstvo, 1983, pp. 190 -195; Sergei Asenin, “Puti sovetskoj mul;tiplikatsii” In Asenin, S., Mir Mul'tfil'ma: Idei i obrazy mul'tiplikatsii sotsialisticheskih stran. Iskusstvo, 1986, pp. 42-44; Semen Ginsburg, “Pervyje gody razvitija sovetskoj mul'tiplikatsii.” In Ginzburg .S., Risovannyj i kukol'nyi fil'm, pp. 70-120. 189 Borodin, Georgy: “Animatsia podnevol'naja.” In Kinograf, no. 16, 2005, pp. 54-153. ( p. 59.) 190 Borodin: Animatsia, p. 59 191 See the first chapter 192 Tatjana Goryaeva, p. 8. 58
Following the teaching of Vladimir Lenin, the party repeatedly affirmed that the most important purpose of art was to help the state to build socialism. As, according to Lenin, art always served class interests, art in Soviet society was called to serve the Soviet people, the Soviet state and Soviet interests.193 This meant that good Soviet art had to vehemently adhere to the principles of ideinost', being driven by an idea or containing ideas; partiinost',serving the interests of the Party and the ideals of socialism and communism; and narodnost',being for and about (average) Soviet people.194 Once Soviet animation became a state industry, determining what these core principles meant for this artistic medium became one of the most urgent tasks of the party. The question of whether animation should speak to children or adult audiences; whether it should be ideologically engaged or purely entertaining; whether it should be satirical or fantastical; whether it should depict human characters or restrict itself to animals and objects; even the question of what it should look like—all of these became the concern of the Party. In other words, once the Soviet state assumed tutelage over the art of animation, its development was no longer “natural”—namely obeying its own internal logic, which can be conceptualized as the understanding of the medium by the artists themselves based on their direct experience with it. Starting in the 1930s and up until 1960s, the path of the aesthetic development of Soviet animation would be orchestrated by the state ideologues.
In 1930, Boris Shumyatsky was appointed by Stalin as the head of state administration of cine- photo production. In order to better monitor the ideological quality of Soviet cinematographic output, Shumyatsky centralized the film industry and introduced the practice of “direct creative involvement” of the administration, which meant that all phases of production were now monitored by Shumyatsky and all serious decisions pertaining to these phases were also his to make.195 Basically, film directors and script writers no longer had final say in their own work.
In short order, Shumyatsky's eagerness to infiltrate the film industry spread to animation. In 1933, he called upon animation artists to make up their minds concerning the most suitable genre for animation; he urged them to learn how to develop characters, and advised against stylistic eclecticism. He also made some thematic suggestions: in his opinion, contemporary issues were
193 Lenin, Vladimir, Partijnaja organizatsia i partijnaja literatura (1905) from: <
Although Soviet animated films at the time were visually more sophisticated and interesting than those produced by Disney, in terms of animation techniques they were weak, and animators could not deny that.197 Both the artists and the administration of the film industry admitted that Disney’s understanding of movement, his mastery in creating individual characters, his approach to characterization through action and ability to communicate affectively could be beneficial for the technical and ideological quality of Soviet production. In order, then, to gain a better understanding of how "they" did it in the United States, Victor Smirnov was sent to Disney and Fleisher studios.198
Smirnov returned convinced that the Soviet people needed a Soviet Mickey Mouse—a serial character who, through funny and entertaining stories, would instill into the minds of Soviet people those very values that were otherwise forced upon them by propaganda films.199 Because this idea resonated very well both with the principles of ideinost', partiinost' and narodnost', and with Shumyatsky’s campaign for more Soviet comedy films, which began in 1933, Smirnov was entrusted with an experimental studio in order to translate his vision into films.200 Unfortunately, the actual films turned out to be rather remote from the ideals of ideological engagement and their content was not very proletarian. In the atmosphere of the second five-year plan,201 characterized by a decisive assault on the remnants of capitalist values in the consciousness of the masses,202
Smirnov did not stand a chance, and lost his job at the vanguard of Soviet animation.203
196 Borodin, p. 68. 197 The first official showing of Disney films in the USSR took place in 1933 at the first festival of American animated films in Moscow. (Maria Tereschenko, “Russian animation in Search of a Hero.” In: Russia Beyond the Headlines. December 17, 2009. <
The all Union Studio or the Factory
Undeterred by Smirnov’s failure, Shumyatsky, in the winter of 1935, expressed his intention to reorganize animation production; more specifically, he sought to centralize it by uniting Smirnov’s studio with the groups of artists working at Mosfil'm and Mezhrabprom studios. This joint studio was to replicate Disney’s studio in terms of organization, and one of its units was to focus exclusively on the production of films for children and youth. Shumyatsky aimed at least to accomplish three goals: first, a single studio made control over production much easier; second, the country needed more films for children and youth, which a dedicated studio could help to guarantee; finally, the conveyor belt organization of labor was expected to yield more films—2 1/3 to 3 pictures per director per year.204
In June of 1936 Shumyatsky’s idea of a single studio became an official decree, and Soyuzdetfil'm (“all-union-children-film”) was established. Although the creation of an all-union studio did not make the other studios obsolete, the new studio was to become the most important animation ‘factory’ in the USSR in terms of film output, theory and experimentation. Because Soyuzdetfil'm was set up for cel animation factory line production, most of the Soviet films until the mid 1950s were graphic.205 Moreover, with the establishment of the central animation studio, the specificity of the medium of animation would be carefully enforced through the censorship apparatus. Because questions concerning animation as an artistic form were deliberated upon in the Kremlin, what animation was expected to deliver was subject to any change according to the political climate.
In contrast to the draft of Shumyatsky’s all-union-animation-studio project, according to which only one unit of the studio was to be allocated for the production of children’s films, during its first two years, Soyuzdetfil'm produced children’s films exclusively—mostly adaptations of fairy and folk tales, which bore strong resemblance to Disney productions. One such film is Little Red Riding Hood (1937), by Valentina and Zinaida Broomberg. Unlike children’s films from the previous decade, which betray little that is specifically child-like in their design, Little Red Riding Hood establishes its audience very vividly through the cuteness of its characters and backgrounds (fig. 1). The film makes the advantages of the technique of cel animation visible: the movement of characters gains a smoothness and fluidity, while shots acquire depth. Charles Perrault’s story is
204 Borodin, p. 73. 205 This did not mean that puppet animation disappeared. At the studio Mosfilm, for example, Alexandr Ptushko continued working with stop motion puppet animation: See, for instance, Novyi Guliver (НовыйГулливер) (1935), Skazka or rybake i rybke.(Сказка о Рыбаке и Рыбке) (1937), Zolotoy kljuchik. (Золотой Ключик) (1939). 61 rendered in a comedic fashion, accompanied by songs and plenty of visual gags.
Although Shumyatsky must have been very content with the new direction of Soviet animation, many animation artists were not; Disney-like adaptations of stories for children were probably not what Soviet pioneers of the medium aspired to.206 The animators complained about the abandonment of politically relevant themes. They also complained about the taboo on human representation, which was supported by Shumyatsky’s administration.207 At studio meetings with the administration, artists insisted that, along with fairy and folk tales for children, the specificity of animation supported a multitude of genres. According to the press at the time, the public shared these concerns fully.208
The change finally came in 1938, when Shumyatsky fell out of favor with the regime, and the new administration of the photo and film industry heavily criticized Soyuzdetfil'm for being apolitical and a thoughtless imitation of bourgeois production.209 The name Soyuzdetfil'm was changed to Soyuzmul'tfil'm (all-union-animated-film) and Soviet animation artists were urged to return to serious political topics. Keeping the interests of young viewers in mind, Soyuzmul'tfil'm was now also required to produce pictures capable of mobilizing adult audiences for the continuing socialist struggle and instilling hatred towards the people’s enemies.210 However, despite official permission from above to return to contemporary political issues, the majority of films produced at Soyuzmul'tfil'm between the late 1930s and the late 1950s continued to be for children. Dealing with political issues in a totalitarian state where the political mood ‘at the top’ was volatile and unpredictable proved to be a troublesome enterprise.211 Probably the only time when international political issues could be relatively successfully addressed was during the Second World War, when the constellations of 'good and bad guys' were relatively stable.
After the war, the discussions surrounding the medium of animation re-emerged in a slightly altered form: from “what is the specificity of animation?” to “what is the specificity of Soviet animation?” Naturally, theorizing Soviet animation was unthinkable without paying close attention to the principles of partiinost', ideinost' and narodnost'—the latter two in particular.
206 Borodin: Kinograph, pp. 77-82. 207 The administration was responsible for the taboo in the following way: the technological weakness of Soviet animation did not yet allow it to create a human character that wouldn’t appear laughable (Borodin, p. 80). 208 Borodin, p. 77. 209 Borodin, p. 78. 210 Borodin, p. 81. 211 Scripts, which were required to be sent to the Central Committee for consideration, often remained there for several weeks. When they came back, they were no longer relevant (Borodin, p. 87). 62
In 1946, Pravda published a decree of the Central Committee of the Party regarding two literary journals published in Leningrad—Zvezda (The Star) and Leningrad. The decree contained severe criticism of the journals’ lack of ideinost', obvious from the repeated decision of the corresponding editing boards to publish decadent writers, whose works, according to the Party, contained no important ideas, were soaked in pessimism and painted too bleak a picture of Soviet reality. The decree went on to remind the editors that the highest goal of Soviet literature was to help the state to bring new generations up in the spirit of optimism and induce confidence in the success of the Soviet project, inspiring them to be brave in the face of difficulties and willing to overcome all obstacles.212
The decree produced quite a stir in the Soviet cultural world. For Soyuzmul'tfil'm as well as other studios, it meant not only frantic cleaning of the script portfolio of the studio, but also the introduction of a new system of control over production. In 1948, a directive was sent from the Ministry of Culture which required that censors be attached to each writer working on a script, so that in the future corrections to scripts would be made while still in progress.213 The director of the studio, along with the Artistic Council, was obliged to view all new filmed material daily, record all subsequent discussions and recommendations and send the protocols to the artists involved. The Artistic Council of the studio had to approve not only scripts, screen tests and completed films, but also the costume and backdrop designs and musical scores. A special censor from the state Committee for Cinematography (Glavk) was to be appointed to each film. All of this was done to ensure the ideinost' of films. In order to be truly Soviet, Soviet animated films had to contain important ideas such as camaraderie, humanism, honesty, bravery, watchfulness and self- discipline.214
Narodnost' – literally referring to being close to, or originating from the people – was another element that, according to the official post-war arbiters of Soviet aesthetics, had to be made more noticeable in Soviet art. A complicated notion, going back to the early decades of the 19th century, narodnost' in Stalin’s Russia came to be associated with simplicity, accessibility and comprehensibility.215 While ideinost' became a measure of the ideological suitability of content, narodnost' looked to the ideological suitability of form. These two concepts converged in the
212 Party ordinance concerning Zvezda and Leningrad. Published in Pravda on August 21st, 1946. <
From deliberations and discussions concerning the present and the future of Soviet animation that started in the second half of the 1950s among and between Soviet animators, film critics and the administration of the film industry, it becomes clear that neither Soviet animators nor film critics were satisfied with the effect that the excessive reliance on rotoscoping, known in the USSR as the method of éclair, had had on the quality of Soviet animated films.216 However, when considered within the Soviet post-war aesthetico-ideological context, it becomes easy to understand why between late 1940s and early 1950s rotoscoping217 became so common in Soviet animation. It was a very logical response to stringency with which the doctrine of Socialist Realism was being enforced on all Soviet arts, as well as the state campaigns against cosmopolitanism, bourgeois anthropomorphism and supernaturalism that took place between 1947 and 1952.
Having already introduced Socialist Realism through the official statute of the Union of Soviet writers,218 I would like to turn to the earliest instance of its conceptualization. In 1934, two years after the term Socialist Realism first appeared in the Soviet press, Maxim Gorky assigned it the following characteristic: “Socialist Realism establishes being as making, as creation, the goal of which is a continuous development of individual talents of each person for the sake of victory over the forces of nature, for his/her health and longevity, for the greater happiness of living on earth.”219 Socialist Realism, as characterized by Gorky, established the platform for what would later be labeled Soviet humanism, which produced a new kind of human hero: a master of his own fate,
216 See for example: Semen Ginzburg, "O khudozhestvenoj prirode mul'tiplikatsionnogo fil'ma." In: Risovannyi i kukol'nyj fil'm, 1957. (pp. 5-37.); "Smelee iskat' novoe v mul'tiplikatsionnom kino," (an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion among animators, critics and the administration of Soyuzmul'tfil'm,published in Iskusstvo Kino, vol. 2, 1957, pp. 93 -100); Dmitry Babichekno, “Dovol'no mul'tshtampov!" In: Iskusstvo Kino, 10, 1961, pp. 33-44; Evgenii Migunov, " Novatoram dostaetsya ne tol'ko po golove" In: Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 80, 2006, pp. 188-192); Ivan Ivanov-Vano, "S chem prikhodim my k etomy postanovleniu." In: Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 80, 2006, (pp. 192- 201). 217 As explained by Maureen Furniss in the glossary at the end of her famous The Animation Bible: the Guide to everything – from Flipbooks to Flash (Laurence King, London, 2008), rotoscoping is an animation technique that “involves filming live-action reference footage and projecting it frame by frame onto animation paper so it can be traced and modified. The drawn images are then filmed, creating imagery that is highly realistic in movement.” 218 See chapter one. 219 “Социалистический реализм утверждает бытие как деяние, как творчество, цель которого -- непрерывное развитие ценнейших индивидуальных способностей человека ради победы его над силами природы, ради его здоровья и долголетия, ради великого счастья жить на земле [...]” Gorky, Maxim. “Sovetskaja literatura. Doklad na pervom vsesojuznom sjezde sovetskikh pisatelei 17 avgusta 1934 goda.” In Gorky, Sobranie sochinenij v 30-ti tomakh. GIKHL, 1953 <
Unlike in the 1930s, when rotoscoping was used mostly as a tool for researching movement, at the turn of the 1950s, it became an artistic technique, in fact, the artistic technique. The following adaptations of Russian folk tales illustrate this change well: The Little Hunch-Backed Horse (1947) by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, and The Little Scarlet Flower (1952) by Lev Atamanov, each considered a masterpiece of the genre. Both films work with human actors. The first one uses live footage as raw material, which is later reworked by animators; the recorded movement is modified in a way which allows for more precise characterization. In the second film, raw footage in its entirety is integrated into the film, along with the actors. While backgrounds in the first film are creatively stylized, the backgrounds of the second film are rendered with nearly photographic detail.
This overarching concern with 'realism' was further justified by the state campaigns against cosmopolitanism, bourgeois anthropomorphism and supernaturalism in literature and art mentioned above. The first of these, officially directed against foreign elements in the “steadily homogenizing” Soviet society, turned in the field of animation into a campaign against Disney.221 The second campaign postulated that personifying animals, as well as showing them as superior to human beings, was anti-humanist. Finally, the campaign against supernaturalism was directed against the unjustified representation of magic222 in order to prevent the dangerous instilling of superstitious views in its young audiences. The examples of The Little Hunch-Backed Horse and The Little Scarlet Flower capture the 'before' and 'after' in relation to these campaigns amazingly well. Both films are based on fairy-tales which include elements of magic, but whereas the former relishes each opportunity for the spectacular, the latter approaches magical moments with the demureness of the dramatic theater—even the animals that appear in The Little Scarlet Flower are rotoscoped.
220 Ginzburg, Risovannyj i kukol'nyk fil'm, pp. 170-172. 221 When referring to Disney in a positive way, Soviet animators called him Denisov (see Borodin, p. 94). 222 The most favored non-magical motivation for magical events was sleep, as for example in Fedya Zaitsev (1948), directed by Valenitina and Zinaida Broomberg. 65
Both the Disney and Socialist Realist periods in the history of Soviet animation have received plenty of criticism from Soviet and Western critics alike; however, not enough emphasis has been placed on the fact that most of the aesthetic drawbacks were not, strictly speaking, the fault of the artists. The crisis in which Soviet animation found itself in the early 1950s was precipitated by the same blow that had struck Soviet literature and other arts shortly before Stalin's death—Socialist Realism becoming the system of centralization and bureaucratization of artistic production. Having to comply with aesthetic prescriptions and proscriptions from above,223 which often came from people with little understanding of art in general and animation in particular, and working under the close supervision of censors – one censor per film – directors had to do the best they could.
The Thaw, or in Search of Artistic Truth
In the warmer cultural, political and intellectual climate of Khrushchev's Thaw,224 animation artists, just like their colleagues in other creative professions, became actively engaged with the theory and methods of their medium. Toward the end of the decade, following the example of Soviet writers in the beginning of the 1950s, Soviet animation artists started voicing their concerns about the state of their art. Their ideas and suggestions regarding the "re-animation" of Soviet animation were strikingly similar to those of the writers: their message to each other was to shake off the cowardice and complacence that was so detrimental to any creative effort and to search for new materials and topoi that could support contemporary topics and themes. Their message to the state administration of the arts was to stop seeing the artist as the enemy, and to cease interfering with the creative process.225
While discussions about what the new Soviet animation should be like and how this could be best achieved continued in the press and inside the studio, a film that seemed to embody what all the talk might have been about appeared. It was A Story of One Crime (1962) by Khitruk, already mentioned here. The film satirizes a particular aspect of Soviet reality – the lack of consideration for others – but in a completely new way. It tells a story of a simple Soviet accountant, Vasily
223 Some of the documents that were sent down to the studio from the Ministry of Cinematography at the end of the 1940s and early 1950s explicitly “recommended” that movement and characters be as realistic as possible. Also, such films as A Tale of a Fisherman and a Fish (1950), directed by Tsekhanovsky, and Tale of a Dead Princess and Seven Bogatyrs (1951), directed by Ivanov-Vano, both predominantly rotoscoped, received positive evaluations by the artistic council of the Ministry of Cinematography (Borodin, p. 101). 224 See the first chapter. 225 Evgeniy Migunov, Novatoram dostaetsya ne toliko po golove” In: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 188- 192; Lev Atamanov, “... a perestraivat'sya nado bylo.” In: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 201-209. 66
Vasilievich Mamin, who kills two street-sweepers because they disturb his sleep with their loud exchanges. Opening with the murder scene, the narrative goes back one day and tracks the chain of the events that had precipitated Mamin’s murderous deed. In this way, instead of preaching, the approach typical to such topics, Khitruk choses to investigate; and the verdict of the film, delivered in the form of a question, is not against poor Mamin, but against the Soviet reality that succeeded in turning an exemplary citizen into a murderer.
As Khitruk himself pointed out, the Story of One Crime was not the first film to satirize Soviet reality.226 In 1960, in response to the demand that animation engage with contemporary issues, Soyuzmul'tfil'm even launched the regular animated satirical journal MUK,227 every issue of which contained four sketches dedicated to various social issues. These episodes, however, much like other satirical shorts, such as Fox, Beaver and the Others (1960), by Vera and Mikhail Tsekhanovsky (fig. 2), and Non-drinking Sparrow (1960), by Leonid Amalrik (fig. 3), were executed in the same manner as the studio's films for children. Even if the characters and sets were rendered in an original and expressive way, they were animated using the established cel animation, optimized for conveyer-belt production.
Everything about the Story of One Crime was new: from designs and materials, angles, animation, soundtrack and montage, to the way the story derived its moral. The film was a stylistic revolution: minimalist in terms of movement and space, with caricaturistically precise rendering of characters, metonymic use of materials and creative use of visual detail for inserting commentaries. In a sense, this film embodied the aesthetic shift that germinated in the end of the 1950s and transformed the theory and practice of the art of graphic and puppet animation in the following decades.
The Poetics of Uslovnost', or less is more
Just as the concepts of ideinost' and narodnost' shaped the aesthetics of post-war Soviet animation, the concept of uslovnost' became the guiding principle of experimentation in the field of animation aesthetics in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike the first two concepts, which were ideological imperatives handed down to the artists by state ideologues, the latter originated from the artists and eventually came to be accepted by the state. As will be demonstrated later, the state's recognition of uslovnost'
226 Khitruk, Fyodor. Professia-animator, vol 1, Gayatri, 2008, p.159. 227 MuK (МуK)stands for Mul'tiplikatsionnyi Krokodil, (Мультипликационный Крокодил), which means “animated Krokodil.” “Krokodil” (literally “crocodile”), was a satirical magazin that came out three times a month. 67 as a fact of animation allowed all those working in the field much more creative freedom than those engaged with other artistic media, thus turning animation into the most radical of Soviet arts, where formal innovation thrived even after the Brezhnev administration re-established the aesthetic constraints of Socialist Realism on all other arts.
What does uslovnost' (условность) mean in the contexts of arts in general and animation in particular? The word is an abstract noun derived from the adjective uslovnyi (условный), which could mean any of the following: 1) conditional as in “conditional acceptance” or “conditional release”; 2) conventional or agreed upon as in “conventional representation” or even secret in a “secret signal”; 3) imagined as in “imagined line”; 4) unrealistic in the way it appears, stylized as in “stylized stage set”; 5) empty of meaning, perfunctory as in “perfunctory courtesy”.228
As an aesthetic category in Russian and in early Soviet literary and art theory, uslovnost' emerged during the second decade of the 20th century as a notion used to describe the 'constructedness' of all artistically mediated representations of reality.229 According to the New philosophical encyclopedia, one of the meanings of uslovnost' is still precisely that—the “otherness” of any artistic representation of an object in relation to the object represented. Basically, the notion underlines the idea that the representation of an object is not the same as this object, but a re-creation of it using the means unique to the medium in which it is made manifest. The underlying assumption of this concept is that every artistic medium is too limited to fully reproduce reality. In this sense, uslovnost' is characteristic of all arts, because any representation, whether expressed in painting, music, or literature, is always constrained by the specificity of the medium: pigments in painting, sound in music, words in literature. This necessary uslovnost', resulting from the constraints inherent to each particular artistic medium is known as primary uslovnost'.230 While all arts are characterized by such primary uslovnost', not all of them are to the same degree: photography, for instance, as a medium of representation of reality, has a much lesser degree of uslovnost' than music does.
Secondary uslovnost' refers to conventions of representation that are characteristic of a particular historical or artistic period. Good examples of such uslovnost' are the monoscopic geometry of the Renaissance linear perspective and the mandatory unity of space, time and action in the classical 228 “Uslovnyj.” Slovar' Ozhegova online. <
Even though the works of these various groups differ significantly, the realism of “realists” is just as conventional as that of futurists and the reason one perceives them as more realistic is because one has been taught to perceive them this way, to accept their constructedness and uslovnost' as transparent. What Jacobson's examples also make visible is that conventions of representation vary in terms of their degree of uslovnost'.
There is also a third kind of uslovnost': a conscious use of various artistic means by an individual artist in order to best express his or her artistic intention. Here, as well as in the first two types of uslovnost', the degree of deviation from the perceptual verisimilitude varies, but the more 'unrealistic' a text, a painting, or a film appears, the more likely it will be discussed in terms of uslovnost. Thus, when one talks about uslovnost' in this third sense, one talks about an artistic method that prioritizes expressiveness and re-creation above verisimilitude and replication. Uslovnost' in this sense refers to irrealism in representation, achieved by such figurative means as metaphor, the grotesque, allegory, hyperbole, irony, etc.; it is a method that yields a Shklovskyesque reality, which is formally difficult, but perceptually more truthful.232
All of the above considered, it is understandable why uslovnost' as a theoretical category disappeared from Soviet texts on aesthetics in the period between 1930 and the 1950s. It re-emerged as a part of Khrushchev's rehabilitation of the early Soviet avant-garde – in theory as much as in practice – and played an important role during the debates about realism in art in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the late 1960s, the category of uslovnost' returned to Soviet aesthetic theory to stay, a fact celebrated by a number of monographs on the subject, published between the late 1960s and late 1970s.233
231 Jacobson, Roman. “O khudozhestvennom realizme.” In Texte der russischen Formalisten. Vol. I. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969. pp. (372-391.) << http://www.philol.msu.ru/~forlit/Pages/Biblioteka_Jacobson_HudRealism.htm>> 232 See Schklovsky, Viktor. “Iskusstvo kak prijem.” 1917. OPOJAZ. Materialy. Dokumenty. Publikatsii. <
When one talks about uslovnost' in relation to animation, then, one most likely refers both to uslovnost' of the medium – primary uslovnost' – and uslovnost' as an artistic method – uslovnost' of the third kind. In fact, there is a direct connection between these two: a medium that is characterized by greater uslovnost', i.e. the kind that expresses the difficulty of representing reality in its verisimilitude, is also more likely to utilize indirect means of representing reality through association, metaphor and exaggeration. Thus, the key to the unexpected success of the animation artists in this process of negotiation of aesthetics, vis-a-vis those working in other media, was to construe uslovnost' as essential to the medium of animation, thus establishing a 'natural' connection between the two.
A wonderful example of how this was being done can be seen in Lev Atamanov's speech at the congress of cinematographers in 1963. The background of his address is an anti-formalist campaign that swept though all cultural fields in the aftermath of the Manege exhibition and, more specifically, the ordeal surrounding the animated film Peace Be Upon You and Your Home (1962). The film, directed by Igor Nikolaev and Victor Nikitin, fell under heavy criticism for its abstractionism by the editorial board of the Central Committee for Cinematography. Here is Atamanov's response to these attacks: Recently a discussion of the film Peace be Upon you and your home took place at the Central Committee [for cinematography]. Not touching upon the evaluations given to this film, we should draw attention to the final words of warning by comrade Sytin234 about this and other films: animation in its very nature is uslovnoe art and therefore is more susceptible to formalism than any other arts.235 Thus, warning us against this danger, Sytin demanded that we [animators] learn a lesson for our future work. But, what lesson can we learn? Animation is indeed an art of uslovnoti (условное искусство). What is characteristic for it are wide generalizations, careful selection and most importantly grotesque exaggeration. This is where its power is. This is where its true realism is. Breaking the laws of the medium,236 we inevitably end up with depressing verisimilitude, which we often try to pass for realism, even though it has nothing to do either with the truth of art or with the truth of life.237
As an example of such depressing verisimilitude in animation, Atamanov makes an expected reference to the rotoscoped images of Soviet animated films in the 1950s, asking, rhetorically, of course, why nobody was concerned with the poor aesthetic quality of those films: “Why is it […]
художественной условности.) (1970); Viktor Dmitriev, Realism i khudozhestvennaja uslovnost'. (Виктор Дмитриев, Реализм и художественная условность) (1974), V. Skrautsis, Uslovnost'. Zhisn'. Literatura. (Скрауцис В. Условность. Жизнь. Литература) (1977); Natal'a Chernaja, Realisticheskaya uslovnot' v sovremennoj sovetskoj proze. (Наталья Черная, Реалистическая условность в современной советской прозе) (1979), and others. 234 V.A. Sytin—a deputy of the chief editor or the script collegiate at the Central Committee for Cinematography. ( endnote: Borodin, “Animatsia na perelome.”In Kinovedcheskije Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 187-209. (p. 209)). 235 What the original says verbatim is: “has more grounds for formalism,” which I understand to mean “is more likely to become formalistic due to its nature.” 236 The italics are mine. 237 Lev Atamanov, “..a perestraivat'sya nado bylo.” In: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 201-209. ( p. 206), (translation mine). 70 now, when we are searching for artistic truth by using the means essential to our art, [that] they are warning us of the danger of formalism?”238
Atamanov proceeds to make a crucial differentiation between the formal experimentation that grows out of an awareness of the primary uslovnost' of animation and empty formalism: “the danger of formalism [...] presents itself when the form becomes the ultimate goal, making content into but a good excuse.”239 Miraculously, this formulation came to be accepted by the state officials as the guiding principle for determining how much formal experimentation was tolerable in each particular film. As long as the artistic council of the studio could convincingly explain the formal dimension of a particular film by its ideological content, the editorial board of the Central Committee for Cinematography – the chief censoring body – was, more often than not, willing to let it be.240
Thus, as has been mentioned earlier, the notion of uslovnost' refers to the dissemblance of artistic representation to the appearance of the represented object in the empirical world. This dissemblance can be caused by: a) the limitations imposed by the medium—primary uslovnost'; b) the stylistic conventions of a particular historical period—secondary uslovnost'; or c) the artistic intention of each individual artist—tertiary uslovnost'. Since primary uslovnost' of animation as a medium was apparent in the 1960s, and secondary uslovnost' for Soviet animation was “uslovnost',” it is tertiary uslovnost' that I would like to consider here in some detail. More precisely, I would like to turn to the implications that this tertiary uslovnost', as a notion pertaining to the formal properties of the film, had for the understanding of narrative in animation.
I would like to begin not with the Story of One Crime mentioned earlier, but with a film that came out two years earlier – Cloud in Love (1959)241 – directed by Anatoly Karanovich and Roman Kachanov. Based on a tale of the Turkish writer and poet Nazim Hikmet, the film tells a story of an unlikely and yet unavoidable love possessed by the Cloud for the beautiful Ayse. Ayse has a beautiful garden, with birds of paradise, apple trees, tulips, carnations and roses of every color. Her garden is an oasis in the arid land that belongs to evil Seyfi, who hates everything alive and beautiful and wishes nothing more but to turn Ayse's garden into a desert. After a few attempts that fail, thanks to the preemptive heroism of the Cloud, who watches over his Ayse day and night, Seyfi
238 Atamanov, p. 207. 239 Atamanov, p. 207. 240 Borodin, Animatsia, p. 122. 241 Another translation for Hikmet's story is The loving cloud, first published in 1962. 71 eventually succeeds. One night, when even the Cloud falls asleep, Seyfi floods the garden with sand from the land of sands, which dries all the plants up. When the following morning Ayse wakes up to the dying garden, she is devastated. In order to make her happy again, the Cloud sacrifices his life by turning into rain, which eventually rescues Ayse's garden. While in the end of Hikmet's story the Cloud reappears in the sky, in the film, it is the heroic sacrifice that renders him immortal.242
Excused from having to comply with the Socialist realist aesthetics of photographic verisimilitude both by the ongoing discussions about the artistic essence of animation and by the fact that such criteria for realism were very hard to meet with the puppet animation of the time, the directors turned to the aesthetics of Ottoman miniatures for inspiration. By opting for the uslovnost' of Ottoman miniatures as the overall stylistic principle of the film, Karanovich and Kachanov solved several issues: first, they demarcated the diegetic space of the film as that of a book; second, they successfully conveyed the poetic uslovnost' of Hikmet's tale and, finally, they brought out the story's cultural character and richness.
A lot of consideration was given not only to the stylistic appearance of the film's characters and sets, but also to the materials from which these were made. The film combines cutout animation with puppet and drawn animation; the Cloud and the birds are cut out of paper, thus conveying their airy lightness, while Ayse and Seyfi receive more “fleshy” puppet bodies, accentuating the fact that they are human embodiments of good and evil; as one would expect, the Wind is drawn, which captures its dynamic character very well. Decisions about the materials used therefore appear to have been made with careful consideration of the characters' poetic “constitutions” (figs. 4a-4f).
From these few observations it becomes clear how much interpretation the directors put into the process of transmuting Hikmet's text into an animated film. Even more telling is the case of the film The Bathhouse (1962), directed by Karanovich together with Sergey Yutkevic and based on the play of the same name by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Against all expectations engendered by the title, the events of The Bathhouse, a satire of Soviet
242 The film ends with the following lines written by Hikmet: “Look at the sky, Ayse! There the Cloud is dying, so that your green garden comes alive. So that the grasses rustle and the crowns show green... Look the branches are turning green already! Do not cry, Ayse – look at them. The one who dies for others, never dies forever! Heroes do not need pity – They continue living in everything. Everywhere! Just like this Cloud remained, turning into a reflection in the water...” ( Translation mine). The original: “Айше, взгляни на небо. Там облако умирает. Чтоб ожил твой сад зелёный. Чтоб шелестели травы. Чтоб зеленели кроны… Взгляни зеленеют ветки. Не плачь, Айше. Смотри на них. Не умирает тот на веки, кто умирает за других. И не нужна героям жалость. Они живут во всём. Везде. Как это облако осталось, став отражением в воде…” 72 bureaucracy, revolve around a time machine.243 When its inventor Chudakov runs the contrivance for the first time, it produces an explosion, then a piece of transparent glassy paper with a coded message stating that on the following day a guest from the future would arrive. Excited by the news, Chudakov is nonetheless concerned with the explosion; soon he comes to realize that it was caused by a collision of the time machine with some obstacle. In order to secure the arrival of the guest from the future, he has to fix this problem and needs money to do so.
Encouraged and accompanied by his friend Velosipedkin, Chudakov rushes to Pobedonosikov—the top bureaucrat in the film. As anticipated, bureaucratic obstinacy and opportunism (embodied particularly well by Pobedonosikov's secretary Optimistenko) make it impossible for the inventors to obtain the necessary support. Nonetheless, the guest from the future – a Phosphorescent Woman – arrives safely, as, at the same time that Chudakov is forcing the tunnel into the future, the contemporaries of the Phosphorescent Woman are working their way toward the past, correcting all of Chudakov's inevitable mistakes.
The Phosphorescent Woman introduces herself as a delegate from 2030 sent by the Institute of the History of the Birth of Communism in order to select the best representatives of the society in the 1930s and ship these to the next century of communism. She promises that the future “would accept anyone who has at least one feature, relating her or him with the collective of the commune – eagerness to work, hunger to give oneself up, tirelessness in inventing, an interest in giving and pride for Humanity. […] Flying time will sweep out and cut off all ballast, heavy with junk, the ballast of those hollowed by lack of faith.”244
Predictably, it is Pobedonosikov, Optimistenko and their fellow bureaucrats who are thrown off the board of the time train and thus made object of public judgment and ridicule.
In the essay “The third way: from the creative experience of work on animated films based on scripts and plays of V. Mayakovsky” (1986), one of the film's directors, Yutkevich, who held a doctorate in theory of art, painstakingly elaborated upon the creative process of careful and conscious selection which accompanied the production of The Bathhouse. He begins by explaining
243 To the very reasonable question of why the play is entitled Bathhouse, when a bathhouse is not mentioned even once in it, Mayakovsky had two answers: a “Bathhouse” washes (reveals the true nature of) bureaucrats” («Баня» моет (просто стирает (erases?)) бюрократов“) and “...because it [the bathhouse] is the only thing that does not appear in it” (Потому что это единственное, что там не попадается“) from: (http://ka2.ru/nauka/banja.html), 244 The original: “Будущее примет всех, у кого найдется хотя бы одна черта, роднящая с коллективом коммуны, - радость работать, жажда жертвовать, неутомимость изобретать, выгода Отдавать гордость Человечностью. [...]Летящее время сметет и срежет балласт, отягченный хламом, балласт опустошенных неверием” (translation mine). 73 why he and Karanovich thought that a play by Mayakovsky was an appropriate script for their first animated film. To him the “metaphoric and hyperbolic imaginary order of Mayakovsky's poetics” was best supported not by the aesthetics of theater or cinema, but by animation.245 One challenge that presented itself to the directors was how to best convey the genre syncretism so characteristic of Mayakovsky's oeuvre. “Maykovsky, the innovator, [who] consciously broke away from the norms of genre limitations”246 had to find an appropriate representation in the animated realization of his play. The solution was eventually found: just like in the Cloud in Love, in The Bathhouse, graphic and puppet animation techniques are combined. What is more, some puppets are rendered in three-dimensions, while others are flat marionettes. To further enrich the texture of the image, animated sequences are combined with documentary footage, or footage of a human actor.247
The next step in the creative process described by Yutkevich is the translation of the metaphoric order of the play into a corresponding visual form, the process in which the semantics of the materials from which the characters and sets are made of apparently play an important role. The satirical image of one of the leading characters of The Bathhouse – Pobedonosikov – emerged from associations evoked by his bureaucratic responsibilities. Inertness, inflexibility, lignification—these are the attributes of bureaucracy. 'Not a human, but an oak' people say, when they want to emphasize someone's inflexibility and thick skin. A cabinet, a desk – these are the indispensable attributes of Glavnachpups [Pobedonosikov], hence the squareness and inflexibility of the puppet. Suddenly, Pobedonosikov comes to resemble a part of the cabinet. His factura acquires the shine of well-polished oak. Where one usually expects to find human organs, and in particular the heart, one discovers but a pocket, reminiscent of a wooden cabinet drawer. From here it is a short distance to the realization of the expression 'a holey head'248; this is why the finger of Pobedonosikov easily goes through his head, passing from one ear to another.249 In contrast to Pobedonosikov, his secretary Optimistenko and the latter's assistant Momental'nikov, who are created from flexible wire, are literal embodiments of “other species of bureaucrats”—those known for their slyness and obsequiousness (figs. 5a-c).250
One of the most complicated and mysterious characters in the play is the Phosphorescent woman. According to Yutkevich, his creative team at first approached this character in terms of materials, trying to characterize her through metaphorical properties of materials. “We tried glass, Plexiglas, metal. We were looking for the features of this Phosphorescent woman in the sculpture of [Vera] Mukhina. Once one of the members of the creative group came up with
245 Yutkevich, Sergey. “Tretje reshenie. Iz tvorcheskogo opyta raboty nad mul'tfil'mami po stsenarijam i p'esam V. Mayakovskogo.” In Prokhorov A., et al. (eds.), Problemy sinteza v khudozhestvennoy kul'ture. Nauka, 1985, pp. 114- 149. (p. 122.) 246 Yutkevich, p. 122. 247 In this case, actor Arkady Raikin. 248 Meaning “absent-minded.” 249 Yutkevich, p. 123 (Translation mine). 250 Yutkevich, p. 123. 74
the daring idea of creating a synthetic image, which would embody the dream of the human kind about eternal femininity from Venus of Milos to Giaconda of Leonardo da Vinci. But all of this was discarded […]. The solution was to be sought in the nature of animation. If all our puppets have volume, then the contrast to this would be to give her a graphic, flat expression.”251 The final image emerged from a synthesis of a few of Picasso's famous drawings of doves of peace and Le visage de la Paix. (fig. 5d.)
Also instructive are Yutkevich's thoughts about the semantic role played by the sets. In Mayakovsky's play no scene takes place inside Pobedonosikov's flat. The decision to add such a scene in the film was motivated by the fact that many of the parts of the play in which Pobedonosikov's “petit bourgeois essence” is expressed lexically could not be included due to time constraints (figs. 5e). Here is how Yutkevich explains it: “Having realized that we would not be able to preserve the dialogue in its entirety in the film, we started looking for means that could visually compensate […]. This is how the image of Pobedonosikov's flat was born with the curtains on windows, furniture, the obligatory rubber plant and the traditional canary bird—all made from cheap lace […].”252 Thus, the nauseatingly pink walls, decorated with candy wrappers and labels taken off of perfume bottles, a wardrobe covered with a photograph of book shelves stuffed with books and “[t]he very combination of facturas of white and black lace with the pink surface of walls, the photographic reproductions of book shelves and candy wrappers allowed [the directors and their team] to give a satirical characterization of the inner world of the character.”253
Yutkevich's essay thus offers detailed insight into the new approach to animation that characterized the shift in animation aesthetics in the 1960s. The visual aspect of the animated film was no longer treated as auxiliary to its script. Every element involved in the film design – the overall stylistic concept of the film-image, the method of animation, the choice of materials for puppets and sets, the choice of actors and music – was now actively engaged with the script, participating in its interpretation as much as its illustration. And uslovnost' as an aesthetic principle had much to do with this change.
As has already been mentioned, uslovnost' as an aesthetic principle that liberated Soviet animators from the requirement to work in a single format, allowing them sufficient freedom to experiment with form. In this way, uslovnost' became synonymous with aesthetic freedom. At the same time, however, uslovnost' as an aesthetic principle required that certain rules be respected. Reflectingupon uslovnost', Evgenii Migunov, one of the radical voices in the debates around changing aesthetics of
Soviet animation at the turn of 1950's, wrote:
Uslovnost' does not mean absolute permissiveness, disregard for aesthetic and psychological
251 Yutkevich, p. 125 (Translation mine) 252 Yutkevich, p. 126 (Translation mine) 253 Yutkevich, p. 127. (Translation mine) 75
laws, in accordance with which a work of art is constructed. Unity, connectedness of all elements, unity of plastic realization, the selection of what is necessary and the chiseling off everything unnecessary or distracting—are all part of a not-so-short-list that a creator should keep in mind.254
Migunov continued by introducing the notion of "equi-uslovnost'." Equi-uslovnost' is a principle by which the formal expression of uslovnost' of formal expression – the degree of dissimilitude, the emotional mode, the choice of materials and the technique – is appropriate to the idea of the film. It also designates the stylistic unity within the film: dynamic stylization, i.e. uslovnost' of movement, whether the chosen musical score corresponds to the overall stylistics of the film, and finally the consistency of the attitude of the creator to all the components of the world created within the work.255 Thus, uslovnost' required Soviet animation artists to carefully evaluate their formal choices against the backdrop of their intended meaning, which ultimately encouraged them to explore the potential of their very visual medium to communicate without words; these explorations eventually upset the previously established hierarchy which placed text over image.
A wonderful example of this upset in aesthetic values is the film Great Troubles (1961), directed by the Broomberg sisters. The film tells a tragic story of a family of Soviet 'drones,' the father of which has been caught doing illegal transactions and is now most likely going to be imprisoned. The story is narrated by the youngest daughter—a little girl, who does not understand the reasons behind the family drama and decides to simply repeat the story she had heard from her family members in the same way they had been talking about it among one another. It turns out that the girl's older brother, Kolya, “fell right through” the university entrance exams and had to “take a seat on her father's neck” (fig. 6a). Her older sister, Kapa, is “a picture” who failed to “jump out” into a marriage, even though there was a respectable man who was “dangling after” her and even “losing his head.” The respectable man, who had so much money that even “chickens did not want to eat it,” “threw” Kapa in the last moment, which led to her joining Kolya on their father's neck. Because the father could not “drag” the whole family on his neck, he decided to send refrigerators “to the left” (fig. 6b), but the traces of the refrigerators were found and his colleague, who is constantly either “digging under” the girl's father or “dripping” on his brains and eventually “sicced” an auditor on him. Although the father tried to “oil the palm” (fig. 6c) of the auditor, nothing worked and the father had to start “sewing himself in” and “twisting himself out.” All of his efforts were, however, in vain 254 Migunov, Evgeniy. “Ob Uslovnosti.” Teatral'naya biblioteka << h ttp://biblioteka.teatr-obraz.ru/page/ob-uslovnost'- evgenii- migunov >> ( “Но это отнюдь не означает вседозволенности, пренебрежения к эстетическим и психологическим законам, по которым строится произведение. Общности, связи элементов, единство пластического осмысления, отбор необходимого, отсекание ненужного, мешающего не такой уж маленький перечень того, чем должен руководствоваться творец” (Translation mine). 255 Migunov, “Ob uslovnosti.” 76 and, consequently, he is now most likely to be “planted.”256 Through her story, the confusion of the little one emerges through these idiomatic expressions, which both obscure her understanding and preserve her innocence.
The visual solution that the Broomberg sisters chose for the film are child-like drawings, a decision very much motivated by the script: the girl's naïve take on the great troubles befalling her family is reinforced and amplified by the naïvety of the visual sequence. By choosing to use child-like drawings, the Broomberg sisters manage to establish continuity between the spoken and visual narratives – the girl both “tells” and “shows” the sequence of events – and this connection is made transparent by supplying the girl's character with a huge pencil when she first appears on screen. Finally, the great uslovnost' of the child-like drawings (uslovnost' in its first sense, i.e. the lack of resemblance to the “objective” appearance of the world) helps to accentuate the problem that lies at the core of the girl's failure to understand her family's predicament—the uslovnost' of the human language so well exemplified by the idiomatic expressions.
The visual narrative of the film echoes the spoken one not only stylistically but also dramaturgically: what the voice says, the screen shows. Thus, when the girl talks about her father “oiling” the palm of the auditor, the viewer sees him literally trying to drip oil into the auditor's hand, and when she talks about the danger of her father being “planted,” the screen shows him being placed into a hole dug out by his nasty colleague and then watered from a watering can. What is interesting, and also ironic, is that despite these echoes, and thus the equation of what is told with what is shown, one actually observes a separation of the text and the image. The meaning of the film is produced neither by the text alone, nor by the sequence of images on the screen; instead, it emerges at the intersection of the two. Besides 'modeling’ the ironic meaning of the script, this separation signals an important change in understanding the relationship between the text and the image: the image is treated as a player on par with the text.
Another interesting film to consider in the context of the ongoing discussion of uslovnost' is Banal Story (1962), directed by Joseph Boyarsky. The film is a parable about marital unfaithfulness: man meets woman, they fall in love, marry and have a baby. His interest in family life drops shortly after and instead of being with his wife and the baby, he stays out late visiting bars and night discos. One 256 In case you did not understand what the big troubles were about, here is a summary: The little girl's brother Kolya did not get into university, and her older sister Kapa was dumped by her rich boyfriend. Their father, in an effort to support his family, resorted to some shady business involving refrigerators, but his rival discovered the case and called an auditor to look into it. Despite the father's attempt to close the case by offering the auditor a bribe, and some other efforts to extricate himself, he now most likely faces jail time. 77 day, he returns home to discover that his wife and the baby are gone. Alone and miserable both from grief and his acquired addictions, he roams the streets until his sad end. The film, therefore, is exactly what it proclaims to be—a banal story, which, however, is told in a very non-trivial way.
The film opens with a live-action prologue in which an actor Zinovy Gerdt introduces what we are about to see as an "unbelievable and yet absolutely truthful story." Not wanting to reveal the identity of the main character (so as not to increase the latter's misery beyond what fate had already meted out), the narrator searches his desk for an object that could take the protagonist's place. He first picks up a pen, and then a lighter, but neither seem appropriate. Suddenly, his attention is captured by a figurine of a rooster; for a moment the narrator considers using it, but having given it a second thought, changes his mind, stating that the "rooster in some ways resembles our protagonist, so by using it we could unnecessarily sadden his family members." An ashtray in the shape of a man's shoe comes to the narrator's rescue; fortunately, it "doesn't resemble anyone—not even a shoe" and thus "even in the case of wildest of imaginations can not remind [the viewer] of anyone." The ashtray is thus pronounced perfectly suitable for acting on behalf of the protagonist. As soon as this decision is made, the full "cast" is introduced: the man will be played by the ashtray shaped as a man's shoe, the woman by an ashtray in the shape of an elegant woman's shoe and a "cupid" by an image of a cupid; episodic roles will be performed by a variety of shoe-shaped ashtrays.
By transposing the human story into the world of inanimate objects allegedly as remote in appearance from human protagonists and the human form in general as possible, Boyarsky not only makes the perfect case for animated film – which, after all, possesses a unique and magical ability to make inanimate objects resemble people – but also achieves the sufficient level of uslovnost', in the sense of "abstraction," to serve as a parable. This should make the rationale behind the addition of this film to my discussion of uslovnost' in Soviet animation apparent; the story here is rendered in a way that by no means can be described as realist.
There is, however, an additional reason to discuss the film. The cinematic prologue and the fake introduction of the film "cast" that follows essentially work in the same way as the essay by Yutkevich quoted above; they establish the code through which the film is to be "read." Unlike the essay, however, they do so in a mocking way, since the synecdochal relationship between the object-actors and what they stand for is quite obvious. Moreover, the ironic tone of Gerdt's monologue, probably best illustrated by his repeated reference to the banal story of the film as 78 something "incredible," "unbelievable" and "unlikely to have happened in his current times," clearly marks this part of the film as something funny rather than instructional. What the sequences in question thus seem to do is play out the meaning of uslovnost' itself, in the sense of something conventional or agreed upon; the cliché representation of the cupid in the sequence that introduces the parts and the actors brilliantly reinforce this point. Besides embracing uslovnost' as an aesthetic principle, then, the film also engages with the very notion of uslovnost' at a meta-level, albeit in a comical way. In fact, this humorous engagement might itself be a commentary about textual explanation being superfluous for understanding images.
Having outlined the key aesthetic principles of uslovnost', and having demonstrated what incredible consequences their re-discovery had for the development of the new language of Soviet animation, I would like to briefly return to the film that became something of an encyclopedia of the new aesthetics of Soviet animation. The film in question is one I have already mentioned in this chapter —Khitruk's Story of One Crime.
The film was Khitruk's debut as a director; it was also a diploma work for the production designer Sergei Alimov and the cameraman Boris Kotov. According to Khitruk, working on the film was an exploration of previously unexamined aspects of animation.257 He wrote, "I think nobody knew what would come out of our picture, even though we were set on making a bomb from the very start."258 Perhaps the reason why the Story turned out being so groundbreaking was because it was directed by an animator, who, moreover, was as much interested in the theme of the film – allegedly Khitruk was regularly put through noise ordeals similar to those experienced by Mamin – as in the opportunity to try out various formal ideas that occurred to him during his work as an animator.259
One such idea was minimalism, apparent not only in the design of the characters and their environment, but also in the mise-en-scène and animation. "Suppose, I need to show how a person enters a room and sits down on a chair, " writes Khitruk, "In a live action film this scene would be shot using a single wide shot: the door opens, the person enters, turns, shuts the door, etc. What is recorded, is the complete chain of events, the way they should happen in reality. One can not cut out a link. The only way to concentrate action is through montage. In the animated film, reality appears in an already aesthetically processed form. What the camera records is not reality, but its aesthetic imprint—a drawing. This 'unties the artist's hands,'
257 Khitruk, Professia animator, (Профессия Аниматор), Moscow, 2007, vol. 1, p. 158. 258 Khitruk, p. 158. 259 Khitruk, p. 159. (“Появлялись идеи самого разного порядка – бредовые и парадоксальные, вполне осуществимые и утопические, четко сформулированные и не очень конкретные, касающиеся скорей каких-то для меня крайне интересных и неизведанных возможностей мультипликации вообще как искусства, как формы изложения мысли.“ (Translation mine) 79
offering more freedom for plastic transformations. The animator does not have to reproduce the scene in its entirety; he can represent the same scene more laconically—omitting the usual links and hinges. Let us imagine a blank white screen; there is no door, it is simply not needed yet. It should be shown at the moment when it is being opened. This would immediately focus the attention of the viewer on it. The person appears, the door disappears. It has completed its informative function and should not interfere with the subsequent development of events.”260
In the scene where Mamin is watching television, his room is defined as a blue square, attached to a black background; in due time, this surrounding darkness reveals other equally minimalistically rendered spaces inhabited by Mamin's neighbors. The mise-en-scène is composed of four objects: a television set, the table it stands on, a cloth that covers the table and a chair (fig. 7a). All of them, except probably for the cloth, are absolutely essential to the dramaturgy of the scene; the cloth is possibly a commentary on Mamin's soft and non-confrontational nature. This determination to keep only the objects that absolutely can not be done away with inside the frame261 applies to the whole film. As a result, not one detail that enters the frame is missed, which, in turn, allows space for ironic commentary and visual jokes.
One good example of such inserted commentary can be seen in the episode showing Mamin at work in his office. In the foreground of the frame, there is Mamin, seated at a simple desk, which is equipped with a calculating machine; behind him is a standard drawer cabinet. Most of the background is allocated for the window, through which one can see a crane working on a new apartment building. Although the sequence is a part of the narrative focusing on Mamin's day-to- day routine, the sheer size of the window, against which Mamin appears quite insignificant, signals that the main action is taking place there. Keeping up with Mamin's diligence and pace, the crane piles up blocks, a future house, which resemble puzzle pieces fitting together perfectly despite their irregular shapes. Each piece shows a portion of the building, which is already well inhabited, so that even before the building is complete, the part of it that stands shows all signs of being occupied: window curtains, potted plants, balcony furniture and even drying laundry (fig. 7b).
The reference here is certainly to Khrushchev's famous housing program, which started in the mid1950s and turned many Soviet cities in the 1960s into construction sites. But a reference is, at best, only a partial commentary. The rate at which houses under this program were built was triple that of the preceding decade, thanks to the standardizing of the buildings. Thus, to have the crane assemble puzzle pieces, each showing a part of a house fully inhabited, is to simultaneously comment on the prefabricated nature of Khrushchev's houses, the demand for them and the speed 260 Khitruk, p. 160 (Translation mine). 261 Khitruk, p. 160. 80 with which they were erected. The latter point is further reinforced by the fact that the house is ready by the end of Mamin's work day.
To illustrate what I mean by using visual detail to create a joke, I would like to briefly turn to the scene featuring the domino game. Mamin's evening newspaper reading on the balcony is interrupted by crashing sounds coming from the yard, where four men are playing the game of domino. A high angle composition of the frame gives a good view of the wooden table and the domino pieces forced against it. Each time a piece is laid down, a cloud of cigarette smoke released by the players obstructs the view for a brief moment, and when it dissipates it reveals a completely new arrangement of pieces. When the last, winning piece is placed, the configuration takes the shape of a fish (fig. 7c) and the Russian for "fish" in the game of dominoes refers to the situation in which the game ends because players can no longer add any pieces.
One other form of minimalism successfully explored by Story of One Crime is minimalism in the rendition of movement, which finds expression within the film both in limited animation and in the condensation of action. A wonderful example of limited animation is the scene inside the metro: the crowd waiting for the train is simply attached to the image of the train that is superimposed on it, and when the train leaves it simply carries the whole platform with it (fig. 7d,e) As an example of condensed action, consider the following scene, cited as an example by Khitruk himself: Mamin is getting ready to pay a visit to his loud neighbor upstairs. When on the chair, Mamin is wearing his home clothes, but as soon as he gets off, he is nearly dressed, pulling his jacket over the remaining shoulder and attaching a tie. Both the sequence of Mamin bringing his clothes into the room and putting pants and shirt on are omitted, or rather left for the viewer to fill in him- or herself.262
A few points should be mentioned about the soundtrack of the film and its relation to the visual sequences. In accordance with the overall minimalist conception of the Story, human speech is reserved for the narrator only, who intervenes in the beginning of the film to appeal to the crowd that gathers around Mamin in the immediate aftermath of the murder, inviting the people to reconsider their righteousness in light of Mamin's ordeal the preceding night. The narrator's commentary stops as soon as he invites viewers to consider how it all started exactly twenty-four hours before the murder, and returns again in the very end of the film to frame the concluding question, rhetorical at this point, about who should really be considered guilty. Following this question, the narrator expresses the hope that the people deciding the fate of Mamin in court would
262 Khitruk, Professia, p. 162. 81 see the film and understand everything. Thus, the narrator is not really a narrator— the story that he introduces is 'told' exclusively by visual means: through editing, acting and cinematography. It is character design, the backgrounds and the composition of the mise-en-scènes that are used to psychologically define the characters.
This, however, is not to suggest that the soundtrack does not play any role in the film—quite the opposite. Besides music, which both helps to pace movement and emotionally characterize action, the soundtrack includes a variety of noises; it constructs the intradiegetic space of the film in terms of noise, thus reaffirming the central idea of the film. There are the usual noises, such as the sound of the metro train arriving, the clatter of the typists, the sound of breaking glass or falling water dropping, and there are noises that can be described in terms of uslovnost'. The dialogue between Mamin and his imposing neighbor with the colossal stereo system, for example, is played out using musical instruments: the neighbor speaks in a “categorical” voice of a trombone, whereas Mamin sounds like a soft “pleading” oboe. The same artistic device recurs in the scene of the gambler husband returning home, where his violin explanations lack any substance against his wife's trombone demands. The songs hollered during the upstairs party are also treated with uslovnost': their lyrics are indiscernible,263 which could be interpreted as a means of indicating the performers' state of joyous inebriation, but also could serve as a way of underlining that this type of collective artistic practice is also, in the end, just noise.
Thus, this total minimalism, manifest in the character and background designs, mise-en-scènes, animation and soundtrack – a method of doing away with everything extra and distracting and thus synonymous with uslovnost' – is what made the Story of One Crime an appropriate emblem of the change in the language of Soviet animation. Just as significant for the film's canonization was the fact that the story of the film was "told" cinematically, without any help from a narrator's voice-over commentary or explicating dialogues between characters.
At the turn of the 1950s, then, Soviet animation began to reevaluate its theory and practice. At the center of this process of re-evaluation was the notion of uslovnost'. To proclaim uslovnost' the main aesthetic principle of animation meant to liberate the latter from the requirements of photographic verisimilitude, whether in terms of character or background designs, movement or storytelling.
263 Except for the final couplet sung by the guests when loading into the elevator en gros, which is important ironic commentary: “Знаю, больше писем не придет,/Память больше не нужна./Ночью за окном шумит, поет/ Ти-ши- на.” (I know that no more letter will come/ memory is no longer of use, /only outside of the window/ loud and singing, one hears silence!” (Translation mine.) 82
Although animation still relied on the cinematographic codes through editing and camera-work, it was now searching for its own expressive potential and found it in the expressive irreality of uslovnost', which acknowledged and celebrated the absolute constructedness of animated film: if everything in the animated film is constructed, then everything in it is subject to full artistic control. Therefore, every component of an animated film can and should be semantically charged: designs, materials, actors, music, the method of animation, etc. Ultimately, what uslovnost' did for the subsequent development of Soviet animation was to rehabilitate its formal aspects and help to re- discover it as a powerful means of communication.
After the Thaw or Maturity
A discussion of the changes in the formal language of Soviet animation would of course be incomplete without considering the historical context that encouraged and supported them. As has already been mentioned, the softer cultural climate of Khrushchev's thaw and the policy of cultural diplomacy opened new visual worlds for Soviet artists and students of art. At the turn of the 1950s, a new generation of artists, who entered universities after Stalin's death, joined Soyuzmul'tfil'm;264 Yurii Norstein describes these newcomers as "somehow completely different,"265 most likely referring to their broader education and artistic outlook.
The older generation, however, did not need these young people to understand that Soviet animation had to re-invent itself: the debates surrounding the new path of Soviet animation, taking place in the late 1950s, were orchestrated by the old masters. They were the ones to initiate the discussion about Soviet animation being behind the times socially, politically and aesthetically, and committed themselves to finding new means of expression.266 Their concerns with the state of Soviet animation were not new, but the fact that they could discuss them publicly and make further decisions about their art certainly was; it was a direct consequence of Khrushchev's cultural liberalism.
Khrushchev's administration affected artistic production within the studio in a very direct way, as well—through the re-organization of the censorial process in the 1960s. Under the new system, employees of the Glavk were no longer assigned to individual projects, nor were studio directors
264 To mention just a few: Sergey Alimov, Boris Kotov, Vadim Kurchevsky and Andrei Khrzhanovsky, who in turn brought with him Yulo Sooster and Yuriy Sobolev, Eduard Nazarov and Nikolay Serebryakov. 265 Yuriy Norshtein, “Kuda prishli my?”(“Куда пришли мы?”), Iskusstvo Kino, (Искусство Кино), no.8, 2006, pp. 71- 87.( p. 74). 266 See: “Smelee iskat' novoe v mul'tiplikatsionnom kino!” In: Iskusstvo Kino, 2, 1959. This is an edited transcript of a discussion between directors, writers, artists, critics and composers that took place in one of the offices of the magazine. 83 required to report on every new phase of the production process. From this point until the very end of Soviet censorship, it was the administration of the studio that carried the responsibility for all stages of production through the script-editorial section and the artistic council. Glavk only dealt with films after the administration no longer had any recommendations.267 Having delegated control over the aesthetic aspects of films to the administration of the studio, Glavk busied itself exclusively with problems of ideological correctness. This reorganization was more conducive to formal innovation, as the studio's control bodies consisted of educated and knowledgeable people, themselves members of the studio's community, for whom matters of artistic unity were in principle convincing reasons to allow the artist to ‘have it his/her way.’268
There were also studio level changes regarding the organization of the creative process: starting in the early 1960s, the role of the director changed: he or she became the master of the creative process. This meant, that the director was allowed to choose the topic, genre, production designer, actors, composer, style and method of animation, as well as the artistic approach to the topic of the film.269 Moreover, since the early 1960s, directors could offer their scripts to the studio's portfolio.270 If the Artistic Council approved the script and gave it a good recommendation, the studio purchased it from the director, who would then direct his or her own film.
Thus while Khitruk is probably correct in his hesitation to proclaim it was the artists who engendered the new approach to animation stylistics or whether the time itself dictated the necessity for change, it is certainly true that the early 1960s were just as nourishing for Soviet animation as they were for Soviet literature, cinema, theater and visual arts. The discussions about the new role of art and the artist that exploded after the death of Stalin271 included animators, as well. Khrushchev's changed approach to state tutelage over cultural production gave artists the privilege of deliberating about matters pertaining to the specificity of their art, while they continued to be financially supported by the state. The artistic re-evaluation of approaches to animation aesthetics and techniques were based on their experience, but also on the "rehabilitated" works of Soviet and Western art, including the animated films of the early Soviet period. Contemporary films, authored
267 Here is how the processes took place: The script, approved by director of the studio, was sent to the Ministry with the accompanying explanatory letter. The Ministry then sent its resolution back (approved, needs corrections, not possible to continue work). The next step would be to send the whole film to the same body. In other words, the Ministry didn’t interfere with the process of creating either films or scripts (Borodin, p. 138). 268 Borodin, Animatsia, p. 134. 269 Borodin, p. 137. 270 After the war, directors were forbidden to co-author a script, let along write one (see Borodin, p.?). 271 See the first chapter. 84 by their colleagues in Eastern Europe and friendly Western nations, also played an important role.272 The change in the mechanism of censorial control over the production of animated films, which placed the responsibility for aesthetic quality in the hands of the artistic council and the script editorial section of the studio, further fostered the spirit of experimentation. Finally, letting directors pick their film team and even write their own scripts played a crucial role by paving the road for auteurist animation to arrive.
The changes in the cultural climate caused by Brezhnev's commitment to tightening the screws that came loose in the cultural sphere during the Thaw affected Soyuzmul'tfil'm, as well. Not to make light of the difficulties and frustrations that the heightened ideological scrutiny over studio production cost the artists, it should be pointed out that the censors' vigilance was directed predominantly at thematic plans and scripts, rather than formal experimentation. Thus, in response to the new regime’s directive to raise patriotic sentiments in the population, the studio opened the decade with a series of propagandistic films, the majority of which were aimed at younger audiences. In accordance with the general ideological line of the Party in the 1970s, the films approached the topic of patriotism through the prism of the following themes: a) the heroism of the Soviet people in the struggle against fascism, for example in Adventures of Red Ties (1971), by Vladimir Pekari and Vladimir Popov, and Pioneer’s Violin (1971), by Boris Stepantsev; b) the advantages of living in the Soviet Union, as can be seen in The Country Where You Live (1972), by Efim Gamburg, and c) the immorality and hypocrisy of Western democracies as evidenced in Ave Maria (1972), by Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Vladimir Danilevich. But the stylistic, dramaturgical and technological diversity of these films – from caricature to poster, to collage, to animated children drawings – clearly indicates that the animators retained significant freedom in terms of aesthetic choices.
Despite the new regime's low tolerance for formal experimentation in other arts, animation officially remained the art of great uslovnost'. Sergey Asenin, one of the leading Soviet scholars of animation, writes in his book Magicians of the Screen, published by Iskusstvo in 1974: "Its [animation's] means of direct reproduction of reality are very limited and artistically unconvincing, while its means of re-construction [of objective reality], fancy, and grotesque transformation are endless. This is why in order to express a thought in the most condensed and
272 Articulating the need for re-animation of animation, Soviet artists referred to the work of their Czech, Polish, Romanian and Yugoslavian colleagues as examples of what animation could and perhaps should be like (see Dmitry Babichenko: Dovol'no mul'tshtampov!” In: Iskusstvo Kino, no. 10, 1961, pp. 33-43; Evgeniy Migunov, Novatoram dostaetsya ne toliko po golove” In: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 188-192; Lev Atamanov, “... a perestraivat'sya nado bylo.” In: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 201-209. Borodin: “Animatsia podnevol'naya”In: Kinograf , p. 136-177; Fydor Khitruk, Professia animator, p. 163. 85
emotional way, the artist resorts to hyperbola and symbol, metaphor and allegory."
He continues to point out that, to the uslovnost' of live action cinema, animation adds uslovnost' of actors—puppets or flat drawings, which themselves are animated metaphors: "Multiply this by uslovnost' of movement, created phase by phase, and by uslovnost' of the word 'uttered' by the animated character, and finally by uslovnost' of backgrounds, against which this character acts. Still, it turns out that all of these applications of uslovnisti are insufficient for this amazing art and it willingly employs allegory of the fable, chooses for itself the most fantastic plots and from the earliest days feels at home in the world of tales."273
Asenin does make sure, however to criticize the 'empty' formalism of Western European animation of the 1960s and 1970s: "[...] imagination helps to see and understand the reality from new perspectives [...]." He continues: "Here, as in any form of art, the power of the artist is in imaged cognition of life and not some abstract play of fancy."274 Here Asenin basically re-iterates Atamanov's position, as embodied in the latter's defense of Peace Be Upon You and Your Home in 1963: animation is an art of uslovnost', and should thus strive to develop its language using the means characteristic of uslovnost'. Nonetheless, uslovnisti should not be taken as an excuse for formalistic chaos; formal irrealism should make the idea of the film more real.
Unlike official artists in other creative domains, therefore, animation artists continued to enjoy relative freedom in terms of formal experimentation even during the Stagnation—relative, because all formal innovations had to be carefully justified. As in the previous decade, Glavk continued to supervise the ideological correctness of the films, leaving the responsibility for the artistic quality to the studios, but as the visual language of animation grew more and more complex, the boundaries between the form and content of the film blurred. The resulting ambiguity was a source of understandable discomfort for censors. The generation of censors from the 1960s, unlike those starting careers in the 1930s, were university graduates typically holding a degree in philology.275 Because their main domain of expertise was written text, the increased semantic complexity of the visual, toward which Soviet animation of the late 1960s and 1970s gravitated, presented them with a serious challenge. "The main object of censorship's attention was not the apparent 'sedition' (which did not occur in animation all that frequently)," writes Georgy Borodin, "nor was it making sure that all political and ideological directives were respected or worrying about morality or conformity to the norms of Socialist realism.The archenemy of censorship was uncontrollable
273 Asenin, Mudrosti vymysla, p. 120 (Translation mine). 274 Asenin, p. 133.(Translation mine). 275 Bljum, Arlen. Kak eto delalos' v Leningrade. Tsenzura v gody ottepeli, zastja i perestrojki. Akademicheskij Projekt, 2005, p.25. 86 subtext. Not necessarily ideologically harmful—simply uncontrollable."276
Waging a war against the uncontrollable subtext of an art form characterized by an increasing uslovnost' of expressive means – not only in terms of designs and movement, but also in terms of dramaturgy – was doubtlessly a serious challenge. Consider for example the following films produced at Souzmul'tfil'm between the 1970s and early1980s: The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971), by Ivan Ivanov- Vano and Yurii Norstein; Butterfly (1972), by Andrei Khrzhanovsky; Master from Clamecy (1972), by Vadim Kurchevsky; Adventures of Chichikov (1974), by Boris Stepantsev; Hedgehog in a Fog (1975), by Yurii Norstein; Crane’s feathers (1977), by Idea Goranina; The Shooting Range (1977), by Anatoly Petrov; Tale of Tales (1979), by Yurii Norstein; Transformation (1982), by Nikolai Serebryakov; and Conflict (1983), by Gari Bardin. While varying widely in terms of topic, style and animation techniques, all of these films are complex systems of meaning—"multi-dimensional infrastructures [...] not easily reducible to a 'narrative', but rather a 'narrative space' [...]."277
The censors responded to this challenge with a witch hunt of sorts: sensing that something was wrong but not being able to identify it, they demanded what seemed to be random changes just to ensure that at least some changes were made. Thus, the response from the censors was often hard to predict, but the artists developed certain strategies to distract from the possibly problematic yet aesthetically indispensable parts of their films and, sometimes, they were successful. In the following chapter, I will return to this 'cat and mouse game' between the animators and the censors during the last decades of the Soviet union, taking a closer look at some of these strategies, as well as the connections between these acts of artistic disobedience, unofficial culture and political subversion.
Although a significant part of this chapter has been devoted to tracing the “parabolic path” that Soviet animation had travelled between its beginnings and the early 1960s, my objective has been to show how the artistic developments that changed the path of Soviet animation in the late 1950s provided animation artists with myriad new ways of conveying their intent and ideas. I have explained that at the center of the process in which the new language of Soviet animation was developed was the aesthetic category of uslovnosti' and have argued that, by re-focusing the artists'
276 Borodin, Georigy. “V boribe za malenikie mysli”, In Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 73, 2005. p. 269 (Translation mine). 277 Paul Wells. “Literary theory, animation and the 'subjective correlative': Defining the narrative 'world' in Brit-lit animation.” In Buchan S.(ed.), Animated 'worlds'. John Libbey, 2006, p. 86. 87 attention on all of the elements of the composite animated image, uslovnost' enabled them to see all of these elements as potential carriers of meaning. I have suggested that the new approach to the medium, inspired and made possible by uslovnost', dissolved the boundaries between form and content and rendered the previously commonsensical notion of the primacy of text over image obsolete. I have also pointed out that, in addition to providing a theoretical framework for formal experimentation, the category of uslovnost' helped animation artists to persuade Brezhnev's officials that formalism was inevitable in the case of animation. Thus, uslovnost' both guided the post-1960 aesthetics of Soviet animation and legitimated them, empowering animation artists and exasperating censors. 88
Theorizing Subversion
In the previous chapters, I have examined the historical contexts – political, social, and cultural – that are relevant when approaching artistic production as well as reception during the Brezhnev era. I have shown, first of all, how, in response to Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization, the new Soviet intelligentsia – the shestidesyatniki – emerged; secondly, how first Khrushchev's and then Brezhnev's efforts to reverse the "thaw" resulted in an antagonism and mutual antipathy between the reform-minded intelligentsia and the state power; and, finally, how this antagonism produced an unofficial, parallel culture, which, despite its perceived status as separate, existed symbiotically with the official culture. It has been stressed here that even though not all members of the progressive creative intelligentsia joined their more radical colleagues in the unofficial underworld of artistic autonomy, they held the unofficial culture in high regard and aspired to produce work of comparable aesthetic, moral, and philosophical value, while continuing to operate under the censor's gaze.
As the focus of this project is on artists who were employed in the Soviet animation industry, in the third chapter I have discussed aesthetic and technological developments in the Soviet animation. These, I have argued, opened up new and exciting ways of communicating beyond words. In the 1960s, Soviet animation, inspired by the cultural climate of the Thaw and directly enabled by Khrushchev's changes to cultural policy, underwent a revolution. This revolution not only affected the themes and styles employed, genres and audiences, but also, most importantly, the understanding of the expressive means of the medium—the language of animation. I have suggested that at the center of the deliberations about the new aesthetics of animation was the concept of uslovnost'—the expressive ir-reality of the carefully constructed animated world. The poetics of uslovnost', operating metaphorically, enabled directors "to expand the semantic field of the film,"278 so that every detail, from the overall stylistic mode to the texture of the image, to the background music, to the choice of actors, became semantically significant and active. The aesthetic principle of uslovnost' guided the formal experimentation with the expressive potential of the medium, as well as legitimated it. Having convinced the authorities that primary uslovnost' of the medium necessitated uslovnost' as an artistic method, the animation artists secured a special place for themselves: while in the aftermath of the Manege exhibition, the state kept formal experimentation
278 Krivulja, Natalia. Labirinty Animatsii. Issledovanie khudozhestvennogo obraza rossijskih animatsionnyh fil'mov vtoroj poloviny XX veka. Graal, 2002, p. 61. 89 in literature, visual and performance arts on a short least, animation continued to enjoy relative formal freedom.
In the current chapter I seek to integrate all these contexts using the concept of “subversion.” In order to do so, I first develop a workable theoretical understanding of the concept. Using Thomas Ernst's analysis of “subversion” and its history as my point of departure, I construct an alternative approach to this evasive notion—an approach that strives to overcome the term's ambiguity by crystalizing some of its characteristic features. Finally, having laid down this theoretical groundwork, I explain why the artistic practices at the center of my inquiry can be interpreted as subversive.
Finding a comprehensive theoretical or historical treatment of the notion of "subversion" in academic literature written in English has proven a serious challenge. Typically, English texts which employ "subversion" as a conceptual tool do not specify what they take "subversion" to mean.279 In the process of reading, implicit definitions develop, but there is no explicit conceptual engagement with “subversion”; nor is there a reflection on why the phenomena under investigation are “subversive,” nor, for that matter, what they subvert. In other words, authors writing in English often use the word in its lexical sense as if what it denoted were transparent and required no further elaboration.280 This is particularly true of texts in art, literary theory and cultural studies; texts in international law and political science exhibit more caution and attempt more precision in this area, probably because of the likelihood that they might affect international and domestic political action.281 Consequently, the treatment "subversion" receives in legal and political science texts is
279 To mention just a few examples that even carry “subversion” in their title: Michael T. Davis: “'An Evening of Pleasure rather than Business': Songs, Subversion and Radical Sub-Culture in the 1790s”; James Smith: “Karagöz and Hacivat: Projections of Subversion and Conformance”; Shirin Edwin: “Subverting Social Customs: the Representations of Food in Three West African Francophone Novels.”; Mumia G. Osaaji: “Subversion of Patriarchal Ideology: a Case Study of Magdalene, a Woman Oral Narrative Performer from the Samburu of Kenya”; Cristina Şandru: “A Bakhtinian Poetics of Subversion: the Magical Realist Fiction of the 1980s in East-Central Europe”; Mary Bittner Wiseman: “Subversive Strategies in Chinese Avant-Garde Art”; Caren S. Neile “A place at the Hearth: Storytelling, Subversion and the U.S. Culture”, Arlette Farge: Sean Noan Walsh: “The subversion of Eros: Dialectic, Revolt, and Murder in the Polity of the Soul.”; Subversive Word:Public Opinion in Eighteenth Century France; George Katsiaficas: Subversion of Politics; M.Keith Booker: Techniques of Subversion in Modern Literature: Transgression, Abjections and the Carnivalesque. (Booker is more exact about what considers to be techniques of subversion, but he still does not reflect critically on them.) 280 A great example here is found in Samuel A. Chambers' book The Queer Politics of Television, 2009; in a chapter entitled "Desperately straight: Subverting heternormativity" Chambers uses the Oxford English Dictionary to define subversion: "To subvert: (1) to demolish, raze or overturn, (2) to undermine, corrupt, or pervert, and (3) to disturb, overthrow, or destroy" (p. 107). The same definition is used by Dana Heller in "Hair with body: corpulence, unruliness, and cultural subversion" In: (H.D.) Hairspray, 2011. 281 See, for example: David J.Kilcullen, “Subversion and Countersubversion in the Campaign against Terrorism in Europe.” Frank Kitson, Low intensity operations: subversion, insurgency, peacekeeping; William Rosenau, “Subversion and Insurgency: RAND Counterinsurgency Study.” 90 very specific—too specific to be easily transferable to intellectual endeavors in other disciplines. This, in turn, brings me to another challenge to finding a general theory of subversion—disciplinary divisions.
Within each of the disciplines mentioned above there exists, often implicitly, a tradition against which "subversion" is understood. In "Subversion—eine kleine Diskursanalyse eines vielfältigen Begriffs,"282, the German scholar Thomas Ernst sets out, using a minor diachronic discourse analysis, to trace these traditions and their respective discourses in order to better understand the notion's synchronic complexity, which, as he rightfully claims, results from the contemporary coexistence of all of these traditions. Because the result of his analysis is generally consistent with my own research, I will be using his work283 as the backbone for the following exposition, adjusting it where necessary.
Ernst identifies four discourses of subversion—the institutional discourse of politics, the artistic discourse of the avant-garde, the subcultural discourse and, finally, the post-structuralist discourse. "In the institutional discourse of politics, subversion is understood as a revolutionary overthrow of the state; in the artistic discourse of the avant-garde subversion can be described as an artistic and procedural movement; in the subcultural discourse it appears as the distinction of a minority and in the post-structuralist [academic] discourse as deconstruction."284
According to Ernst, these traditions developed historically and can all be traced to a common point of origin—the political discourse of subversion. However, despite this common origin, the acknowledged permeability of the borders separating these discourses285 and the logic suggested by the process of appropriation (i.e. the fact that notions, ideas, objects, etc. are appropriated because of their initial appeal and maintain traces of their initial meaning), Ernst prefers to keep these different subversions separate and well-rooted in their respective discourses. He proposes that the notion's heterogeneity or multi-facetedness be celebrated as a "multitude," and thus an adequate counter-response to the all-pervasive power in the society of control— a kind of decentralized resistance.286
Not disagreeing with Ernst's decision to treat these different "subversions" separately – that is what
282 Published in: Psychologie & Gesellschaftskritik, 128, 2008, pp. 9-34. 283 Although I will be predominantly working with "Subversion -- eine kleine Diskursanalyse eines vielfältigen Begriffs" (2008), I will also consult Ernst's other publications on the subject: "Subversionen. Eine Eniführung", the introduction to the anthology Subversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästhetik in der Gegenwart, 2008, and "Ein Gespenst geht um; der Begriff der Subversion in der Gegenwart" (2002). 284 Ernst,Thomas, summary from the author's website. <<(http://www.thomasernst.net/aufsatz-subversion>> 285 Ernst: Subversion—eine kleine Diskursanalyse, p. 17. 286 Ernst, Subversion, pp. 28-31. 91 his project in a way requires – I would like to suggest that the ambiguity of the concept of "subversion" might better be dealt with if similarities – and not differences – between what "subversion" is understood to mean in each of the indicated discourses were considered. I would, moreover, argue that while in each of the discursive fields mentioned above "subversion" does entail a different set of possible actors, methods and outcomes, the concept always retains its initial political meaning. In fact, it is precisely the concept's political derivation and, consequently, the promise of a political effect, that endows all 'non-political' usages of "subversion" with rhetorical power and significance. Thus, building upon Ernst's analytic effort, I will proceed to theorize a possible synthetic approach to "subversion." Finally, by bringing the contexts described in the three previous chapters together, I will show why the resulting framework can be applied to this project.
Institutional Political Discourse: Subversion as Preparation for a Revolution
According to Ernst's history of the term, "subversion" first came to be used by those in power to characterize any activities that potentially threatened their position in the current power constellation.287 In other words, "subversion" was initially taken to mean "undermining" and potentially "overthrowing" the established political order. Ernst, whose focus is primarily on the German context, locates the earliest instance of the word's use in the beginning of the 19th century,288 suggesting that the understanding of subversion as "revolutionary toppling of the state" made its way into American and German politico-military institutional discourses in the aftermath of the French Revolution, along with many other political ideas developed during and for the latter.289
In “Defining Subversion,” R.J. Spjut provides records of earlier usages of the word “subversion” in the context of 16th and 17th century England. Because these examples both compliment Ernst's historiography and illustrate some of the key characteristics of political subversion that Ernst develops, they are worth mentioning here. The first example described by Spjut comes from Henry VIII's proclamation "Limiting Exposition and Reading of Scripture," in which the King decrees that the right to teach the Bible and the New Testament should be restricted to "curates or graduates in any of the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or such as be or shall be admitted to preach by the
287 Ernst, Thomas. “Subversionen. Eine Einführung.” In Ernst, Th., Cantó, Gozalbez, Richter, Sebastian, et al. (eds.), SUBversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästetik in der Gegenwart. Transcript, 2008. p. 13 288 Ernst, Einführung, p. 13. 289 Ernst, Subversion Diskursanalyse, p. 17. 92
King’s licence or by his vice-regent or by any bishop of the realm"290 in order to prevent those "minding craftily by their preaching and teaching to restore into this realm the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome" from subverting and overthrowing "as well the sacraments of the Holy Church as the power and authority of the princes and magistrates."291
The second example mentioned by Spjut is that of John Taylor, who in 1676 was accused of uttering blasphemous expressions and because of this was found guilty of sedition. Exactly how blasphemous speech was interpreted as sedition is explained in Barrister Sir Matthew Hale's pronouncement concerning Taylor's ill behavior. According to Sir Peyton Ventris's Report, [...] Hale said, that such kind of wicked blasphemous words were not only an offence [sic.] to God and religion, but a crime against the laws, State and Government, and therefore punishable in this Court. For to say, religion is a cheat, is to dissolve all those obligations whereby the civil societies are preserved, and that Christianity parcel of the laws of England; and therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law.292
Sir Mathew Hale's interpretation beautifully explains not only why seemingly non-political activities of alternative interpretation of the scriptures and blasphemy were treated with such seriousness by the Crown, but also how political “subversion” works. Neither of the activities cited above presented an immediate threat to the throne and yet, by challenging the ideological foundations of the state, they posed a threat to the very basis of society, thus creating legitimacy problems for the regime. As will become clear shortly, in general terms, this is the conclusion Ernst makes about “subversion” characteristic of the political discourse.
According to Ernst, it was during the French Revolution, and in fact owing to it, that historico- philosophical or religious models became acceptable for justifying militant subversive actions as necessary preparatory work – practical and theoretical – for a revolution.293 Ernst cites Johannes Agnoli, a German-Italian political theorist, who in 1991 gave a series of lectures entitled “Theory of Subversion,” which later appeared as a book.294 According to Agnoli, "Subversion is work [...] for the sake of revolution; it is an overturn, possibly of consciousness, in the direction of a revolutionary change."295 This work, as Agnoli puts it, is the laborious "work of a mole" (Maulwurfsarbeit) and consists of radical practices and constant revisions of the theory of
290 Spjut, R.J. “Defining Subversion.” In Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 6, No. 2 1979, pp. 254-261. (p. 254. ) 291 Spjut, p. 254 292 Taylor's Case (1676). In The Reports of Sir Peyton Ventris. Vol 1, p 293. (Googel e-Book). 293 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 17. 294 Johannes Agnoli: Subversion: Die Sach Selbst und Ihre Geschichte, Ca Ira Verlag, 1999. 295 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 18 (Translation mine) 93 subversion, which informs the practices.296
The radical subversive practices that Agnoli might have had in mind here are described, quite broadly, by the US Department of Defense as actions "designed to undermine the military, economic, psychological, or political strength or morale of a regime, but do not fall into the categories of treason, sedition, sabotage, or espionage."297 Some examples of such actions are given by Frank Kitson in his seminal work on political subversion.298 These are assertions of economic pressure, strikes, protest marches, propaganda and even small-scale violence "for the purpose of coercing recalcitrant members of the population into giving support.”299 Despite the inclusion of small-scale violence in this list, subversive actions in the military-political context are largely understood not to employ force.300 William Rosenau points out that while political "subversion can have violent manifestations—e.g., fomenting riots—and is typically employed as part of a broader armed terrorist or insurgent campaign," "it is essentially not martial in nature."301
Besides the radical practices, Agnoli's formula of political subversion includes the continuous advancement of relevant theory. The importance of the theoretical dimension of political "subversion" can hardly be overemphasized, since the course of the radical actions aimed at "toppling the current political order," as well as their effectiveness, always depend on an understanding of the political order in question and the power relations that sustain it.302 Consider, for instance, the difference between possible subversive actions directed against a totalitarian "socialism" and those aimed at liberal capitalism.303 A less trivial example is offered by Ernst, who points out that following the failures of the 1968 student movements in Europe, disillusioned revolutionaries realized that they might be more successful in achieving their radical goals by trading direct politics and violence for softer, indirect, playful and artistic techniques.304 Also, the theoretical arrival of Guy Debord's "society of the spectacle," Michele Foucault's "bio-power," Gilles Deleuze's "society of control" and Antonio Negri's notion of the "multitude" have all had an impact on the understanding of the politics of political "subversion."
296 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 18. 297 Rosenau, William. “Subversion and Insurgency: RAND Counterinsurgency Study.” pp 1-19. (p. 4.) 298 Kitson, Frank. Low intensity operations: subversion, insurgency, peace-keeping. London, 1971 299 Kitson, p. 3. 300 Kitson, p. 3. 301 Rosenau, p. 5. 302 Martin Doll, “Für eine Subversion der Subversion.” In Ernst, Th., Cantó, Gozalbez, Richter, Sebastian, et al. (eds.), SUBversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästetik in der Gegenwart. Transcript, 2008, pp 47-69. (p. 48.) 303 See Rosenau, pp. 16-17. 304 Ernst, Begriff, p. 5. 94
It is necessary to emphasize, especially in light of the previous paragraph, that political subversion should not only be associated with revolutionary political movements.305 Rosenau points out that the golden age of political subversion was during the Cold War, when both the US and the USSR were busy running subversive programs in one another's respective "camps." Rosenau mentions that the US supported the Congress for Cultural Freedom—an organization of Soviet intellectuals and artists who advocated for liberal democratic changes. He also remembers a US project involving the distribution of copies of Western books in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Countries, as well as the assistance given to trading Chilean unionists, politicians, journalists, military officers and others following the 1973 coup. The Soviet Union, in turn, is known to have worked to destabilize the democratic governments in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1940s, to have supported liberation movements opposed to pro-Western regimes in Latin America and to have provided financial assistance to pro-Soviet political parties in India and Africa.
Thus, in political discourse, which is produced by the politico-military complex of the state, on the one side, and radical political theorists and activists on the other, "subversion" is taken to mean preparatory work for a revolutionary change. This work consists of radical actions directed at weakening the opponent by eroding the latter's economic, political and ideological support systems. Likened to the work of a mole, subversion operates from underneath, or inside, and the extensiveness of its impact is subject to its remaining undetected. Political subversion is a method and thus is not bound to any single ideology: Ernst's list of radical groups employing subversive strategies includes the Red Army Faction and Al-Quaida, as as well as peaceful revolutionary movements in the Eastern Block from 1989 into the 1990s. Rosenau's examples of both the United States' and USSR's subversive projects also support the point.
According to Ernst, this political understanding of "subversion" was prevalent during the 18th and 19th centuries, but in today's political language "revolution" is preferred to "subversion," where the "toppling of the state" is concerned, and "terrorism" has nearly fully replaced "subversion" when talking about preparatory activities leading to the former.306 Ernst sees the reason for this change in the gradual broadening of the word's meaning due to its appropriation by the other discourses —the artistic discourse of avant-garde and the subcultural discourse. "307
305 Mark Terkessidis points out that in 1970s Latin America "subversion" did in fact come to designate any leftist critique. Consequently, after the Chilean and Argentinian coups, the word was suddenly empty of meaning. ("Karma Chamäleon. Unverbindliche Richtlininen für die Anwendung von subversiven Taktiken früher und heute." In: Thomas Ernst at al. (eds): Subversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästhetik in der Gegenwart. Bielefeld, 2008.) 306 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 19. 307 Rosenau thus explains the decreased popularity of "subversion" in military-political discourse today: "Within 95
The big question is when and how "subversion" entered discourses other than the political and came to designate objects and life styles. Diderich Diederichsen, another German scholar famous for researching "subversion" in the field of cultural production, observes that the mid 19th century bore witness to a marked shift in the meaning of the notion. The word that previously formed part of the politico-military vocabulary, and shared a semantic field with such words as 'infiltration', 'disruption', 'erosion', 'eruption', 'insubordination', 'propaganda' and even 'paranoia', was appropriated and positively re-evaluated by the new social group of Parisian "anti-bourgeois," a heterogeneous group recognizable by its "art, youth, the underworld [and] the gypsy life-style"308— in other words, the Bohemia.309
What is of interest to Diederichsen, and certainly anyone concerned with the history of the notion of "subversion" is how and why the latter came to be re-evaluated and appropriated to designate not only military operations but also types of aesthetics and life-styles. Diederichsen proposes that the necessary conditions for making this re-interpretation possible were all found inside Parisian Bohemia in the mid 19th century: the heterogeneous composition of the group, its geographic coherence, and its common enemy—the bourgeoisie. He suggests that, in the smoky atmosphere of Parisian cafés and other venues adopted by bohemians, bourgeois ideology and aesthetics, such as instrumental rationality, economic exchange and artistic production regulated by market, were equated with bourgeois praxis and politics—and with this modernization, industrialization and anonymity. In other words, aesthetic and political disagreements with the emerging status quo were fused together to such an extent that aesthetic difference came to be perceived as political and vice versa.310 Both Ernst and Diderichsen agree that this re-interpretation paved the way for "subversion" to enter the discourses of the artistic avant-garde and, somewhat later, the discourse of subculture.
As Elizabeth Wilson writes, Bohemia was not fully coextensive with either "modernism" or the "avant-garde," but all three overlapped.311 To use Jerrold Siegel's characterization, Bohemia was a "strangely assorted grouping," which, besides artists, the young and shady but inventive characters agencies such as the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and DoD, CI [the countersubversion branch] has long been viewed as a professional backwater. For many people, CI, like the term subversion, has unfortunate connotations —Cold-War style paranoia, the 'wilderness of mirrors,' and the relentless search for “the enemy within,” both real and imagined." (p. 14) 308 Siegel, Jerold. Bohemian Paris. culture, politics, and the boundaries of bourgeois life.1830-1930. John Hopkins University Press, 1999. p. 4. 309 Diederichen, Diederich. “Subversion – kalte Strategie und heiße Differenz.” In Diderichsen, D., Freiheit macht arm. Das Leben nach Rock'n'Roll. 1990-93. Kiepenheuer&Witsch, 1993. pp. 33-53. (pp.36-37.) 310 Diederichsen, p. 37. 311 Wilson, Elizabeth. Bohemians. The Glamorous Outcasts. Taurisparke, 2011. p. 25. 96 accommodated eccentrics, visionaries, rebels against discipline, people rejected by their families, the temporarily or permanently poor, political radicals and even the bourgeois.312 What all of them shared were deep disappointment with the outcomes of the French Revolution of 1930,313 in most cases their youth, and the Latin Quarter.314 Above all, however, they all were openly frustrated with bourgeois modernity, in particular the conflict between – on the one hand – the newly developed notion of "free subjectivity," which promised each person the unlimited right to personal development, and – on the other – the need for better regulation in order to ensure the social stability necessary for economic development.
While many "non-bohemians" must have also felt frustrated with the rapid social and cultural transformations brought about by modernity, the bohemians took it upon themselves to act out the conflicts of the new bourgeois reality.315 "Bohemia", writes Seigel, "was a space within which newly liberated energies were continually thrown up against the barriers being erected to contain them, where social margins and frontiers were probed and tested."316 By appropriating marginal lifestyles often offensive to developing bourgeois values and sensitivities, in particular propriety and the means-ends rationality, bohemians dramatized the tensions inherent in the new order, "making them visible and demanding that they be faced."317 What they did, in other words, was denaturalize the homogeneity of the dominant discourse of bourgeois modernity by performing their non-normative "otherness" and in doing this, according to Diederichsen and Ernst, lay their subversive power—subversive in the contemporary sense of what Ernst terms the "subcultural discourse of subversion."
The Anti-hegemonic Discourse of Subversion: Subversion as Hegemonic Disarticulation -Rearticulation
In the subcultural discourse, according to Ernst, "subversion" refers to practices of minority groups; by "minority groups" he means both minority groups "proper," i.e. ethnic, sexual, religious, political, cultural, etc., as well as (youth) countercultures. The potential of minority groups for
312 Siegel's proposed re-definition of Bohemia: "[…] it was the appropriation of marginal life-styles by young and not so young bourgeois, for the dramatization of ambivalence toward their own social identities and destinies" (p. 11). 313 While non-bourgeois members of Bohemia were angry with the fact that the new regime was serving the interests of a single social group ( the revolution was named the "Bourgeois Revolution"), the bourgeois component of the group was dissatisfied with the increasingly conservative politics of the Bourbon monarchy (for more, see Siegel pp. 3-31). 314 Siegel, p. 27. 315 Siegel, p. 13. 316 Siegel, p. 11. 317 Siegel, p. 11. 97 subversion, which I would like to call "subversiveness," lies here in each group's identity, it's "otherness" in relation to the dominant social group. Therefore, the construction and cultivation of a distinct identity through clothing, hair styles, musical preferences, patterns of consumption and meaning-making, forms of politics, means of artistic expression, and language constitutes the core strategy of subcultural subversion.
If a distinctive collective identity is the main strategy of subcultural subversion, then how does it work and what does it accomplish? Ernst's answer to this question is that the goal to which minority groups aspire is not political "subversion" in the sense of "political revolution"; rather, they wish to establish a solid social position and acquire emancipation.318 By performing their differences through creative differentiation, minority and subcultural identities act as corrosive elements which erode hegemonic ideological constructions and through this process carve out new social spaces for themselves. A minority group or subculture is successful – in terms of subversion, that is – if it manages to force the dominant cultural discourse to accept its "otherness" as "normal." The obvious drawback of this success, however, is 'going mainstream' and, thus, losing a distinct, "subversive" identity. The positive aspect of this acceptance is that, in the process of struggling for social recognition and inclusion, a successful minority group or subculture manages to transform society at large.319 Thus, even though "toppling of the state" might not be the goal that minority groups pursue by performing difference, their cultivated "otherness" can succeed in toppling the dominant discourse—a sine qua non of any state's legitimacy.
Although I do agree with Ernst in construing "subversion of minorities" as an independent category in his classification of different discursive traditions of "subversion," I find it too narrow and too specific and would, therefore, like to expand it in a way that would allow for it to include instances of subversion that resemble "subversion of minorities" in logic, i.e. those activities that intentionally or unintentionally rupture the homogeneity of the dominant discourse, but differ in terms of actors – neither subcultures, nor minorities – and means other than the cultivation of identity difference. Examples of this, for instance, would be the activities of civil society interest groups, like the Alternative Globalization Movement, or socialist think tanks, like the League for Social Reconstruction.
The notion of "subversion" in Cultural Studies – the home of the subcultural/minorities discourse as
318 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 23. 319 Ernst gives the examples of the hippies, Kommune 1 and Feminist movements as evidence of the possible political effect of subcultures (Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 24). This list can of course be extended to many other groups. 98 it is described by Ernst – is closely linked to the notions of ideology and domination. In fact, it was of course due to the shift from the deterministic structuralist model of ideological domination associated with Louis Althusser to a more dialectic version of ideology conceived and developed by Antonio Gramsci that "subversion" as an analytical category could emerge.
In contrast to Althusser, who postulated ideology as an infallible closed system that reproduces itself successfully through the interpellation of social subjects, Gramsci viewed ideology as an unstable process, or, as John Storey puts it, a "condition in progress."320 Gramsci's theory of hegemony proposes that the dominance of certain social formations is secured not by ideological compulsion, but by cultural leadership .321 This cultural leadership is accomplished not by coercion, but by winning the active consent of the subordinated groups. Thus, hegemony is maintained not through the destruction of opposition, but through negotiation, and it is through negotiation that dominant ideologies can be gradually transformed in a way that is favorable to non-dominant groups.322
One obvious advantage of Gramsci's theory of hegemony, in comparison to Althusser's model, is it's capacity to explain ideological and social change. Moreover, it makes possible the understanding of disjunctions between the base and the superstructure, which are manifested in the survival of the features of society that cannot be explained by the dominant mode of production and the conditions of existence.323 Its greatest contribution, however, especially in the context of the genesis of "subversion" as a theoretical possibility, is its re-interpretation of the subject. Conceiving of ideological domination in terms of hegemonic struggle presupposes that subjects no longer passively absorb the dominant world-view, but actively participate in negotiations of their own. As Turner puts it, the theory of hegemony "allows for power to flow 'bottom-up', and severely qualifies the assumptions about the effectiveness of power imposed from the 'top-down'."324 What better way to frame the dynamic of subversion?
320 Storey, John. Cultural theory, popular culture: An introduction. (3rded.). Longman, 2000. p. 103. 321 Graem Turner. British cultural Studies: An introduction. (2nd ed.) Routledge, 2000. p. 191. 322 It should be pointed out, however, that coercion is not completely absent from Gramsci's understanding of the process of hegemonic domination. The process of establishing and maintaining hegemonic leadership is based on a combination of violence (toward opposing groups) and persuasion (in the case of subaltern groups). (See a brief discussion in Steve Jones. Antonio Gramsci, Routledge, 2007, pp. 49-52.) 323 What I mean here is that practices and ideas, that are from the position of economic function no longer useful, often continue to exist in society nonetheless. In Gramsci's words: “[...] I do not believe believe there are many who would maintain that once a structure has altered, all the elements of the corresponding superstructure must necessarily collapse. […] the law of nature itself, which may have waned for the educated classes, is preserved by the Catholic religion and is more alive among the people than one thinks” (Gramsci, Q10, II §41.xii In: David Forgacs, The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1835.NY, 2000, p.198). 324 Turner, p. 199. 99
According to Chantal Mouffe's interpretation of Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the process of establishing a hegemonic “leadership” is marked by the following phases: a) formulation of a “hegemonic principle,” i.e. a value system—“the realization of which depends on the central role played by the fundamental (dominant) class at the level of the relations of production.”325; b) the articulation (attachment) of elements of the ideologies of subaltern groups to the hegemonic principle in order to create a unified ideological system. 326 It follows that if one social group wanted to establish hegemonic leadership over other groups, it would have to incorporate at least some of the demands of these groups into its ideological program. The resulting “ideological ensemble,” unified around the initial hegemonic principle, would still serve the interests of the hegemonizing group, but to the hegemonized subjects it would appear as in their interests, as well.
Within such a framework, Mouffe describes ideological struggle as consisting of “a process of disarticulation - rearticulation of given ideological elements.”327 Here disarticulation refers to practices that place the necessity of the ties between the elements of the articulated reality in question; rearticulation, in turn, denotes a process through which the elements of previously articulated reality are recuperated by a different social group aspiring for the position of new hegemon and are articulated to its hegemonic principle.328 Hegemonic struggle is thus a continuous dialectic of resistance and incorporation, in which one can easily recognize the process of successful subcultural subversion as outlined by Ernst. The tradition of "subversion" in the discourse of subcultures, which Ernst describes as the cultivation and performance of difference with the purpose of creating fissures in the homogeneity of the hegemonic discourse, appears to be nothing other than a practice of disarticulation - rearticulation. What I would indeed like to suggest is that Ernst's category of "subcultural subversion" is a particular case of "hegemonic disarticulation – rearticulation," and that what he calls a "discourse of subcultures" is a particular instance of the "discourse of hegemonic resistance."
Once the "discourse of subcultures" is expanded to the "discourse of hegemonic resistance" and "subcultural subversion" is rethought as "hegemonic dis-articulation," these categories come to circumscribe a significantly larger range of activities framed as subversive in Cultural Studies and its "daughter" disciplines—Queer Studies, Gender Studies, Post-colonial studies, Visual Studies and others: from drag pageants to culture jamming, from media activism to what Michele de Certeau 325 Chantal Mouffe. “Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci.” In Mouffe, Ch., Gramsci and Marxist theory. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 168-206. (p.193.) 326 Mouffe, p. 193. 327 Mouffe, p. 193. 328 Mouffe, p. 193. 100 calls le perruque,329 from what Dick Hebdige named bricolage330 to resistance through pleasure, from flash-mob performances to Homi Bhabha's notion of hybridity. Moreover, because Gramsci views popular culture as the most important battlefield of the hegemonic struggle, making apparent the link between this understanding of subversion and Gramsci's theory of hegemony opens the wide field of popular culture to investigation. One final advantage of reconceptualizing Ernst's category of "subcultural subversion" as "hegemonic dis-articulation" is that the latter is much more inclusive in terms of the possible actors involved: in addition to subcultural and minority groups, it can include interest groups, such as anti-nuclear power, anti-globalization or anti-consumerism groups and even 'non-affiliated' individuals.
Thus, with some modifications, but in general agreement with Ernst's blueprint, the second tradition of conceptualizing "subversion" provides an understanding of it as hegemonic dis-articulation, which circumscribes activities that intend, or have the potential, to compromise the homogeneity of the hegemonic discourse and thereby put the legitimacy of the latter to question. These activities, besides the cultivation of identity difference through taste, clothing, language, and behavior, as discussed by Ernst, can include a variety of instances of media activism, pranks, practices of culture jamming and a wide range of pop-cultural productions.
The Artistic Avant-Garde Discourse: Subversion as Challenge to Hegemonic Visuality
In Ernst's classification, the third discourse in which "subversion" has acquired a distinct tradition is that of the artistic avant-garde. He observes that in the avant-gardist discourses of art theory "subversion" is primarily concerned with systems of signs (Zeichensysteme)331; however, as Ernst also briefly mentions, in the theoretical and political contexts of historical avant-gardes, attacks on the established systems of signs were a part of larger politico-aesthetic programs aspiring to affect the political and social order as much as the aesthetic tradition.332 According to Ernst, "subversion" in the artistic avant-gardist discourse has to do with bringing the existing ruling order into question333 and, although he does not state it very clearly, one can infer that this questioning is done
329 As described by de Certeau, "La perruque is the worker's own work disguised as work for his employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of the material value is stolen, it is different from absenteeism in the the worker is officially on the job. La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary writing a love letter on 'company time', or as complex as a cabinet maker's 'borrowing' a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room" (Michele de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 25). 330 Dick Hebdige. Subculture: the Meaning of Style. Routledge, 2002, pp. 103-106. 331 Ernst, Einführung, p. 13. 332 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 19. 333 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 19. 101 by challenging the conventions of hegemonic visuality, i.e. the way that we see, or, as Hal Foster has formulated it "how we see, how we are able, allowed or made to see, and how we see this seeing and unseeing therein."334
As narrated by Ernst, the history of the idea that radical aesthetics possesses subversive power goes back to the European avant-garde movements of the early 20th century—specifically the Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists, whose interdisciplinary and experimental practices sought to dissolve the borders separating art from social and political life. However, their efforts to bring art as an institution down failed, when the seemingly indigestible avant-garde radicalism of the first half of the 20th century was eventually absorbed right back into the institution. What the historical avant- garde ultimately managed to accomplish, concludes Ernst, is the expansion of the borders of the field of art, not the dissolution of them.335
In the late 1950s, Ernst continues, the avant-gardist project of radicalizing art as a social and political force was resuscitated by the Situationist International (SI) — an international, somewhat loosely connected network of European artists, intellectuals, political theorists and activists. As Ernst rightfully points out, it was the SI, who theorized the notion of subversion, explicitly and at length, in relation to radical artistic practices; he cites a passage from a 1963 publication of a German offshoot of the SI Subversive Aktion—Unverbindlichen Richtlinien [Tentative principles], where a new type a human being – homo subversivus – is described. It states that the such a being is produced by combining the intentions of Karl Marx, the complex psychology of C.G Jung, the psychoanalytic movement, the Eranos group, the Frankfurt school, some of the art movements (Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism and the Beatniks) and also all those elements that are accepted into the Subversive Codex. Homo subversivus is someone who has seen through the delusions of the repressive world and has decided to live his life in such a way that his or her human potential is realized to the fullest and his or her environment transformed.336
To better understand the subversive potential of homo subversivus, it would be helpful to briefly consider his or her social milieu—the society of the spectacle. The society of the spectacle, as theorized by possibly the most prominent figure of the movement Guy Debord, is a society in which all human relations – whether inter- or intrasubjective – are fully mediated by the flow of images. It is the realm where what was directly lived before moves and exists as representation; it is a space
334 Foster, Hal. Vision and Visuality. Bay Press, 1988. p. ix. 335 Ernst, p. 20. 336 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, pp. 21-22. 102 where relationships between people are replaced by relationships with commodities.337 A separate reality that supplants the actual reality by dulling the awareness of life, it is "an affirmation of all human life as appearance.”338 Its alternative reality absorbs and subverts the actual reality, to the point that appearances become the “real”. Thus, homo subversivus becomes someone who sees through this uninterrupted and dazzling flow of appearances, who seeks to live his or her life more fully than the borders as delineated by the spectacle deem possible or desirable.
Bringing the notion of the spectacle into Ernst's narrative is helpful not only because it allows for a more nuanced understanding of homo subversivus, but also because it outlines the conditions against which contemporary instances of avant-garde subversion, as described by Ernst, are taking shape. In the theoretical construction of the "society of the spectacle," Debord articulates the overpowering status that representation has acquired in media-saturated capitalist society, as well as the role that images have come to play in regulating and sustaining the existing political, economic and social order. At the same time, he lays out a framework which allows one to see how toying with images is kind of political intervention, and how disrupting the smooth, monotonous flow of commodified life experiences can have transformative effects. In the framework of the spectacular society, disruptions, appropriations and interventions, as well as creative resistance to commodification, which provided the conceptual foundation for SI aesthetic strategies, acquire a clear political meaning.
Whereas the subversive program of SI combined aesthetic theory with political action, and was multidisciplinary in its aspired impact, the group's intellectual and spiritual heirs, according to Ernst, gradually transformed the SI battle into a "micro-level of symbolic struggle."339 Ernst concludes his history of artistic subversion by stating that in contemporary society, in which the system of media capitalism in Western democracies seems indestructible, avant-garde subversion is best expressed by media activist groups such as Communication- and Spassguerrilla.340 Their activities, which are very much in line with the Situationist project, aim to interrogate the cultural grammar and workings of the seemingly indestructible system of media-reliant capitalism in the democratic West.341
Although I think Ernst's description of this type of subversion is insightful, I find the fact that he 337 Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, 1995, p.12. 338 Debord: The Society, p.14. 339 Ernst, p. 22 (in the original: "Microberichen symbolische Kämpfe"). 340 Ernst, p. 22. 341 Ernst, p. 22. 103 doesn't consider the possibility of it being applicable to artistic work outside the context of the communication/media guerrilla groups unfortunate and unsatisfactory. The reason why his analysis follows the trajectory it does, I would maintain, is because Ernst implicitly chooses a particular narrative of the artistic avant-garde—a narrative within which subversive institutional art, meaning art produced and distributed within the context of the bourgeois art system, is an oxymoron. In what follows, I would like to critically engage with the theoretical frame chosen by Ernst and show why there is no reason to limit the notion of subversiveness to the semiotic warfare of post-situationist anti-spectacular guerrilla groups.
Despite locating the idea of subversion through radical aesthetics in discourses of the artistic avant- gardes, Ernst does not engage with the artistic avant-garde theoretically, or at any rate not to a sufficient degree,342 giving the reader little clue as to what he takes the artistic avant-garde to be, except for listing Surrealism, Dadaism and Futurism as examples and referring to the "transgression of boundaries between life and art"343 as its main purpose. I would suggest, however, that theoretical engagement with the avant-garde is necessary where the connection between the assaults on aesthetic traditions and their impact on social or/and political order is concerned, and that this connection is crucial for grasping both the logic of this type of "subversion" and the relation of artistic subversion to the notions described before.
Consistent with the artistic movements that Ernst offers as examples and his understanding that the major aspiration of these groups was to transgress the boundaries between art and life is Peter Bürger's theory of the avant-garde, one of the most influential takes on the subject. In his seminal work The Theory of the Avant-garde, to which Ernst makes a reference, Bürger sets out to historically determine what differentiates the artistic avant-garde from artistic modernism. He argues that while both modernism and the avant-garde strive to negate the principles of society, they differ with respect to their strategies: modernism's strategy is to break away from the expected formal norms and explode comfortable aesthetic clichés, thus challenging and frequently offending bourgeois sensitivities. The avant-garde, on the other hand, is directed not as much against aesthetic norms and structures as against the organization of art in bourgeois society—the bourgeois institution of art constituted as an autonomous social sphere unrelated to the other spheres of human activity. "The European avant-garde movements can be defined as an attack on the status of art in bourgeois society," writes Bürger. He continues: "What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a
342 Ernst does refer to Peter Bürger, Hans Magnus Enzensberger andr Walter Fänders when explaining how the avant- garde failed. 343 Ernst, p. 20. 104 style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life praxis of men."344 "The avant- gardistes" he goes on to say, "proposed the sublation of art—sublation in the Hegelian sense of the term: art was not to be simply destroyed, but transferred to the praxis of life where it would be preserved, albeit in a changed form."345
According to Bürger, the process leading up to the avant-garde began in the mid 18th century, when art was set apart from the daily life of the emerging bourgeois society—the process which eventually produced art criticism, systematic aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, public art exhibitions and the art market; the process, in other words, that produced the modern notion of art.346 The liberation of art from its previous social functions "freed" the artist from the "tyranny" of patronage and invited, if not required, him or her to explore their own individual vision of their historic predicament. Thus, where the collectively produced sacral art of the middle ages served as a cult object for collective reception, and individually produced courtly art served the glory of the prince and was created for social reception at court, bourgeois art became an individually produced portrayal of bourgeois self-understanding offered for individual contemplation.347 This individual contemplation, however, came to be mediated by the emerging discourses of the institution of art, which constructed art as "the realm of non-purposive creation and disinterested pleasure,"348 a realm drastically different and, at the same time, complementary to that of the bourgeois everyday, dominated by instrumental reason.
Although the newly acquired autonomous status of art as an institution in bourgeois society allowed the artist relative critical distance from which bourgeois 'philistinism' could be criticized, it simultaneously contained this criticism within the institution. Dissociated from social practices, the bourgeois art of the 19th century, according to Bürger, abandoned itself to its own materials, until Aestheticism "had made the element that defines art as an institution [autonomy] the essential content of [art] works."349 In this way, the avant-garde, for Bürger, is the phase of historical development of Western art when the nexus between the autonomy of art as an institution and the absence of any real consequences is realized; when art as a social subsystem becomes self- critical.350 This phase, according to Bürger, begins in early 20th century with movements such as
344 Bürger Peter. Theory of the avant-garde. (translated by Michael Shaw.) University of Minnesota Press, 1984. p. 49. 345 Bürger, p. 49. 346 Bürger, p. 42. 347 Bürger, p. 48. 348 Bürger, p. 42. 349 Bürger, p. 48. 350 Bürger, p. 22. 105
Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism, artistic practices, Bürger argues, which are best understood as expressions of the intent to eliminate art as an institution.351
According to Bürger's theory, therefore, the avant-garde was an artistic movement of the early 20th century, the main objective of which was to destroy the bourgeois institution of art by "negating those determinations that are essential in autonomous art: the disjunction of art and the praxis of life, individual production, and individual reception as distinct from the former."352 Because even the most radical anti-institutional statements and works of the avant-garde are the pride of permanent collections of art museums around the world, the avant-garde's attempt to destroy the institution of art has obviously failed. Although this failure, in Bürger's evaluation, doesn't nullify the importance of the avant-gardist moment,353 it is reason enough for him to be pessimistic about the politically transformative potential of the neo-avant-garde. As Schulte-Sasse rightfully points out, Bürger's understanding seems to be that, in order for art as an autonomous institution in a bourgeois society to be overcome, bourgeois society has to be overcome as well.354
Whether it is indeed true that post avant-garde art in bourgeois society has no "genuine" political potential because, following the failure of historical avant-gardes to overcome the institutional autonomy of art, it is always already absorbed by the institution, is contestable. What is true, however, is that such patterns of thinking, i.e. construing the political power of art as inversely proportionate to its institutional acceptance, is common in the ongoing debates surrounding contemporary art, and in particular the subversive potential of it. Ernst's leaving the discourses surrounding contemporary institutional art out of his analysis is informed by this very logic. He moves from the dadaist manifesto to theoretical insights into how and why the avant-garde could not have succeeded in destroying the institution of art, but, instead, pushed the boundaries of what art is, securing its own institutional recuperation, to Pierre Bourdieu's critique of the avant-garde art today as a vehicle of social distinction, to the last vehement attempt to reclaim art for life carried out by the Situationist International and concludes with the semiotic warfare carried out by communication guerrilla groups.355
351 Bürger, p. 50. 352 Bürger, p. 53. 353 Bürger writes: "The meaning of the break in the history of art that the historical avant-garde movements provoked does not consist in the destruction of art as an institution, but in the destruction of the possibility of positing aesthetic norms as valid ones" (p. 87). Bürger believes that this is exactly why such a variety of styles and schools exist side by side today (p. 87, p. 93). 354 Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. “Theory of Modernism versus theory of Avant-garde.” In Bürger, P., Theory of the Avangarde. p. xlii 355 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, pp. 20-23. 106
Although I agree that the communication guerrilla groups are "conceptual offsprings" of the Situationist International, who, in turn, are "conceptual offsprings" of dadaists and surrealists, this is definitely not the only lineage that can be drawn from the latter—unless, that is, one assumes that the artistic avant-garde is indeed dead, which is exactly what Bürger claims. One must question here, however, whether the avant-garde is really dead, and whether the relationship between the neo- and historical avant-gardes is really that of cancellation –namely, that neo-avantgarde serves as proof of historical avant-garde's demise.
Since its publication, Bürger's Theory has attracted a lot of critical attention356 and probably nothing has been taken closer to heart by the younger generation of art historians and theoreticians than Bürger's dismissal of the post-1945 avant-garde as an "inauthentic" repetition of the more radical avant-garde of the early decades of the 20th century.357 In "What's neo about neo-avant-garde?" Hal Foster argues that, contrary to Bürger's verdict, not only is the neo-avant-garde as "authentic" as the historical avant-garde, it is in fact the fulfillment of the historical avant-garde's project. His claims are threefold:"(1) that the institution of art is grasped as such not with the historical avant-garde but with neo-avant-garde; (2) that the neo-avant-garde at its best addresses this institution with a creative analysis at once specific and deconstructive [...]; and (3) that rather than cancel the historical avant-garde, the neo-avant-garde enacts its project for the first time—a first time that, again, is theoretically endless."358
Although an insightful variation on Bürger's theory, Foster's theoretical effort "to righten Bürger's dialectic of the avant-garde"359 preserves the centrality of the anti-institutional stance to the avant- garde project. While the continuous resistance to being recuperated by the institution of art is indeed an important aspect of avant-garde struggle, it is not the most helpful one for grasping what the artistic avant-garde is, not to mention that it renders the project of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde incomprehensible.360 I would thus suggest that a better way to address the phenomenon of the artistic avant-garde, especially where its subversive potential is concerned, would be by expanding its historical and theoretical frame to include its earliest "theorization" in the early 19th
356 See, for example, Dietreich Scheunemann (ed.), European Avant-garde: New Perspectives (2000) and Avant- garde- Neo avant-garde (2005). 357 Bürger, p 58. 358 Hal Forster, p. 20. 359 Forster, p. 20. 360 Part of the grand project of building a new society and new man, the Russian avant-garde of the early 1920s developed on premises very different from those requiring the destruction of the institutions of art. 107 century by the French utopian socialist Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. By expanding the frame under theoretical consideration and slightly shifting the emphasis, the anti-institutional stance itself will make more sense.
In Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Opinions (1825), Saint-Simon came up with a governing model that he believed could usher humanity away from its misery and toward a better life. This model was based on a triumvirate of artists, scientists and industrialists, each group playing a particular part in the process. The leading, or avant-garde, role was reserved for the artists and consisted of envisioning the future of the society; the scientists, in turn, were to evaluate whether the ideas of the artists were feasible and the industrialists were to develop administrative techniques that would put these ideas in practice.361 Besides the envisioning of the future, the artists were entrusted with the task of inspiring and guiding the people. Saint Simon writes: "We362, the artists, will serve as the avant-garde: for amongst all the arms at our disposal, the power of the Art is the swiftest and most expeditious. When we wish to spread new ideas amongst men, we use in turn the lyre, ode or song, story or novel; we inscribe those ideas on marble or canvas. [...] We aim for the heart and imagination, and hence our effect is the most vivid and the most decisive."363
Even though over time, as Paul Wood has put it, "[t]he avant-garde became the generic name for a plethora of [technically] unorthodox art movements,"364 Saint-Simon's understanding of it was quite indifferent to aesthetics. It was the social and political engagement of the artist through his or her work which, according to Saint-Simon's vision, determined whether the former was avant-garde or not. Thus, at least initially, social radicalism preceded technical radicalism as the establishing criterion of the artistic avant-garde. Challenging the aesthetic canon, in other words, was a consequence and not the constitutive aspect of the avant-garde's agenda. Citing T.J. Clark's work on Gustav Courbet, Wood emphasizes the fact that, although in the annals of history Courbet stands as a realist painter, his work had become a benchmark of political avant-gardism for his contemporaries.365 Comparing Courbet's Stonebreakers, painted in 1849, to John Brett's Stonebreaker from 1857, Wood demonstrates why the former is avant-garde: larger than the usual pictures of working people of its time, depicting the stonebreakers from behind as exceptionally large in comparison to the overall image and lacking the expected smooth academic finish,
361 Saint-Simon: Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Opinions, extract reprinted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (ed.) Art in Theory 1815-1900: an anthology of changing ideas, 1998, p. 40. 362 Literary, Philosophical and Industrial Opinions is written in a form of a dialogue between the artist, the industrialist and the scientist. The extract cited is uttered, of course, by the artist, so "we" here, does not refer to Saint- Simon. 363 Saint-Simon, Opinions, p. 40. 364 Wood, Paul. “The avant-garde from the July Monarchy to the Second Empire.” In Wood, P., The challenge of the avant-garde. Yale University Press, 1999. p. 39. 365 Wood, p. 49. 108
Courbet's work was an uncomfortable, provocative and political gesture for its contemporary, largely bourgeois spectators. In Stonebreakers Courbet's political radicalism found an expression in artistic innovation. As Wood has so well summarized it, "Courbet's avant-gardism consists exactly in his conjunction of artistic and political radicalism."366
In the last quarter of the 19th century, after the failure of the Paris commune, in which Courbet took an active part,367 the radicalism of the artistic avant-garde was rethought. Avant-garde artists no longer thought it necessary, or desirable,368 to partake of radical politics; it was sufficient for them to create radical art.369 Wood suggests that, after the commune, the role of the avant-garde artist shifted from being a mouthpiece of radical politics – Courbet's literal interpretation of Saint- Simonian doctrine – to being a radical but independent witness to contemporary transformation; this radicalism was to be expressed through radical aesthetics.370 That radicalism moved from the realm of political into the realm of the aesthetic did not, however, make it less political. Although many admire Paul Signac's work for its skillful and original technique, few know that Signac attributed political value to this technique. The artist believed that pointellism was a better means of underscoring "the great process which pits the workers against Capital"371 than political content; for him revolution was made "stronger and more eloquent in pure aesthetics [...] applied to a subject like working class housing [...] or better still, by synthetically representing the pleasures of decadence."372
The question of the political efficacy of aesthetic form is probably the most exciting one when studying artistic avant-gardes. How, in other words, can society be affected and moreover transformed by aesthetic means, provided this is possible at all? It seems that the distance that separates Courbet's radicalism from the radicalisms of Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Signac, Max Ernst, Raoul Hausmann, Kazimir Malevich and John Heartfield, but also Asger Jorn, Robert Rauschenberg, Daniel Buren, Judy Chicago, Banksy and of course a myriad of other artists of the so-called historical and neo-avant-gardes, and the distance which also separates various groups of post-Courbet avant-garde artists from each other, is precisely their divergent understandings of how art can transform. The belief that it can, however, is what all of them have in common and the
366 Wood, p. 51. 367 Wood, pp. 117-120. 368 Lamoureux, Johanne. “Avant-Garde: A Historiography of a Critical Concept.” In Jones, A., A companion to contemporary art since 1945. Blackwell, 2006. pp. 191-212. (p. 192.) 369 Wood, p. 129. 370 Wood, p. 129. 371 Harrison and Wood, p. 797. 372 Harrison and Wood, p. 797. 109 person to be credited with having established this certainty to begin with is none other than Saint- Simon. Although, he, as Wood tells it, "did not distinguish one approach to art making from others," he did credit art as such with the unique and powerful social role of getting ideas across.373
What I would thus like to suggest is that the anti-institutional discourse of the artistic avant-garde, which Ernst implicitly adopts, is too restrictive: not only does it not account for much of avant- garde art both pre- and post-1945, it also dwarfs the artistic avant-garde's social and political ambition.374 It should, therefore, be replaced with a theoretical frame that construes the artistic avant-garde in terms of politically and/or socially critical engagement through aesthetic innovation. If such an approach is followed, the divide between the historical and neo-avant-garde can be overcome, since, as Hubert van den Berg has pointed out, "the combination of radical aesthetic innovations with the attempt of revolutionizing not only artistic practices, but society as whole"375 is what avant-garde movements from the second half of the 20th century share with their precursors. Moreover, thus framed, the formal aspect of avant-garde work – aesthetic innovation – acquires greater meaning: its ultimate purpose is no longer to attack and destroy the institutional prison and enter the public space as an un-mediated presence, but rather to transform social and political reality through artistic innovation. The attack on art as an institution, which Bürger, and Ernst, consider to be the purpose behind the aesthetic strategies of the historical avant-garde, emerges in this new constellation as a tool, a means of acquiring an independent platform from which art, and artists, can participate in the public debate.
Once the artistic avant-garde is no longer seen as a historically specific and failed project of the first half of the 20th century, the main objective of which was to sublate art in the praxis of life and thus dissolve the boundaries separating the two, there is no reason to think that its subversive legacy today is possible only outside the institutions of art. Simply because the SI was the organization to extensively theorize subversion as an aesthetic and cultural strategy of political resistance does not mean that their theory and methods are infallible and in any way guarantee, when used, that subversion will take place.376 Challenging the political and social status quo by questioning the
373 Wood, p. 40. 374 The political ambitions of historical avant-gardes are easy to discern in their manifestos, which, as Ernst observes, are imbued with belligerent metaphors directed against aesthetic traditions, as much as against the social and political order that support them (Ernst, p. 19). The most exemplary in this respect are probably the "violently upsetting incendiary" manifestos produced by Italian Futurists, glorifying war, proclaiming that "art can be nothing but violence, cruelty and injustice" and calling for the destruction of history, but equally significant in this respect are those put out by surrealists, members of the DADA group, and contemporary avant-garde groups. 375 Van den Berg, Hurbert. “On the Historiographic Distinction between Historical and Neo-Avant-Garde.” In Scheunemann, Dietrich (ed.), Avant-garde/Neo-avant-garde. Rodopi, 2005, p. 64. 376 See, for example Anna Schober's critique of the uncritical employment of irony, parody, montage and alienation as 110 conventions of hegemonic visuality is not restricted to the semiotic warfare of critical artistic communities such as the Yes Men, Critical Art Ensemble, Adbusters, monochrom, etc. As Joanne Lamoreaux observes, the artistic avant-garde's criticality has endured in contemporary art and, thanks to feminism and post-colonial theory, turned toward non-artistic institutions. Contemporary art today "participates in a reconfiguration of social and artistic spaces and practices; it precipitates the visibility and precarious inscription of new hybrid and fluid identity positions within those spaces."377 Although contemporary art is still contained within art institutions, its subversive potential should not be dismissed because of it; there is a wealth of such potential in the critical project that contemporary art formulates "in relation to the socio-poltical conditions of the present."378
Post-structuralist Academic Discourse: Subversion as Deconstruction
Finally, the last discourse to adopt the revolutionary notion of subversion was that of post- structuralism. This crossover took place in the 1960s, with the help of thinkers who actively participated in the formation of post-structuralist thought—Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari and Jean-François Lyotard.379 Referring to an essay by Michael Makropoulos and Robert Müller,380 Ernst suggests that, within Germany, interest in post- structuralism as a form of subversion was a response to the disillusionment with Marxist metaphysics of history, which, in turn, served as a theoretical background for the student movements of the 1960s. Makropoulos and Müller, he writes, position themselves in opposition to both the dogmatic left and the collective identities of emancipatory counter-cultures. Instead, these writers propose a theory of subversion—a method of critical analysis that does not stop at anything, not even the myth of the identity of a revolutionary individual or a group.381 This proposed method, according to Ernst, is the method of deconstruction.
Makropoulos and Müller's essay, Ernst writes, can be described as the first politicized reception of subversive artistic tactics. She argues that avant-garde traditions associated with the radical artistic movement of the early 20th century are no longer subversive in our contemporary context. They have, in fact, become the opposite of subversion– a tradition. (Ana Schober, “Irony, Montage, Alienation: Political Tactics and the Invention of an Avant- garde tradition.” In: Afterimage, 37, no.4, 2010, pp. 15 – 19.) 377 Lamoureaux, p. 207. 378 Lamoureaux, p. 207. 379 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 26. 380 Mickael Makropoulos, Robert Müller: "Das Schillern der Revolte : für eine entgrenzte Theorie der Subversion," In Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik, vol. 2, no. 2, 1978, pp. 169-189. 381 Makropoulos, Müller (cited in Ernst, p. 27.) 111
French post-structuralist thought in the German context, however, as Steven Best and Douglas Kellner argue, French post-structuralism also had a lot to do with the political movements of the 1960s. In The Postmodern Turn (1997), they trace the birth of post-modernism to the student protests of 1960’s. The authors point out that most of the first wave French postmodernists such as Deleuze, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, et al. were actively involved in the events of the 1960s.382 The enthusiasm, euphoria and the promise of major social, political and cultural changes that permeated the decade must have inspired these theoreticians to interpret what was happening as a rupture, a definite break with the past. It was, according to Best and Kellner, the failure of the student and worker protests to politically subvert the government of Charles de Gaulle, and in particular the fact that the French Communist Party chose to support de Gaulle’s call for new elections and return to normalcy, that led the young French postmodernists to re-evaluate political and social theories of modernism. The outcome of the the 1960s made it clear that there was a multitude of forms of oppression and resistance and that the Marxist model was too simplistic. In fact, Best and Kellner point out, the first ‘grand narrative’ to be attacked was nothing other than orthodox Marxism.383 Thus, as Best and Kellner put it, “postmodern assaults on Enlightenment rationality and universalism, as well as postmodern emphases on relativism, perspectivalism, difference and particularity, stem as much from philosophical critiques of Western thought that begin with Nietzsche and continue through Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and feminism, as from particular political experiences. [...] [O]ne could argue, that the postmodern theories of the past two decades exhibit the political and theoretical experiences of the 1960’s sublimated into new discourses.”384
It is true that post-modern theoretical discourses are saturated with revolutionary metaphors; consider for example, Lyotrard's ‘event,’ Foucault's ‘rupture,’ Bhabha's ‘hybridity’ and, of course Derrida's ‘deconstruction’ itself. Indeed, if “[o]verall, postmodern philosophy is to be defined as an updated version of skepticism, more concerned with destabilizing other theories and their pretensions to truth than setting up a positive theory of its own,”385 then post-modern philosophy and post-structuralism are almost synonymous with “subversion.” Joel F. Handler, for example, argues that subversion, which he characterizes as "the commitment to undermine dominant discourse," was the major theme of post-modernism.386
Returning to Ernst, subversion in the post-structuralist discourse expresses itself as the
382 Best. Steven, Kellner, Douglas. “The time of the posts.” In Best S., Kellner, D., The Postmodern Turn. The Guilford Press, 1997, p. 6. 383 Best and Kellner, p. 6. 384 Best, Kellner, p. 8 385 Sim, Stuart.”Postmodernism and philosophy.” In Stuart, S., The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Routledge, 2001, pp 3-15. (p. 13.) 386 Handler, Joel F.. "Postmodernism, protest, and the new social movements." In Law and Sociary Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (1992), pp. 697-732. (p. 697.) 112 deconstruction of allegedly unproblematic and accepted categories that are used to model and explain, or, rather, construct, social and political worlds, such as "truth," "identity," "history" and "nation."387 Ernst identifies three fields, which, for obvious reasons, welcomed this type of subversion—gender-, post-colonial- and queer studies.388 The first of these used deconstruction in order to interrogate the binary gender matrix; the second subverted the distinction between "self" and "the other" and the last directed its critical attention to the category of identity, working with gender, ethnicity, sexuality and other forms of identity in order to demonstrate where these intersect and how they shift.389
Because deconstruction destabilizes, or undermines solidity and therefore also the validity of core notions that legitimate subversion in the discourses considered earlier ("justice," "history," "truth," "identity," etc.) Ernst positions the post-structuralist discourse of subversion in opposition to these. I would, however, agree with Handler that the problem that deconstruction presents to political, anti- hegemonic and to some extent avant-gardist visions of subversive strategies is not so much its eagerness to problematize key concepts, as its commitment to radical indeterminacy.390 Even after the repressed alternative meaning is uncovered, it should not be privileged; as Pauline Roseneau puts it: "Deconstruction tears a text apart, reveals its contradictions and assumptions; its intent, however, is not to improve, revise, or offer a better version of the text."391 Deconstruction is thus a kind of subversion that never ends, subversion with no objectives other than itself— subversion as a pure method. Nonetheless, it has much in common with the traditions considered earlier. Like them, it is a form of critical engagement with a de-contested, status quo. It involves working from inside the system, problematizing de-problematized junctures, opening space for what hegemonic articulation has rendered invisible or inaudible and, thus, creating, in its own way, an opportunity for change. According to some critical voices concerned with the efficacy of contemporary political, cultural, and artistic practices of subversion,392 the commitment to perpetual subversion is also something that deconstruction shares with the other "subversions."
Before, I go on to engage with these similarities more closely in order to tease out a broader
387 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 27. 388 Ernst, p. 27. 389 Ernst, pp. 27-28. 390 Handler, p. 699. 391 Rosenau, Pauline. Post-modernism and the social sciences. Princeton University Press, 1992. p. xi. (cited in Handler, p. 699.) 392 See, for example: Mark Terkessidis' "Karma Chamäleon. Unverbindliche Richtlinien für die Anwendung von subversiven Taktiken früher und heute." and Martin Doll's "Für eine Subversion der Subversion. Und über die Widersprüche eines politischen Indivualismus." Both In: T.Ernst, P. Gozalbez Canto, S. Richter, N. Sennewald, J. Tieke (eds.): Subversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästhetik in der Gegenwart. Transcipt, 2008. 113 approach to "subversion," I would like to briefly summarize the divergent traditions outlined earlier. In an effort to trace the history of the concept of "subversion," Ernst identifies four discourses with which subversion is associated—the institutional discourse of politics, the artistic discourse of the avant-garde, post-structuralist discourse and the subcultural discourse, which I have suggested should be rethought as a discourse of hegemonic resistance. In the institutional discourse of politics, subversion refers to preparatory work for a revolution – various actions aimed at weakening the current regime by eroding military, economic, psychological or political strength – as well as the actual toppling of the state; in the artistic discourse of avant-garde, it refers to radical aesthetic practices that challenge dominant visuality and thereby question the existing order; in the post- structuralist discourse, subversion is the method of deconstruction; and, in the discourse of hegemonic resistance, subversion implies practices of hegemonic dis-articulation.
Ernst suggests that the confusion surrounding the concept today – likely responsible for the common unwillingness to engage with "subversion" explicitly, let alone comprehensively – is due to the fact that, although the appropriation of the term by each of the discourses resulted in a slightly different meaning, these new meanings did not replace the already existing ones. Therefore, in the process of its history, "subversion" has become a conglomerate too heterogeneous to be unified through a clear-cut and conclusive definition.393 As has been mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, for Ernst, this heterogeneity, or simultaneity of different theories and practices of "subversion," is something to be celebrated; working on different levels and in different areas of human activities, such a composite understanding of subversion might be just the form of decentralized resistance capable of challenging and countering the diffused power in the globalized world.394
Ernst's explanation helps in understanding where the difficulty with theorizing "subversion" comes from, but it does not resolve the problem. What I would like to suggest is that where the challenge presented by the multifariousness of the concept is concerned, shifting the focus from differences between the four understandings of "subversion" identified by Ernst to their similarities could provide a fruitful solution. Focusing on what these different kinds of "subversion" share could help to create a theoretical frame within which a more comprehensive and unified understanding of subversion could develop.
393 Ernst et al., Einführung, p. 12. 394 Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 28. 114
The advantages of such an understanding, in comparison to what Ernst, referring to the co-existence of four semi-independent discourses, calls "the hybrid cumulative discourse of subversion,"395 are readily apparent. While the hybrid cumulative discourse of subversion acknowledges the concept's various contexts, theories and levels of application, it does not clarify what kind of thing "subversion" is and how it is different from similar kinds of things. Moreover, although Ernst admits that the borders between the four discourses of subversion are permeable, the idea of them co-existing does not make it clear how these discourses interact and affect one another. Without a synthesizing effort, the hybrid cumulative discourse yields a concept of "subversion" that is rigidly compartmentalized rather than multifarious, to the effect that the quality of subversiveness can only be determined by the extent to which it fits in with one of the four discourses. In fact, the difficulty of deciding which of the respective co-existing discourses the current project should be inscribed into served as the major incentive here in considering the unifying, synthetic approach as an alternative.
Using Ernst's analysis as a reference point, therefore, the synthetic approach to "subversion" taken here will focus on what the different traditions of understanding the concept share. Such an approach will allow me to construct a unified framework for approaching "subversion," which I believe holds greater potential for producing a better and deeper understanding of the concept than Ernst's model of hybrid cumulative discourse. Moreover, a synthetic approach is far more helpful in considering the potential subversiveness of the the artistic practices explored in this project.
A Unified Approach to “Subversion”:
The Situation of Subversion: David and Goliath The first feature that all types of "subversion" described by Ernst share is the situation of subversion. In an effort to define “subversion,” Mark Terkessidis characterizes it as an activity of the weak originating in a specific political, historical and geographical context; the context can be characterized by a particular type of political regime and an established dominant social group.396 Terkessidis, in this way, identifies three elements of a subversive situation: 1) a weaker party (the oppressed, disadvantaged, politically insignificant, a minority, etc.); 2) a more dominant party; and 3) a political regime or discourse that enforces and legitimizes a status quo which the "weak" dislike but have no legitimate means of changing. Subversion, thus described, is a tactic of “the weak,”
395 In German "der hybrid Gesamtdiskurs der Subversion" (Ernst, Diskursanalyse, p. 28). 396 Terkessidis, Mark Terkessidis' "Karma Chamäleon. Unverbindliche Richtlinien für die Anwendung von subversiven Taktiken früher und heute." In In Ernst, Th., Cantó, Gozalbez, Richter, Sebastian, et al. (eds.), SUBversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästetik in der Gegenwart. Transcript, 2008, pp.27-47. (p. 29.) 115 when open confrontation with “the strong” is perceived as ineffective, inappropriate or too risky. Consider, for instance the following examples: Viet Cong mobilizing the South Vietnamese population against the United States and the South Vietnamese regime397; the Uzbeki population resisting the enforcement of Soviet family Law;398 a feminist writer like Angela Carter using novels and short stories to chip away at the edifice of gender stereotypes; or a scholar like Judith Butler challenging “common sense” discourse on the “naturalness” of gender. In all of these examples the ones who challenge possess far fewer resources than and are by far outnumbered by what or whom they challenge. It should be pointed out again that “the weak” may consist of "the down-trodden people's of the world against their oppressors"399 as well as "evil men [seeking] to advance their own interests."400
The same "weak" vs. "strong" dichotomy as characteristic of the situation of subversion is found in de Certeau's theory of subversive resistance through practices of everyday life. De Certeau refers to such acts of resistance as "tactics," ways of operating or, rather, manipulating well-defined spaces of control "strategically" constituted by subjects of power:401 Many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking, etc.) are tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many "ways of operating"; victories of the 'weak' over the 'strong' (whether the strength be that of powerful people or of the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.), clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things, "hunter's cunning", maneuvers, polymorphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.402
In terms of the actors, then, the situation of “subversion” could be likened to the confrontation between David and Goliath, where the former has an apparent physical disadvantage that he overcomes by taking advantage of his intellectual superiority over the latter.
The motif crops up often where subversion is concerned. The necessity of being shrewder than one's opponent is particularly demonstrable in the case of political subversion, where the stakes are the highest and subversive strategists and tacticians must be steps ahead of the secret services. But it is also true of anti-hegemonic practices. "Sly as a fox and twice as quick"403—this is how de Certeu 397 Roseneau, p. 9-10. 398 See a fascinating study by Douglas Northrop of the various strategies developed by Uzbek communities in order to make Soviet law proscribing traditional practices such as qualin (buying a bride), polygyny, marrying under-aged girls impossible to enforce. (“Subaltern Dialogues: Subversion and Resistance in Soviet Uzbek Family Law.” In: Viola, Lynne (ed.) Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s, Cornell University Press, 2002, pp. 109-139.) 399 Frank Kitson, p. 8. 400 Frank Kitson, p. 8. 401 De Certeau, Michel. The practice of everyday life. (Translated by Steven F. Rendall), University of California Press, 1988, p. xix 402 De Certeau, p. xix. 403 De Certeau, p. 29. 116 describes tactics of resistance through everyday practices. Johannes Grenzfurthner, the founder of the subversive artistic group Monochrome, in turn, describes guerrilla activism as "systematic attacks on an enemy, who is much bigger, but also a little bit lame.”404 His attitude is well reflected in the praxis of Monochrome and other artistic and political groups with similar agendas; what artistic and communication guerrilla groups generally refer to as "culture jamming" is basically a challenge to beat multinational corporations and spectacular politics, the targets of these groups' critique, at their own game, i.e. global marketing and publicity.405
It has already been mentioned that the key characteristic of homo subversivus, as described by the Subversive Aktion group, is his or her ability to see through the illusion of the spectacular order—a skill which, according to the rather long list of indicated formative influences, is developed in a process of serious reading and reflection. But even in cases of individual "resistance," acts that would fall under de Certeau's category of la perruque, there is an implied intellectual – mother wit – superiority of the weak ones over their oppressors—particularly in the ability of the former to go unnoticed and unpunished by the latter.
Diderichsen, too, proposes that the self-perception of subversives as intellectually superior to their opponents is one of the key motifs running through the history and theory of subversion. He points out that Bohemia, especially that portion of it that was comprised of ruined aristocrats and déclassé intellectuals, differentiated itself from the bourgeoisie by claiming superior critical cognitive abilities, which enabled members of the group to "discern" that the complexity of their social, political and historical predicament was, "in fact," to be blamed on "stupid citizens," "blind legitimate capital" and "slow-headed management."406Diderichsen cites Antonio Negri's description of a similar attitude of intellectual distinction among Parisian students, who gathered in the squares of the city during the 1986 to 1987 protests: "their only common element – their only medium of self-identification – was their intellectual style, their ability to express themselves with eloquence and irony in challenging authority—above all in the form of paradox."407
Bohemian artists also viewed their bourgeois customers as philistines—"crass and undiscriminating
404 Grenzfurthner, Johanes. Presentation at the SIGINT converence (SIGINT :Konferenz für Netzbewohner, Hacker und Aktivisten), in Hamburg 2010. << h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMCNMwrCd7s >> (13'39'') 405 See Christine Harold: "Pranking rhetoric: "Culture jamming" as media activism." In: Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 21, no. 3, 2004, pp. 189-211. 406 Diderichsen, p. 39. 407 Negri, Antonio. The politics of subversion – a manifesto for the 21st century. Polity. Polity, 1989, p. 51 (cited by Diderichsen, p. 39. 117 individual[s] for whom art was a status symbol, an opportunity for the display of wealth rather than taste."408 It can be argued that this contempt for bourgeoisie – its moralistic attitudes, mercantilism and lack of refinement – found its expression in the aesthetic radicalization of the European artistic avant-gardes of the last quarter of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century. From their new social position as heroic prophets, modern artists directed their challenge against the operating principles of bourgeois society by often sabotaging bourgeois sensitivities. Wood makes an interesting point about the reception of avant-garde work in the early 20th century: the image of the modern artist as a trouble maker was cultivated not only by the artists themselves, but also by art critics and audiences. He highlights the fact that critics and audiences actually expected avant-garde works to contain an element of disrespect.409 In a way, then, Goliath anticipated that David would use his intellectual superiority to his own disadvantage. One can discern traces of a similar attitude in the tactics of baffling and dumbfounding that post-WWII avant-garde artists have employed in order to confuse and embarrass art critics and the institution of art, political regimes and, of course, audiences.
The Purpose of Subversive Action: Undermining, Weakening, Putting to Question, Delegitimizing
Diderichsen considers subversion a tactico-strategic complex of dissidence, where dissidence is understood as a "symbolic and practical (actual) type of action of disagreement, the opposition of which cannot be explained through defensive reaction to primarily racist, social, sexual or political disadvantage; it is ,thus, an action touching upon the complex of beliefs/convictions."410 Subversion is, in short, a tactic of resistance based on conviction—resistance to political regimes, their dominant discourses and power structures, their disciplining strategies and regimes of truth fixed in and replicated through academic discourses as much as mass media and cultural production.
The purpose of this resistance, however, as Terkessidis states, is not to eliminate the condition resisted, but to trigger a particular understanding of it.411 It is easy to see how Terkessidis's statement holds up when applied to practices construed as subversive in post-structuralist, avant- gardist and anti-hegemonic discourses: based on the discussions earlier in this chapter, it can be said
408 Wilson, p. 17. 409 Wood, p. 185. 410 Diderichsen, p. 34 (Translation mine). 411 Tarkessidis, p. 31. 118 that all of these aim at changing our understanding of various aspects of, broadly speaking, human existence by de-naturalizing the ways we see, think and feel about these aspects. In the political- military discourse, however, challenging an understanding of the situation does not appear as the ultimate purpose of subversion. As has been mentioned, the ultimate purpose of “subversion,” in its political sense, is revolution. However, regardless of how effective fomenting riots, organizing strikes, encouraging acts of civil disobedience and direct action are in weakening the military, economic and political strength of the regime, the most important struggle site of political subversion takes place in human minds—in the “overturn of consciousness," as Agnoli has called it. Thus, tremendous amounts of effort in political subversion is put into circulating information, or dis-information, that would undermine the self-image of the enemy, its ideological integrity or legitimacy.412 Political subversion, in this manner, also aims at transforming the way the enemy is seen and understood by the general population and target groups.
The Logic of Subversive Strategy
Subversion is a form of resistance, but differs from other forms of resistance in several important ways. Unlike other expressions of dissent, subversion, as Diederichsen writes, does not enter into dialogue with its "enemy." Negotiating, Diderichsen explains, would mean playing by the rules of the enemy and, thus, surrendering to the enemy's terms; moreover, it would mean giving the enemy an opportunity to demonstrate or feign willingness to reform.413 Diderichsen's observation is of course based on Western democracies. It is, however, also applicable to the contexts in which negotiation is not an option due to, for example, the status of the weak, as with the case of slaves or serfs,414 or the nature of the totalitarian political system or dictatorship.
Subversion is a non-confrontational form of resistance: 'the weak' do not articulate their antagonistic position, nor do they usually express their discontents or demands openly. They do not critique the existing structures put in place by 'the strong,' but, instead, make use of them for their own benefit. Bricolage and détournement are good examples of tactics of inconspicuous resistance, but where
412 See, for example, Roseneau's analysis of the subversive tactics of the Viet Cong, El Salvador's FMLN, and Tamil Tigers, as well as his counter-subversion policy recommendations (pp. 9-16). 413 Diderichsen, p. 38. 414 See, also James C. Scott' s study of Malaysian peasants in Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance, Yale University Press, 1985. 119 strategies of infiltration,415 over-identification and subversive affirmation416 are concerned, inconspicuousness becomes dissimulation. Consider, for example, insurgents who manage to infiltrate organs of the state in order to collect intelligence, plant false information, obtain funds, recruit followers and weaken the system from within; or an employee, who uses his or her paid time to write personal emails or discuss the latest news with colleagues; or an artist, who accepts a commission and produces a piece that indirectly critiques the institution that commissioned it; or a media prankster, who creates an "image event" that is eventually covered in an ABC documentary;417 or an actor who says all the ideologically correct phrases, but with an inflection that suggests that what is meant is the opposite—each of these individuals dissimulates their oppositional, critical stance, whether for the sake of personal safety or a stronger effect.
As has been mentioned in the section devoted to subversion in institutional political discourse, in order to be effective, subversive tactics should be predicated on a good understanding of what or who is identified as the "enemy" and, consequently, of what this enemy's blind spots consist and where they might be located. In other words, one should not think of subversive tactics as an established repertoire of tricks that are effective in all contexts and at all times, but rather as practices that are time-based—rooted in their historical, political, cultural and theoretical here and now.418 Neither parody, irony, montage nor alienation are subversive in and of themselves; they acquire subversive potential in their particular historical situation.419 Thus, if one wishes to understand whether and in what way certain practices, performances, artworks, texts, etc. are subversive, one would be best advised to approach these not by inquiring how well they fit into the established "canon" of subversive practices, performances, artworks, texts, etc, but rather by investigating how well the strategies they use reflect, expose and make use of the weaknesses or blind spots of their "enemy."
415 Infiltration of state institutions (the armed forces and the police) and non-state organization is one of politically subversive strategies identified by Roseneau in addition to fomenting riots, establishing front groups and generating civil unrest. Infiltration is useful because it helps to collect intelligence, “to plant false information, redirect the state's potentially lethal gaze, force the authorities to misallocate resources, and otherwise derail the state's campaign.” (Roseneau, William, “Subversion and Insurgency”, pp. 6-7) 416 Subversive affirmation, as defined by Inke Arns and Sylvia Sasse, is “an artistic/political tactic that allows artists/activists to take part in certain social, political, or economic discourses and to affirm, appropriate, or consume them while simultaneously undermining them.” ( “Subversive affirmation: On Mimesis as a Strategy of Resistance” In East Art Map: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe. IRWIN, 2006, p 445.) Over- identification is the ultimate form of subversive-affirmation; consisting of a “hyper literal repetition of totalitarian ritual,” over-identification “makes explicit the implications of an ideology and thus produces such elements that may not be publicly formulated in order for an ideology to reproduce itself” (Arns, Sasse, p. 448). 417 I am referring to Joey Skagg's project "Cathouse for Dogs." For more information see http://joeyskaggs.com/html/cat.html 418 De Certeau, pp. 29-42. 419 Anna Schober: "Irony, montage, alienation: political tactics and the invention of an avant-garde tradition."In: Afterimage, 37, no. 4, 2010. 120
Unlike Ernst's hybrid cumulative discourse of "subversion," then, the framework for approaching "subversion" proposed here is a product of a synthesizing effort. Building upon Ernst's typology, with the theoretical support of Diederichsen, de Certeau, Terkessidis, and others, I have isolated the following elements as common to all "subversions": a) the situation in which subversion is a preferred mode of resistance; b) the purpose of subversive action; and c) the logic of subversive strategy. The situation of subversion has been described as that in which the "weak" either lack any legal means of "wrestling" "the strong," or perceive the ones that they have as ineffective. It has been pointed out that the purpose of subversion is not to reform the situation or eliminate grievances, but rather to expose the weaknesses or inadequacies of the enemy, who produces and reproduces them. Finally, the strategy through which these weaknesses are exposed is not that of critique, but rather by discovering them and, ultimately making use of them—diverting the enemy's resources for one's own use, appropriating the enemy's discursive practices, benefiting from the enemy's channels of communication, etc.
It should be kept in mind, however, that the primary purpose here is not to construct a theory of "subversion," but rather to instrumentalize the concept in a way that makes it applicable to the current project. Thus, what remains to be explained is how the current project fits into the framework above outlined and acquires sense within it. In the title of this project – Subversion in Soviet animation of the Brezhnev period: a case study of Andrej Khrzhanovsky's films – I make the following general claim: at least some of the Soviet animated films – those created by Khrzhanovsky between 1964 and 1982 – can be read as subversive. Now that a sufficient theoretical framework for "subversion" has been presented, this claim can finally be unpacked.
Instrumentalizing “Subversion”: Aesthetic Anti-Censorship Practices as Subversive
Within the framework outlined above, the claim that an animated film can be read subversively would mean that: a) the film is a part of a quiet resistance of "the weak" against "the strong," and that this resistance applies to something that "the weak" perceive as wrong, which is kept in place by "the strong" and unlikely to be changed in the process of an open dialogue with them; b) as such, the film in some way discredits "the strong" by exposing their weaknesses and thus questioning their self-image; c) the film bears traces of a strategy that shows a good understanding of the weaknesses and blind spots of "the strong" and makes use of these to the advantage of "the weak."
In the first chapter of my dissertation, I have outlined the process of Khrushchev's cultural Thaw 121 and the role that it played in the consolidation and political mobilization of the Soviet intelligentsia. As has been pointed out, despite Khrushchev's increasing concern with the political challenge that the shestidesyatniki presented to the regime, ideological subversion was not their aim. In fact, the shestidesyatniki upheld the Soviet values and were eager to work together with the regime in order to help it to reform. However, as is described in the second chapter, the attempts to undo the Thaw – first by Khrushchev and then by Brezhnev – alienated the progressive members of the Soviet intelligentsia from the state, producing a generational conflict between them. As Brezhnev's administration advanced on the charted stabilization course, it became increasingly clear that the success of stabilization was predicated upon the successful reversal of what the Thaw had accomplished. For the progressive, change-oriented Soviet intelligentsia, this meant not only increased censorial vigilance carried out with the assistance of the KGB, but also public humiliation through "prorabotki," hounding in the mass media, trials and eventually exiles. It is little wonder that such treatment had antagonized the Zhivago children, causing many of them to leave the official cultural scene in favor of the parallel, unofficial sphere of cultural production.
However, as has been pointed out, not all of the disgruntled members of the Soviet intelligentsia opted for the oppositional autonomy that the unofficial field of culture offered. The reasons for choosing to remain within the realm of official culture were manifold, and included such obvious factors as the nature of creative production. For example, in the 1970s and 80s, the production of animated films was still an extremely expensive process. Whereas a dissident writer, a philosopher or a social theorist would only need some paper, a pen or a type writer, or, similarly, a dissident painter or sculpturer canvas, paper, oils and brushes or carving instruments, stone, gypsum, etc., whoever wished to make an animated film would need a small factory, both in terms of equipment and supporting hands and eyes. It is very difficult indeed to imagine samizdat production of animated films.
Whatever the reasons, remaining "official" did not mean that those who decided to walk on the right side of the law embraced the new regime's policies. Moreover, as has been mentioned, due to the permeability of the borders between the unofficial and official cultures and the status that the former had acquired in the 1970s among the progressive creative intelligentsia working under the Soviet censorship, it was the unofficial culture that set the standards of artistic quality. Thus, the official artists who cared about their artistic and personal integrity had to find a way to comply without complying—a way in which they could be underground without being unofficial and bypass censorship in order to bring the ideas, values and voices of the unofficial culture to a broader 122 public.
Luckily, the problem of censorship was not new for the Russian artistic community. Lev Loseff, whose study of Aesopian language in modern Russian literature provides the theoretical and methodological framework for my film analysis, argues that "from the era of Peter the Great on, the entire history of Russian literature is to a significant degree also the history of Russian censorship."420 What he means is that, with the establishment of censorship in Russia, censors had become a part of the creative process, fostering, most likely unbeknownst to them, creativity and aesthetic ingenuity. Knowing about the taboos, the writers tried to anticipate the censor's intervention by obscuring, complicating and resorting to metaphorical language.421 In other words, as Sidney Monas beautifully explains: Censorship [...] enters willy-nilly into the creative process. A certain tense antagonism takes shape in the game between the repressive censor and the evasive writer under the scrutiny of the newly formed 'public' [...]. The writer counts on the censor falling asleep, or relaxing his vigilance, or being subject to distraction, or simply not being able to understand something the public is more likely to understand because of the special orientation of the censor and the public's expectant attention.422 Thus, concludes Monas, censorship "helps to create new ways of reading, (one should add, with regard to the visual arts, also new ways of seeing) new ways of receiving and communicating— whole new 'censorship genres'."423
When Brezhnev's regime set about undoing the "harm" of Khrushchev's Thaw, then, this long tradition of "censorship genres" was of great use to the Soviet writers and artists, who disagreed with the new cultural policies, but decided to remain official. The strategies of outsmarting the censor, which Arlen Bljum refers to as "dangerous but exciting games with the censor,"424 could be roughly divided into two types of activities: textual and extra-textual. The former refers to the aesthetic organization of artistic texts—the “censorship genres” proper; the latter concerns the circumstances surrounding the publication of the texts, i.e., deciding where to publish, when, etc. As will be demonstrated below, both of these types of activities made clever use of the weaknesses of the Soviet censorship machine, and as such accord wonderfully with the David and Goliath analogy.
420 Loseff, Lev. On the benefice of censorship.Aesopian language in modern Russian literature. Otto Sagner Kommission, 1984, p. ix. 421 Loseff, pp. 6, 12. 422 Monas, Sidney. “Censorship, film, and Soviet society: Some reflections of a Russia-watcher.” In Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. 17, nos 3, 4, 1984, pp. 163-172. (p. 165.) 423 Monas, p. 165. 424 Bljum, p. 219. 123
Extra-textual Strategies of Sidestepping Censorship
In their work, Soviet censors relied on lists of forbidden names and titles, lists that, naturally, had to be updated regularly. Because, the country was so large, however, and the censorship machine so bulky, there were often delays in communicating these updates. Even when the important information arrived on time, it was often incomplete. Such delays and imprecision created windows of opportunity, during which some parts of the country would be more lenient with regard to certain works than others.425
Even when the updated lists were available on time and in complete form, they were often more overwhelming than helpful. As Bljum points out, by the 1980s censor's lists had grown so "catastrophically large" that censors could no longer manage their work effectively.426 To make the work of the censor even harder, the information on the lists contained only names of forbidden authors and titles, not the texts or images of the works themselves. Thus, unless the censor took time to familiarize him- or herself with the forbidden oeuvre in its near entirety – a task that was, at best, formidable, but most likely simply impossible – he or she was often quite helpless in situations in which the name of the author or the title of the text were omitted. This weakness, of course, became a valuable resource for the Davids of the Soviet intelligentsia. Often, lines of forbidden poets were cited in the most unlikely texts, such as an essay about the life and work of Soviet vulcanologists on Kamchatka—one example given by Bljum. In this essay, a group of scientists joyfully recalls a funny incident with the young vulcanologist Vitaliy, who decided to slide down a snowy hillside and then fell right through the ice. As he slid, according to the scientists, Vitaliy recited what were in fact lines from Nikolay Gumilyov's poem "I and you."427
It was also known that it was generally easier to publish problematic texts in geographical areas removed from the center, either because regional censors were "weaker cadres," less informed, or because publications in the republics were less closely monitored by Glavk than those in Moscow or St. Petersburg. It could, of course, have been the combination of all of the above.428 As an example of the latter, Bljum mentions Literary Georgia, which "under the banner of friendship of nations and strong literary ties with Russia was publishing the poetry of Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, and other semi- or completely banned Russian writers, about whom those in the centers
425 Bljum, pp. 218-219. 426 Bljum, p. 214. 427 Bljum, p. 224. 428 Bljum, p. 219. 124
[Moscow and St. Petersburg] preferred to keep quiet."429
Another common extra-textual strategy was to make use of urgency. Bljum, for example, remembers the following story: in January 1961, a Soviet rocket was sent to Venus and, in order to cover the story before "Pravda" did, the editor of the science unit at "Izvestia" asked a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist, the prestigious Lenin prize laureate Iosif Schklovsky, to urgently produce an article. Shklovsky agreed under the condition that not a word of the text would be altered. Consequently, readers of "Izvestia," unfolding their copies of the newspaper on January 13th, 1961, discovered the following: "Many years ago, the wonderful Russian poet Gumilev wrote […],"430 followed by the first lines of Gumilev's "On the faraway star Venus,"431 published in 1921 in the 2nd book of the almanac "Guild of poets"432 as the last of Gumilev's poems. Writing about censorship in the context of animation, Borodin also points out that fulfilling the productive quota was often more important than submitting a perfectly "clean" film. Thus, if the film was submitted relatively close to the end of a productive quarter or year, it would be treated more leniently, unless, of course, it was an obvious "no-go."433
Textual Strategies of Sidestepping Censorship
Just as with the extra-textual strategies, textual strategies of outsmarting the censor made use of the key vulnerabilities of Soviet censorship. One such vulnerability was recognized in the way that ideological censorship approaches artistic texts. Loseff points out that an ideological censor treats a literary work as if it were non-literary.434 In other words, what the censor is interested in is the message of the text and not its aesthetic properties and, as Loseff observers, from the perspective of information theory, "all poetic invention of the artistic text may be regarded as noise"435 by the censor. To the censor, then, an artistic text can be broken down into the following components: portions "to which the censorship is agreeable," portions "which censorship will find objectionable," and portions consisting of noise, which has to do with artistic decisions. Even if the censor perceives the latter decisions to be poor one, the aesthetic value of an artistic text is "the
429 Bljum, p. 219 (Translation mine) 430 Bljum, p. 222 (Translation mine). 431 The original title: "На далекой звезде Венере." 432 The original title: "Цех поэтов". 433 Borodin, Kinograph, p. 138. 434 Loseff, p. 4. 435 Loseff, p. 43. 125 province of aesthetic criticism";436 the responsibility of the ideological censor is to identify and remove the ideologically objectionable bit of the message.437
The obvious problem with this seemingly commonsense division of responsibilities between the censor and the art/literary critic is that, where the artistic texts are concerned, it is very difficult to draw the line between what the censor perceives as aesthetic noise and the message. Knowing this, the Soviet creative intelligentsia mastered various ways of using what the censor would perceive as aesthetic noise in order to obscure the possibly objectionable content of their message or to signal to the reader that portions of the text deemed acceptable by censors should be read ironically. As has been mentioned, these tactics, which provided the basis for the "censorship genres," were not new; most commonly known as Aesopian language, they did, however, reach unprecedented complexity during Brezhnev's administration.438 I will return to Aesopian language in the methodology section and will discuss its mechanism and methods in some detail there.
A related difficulty involved in patrolling the meaning of the message in an artistic text is that there is no one meaning or one message; this is exactly what differentiates an artistic, poetic text from, for example, a bike repair manual. With this in mind, the question becomes which of the multiple meanings censors were expected to monitor: the first, most apparent one, or also the second? Or even the third? During the history of censorship in Russia, the answer to this question varied. However, as Monas suggests, a patter can be discerned: if the times were politically calm, and the administration open-minded, the author/artist was given the benefit of the doubt; if, however, the opposite was the case, all ambiguity became suspect.439
In the third chapter of this dissertation, I have discussed the censorship's growing concern with the uncontrollable associations engendered by the increasingly poetic and metaphorical language of Soviet animation in the 1960s and 70s. This concern, as stated, eventually found expression in unpredictable and aggressive responses from the censor. The censors' reaction is understandable: having to watch out for the ideological correctness of the message in an artistic work is a frustrating task as is, and becomes only more challenging in the case of mixed media, such as opera, cinema or, animation, where questionable words can be supplemented by images and gestures and forbidden
436 Loseff, p. 45. 437 As has been mentioned in the third chapter, whenever the artistic council of Soyuzmul'tfil'm had to defend a film against possible attacks from the censorship apparatus, it would always cite the aesthetic importance of what, from the censor's point of view, was disagreeable. 438 Bljum, p. 214. Krivulja pp. 74-77. 439 Monas, p. 167. 126 words and images can be evoked by sound and music, etc.440 And, as has also been shown in the third chapter, in the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet animation artist became very conscious of the synthetic nature of their art.441
The indomitable task of supervising non-apparent meanings and uncontrollable associations may be linked directly to two innate failings of all censorship—the censor's imminent self-disclosure and censorship's inadvertent disclosure of secrets it is charged with protecting. In the beautiful essay "The game of the Soviet Censor," Tomas Venclova remembers a joke, allegedly popular in Hitler's Germany, which serves as a perfect illustration of what is meant by the censor's self-disclosure. On a Berlin tram in 1944, a passenger utters with a sigh: "When will they hang this rascal?" Immediately, he is approached by a man in civilian clothes and asked: "Whom do you have in mind, comrade?" To which the passenger replies: "Churchill, of course! And whom did you have in mind?"442 Loseff, recounts the following, actual, incident of a censor's self-disclosure: after the publication of the first part of Strugatsky's novel The snail on a slope, the critic V. Aleksandrov, loyal to the Party, wrote a review reprimanding the work in a Buryat journal. "This work,"he wrote, "touted as a science fiction tale, does nothing more than libel our ways..."443 In response to the provincial critic's attack, Novyi mir published a retaliatory piece ridiculing and incriminating the former: “[...] by what identifying features does V. Aleksandrov place the fantastic reality of the Strugatskys on a par (sic) with what he designates as reality? Take these: 'The fantastic society portrayed by A. and B. Strugatsky in the tale [...] is a conglomerate of people who live in chaos and confusion, who busy themselves with pointless labor necessary to no one, who carry out stupid laws and directives. Fear, suspicion, sycophancy, and bureaucracy reign there.' [...] There is no denying, V. Aleksandrov has a nice opinion of the society around him...444
Where the inadvertent disclosure of a regime's secrets is concerned, there is not much that a censor can do: by identifying and excising what should not become public, one always points directly at what is being protected, thus revealing to sometimes unsuspecting artists/authors, that they have unknowingly stepped on the regime's metaphorical blister. Here is an example that can be used to illustrate how the activity of the censor makes both him or her and the regime he or she serves vulnerable. Appropriately, the work in question is an animated film—Serebryakov's Gilded
440 In the chapter three, it was mentioned how uncomfortable censors were with ambiguity. 441 Krivulja points out that in the 1970s animated films developed in an entirely new direction—wordless animated films. She speculates that censorship could have played a role in this development, suggesting that, because the artists wanted to avoid confrontation with the censorship apparatus, they used visual and musical levels as the principal media for communicating meaning (Krivulja, Labirinty, p. 122). 442 Thomas Venclova, “Igra s tsenzorom.” ( Томас Венцлова, “Игра с цензором”) <
Foreheads, from 1971. Based on a tale by Boris Shergin, the film is a story of a friendship between a czar and a muzhik, a friendship that is denied by the czar in front of his noble guests. In revenge, the muzhik decides to teach His Majesty a lesson. The muzhik tricks the czar into leaving the house for an island which offers free sugar. Meanwhile, the muzhik appears in court as a foreign forehead gilder, easily convincing the vain and narrow minded women of the czar's family to have their foreheads gilded. Instead of gold, he covers the women's faces with tar and sits them in the palace's windows to dry, creating an embarrassing spectacle for the whole town to witness and humiliating the czar. After the film was accepted for distribution, a note was issued demanding that one dialogue be changed. All copies of the film were withdrawn from circulation and the offending part of the soundtrack re-recorded. But what was it that had provoked such urgency and how was it fixed? As Borodin narrates, the controversy was caused by the following scene: when the czar sees the muzhik walk past the palace with a basket full of sugar, he exclaims: "Hey, muzhik! Where is all the sugar from?" "Oh, haven't you heard?" answers the muzhik. "Steamboats from over the seas are anchored at the shores of the Empty island and pour a share to anyone interested!" The reason this dialogue had to be changed was that censors saw in it a hint at the current trade relations between the USSR and Cuba.445 In the version of the film that exists today, the words "steamboats from over the seas" are replaced by "merchants."446
What I have thus been trying to establish is that, when looked at through the framework of "subversion" developed in this chapter, historical, political and social contexts, as well as artistic production during the Brezhnev period can be approached as potentially "subversive." In response to the stabilizing efforts of Brezhnev's administration and its perceived immutability, the situation of subversion, as specified earlier, had developed. Embittered and disaffected by the regime's humiliating efforts to rein it in, the progressive Soviet intelligentsia – "the weak" – both lacked the open means of negotiating new cultural policies with the regime – "the strong" – and did not believe that such negotiations would lead to any positive change. Consequently, some members of the intelligentsia left the field of official culture and, in so doing, acquired the much desired autonomy. Those who remained within the official field of culture, but sympathized with what was happening in the unofficial field, had to maneuver around the Cerberus of the totalitarian Soviet system—the censorship apparatus. As has been demonstrated, this maneuvering made good use of the inherent vulnerabilities of Soviet censorship, especially with respect to patrolling the ideological correctness of aesthetic texts. Thus, the logic of this maneuvering is consistent with the above described logic of
445 Borodin, “V boribe za malen'kie mysli.” ( В борьбе за маленькие мысли»), Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, (Киноведческие записки), 73, 2005, pp. 261-309, (p. 296.) 446 Zolocehnnye lby, (Золоченные Лбы), 8' 35 – 3'39. 128 subversive strategy. As to the purpose of becoming involved in the "dangerous but exciting games with the censor," it should be pointed out that even though tricking the censor must have been a source of great satisfaction to the official intelligentsia sympathetic to unofficial culture, it was often not the goal.447 What the authors and artists were primarily concerned about was the artistic relevance and aesthetic integrity of their work. As has been explained in the second chapter of this project, progressive members of the official Soviet intelligentsia understood the ridiculousness of late Soviet ideology, but could not pretend to mis-recognize it as Yurchak's "normal subjects" would; they still upheld the values of shetidesytnichestvo—moral integrity, fidelity to the truth and the high calling of art. Thus, by accepting the challenge of late Soviet censorship, they were probably more concerned with their moral and artistic integrity than with political subversion. Nonetheless, due to the political importance of the institution of censorship in the Soviet totalitarian system, every successful maneuver past the censor exposed the weaknesses of this system, embarrassing and even humiliating the regime and affecting its self-image. Therefore, whether the exposure of the inadequacies of the Soviet censorship apparatus, and by association the Soviet regime, was intended or not, censorship games were certainly subversive in effect.
Essentially, then, my project is about the sophisticated games played by Soviet artists with Soviet censorship, and, more precisely, about the aesthetic strategies that animation artists employed in order to bypass the censor. My analysis will be acquiring more focus through Loseff's model of Aesopian language, which, as mentioned earlier, was a popular umbrella term among the dissenting intelligentsia, used to designate a variety of ways of communicating with audiences in ways that would go over the censor's head. Because Loseff's model and its application to my corpus of films will be explained in the following chapter, one final question that needs answering here is why Andrey Khrzhanovsky's oeuvre is a good starting point for such an investigation.
Firstly and probably most apparently, Khrzhanovsky's work systematically examines the themes of artistic freedom and the role of art and the artist in society. Although his position on these matters is clearly visible in his work, in an interview, which I was fortunate enough to carry out with the artist in January 2010, I could not refrain from asking him about it. In response, Khrzhanovsky stated that he saw the question of defending high cultural values as a matter of great personal importance. He repeatedly emphasized the emancipatory power of art—its ability to teach people how to think independently. He asserted that it is because of this very potential that the totalitarian Soviet state saw artistic creativity and talent as a threat and, consequently, invested so much of its resources in
447 Bljum, p. 221. 129 suppressing any manifestations thereof. What the state leadership and bureaucrats wanted to accomplish by trampling and crushing high culture – and this, according to Khrzhanosky is still the case in contemporary Russia – was to produce ignorant subjects similar to themselves— irresponsible and with no norms or standards, be those aesthetic, moral or spiritual.448 One can infer from these statements, as much as from Khrzhanosvky's work, that the more aggressively the regime tries to silence and subordinate the artist, the more important it is for the latter to resist: once the artist surrenders, there is nobody left to lead humanity toward meaningful, ethical and fulfilling ways of living.
It could be because of this faith in independent thinking and the high calling of art, manifest in Khrzhanosvky's words and works, that the Russian film critic Dina Goder has called him "the most authentic shestidesyatnik" of the young generation of artists who joined Soyuzmul'tfil'm in the 60s.449 Goder also points out that Khrzhanovsky's work shares a lot aesthetically with the unofficial culture of the Brezhnev period: "protest, metaphorism, irony combined with pathos and an attempt to restore the connection with the world culture.”450 Khrzhanovsky was indeed familiar with the unofficial creative community and even invited non-conformist artists Ülo Sooster and Alexander Nolev-Sobolev, as well as composer Alfred Schnitke, to work with him. Interestingly, the official artists he worked with were also iconic figures of the shestidesyatnichestvo, for example actors Sergey Yursky and Innokenty Smoktunovsky, and scriptwriter Gennady Spalikov. My second reason for choosing to work with Khrzhanovsky's oeuvre, therefore, is his status as one of the official artists who not only sympathized with the unofficial culture, but, in a way, embodied the permeability of the borders between it and official culture.
Finally, Khrzhanovsky is known to have had a difficult relationship with the Soviet censorship apparatus. While his first film, Once upon a time there lived Kozyavin (1966), was circulated widely, his legendary second work, Glass harmonica (1968), after a seemingly endless back-and- forth with the administration of the studio and multiple corrections – additions, excisions, retakes, etc. – was put on the shelf almost as soon as it was released and was kept from audiences for nearly two decades.451 As the artist recalls in our interview, after the film, for which he was, in fact, sent to serve two years in the Soviet naval infantry, censors became especially attentive to his work, and were eager to introduce corrections just for the sake of it. He states: "I had to take steps in order to
448 Interview with the artist, 17'-18'. 449 Goder, Dina. “Russkaja animatsia: Prodolzhenie sleduet.” <
In the beginning of this chapter I set out to develop a theoretical framework for a conceptualization of "subversion" with the purpose of first demonstrating how my project is about "subversion" and then working out the appropriate methodology for analyzing the films. Using Thomas Ernst's analysis of the different discursive traditions of the concept, I have attempted to create a synthetic understanding of "subversion" by focusing on the features that cut across the discursive divides in Ernst's analysis. I have suggested that all types of "subversion" can be described as forms of resistance that share the following: the situation of subversion, the purpose of subversive action and the underlying logic of the subversive method. This list is certainly far from being exhaustive, but it could provide some guidelines for developing a unified theoretical approach to "subversion," an approach that could eventually help to foster a better understanding of it. In more immediate, concrete terms, adopting a unified approach has the advantage of helping me to better situate my project in order to construe the object of my research – the aesthetic strategies employed by Khrzhanovsky in order to maneuver his work past the censor – as "subversion."
In seeking to do this, I have demonstrated how the cultural, political and social contexts examined in the previous chapters – the ideological conflict between the new Soviet intelligentsia and Brezhnev's regime, the relative accessibility of the unofficial culture to the official creative intelligentsia and audiences, as well as the respect unofficial culture was accorded by both, and, finally, the aesthetic developments that had taken place in the language of Soviet animation in the 1960s – converge to reveal a situation of subversion. I have shown how, for the new Soviet intelligentsia working under censorship was nothing new, and how artists were in fact very conscious of the censor both when creating and when planning the publication of potentially problematic works. It has also been shown that the official intelligentsia sympathetic to unofficial culture was quite knowledgeable with respect to the weaknesses of Soviet censorship and – corresponding to the logic of the subversive method described here – developed various strategies in order to manipulate these weaknesses to its own benefit. Finally, where the purpose of playing the cat-and-mouse game with censors is concerned, I have argued that even though tricking the
452 Interview with the artists, 18'-18'55" (Translation mine). 131 censor often did not have political meaning for the artists, each of their successes revealed incompetences and weaknesses within the regime, and was thus subversive.
When describing and giving examples of the anti-censorship strategies of the new Soviet intelligentsia, I have suggested that these could be divided into extra-textual and textual categories. Although each of the groups deserves close attention, this project will focus on a single kind of textual strategy – Aesopian language, which became something of a staple tactic of the creative intelligentsia during the "stagnation." In the following chapter, therefore, I will outline Lev Loseff's theory of Aesopian language and explain how this theory could be adopted to create a method of analysis suitable for animated film. As stated in the title of my dissertation, I have chosen to work with the films of Khrzhanovsky. The end of the chapter has pointed to the decisive factors for this choice: the themes these films explore, the values that they express, the weariness that they created among the Soviet censors and, certainly, the confidence of their creator, who, despite everything, was able to say everything he wanted to say. 132
Andrei Khrzhanovsky's Pushkiniana through the Aesopian Glass
Methodology:Lev Loseff's Model of Aesopian Language
As elaborated in the previous chapter, "subversion" in the current project refers to successful outflanking of the Soviet ideological censorship by clever use of aesthetic devices. As has been shown, the possibility of such "subversion" was allowed by the vulnerabilities inherent in the Soviet censorship, such as, for example, too extensive a list of forbidden names and titles, which made familiarity with the works that these designated an insurmountable challenge; or the belief that the meaning of the message of a poetic text could be isolated from the myriad alternative and equally reasonable reading; or the assumption that the censor could separate the form of an artistic work from its content. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the aesthetic strategy that was most popular with the creative Soviet intelligentsia working under the supervision of Brezhnev's censorship was that of Aesopian language.
Named after the famous Greek fabulist, Aesopian language designates a type of communication that conveys important secret information to the initiated target group, while betraying none of it to the uninitiated. It can also be understood as a code, or a cypher, that does not appear as such, and thus avoids any easy suspicion from 'by-listeners'. Lev Loseff points out that in the Soviet context, where publication of certain information such as natural disasters, poor crops, political uprisings in brother republics, etc. was taboo, Soviet press had to employ Aesopian language to pass the information to the readers. One of the rhetorical devices employed by the Soviet press to alert the experienced reader was a deliberately euphemistic style. For instance,
"[...] an article may refer at considerable length and in glowing terms to agricultural advances, but make only a passing mention in its next to last paragraph of the poorly organized procurement of cattlefeed (sic.) 'in certain areas'; for an experienced reader, the content of the article amounts to a forewarning of imminent meat shortages."453
According to Loseff's definition, "Aesopian language is a special system, one whose structure allows interaction between author and reader at the same time that it conceals inadmissible content from the censor."454 So, Aesopian language, or more precisely, Loseff's theory of it, appears as a helpful methodological frame for the current project.
453 Lev Loseff, On the Benefice of Censorship. Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature. Otto Sagner in Kommission, 1984, p. 56. 454 Loseff, p. x. 133
According to Loseff, Aesopian language can be of two kinds – political and artistic. The above instance is an example of Aesopian political language. It is, however, the artistic Aesopian language that forms the object of Loseff's investigation and is of relevance to the current project. Although these two types of Aesopian language resemble each other formally, "there is a difference in principle between the coding devices [...] Semi-official texts are rhetorically coded solely in order to feed the reader specific information. This is not the case in artistic works."455 As will be explained shortly, in the case of artistic works, there is much less specificity and certainty where encoding on the one side and decoding on the other are concerned.
Referring to Yurii Levin's study of Russian folk riddles456, Loseff suggests that semantically both political and artistic Aesopian utterances work as folk riddles, i.e. as "texts whose referent is some object which is expressly unspoken in the text itself."457 Since the object of the riddle cannot be expressed directly, it is replaced by a description, which is either incomplete or "distorted". Any word, or a group of words, that shares a feature with the object of the riddle, or taboo object of the Aesopian utterance, can be employed as the vehicle for the transformation.458 So, the difference between the instances of the political Aesopian utterance and its artistic counterpart is in the nature of these "vehicles": while Aesopian allusions in the former, though multiple and various, are relatively stable and can, in fact, be encountered in everyday speech459, those in the latter have to be continuously reinvented. In contrast to political Aesopian language, the main purpose of which is to designate a taboo subject of the socio-political world, Aesopian language in an artistic text "betrays the presence of two valencies, one of which ensures its inclusion in the social-ideological orbit, the other in the literary aesthetic."460 Basically, what Loseff means here, is that artistic Aesopian texts can simultaneously be and not be Aesopian. In other words, different readers confronted with the same artistic work in different historical contexts would either recognize in it the features of Aesopian metastyle and approach them as references to an extra-literary context, or deal with these same features as if their role was purely stylistic.461
455 Loseff, p. 57. 456 Yurii Levin: “Semantic Structure of the Russian Riddle”, (“Семантическая структура русской загадки”). 1978. 457 Loseff, p. 29. 458 Loseff, p. 32. 459 To illustrate this point, Loseff gives the example of many nicknames of Stalin that were commonly used in Soviet colloquial speech: the boss, leader and master coryphaeus, father dearest, the old boy with the mustache, bootblack, etc.. (pp. 35-36.) 460 Loseff, p. 36. 461 Loseff, p. 36. ( This differentiation between a style and metastyle belong to Loseff, who thus differentiates between them: "[...] a stylistic device is revealed in the striking impression upon the consciousness of the reader which results from the author's deliberate disappointment, i n the context of his work, of linguistic and cultural predictability. In order that any given segment of the text exhibit markings of style, it is imperative that there be a conflict between some two 134
Thus, as Loseff claims, ambivalence is the essential property of Aesopian language in general, however, spotting Aesopian language in artistic texts is a a task much more daunting than doing the same in political communications. If an artistic text can simultaneously display and not display its Aesopian features, how can one determine which one it is? Loseff proposes a beautiful model. He suggests that an Aesopian text, whether a complete work or a single utterance, simultaneously employs two types of literary devices – screens and markers.462 Devices of the first group are used in order to conceal the fact that a given text is Aesopian, while those of the second group are meant to draw attention to it being Aesopian. Both screens and markers are designations of functions and can be realized by various means, be it verbal stylistic devices, the plot or the individual elements of the plot.463
Screens and markers in an Aesopian text are usually realized through different elements, but the same element can serve as both a screen and a marker.464 What is more, because ambivalence is the necessary attribute of the artistic Aesopian text, the choice of imagery for screens and markers should always remain within the bounds of what is realistically admissible.465 So, despite the doubtless helpfulness of Loseff's approach, his strategy does not do away with the unsettling dualism of artistic Aesopian language completely; the ultimate burden of discerning and interpreting instances of Aesopian language in artistic texts remains on the reader.
Recalling his experience of watching Vasily Shukshin's The Red Snowball Tree (Калина Красная) with his Soviet friends, Sidney Monas expresses his surprise at how differently the latter saw the film in comparison to him.
"They called attention to the background, the ruined churches, the manner of speaking of an old woman who had seen and suffered much, and other details. [...]. What I had seen as a background, they saw as foreground. What they saw seemed consistently to have subversive implications for the regime, though, surprisingly, some of those who gave such an account seemed in other ways perfectly conformist 'normal' Soviet citizens -- not in any way dissident."466 of its elements. Stylistic markings arise, therefore, in the context of the literary work itself; whereas an Aesopian device involves the contrast of the text of an artistic work -- a text that is, which is already organized stylistically -- with a socio-ideological situation, in which wider context the entire single work, or even the whole of literature, is but one component part. There is therefore reason to label Aesopian language a metastyle." (Loseff, p. 23.) 462 Loseff, p. 51. 463 Loseff, p. 52. 464 Loseff's example is the title of Bella Akhmadulina's poem "Saint Bartholomew's night". Saint Bartholomew's night has of course a historical referent, the 1572 massacre of Huguenots during the French War of Religion, but in colloquial Russian it also designates any cruel massacre of innocent. 465 Loseff, p. 41. 466 Monas, "Censorship, Film, and Soviet Society: Some reflections of the Russia watcher", 1984, p. 171. 135
As Loseff points out, Korney Chukovsky, who in his study of Aesopian language devoted a lot of attention to social conditions necessary for the emergence and successful functioning of the communicative strategy in question, believed that the development of Aesopian language comprises two processes: one is creation and refinement of various encoding methods, and the other – "rearing of an Aesopian reader"467. Such rearing, in which Chukovsky himself played an important role,468 began from early childhood469 and eventually resulted in the condition where, as Monas puts it, "[a]udiences learn to read between the lines with greater attention than they read the lines, to be more sensitive to what is absent than to what is present; viewers tend to see the background emerge as a foreground; what might previously have been regarded as incidental becomes central."470
In other words, censorship can be said to have produced not only new "censorship genres"471, but also "censorship readers". So, even though the task of decoding Aesopian messages appears as a formidably complex one, it could be assumed that the contemporaries of under-the-censorship Soviet artists, most certainly their target audiences, would have at least some of the expertise necessary for decoding Aesopian messages. When I asked Khrzhanovsky about the extent to which he thinks his use of Aesopian language was understandable to the audiences, he replied that it most certainly was. "To what extent is the language of La Fontaine or Krylov understandable? Or the father of this language Aesop himself? Aesopian language is a traditional phenomenon in aesthetics and artistic practice... I think, in fact, have no doubt that it was exactly like that -- that I had a complete understanding of the audiences."472
As has been mentioned, Aesopian language, like folk riddles, operates on the principle of metonymicity, meaning that its taboo element is substituted by another that in some way evokes the former. Loseff claims that in Aesopian language such metonymic substitution can occur on three planes: a) on the level of genre and plot; b) on the level of intended audience; and c) on the level of utterance.473 Keeping this layering in mind, he generates the following typology of Aesopian vehicles and their taboo subjects:
467 Loseff, p. 17. 468 Loseff rightfully points out that, being an established and much respected critical voice in the field of Russian children's literature, (Chukovsky is often credited with having founded modern Russian literature) Chukovsky played a very important role in rearing Aesopian readership. Not only did he fight against misconceptions concerning children's cognitive limitations as a critic and a scholar (see Loseff, p. 194 -195), but also actively contributed to the pool of children's literature as one of the most favorite authors. 469 Loseff, pp. 193-213. 470 Monas, pp. 165-166. 471 Monas, p. 165. 472 Interview with the author, 23'50'' -24'43". 473 Loseff, p. 60. 136
On the level of the plot and genre Apparent plot/genre: Actual plot/genre: Examples: a work treating a historical plot a parable ( a cautionary Sergei Esienstein's Ivan the Terrible tale) screens: historical events and persons markers: portrayed reality strongly reminiscent of contemporary Soviet reality. ( p. 64) an exotic foreign plot a parable Vladimir Lenin: Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, 1916
screens: - geographically far removed place ( analysis of the economic relations between Japan and Korea)
markers: - relations reviewed showing strong similarities to Russia's economic ties to Finland and Poland. ( p. 65) a fantastic plot a parable Boris and Arkady Strugatsky: It is hard work (anti-utopia about being a god,(1964)/ The Ugly Swans,(1969) totalitarian societies) screens: - allegedly a science fiction text - Strugatsky Brothers recognized science fiction writers markers: - absence of traditional science fiction elements: (futurological, scientific, and technological story lines) - social and verbal features characteristic of Soviet reality - inclusion of prohibited texts (in the Ugly Swans: a song by a dissident bard Vladimir Vysotsky) a nature plot (one that treats a parable Yuri Koval: The Yearling, (1975) animals, for instance) screens: -naturalistic and detailed description of life on the animal farm markers: - the motif of the feeding trough around which the events of the novel revolve ( feeding trough is a common metaphor for corrupt and powerful) - the novel's Orwellian theme ( the Animal Farm had been a bestseller in samizdat at the time) an exceptional plot a parable Fazil Iskander: The goatibex constellation, 1966 (“[...] a plot, where the 137 exceptional event or anecdote screens: related not only awakens in the - improbability of the plot mind of the reader resonance of - limited provincial locale a general aesthetic sort, but is also conductive to precisely markers those kinds of generalizations - parody of the official Soviet campaigns in every targeted by the censorship, detail. which cannot themselves be openly made.” (Loseff, p. 75)) a translation (likewise an an original work a. Vladimir Lifschitz: poems of James Clifford: ( a imitation) collection of 23 poems critiquing war and life in a totalitarian society, all authored by Lifschitz, but published as translations)
screens: - a biographical sketch to assure that there is such a writer -trustworthy stylizations
markers: - absence of stylization from some poems
b. Boris Pasternak: translation of Macbeth
screens: - a translation of a classical work by a famous author
markers: - vital changes are made in Shakespearian meaning to enable Pasternak to communicate his experiences of Stalinist terror.
Table 1: Aesopian vehicles and their taboo subjects at the level of the plot and genre.
On the level of intended audience: Apparent audience: Actual audience: Examples: specialists (possibly opponents) in the general reader Arkady Belinkov's Yury Tynyanov, which such fields as literary criticism or claims to be a work in literary criticism, but one of the sciences is an extended essay about dictatorship and free thought. children adults Korney Chukovsky's “The big bad Cockroach”, which is an anti-totalitarian Aesopian satire. Table 2: Aesopian vehicles and their taboo subjects at the level of intended audiences. 138
On the level of utterance: there are no tailor-made Aesopian tropes. The ones described below, in Aesopian texts, are handled differently than in their non-Aesopian counterparts. 139
Most frequent tropes: Examples: allegory: Yevgeny Markin: "The White Buoy" (1971)
Aesopian allegory differs from non-Aesopian by a A poem about a buoy keeper, an odd silent loner with an "greater difficulty" at decoding. unflattering reputation, who places river buoys to mark "screens and markers are drawn from an area with out the main channel for navigation. (p. 89) ( localized which only fairly learned readers will be familiar through the eyes of his former lover, who left him for a (such as classical mythology), or from the idiom of more convenient life with a decent but boring husband. intelligentsia, with which the censors would be unacquainted."(Loseff, p. 87) The poem is an allegory about Solzhenitsyn. The poem, written after Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Union of Writers, presents him as unfairly accused. screen: probable imagery of the allegory markers: giving the buoy keeper patronymic of Solzhenitsyn – Isaich: ( Isaich was also how Solzhenitsyn was referred to by intelligentsia.)
Fazil Iskander: Sandro from Chegem (1973) a novel, made up of 32 novellas (3 books), telling a story of Sandro. It is a semi historical and semi fictional work, which tells stories of real historical figures (Stalin for example) alongside fictional ones. The novel covers the stretch of time from before the revolution and until Brezhnev's reign.
Episode analyzed: the scene of hog transport. Hogs are attached to asses' backs. screen: an element of the plot ( "description of the narrated event) marker: the image is just too rich in associations. pigs (Russian pigs) asses ( Muslim Abkhazians). parody: (Aesopian) manipulation of another's text A. Yevlakov: "Student", 1906 for social and political aims. a poem that parodies A. Pushkin's poem "Prophet", refocuses it on a student -- a critique of passive, subdued a.parody as collage (popular before the revolution) studentry. ( It' s a collage: Yevlakov simply inserts his portions of the text into the skeleton of the parodied poem.) b. Parody through stylization: screens: 1. artistic texts: ( burlesque manipulation): preferred - literary stylization by conservatives markers: - semantic disparity (a banality (quote) prefaced with 2. official texts (most popular in the Soviet period) "brilliant".
periphrasis: (use of excessive language and surplus Bulat Okudzhava: song “Hope's small orchestra” words to convey a meaning that could be conveyed (“Надежды маленький оркестрик') "When the rain of 140 in a more direct manner) bullets pelted our backs mercilessly" is a periphrasis of Stalin's tyranny, as well as the NKVD squads firing effective when one wants to avoid naming a taboo bullets into backs of deserting soldiers. subject – describing it instead (euphemisms) or referring to it somehow else. (Mezhirov) 2. Alexander Mezhirov: war poem “We're lying in a huddle outside Pulkovo” narrates an incident of Soviet artillery firing at its own troops. It concludes with a reworked saying much repeated by Stalin. The saying goes like this: " when wood is being chopped, splinters fly", reworked it looks like this: " No wood gets chopped, still the splinters fly." This reworked saying serves as a periphrasis of unnecessary and unjustified sacrifices made by Stalin's regime.
screen: the poem appears to be narrating an unusual, bizarre situation
marker: - reference to Stalin's justifying adage
Semjon Lipkin: "Conjunction" ( a panegyric upon the Jewish people,where their idealized characteristics are named, but their name appears as a conjunction "i", which is "and". ( but also an abbreviation of Israeli) ellipsis: Yuri Trifonov: "The pigeon's Demise", 1968: In Aesopian language, what is omitted is usually (a story about an elderly couple, who feed a pigeon that what matters, while what is mentioned only in comes to their balcony. The pigeon starts a family on their passing – matters most. balcony, but the neighbors start complaining because of dirt. So, the elderly man does away with the pigeons. (p. 106.)
The "how" of doing away with pigeons is omitted, but also details about this elderly couple's neighbors are omitted. There is, however, an arrest of one of the neighbors, who works "in the most important library". But it remains marginal (in terms of the narrative) Aesopian quotation: In political journalism: the stated opinions of the regime's The writer using the quotation imbues it with a ideological opponents, when quoted, are framed by what content different than that which was intended by its from the stand point of the Russian censorship are author. ideologically correct counterclaims. The latter arguments, however, take such a deliberately banal form that they are given no credence by the reader and are merely screens.
Vladimir Arkhipov: Review of The icon and the Axe, by James Billington (published in a conservative journal Moscow, 1968 (quotations were what was in fact cherished by the 141
readers, since the book was out of reach)
epigraphs: (as the one preceding G.A. Tovstonogov's production of Griboedov's Woe from Wit. "... that I be born in Russia with feeling and talent was the devil's curse" (A.S. Pushkin) shifts: (stylistic contradictions) Evghenii Schwartz: The Dragon ( structural complexity: different levels of reading) - layering the text - the play develops in terms of Aesopian devices and markers: first and most of the second act -- keeps the level of tale: mostly anachronism-shifts and cultural-idiomatic shifts (for seemingly ironic purpose), only 2 Sovietisms. From the mid 2nd act, anachronisms and idiomatic shifts become fewer, but Sovietisms more frequent; parodic episodes are introduced ( parodies of Soviet public rituals); the 2nd act concludes with a grotesque monologue of Lancelot and in the third act all mild devices are abandoned: 4 very pointed microparodies introduced.
screen: the first level of - the plot, which is identical to the mythological invariant
markers: anachronisms, cultural (including very Soviet political practices) -idiomatic (sovietisms, bureaucratic language) incongruences reductio ad absurdum and non sequitur: Victor Golyavkin: “The Docks” (an other humorous short stories for adults, published after Golyavkin had The absurd was prohibited from Soviet adult established himself as a children's writer!) literature, because in Marxist aesthetics it was "labeled a petty-bourgeois manifestation and "The Docks". evidence of anarchism" (Loseff,p. 112) In children's literature, however, it was accepted as an element of Non sequitur (breaking the rhyme pattern, the word that play and folklore inspiration. had to be replaced, however, can be easily guesses (it should be something that would rhyme) -Aesopian absurdity is a false one: it could be both a screen and a marker. other: (weaker in comparison with artistic Aesopian language) (p. 117) puns: acrostics:
Table 3: Aesopian vehicles and their taboo subjects at the level of utterance.
As can be seen from the examples in tables 1-3, what allows the Aesopian reader to identify metonymic vehicles is the ability to notice the interplay of screens and markers. For example, what 142 enables the Aesopian reader to recognize an anti-utopian parable in The Ugly Swans is her ability to notice that the plot of the novel lacks the traditional science fiction elements but contains a lot of details that make the imaginary and remote in time diegetic world sound and feel very much like her Soviet contemporary reality. In the case of the hog transport scene in Iskander's Sandro from Chegem, in order to see through the screen of it serving a purely narrative function, the Aesopian reader would have to detect that the imagery of the episode is semantically too rich for the story telling purpose alone. To understand that, despite appearing to be a fairy tale, Evgenii Schwartz's The Dragon is a critique of Stalinism, the Aesopian reader would have to notice anachronistic shifts as well as idiomatic and cultural incongruences.
The mechanism by which Loseff's Aesopian reader recognizes Aesopian markers, and, consequently, a possibility that the text in question is Aesopian, is similar to the mechanism at work in Herbert Paul Grice's model of conversational implicature. The conversational implicature refers to hearer's ability to recognize messages conveyed beyond the literal meaning of the the words uttered by the speaker. To understand how conversational implicature works, one needs to know that for Grice, rational exchange is governed by the “cooperative principle”, which states that in order for a conversational exchange to be successful, each of the participants involved must make sure that his or her “conversational contribution is such as required at the state at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in which you [she or he] are [is] engaged.”474 Grice names four maxims which characterize the condition in which the cooperative principle is respected: 1)try to make your contribution on that is true, (the maxim of quality); 2) make your contribution as informative as is required (the maxim of quantity); 3) be relevant (the maxim of relation) and 4) be perspicuous (the maxim of manner). 475
According to Grice, these maxims can be broken in different ways, for different reasons and to different effect. A participant, he suggests, could violate a maxim “unostentatiously” and mislead the hearer; she may “opt out” by indicating that she is unwilling to cooperate; alternatively, she may fail one maxim because it clashes with another maxim and, finally, she could “flout” a maxim. Flouting, as characterized by Grice, is a blatant failure to fulfill a maxim when the speaker, in the eyes of the hearer, is perfectly able to do so. Flouting the maxim, in other words, is an intended violation of a rule of conversation, which signals to the hearer that what the speaker means must be other than what the words of the utterance say. Grice writes:
474 Paul Grice, “Logic and Conversation.” In Cole et al (ed): Syntax and semantics 3: Speech arts, 1975, (pp. 41-58), p. 45. 475 Paul Grice, Logic and Conversation, pp. 45 – 46. 143
“To work out that a particular conversational implicature is present, the hearer will reply on the following data: 1) the conventional meaning of the words used, together with the identity of any references that may be involved; 2) the CP [Cooperative Principle] and its maxims; 3) the context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance; 4) other items of background knowledge; and 5) the fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous headings are available to both participants and both participants know or assume this to be the case.”476
It is easy to see parallels between Grice's situation of maxim flouting and Loseff's concept of Aesopian markers. Consider, for the example, Vladimir Lifschitz's verse cycle of allegedly translated poems written by an English soldier James Clifford477. In order to create a believable cover for this hoax – Lifschitz was the author, not a translator – Lifschitz prefaced the cycle with a fake biography of the imaginary solider and richly saturated some of the poems with stylized anglicisms. 478 Some of the poems, however, lack any stylization, which in Loseff's analysis, marks Lifschitz's work as Aesopian. Transposed to Grice's plane of pragmatic linguistics, Loseff's stylistic analysis would be nothing other than an instances of exploitation479 of the maxim of stylistic unity. Likewise, stylistic shifts, anachronisms, periphrasis and ellipses listed by Loseff as Aesopian devices at the level of utterance480 can all be framed as instances of maxim flouting, which draw the reader's attention to a possibility of alternative, implicated, meaning.
The examples cited above yet again bring to the fore the extent of expertise that the Aesopian reader is expected to posses. Besides certain sensitivity toward the artistic formal conventions and familiarity with the most popular Aesopian stylistic devices, an Aesopian reader should also have a good amount of cultural and historical knowledge in order to notice stylistic and other anachronisms and, more importantly, be able to infer the taboo subjects from the emphasized features of the vehicle one. The Aesopian reader's job is very much like that of a detective, searching for any possible clues that in some way undermine what the text claims or appears to be in terms of genre/plot, intended audiences and individual utterances.
A formidable task, especially for someone not in touch with the immediate context in which the films were created and viewed, Aesopian reading is what I would like to attempt on the following pages. Applying Loseff's model of Aesopian communication and his layered typology of Aesopian vehicles and devices in artistic texts to Khrzhanovsky's three films about Alexander Pushkin I hope
476 Grice, p. 50. 477 See table 1. 478 Loseff, p. 78. 479 Grice uses “exploited maxim” to signify a flouted maxim that produced the situation of conversational implicature. (Grice, p. 49). 480 See table 3. 144 to produce their subversive interpretation, an interpretation that would have been surprising to the censors who cleared these films for cinema and television showing.
In the final pages of the previous chapter I have given my reasons for deciding to work with the oeuvre of Khrzhanovsky. They were as follows: 1) Khrzhanovsky's commitment to exploring in his work the topic of art – its meaning, its place in society, its relationship to the state power, its role in education and attainment of personal freedom; 2) Khrzhanovsky's familiarity with the unofficial cultural scene, which often found expression in his cooperation with semi- or even unofficial artists on his films; 3) Krhzhanovsky's bad reputation with the censorship and finally, 4) Khrzhanovsky's conviction that despite the unfair and prejudiced attention of censorship, he managed to communicate everything he wanted to his audiences.
Because Aesopian reading, as will shortly become apparent, is a very time and effort consuming exercise, I have chosen to work with the following three films: “Я к Вам лечу воспоминанием” ( I am flying to you as a memory), 1977, “И с вами снова я” (And I am with you again), 1980, and “Осень”, (Autumn) , 1982. These films form a trilogy dedicated to the life, work and ideas of the famous Russian poet, prosaic, dramatist, journalist and historian Alexander Pushkin. Each individual film and the trilogy as a whole are organized chronologically, narrating biographical and bibliographical events of the poet's life, starting with Pushkin's early memories of school and ending with his death.481 To tell this story, Khrzhanovsky uses fragments from Pushkin's poems, letters, and diary entries and to show it – doodles and sketches made by Pushkin's hand; the films also, occasionally include sequences of live footage.
My reason for focusing on these three films has to do with the fact that, despite their 19th century subject, they appear very contemporary to Khrzhanovsky's context, especially with respect to such issues as the role of an artist in a society, freedom of artistic expression, and individual and artistic integrity. Not only were all of these at the core of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia's self understanding, but they also became central to the conflict between the Soviet artistic intelligentsia of the sixties and Brezhnev regime. Moreover, the position on these issues, articulated through the films by the Pushkin character, resonated very critically with the post-thaw status quo. Thus, it became surprising to me that films which appeared to be articulating values and discontents (that by the time of the films' production had moved to the unofficial realm of Soviet culture) were allowed
481 Technically, the film does not end with the poet's death: Khrzhavnosky's Pushkin is shot around 32'41'', his face facing upward appears around 33'41'' and, finally, the shot of his death mask is edited in around 35'14'', the titles begin around 38'46''. 145 for free circulation in Soviet mainstream media. If Loseff's model could help me to understand why and how the films work as Aesopian texts, then the films would fit perfectly the scope of the current project: a) they would qualify as subversive in the way specified in the previous chapter and b) their taboo subject would be the conflict that created the very circumstances in which subversion, again, as conceptualized in the previous chapter, became a relatively common practice among official artists.
While Khrzhanovsky's oeuvre is generally characterized by sophistication and semantic complexity, the films of the Pushkin trilogy stand out. Their semantic density is partially due to the fact that Khrzhanovsky, who not only directed, but also wrote the scripts for these films, built the narrative almost entirely from fragments of Pushkin's texts. Since most of the texts forming the textual foundation of the films are poetic, they often need to be interpreted in their own right before they can be considered as an element of the multimodal animated image they are part of. Moreover, oftentimes making sense of Khrzhanovsky's choice to include a fragment from a particular text necessitates understanding of this text's significance in the context of Pushkin's oeuvre. For instance, to begin to guess why Khrzhanovsky has chosen to conclude the story of the poet's life with a fragment from the Bronze Horseman, one would have to look beyond the content of the selected strophes and even beyond the content of the whole poem: one would need to research the interpretative traditions of this text. In other words, besides functioning as chronological markers in the biographical narrative, that is referring to or reflecting on true historical or biographical events, the texts can serve as Aesopian “vehicles” for different ideas.
This multi-valency with respect to the textual base of the films is only one factor responsible for their complexity. Another challenge is presented by the fact that animated sequences in all three films are created using Pushkin's sketches and doodles. Being “borrowed”, these images, just like the texts comprising the scripts, carry their own history and context with them, thus opening yet another non-apparent semantic level. Where did these images come from? Who do they depict? Does this matter for how they are used in the narrative?
Sometimes, the source of the image matters as, for example, is the case with one of Pushkin's self- portraits. This unusual three-quarter drawing is sketched on a sheet containing profiles of his friends who were involved in December 1825 uprising at the Senate Square – Vladimir Rayevsky, Sergey Trubetskoy, Kondratiy Ryleev (figs. 8a-b). Khrzhanovsky uses this portrait to indicate the poet's 146 connection to that group of people and the values that they represent482; this image is also used to emphasize Pushkin's “otherness” with respect to Nicholas I's Russia483. Often, however, neither the source of the image nor its referent are treated as relevant, as, for example, when Pushkin's sketch of Lisa – the protagonist of “The lady peasant” – 'plays' Natalia Goncharova in the Boldino episode (fig. 9a-b).484 The same is true of Pushkin's illustrations of Gotlieb Schultz and Adrian Prokhoroff from “The coffin maker” story, which in the scene of Pushkin's departure to Moscow stand in for K. Timofeev and Pushkin's coachman Peter (fig. 10a-b).485
Possibly, the commitment and perseverance that these films require of anyone eager to attempt their interpretation are reasons why I have not been able to find a record of engagement with the trilogy that goes beyond a description or a brief stylistic analysis486. Because the job of an Aesopian reader is essentially uncovering meanings other then obvious ones by reading between the lines, in her eyes complexity always represents a promise. So, encouraged rather than deterred by the interpretative challenges that these films present, I hope that in my effort to produce an Aesopian reading, I will be able to give Khrzhanovsky's Pushkiniana some of the exposure that it deserves.
What I would like to argue is that the trilogy is as much about Pushkin as it is about Soviet creative intelligentsia of the sixties. My main claim, thus, is that Pushkiniana is not just a biographical essay, but also a parable about the misunderstanding and betrayal of shestidesyatniki by the Soviet state. This means that I will approach the trilogy as an Aesopian text at the level of the plot/genre. I will thus be analyzing the narrative for screens and, more importantly, markers which would support such a reading. As far as the level of utterance487 is concerned, I will consider utterances only inasmuch as they relate to my proposed reading.
As for the level of intended audiences, Pushkiniana is not really an Aesopian text at that level. Based on Loseff's model, saying that a text is Aesopian at the level of intended audiences would mean that pretending to be created for audience type “a”, the text is in fact directed at audience type “b”. Such, for instance, would be the case of a film labeled and distributed as a film for children and
482 As in the Arion sequence (I, 24'38''-25'47''), or 19th of October “I am sad, my friend is not with me..” (II, 5'32''- 5'46''), or the Conversation with Nicholas I scene ( II, 18'53''- 21'14'''). 483 See the dancing scene toward the end of the second film ( II 26'24'' – 26'34''), or the opening of the kammerjunker episode ( III 16'14''- 16'26'') 484 Autumn, 7'28''-7'38'' 485 And I am again with you, 14'56''-18'07''. 486 Asenin's praises the films for bringing Pushkin's world to life (in Mir Mul'tfil'ma (1986), pp. 69-70), Krivulja menitons them as an example of director assuming a mask of the protagonist (Krivulja p. 70). 487 In the proposed analysis, 'utterance' can refer to a scene, a sequence, an episode and even to a single shot. 147 youth, which, in fact, contains messages directed at more mature viewers. Another example would be an article that seems to have been written for experts, but which, actually, is aimed at general readers. Although in the 1970s, despite the incredible developments in the language of Soviet animation, the officials still perceived the medium as being most suitable for telling stories, preferably with a moral lesson, to children and youth, Pushkiniana does not pretend to be for young audiences. Unlike Khitruk's Winnie the Pooh, it is unmistakably difficult, stylistically challenging, narratively non-linear, musically complicated. So, in Loseff's terms, Khrzhanovsky does not use any screens, where the intended audiences are concerned: Pushkiniana trilogy is for mature and sophisticated audiences, old and motivated enough to be willing to sit through one hour and forty minutes of non-linear, poetry-based narrative about a poet, who to an average school-child in the 1970s had already become commonplace, a commodity drained of all life by canonization. Thus, even through Khrzhanovsky prefers to think of his work as accessible to all audiences, Pushkiniana is quite visibly a film for adults – no Aesopian reading needed at this level.
So, how am I going to go about defending my proposed Aesopian reading of Pushkiniana? Since an Aesopian message, whether at the level of a single utterance or the whole text works according to the principle of metonimicity, I would first have to consider whether the similarities between the vehicle subjects – Pushkin's biography, his historical context and his representation – and the taboo subjects – the narrative about the relationship between the Soviet (creative) intelligentsia and the Soviet state, the context in which this relationship was developing, i.e., the period between the beginning of Khrushchev's Thaw and the end of Brezhnev's Stagnation, and the self-image of Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties are sufficient for considering the former an expression of the latter. Because similarity alone is not enough, I will then look for possible markers that either bring attention to the above mentioned similarities – the choice of biographical episodes, their hierarchy, the character of the poet, or problematize the notion of film's biographical accuracy and historical truthfulness – inaccuracies in using visual or textual materials or changes of biographical facts. Before continuing, however, I would like to emphasize that in no way does Aesopian reading preclude or lessen the importance of other interpretations. What I am suggesting here is a possible reading, performed by an ideal type of Aesopian reader, whose competence is understood to be rooted in Loseff's model of Aesopian language.
Preliminaries: The Question of Appearances, or Design as Aesopian Marker 148
As already mentioned, at the level of genre, the film appears to be a biographical essay – a lyrico- dramatic rendition of life and thoughts of a historical person, a renown national poet, who was born in 1799 and died in 1837. The fact that the narrative indeed follows the events of Pushkin's biography and develops chronologically reinforces this impression. Khrzhanovsky's decision to construct the films solely from Pushkin's texts and drawings seems to beautifully fit into this frame: if one accepts that the poet's intellectual, emotional and biological life circumstances find expression in his art, then one could interpret Khrzhanovsky's artistic concept of the film as an attempt to re-create the poet's life from inside. In other words, what the director has aspired toward is an account put together not from externally verifiable, 'objective' facts of the poet's life that one can find in an encyclopedia article, but one of the poet's own view of these events, documented in his manuscripts, sketches and letters.
In a commentary on the processes of first conceiving the idea of making films based on Pushkin's drawings and then carrying it out, Khrzhanovsky seems to support such an interpretation. “We had to find parallels between graphic images and syuzhets found in his literary works, from letter exchanges – in one word, to present the world of Pushkin in unity of all the means of expression.”488In the same article, he points out that decisions regarding methods of animation were dictated by the images themselves, thus, in a way, making the peculiarities of Pushkin as a drawer the principle of the film aesthetics. It is because of this intended continuity between the expressive logic of the 'raw materials' and the constructed narrative that Khrzhanovsky can hope that the polyphonic structure of the film could be an embodiment of Pushkin's creative genius.489So, the director's choice to tell a story of Pushkin's life through Pushkin's texts and drawings was motivated by wanting to re-create the poet's inner experience of life as closely as possible.
If one considers these quite reasonable justifications closer, however, one might discover that they might be less definite than they seem. In Labyrinths of Soviet animation, Natalja Krivulja points out that in the early 1970s, due to the increasingly unfavorable censorship situation, many animation directors turned to classical works as a means of exploring their contemporary problems.490 One can
488 Khrzhanovsky, Andrei. “Byvajut strannye sblizhenia." In Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 42, 1999. http://www.kinozapiski.ru/ru/print/sendvalues/787/ “Необходимо было также найти параллели между графическими образами и сюжетами из литературных произведений, из переписки — одним словом, представить пушкинский мир в единстве всех способов самовыражения.” (Translation mine) 489 Khrzhanovsky, "Byvajut strannye sblizhenia." <
Thus, Khrzhanovsky's visible absence from the process of storytelling can be said to function both as a screen and a marker. As a screen it encourages the interpretation according to which, limiting materials to Pushkin's drawings and texts, the director aspired toward recreating the inner world of the poet as closely as possible. Such an interpretation, construing Khrzhanovsky's decision as artistic, would make this formal aspect uninteresting to the censors. To those familiar with the trend described by Krivulja, however, a film whose visuals and dialogue are citations would have signaled that it is a mask, marking the film as Aesopian right away.
Because I will problematize the biographical and chronological aspects of the trilogy later, I would now turn to outlining similarities between the context, the narrative and the protagonist of what I consider a vehicle subject of the trilogy and the context, the narrative and the protagonists of what I suggest to be the taboo object. First, I will look into Pushkin's historical context, comparing it to the historical context of the sixties Soviet intelligentsia; then, I will address the similarities between the cultural image of Pushkin and the new Soviet intelligentsia's self-image and finally, I will show why, when approached from the perspective of the poet's relationship with the authorities Pushkin's biography is very well suited for communicating the story of Soviet intelligentsia's changing relationship with the Soviet state.
491 Krivulja, p. 70. 150
Pushkin's Historical Context as Aesopian Vehicle
Pushkin's life, like the history of the new Soviet creative intelligentsia, spans the period of two rulers – Alexander I and Nicholas I. Therefore, drawing historical parallels will begin with Alexander I, comparing the latter to Khrushchev. Starting with these two political leaders will also reveal the extent to which the background of Pushkin's life 'works' as an allegorical space for narrating the situation of the Soviet artists in the 1970s and early 1980s, struggling to create under the oppressive, intrusive and unpredictable system of ideological control.
Alexander I and Nikita Khrushchev
Raised by Catherine the Great in the tradition of Enlightenment492, Alexander I, who succeeded the despotic and tyrannical Paul I, started his reign surprisingly similarly to the way Khrushchev started his: a) he granted amnesty to up to 12,000 men dismissed by Paul; b) abrogated restrictions on travel abroad and on the entry into Russia of foreigners as well foreign books and periodicals; c) relaxed the censorship493 and d) granted permission for private publishing houses to open. Alexander abolished torture in investigation and liquidated the Secret Expedition, the organ of secret political police established by Peter III. Playing with the idea of constitutional monarchy, the new tsar restored the Senate and even requested a proposal for a constitution from his assistant Michael Speransky. The latter project was submitted in 1809, but was not implemented.494 It proposed separation of powers and strict legality of their respective processes; legislative assemblies and courts at each administrative level, culminating in the state Duma and the Senate respectively; popular election of judges, the possibility of obtaining political rights for members of the “middle condition”`(artisans, merchants, peasants, or small proprietors) when they met a particular property requirement. Another progressive challenge that Alexander I showed strong interest in right after his ascension to the throne was abolition of serfdom, a project which, unfortunately, found its expression in very modest, 'cosmetic,' measures.495
492 Riasanovsky, Nicholas, A History of Russia. (6th edition), Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 301, Fedorov,Vladimir. Dekabristy i ikh vremya, (Декабристы и их время), Moscow State University, 1992, p. 48. 493 The statute of 1804 required censors to show leniency to the authors and to always interpret ambivalent passages in the best for the author way. (Модест Богданович: История царствования императора Александра I и России в его время. Т. 1. СПб. 1869, с. 97 – 98 (Bogdanovich,Modest. Istorija tsarstvovanija imperatora Alexandra I i Rossija v ego vremja. vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1869, p. 97-98, (cited in Fedorov, p. 58), translation mine. 494 Riassanovky, p. 305-306. 495 Fedorov, p. 57-58. 151
One of the greatest accomplishments of Alexander's early period, however, was an education reform (1803 -1804) that made public education available to different levels of society.496 In the same liberal Enlightened spirit, the tsar initiated and financed translation and publication of works of foreign progressive philosophers, economists, sociologists, and jurists among whom were Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Cesare Beccaria and Charles Montesquieu. Interestingly, as Vladimir Fedorov points out, more than two decades later, these very books would be frequently cited by the Decembrists under investigation supervised by Alexander's brother Nicholas I as intellectual sources for their liberal ideas.497 But in the first decade of Alexander's reign, the Decembrist revolt was still comfortably remote and Alexander's beginnings, not unlike those of Khrushchev's, inspired hope and promise – “the wonderful beginnings of Alexander's days” in Pushkin's words.498
Just like Khrushchev, however, Alexander I did not maintain his reformist ethos throughout his reign. Terrified by the violent aftermath of the French Revolution, Alexander I reconsidered his sympathies toward the ideas of liberalism. A supporter of progressive transformations in the spirit of Enlightenment during the first half of his reign,499 following the victory over Napoleon, Alexander assumed the position of an ardent defender of monarchy, seeing it as the only guarantor of peace in Europe.500 Despite Alexander's granting in 1815 of a constitution to the Kingdom of Poland, despite him requesting and even approving a draft – yet another one -- of a constitution for Russia, submitted in 1820 by Nikolay Novosiltsev; despite the emancipation of serfs in the Baltic provinces in 1818 and a directive addressed to 12 dignitaries to prepare projects for emancipation of serfs in Russian provinces501, the second half of Alexander I's reign has come down in history as the period of religious obscurantism and “arakcheevshina” – a word denoting extremely reactionary politics, police despotism, and crude militarism named after “brutal, rude, and a martinet of the worst kind”502 General Alexis Arakcheev, who became Alexander's right hand in 1815.
In the final five years of Alexander's rule (1820-1825), many of the liberal decrees issued in the early 1800s were invalidated. For example, landlords were once again allowed to exile their peasants to Siberia without giving them a trial and the peasants were no longer allowed to complain
496 Riassanovsky, pp. 302-304, Fedorov, p. 59. 497 Fedorov, p. 59. 498 Pushkin, Alexander. Poslanie tsenzoru, 1822. In A.S Pushkin. Sobranie sochinenij v 10 tomakh. Moskva, 1959.<< http://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/01versus/0217_22/1822/0131.htm>> 499 Some historians, like Fedorov, do not believe that Alexander I was ever seriously considering liberal transfor mations in Russia, but was instead using the discourse of liberalism to win popularity. (Fedorov, p. 58). 500 Seton-Watson, Hugh. “Reform and Resistance.” In Seton-Watson, H., The Russian empire, 1801-1917. Clarendon Press, 1988, pp. 69-127. (p. 176.) 501 Fedorov, p. 65. 502 Riassanovsky, p. 318. 152 about cruelty of their landlords. Censorship was once again tightened and education fell under stringent ideological control: anything that put in question autocracy or religious doctrines of the Orthodox church – let alone betrayed atheistic leaning – was not to be tolerated.503 In 1821-1823 a new system of secret police was introduced – centralized and reaching into all areas of life, including private correspondence, it had at its disposal an assorted body of spies and informants, including those who spied on the other agents504.
In 1820, Alexander signed the protocol of Troppau which obliged its signatories – the Holy Alliance countries – to suppress any revolutionary movements that might break out in Europe and deny recognition to any political changes produced in a revolutionary manner. The mutiny of the Semenovsky regiment, of which Alexander was informed during the congress of Troppau and the news of which possibly played a role in the tsar's decision to sign the protocol, confirmed the tsar's growing fear of popular unrest at home. Giving a speech at the opening of the second Sejm in 1820, Alexander, no longer mentioning a constitution, referred to the revolutionary events in the south of Europe as “the spirit of evil”, made sure to communicate that should Poland reveal any political disturbances, he will not delay with “appropriate” measures. 505
Liberally minded educated elites were confused and disappointed by Alexander's change of political direction. Decembrists, as these would be named after their failed protest on the Senate Square on 14th of December (old style) 1825, were a group of progressive members of nobility, who, inspired by humanist ideas of French Enlightenment as well as the political and socio-economic changes that were taking place in Europe and North America at the turn of XVIII – XIX centuries, wished for similar transformations in their motherland. The two most urgent issues on the Decembrists' agenda were absolutists monarchy and serfdom506, so Alexander I's reformist beginnings, especially the tsar's seeming determination to deal with the lingering serf question and his openness to the idea of a constitution, resonated extremely well with this group and gave them hope.
503 A good example of what this control meant to accomplish and how it was implemented is that of the 1819 purges in the Kazan university. Sent to the university for inspection, Mikhail Magnitsky found the institution contaminated with the “poison of free-thinking” (Fedorov, p 68) and recommended that the university be publicly destroyed. Alexander declined the recommendation, but appointed Magnitsky the guardian of Kazan school district. Once in charge, Magnitsky embarked on a project of transforming the university into what Nicholas V. Riasanovsky describes as “ monastic barracks”: all 'ideologically pernicious' books were promptly replaced with copies of the Bible, faculty suspected of liberalism was fired, stringent discipline among the students was instilled and mutual spying was encouraged (Riasanovsky, p. 319). 504 Fedorov, pp. 67-68. 505 Fedorov, p. 67. 506 Fedorov, pp. 37-38. 153
It was, however, the patriotic war of 1812 and its aftermath – both the anti-Napoleonic European campaigns and Alexander's unexpected turn toward reactionary politics – that turned the Decembrists into a politically oppositionary group whose members put salvation of their country from backwardness, the task seen by them as their highest patriotic duty, above their social position and the comfort associated with it.507 During the war and anti-Napoleonic campaigns in Europe, many of the Decembrists came in direct contact with Western life, this encounter making the deficiencies in their country acutely perceivable.508 More importantly, the war, or more specifically individual and collective heroism of the Russian people, signified to the Decembrists political and national awakening of the 'masses', their capacity to mobilize in response to any serious threat to independence their own and their communities.509 “Is it possible”, asked Decembrist Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ruymin in a speech delivered a few years after the war in front of his fellow members of the pan-slavic secret society, “that Russians who have distinguished themselves through brilliant feats of heroism in the truly patriotic war, the Russians who have pulled Europe from under the Napoleonic oppression, would not overthrow their own yoke […]?”510
Initially, the Decembrists were planning to work with the regime, devoting themselves to such issues as philanthropy, education and the civic spirit, but Alexander I's continuous failure to live up to his new international image made many Decembrists, who differed with respect to how they envisioned the better future of their country and the means of advancing it511, more and more accepting of the idea of revolution and even regicide as the only way of ensuring change.512 To the Decembrists the flattering appellation of the liberator of Europe, acquired by Alexander I in the anti-Napoleonic march through Europe, came with certain responsibilities: how could someone claim to have saved Europe from the tyranny of Napoleon and continue to tyrannize his own people?
Relying on the Decembrists' court testimonies, letters and memoirs, Vladimir Fedorov concludes that the autocratic and police despotism, as well as the continuity of serfdom, were the primary causes of the Decembrist opposition. Among other factors were the absence of a legal basis for execution of judicial power, cruel treatment of soldiers, disrespect for human dignity in general,
507 Fedorov, p. 42. 508 Fedorov, p. 47. 509 Fedorov, p. 40-41. 510 Cited in Fedorov, p. 42 (translation mine) 511 Fedorov, pp. 43-45, Riassanovsky, p. 320. 512 Riasanovsky, p. 320, Fedorov, pp. 46-47. 154 ideological constriction of education, corruption of officials and continuous strangling of freedom.513 After the war, despite the Decembrists' hopes, even those serfs who had risked their lives for the country were not granted freedom, not even in appreciation of their heroism. The professional soldiers received little reward as well; when the implementation of the 1810 reform of 'military settlements' was resumed in 1816, the cruel Arakcheev was put in full charge. As has already been mentioned, Novosiltsev's draft of the constitution, though approved, was never made official; the power was still concentrated in the hands of the tsar and there was little legal transparency with respect to how it was executed. Orthodoxization of education, growing obscurantism, increased vigilance of censorship, and reinstatement of the secret police were hardly what anyone would expect from a liberator. In a note written to Nicholas I after the arrest, a Decembrist, Alexander Bestuzhev, described the feelings of the returning soldiers in the following way: “We delivered our homeland from tyranny but we are tyrannized anew by the master... Why did we free Europe, was it to put chains on ourselves? Did we give a constitution to France, so that we should not dare to talk about it? Did we buy with our blood primacy among nation, so that we should be oppressed at home?”514
In December 1825, Alexander I unexpectedly died. According to the agreement reached between him and his brothers the Grand Duke Constantine and Nicholas I, it was the latter who was to assume the throne following Alexander's death. However, due to the fact that the agreement had not been made public before Alexander's death, this event produced confusion regarding the right of succession. In Poland Constantine swore allegiance to Nicholas I, while in Russia Nicholas I, the capital and the Russian army swore allegiance to Constantine. The Decembrists decided to seize this “dynastic crisis” as an opportunity to act. They decided to stage their rebellion on the Senate Square shortly before the guard regiments were going to swear allegiance for the second time, this time to Nicholas I. The Decembrists-officers convinced the soldiers to boycott Nicholas I's ascension to the throne and defend Constantine's right to succession.
The protest, however, lacked leadership and the standoff between the rebels and the government troops, which by far outnumbered the rebels, continued for several hours. Finally, Nicholas I ordered the horse guards to charge and the artillery to shoot at the crowd.515 The protest of the Decembrists was crushed and that was the beginning of Nicholas I's rule. As Yurij Lotman so well put it: “ Nicholas I began his reign like a skillful prosecutor and merciless executioner: five leaders
513 Fedorov, p. 37-38. 514 Dovnar-Zapolsky, Mitrofan. Idealy dekabristov. Al'faret, 2011, p. 94 515 Stephen M. Norris. “Nicholas I.” In Millar J., Encyclopedia of Russian History. Macmillan, 2004, p. 1046. 155 of the Decembrist movement were hung, 120 exiled to penal colonies in Siberia. The new rule started under the sign of political terror.”516
Nicholas I and Leonid Brezhnev
Similarly to Brezhnev, whose political program was directed toward stabilization and restoration of the ideological base of the Soviet state, Nicholas's tactic was thus directed toward restoration of autocracy and defense of the existing order.517 Nicholas's political project, like that of Brezhnev, necessitated fortification of the ideological grounds for legitimation of his political regime, the legitimation that had been challenged by the Decembrists; it also required a closer watch over the subjects. The former was taken care of with the formulation of the ideology of 'official nationality', the latter through establishment of the Royal Chancellery, which allowed Nicholas to conduct personal policy unrestrained by the regular state channels,518 and more specifically its Third Department, the secret police.
The doctrine of 'official nationality' was formulated by Sergei Uvarov in 1833 and was ultimately meant to serve “as a bulwark against the challenge which Western ideas posed to the established order.”519 Just like the French Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, which it was meant to counter, the 'official nationality' contained three elements: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. It was the middle element – Autocracy – that was at the heart of the ideological system, the flanking Orthodoxy and Nationality providing the necessary support. A decade after the initial articulation of the doctrine, Uvarov wrote: “A Russian devoted to his fatherland, will agree as little to the loss of a single dogma of our Orthodoxy as to the theft of a single pearl from the tsar's crown. Autocracy constitutes the main condition of the political existence of Russia. The Russian giant stands on it as on the cornerstone of its greatness.”520 Where the Nationality is concerned, the notion referred to the unique character of the Russian people, the uniqueness that was described in terms of docility and obedience521, which, of course, tied in very well with the structural organization of Orthodoxy
516 Lotman,Yurij. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Prosveshenie, 1982, p. 4 ( Original: “Николай I начал свое правление как ловкий следователь и безжалостный палач: пятеро руководителей движения декабристов были повешены, сто двадцать - сосланы в Сибирь в каторжные работы. Новое царствование началось под знаком политического террора.” translation mine) 517 Riasanovsky, p. 324 518 Riasanovsky, p. 326. 519 Lincoln, W. Bruce. NicholasI: Emperor and autocrat of all the Russia. Northern Illinois University Press, 1990. p. 241. 520 Lincoln, p. 241. 521 Lincoln, p. 250. 156 and Autocracy.522
Nicholas's commitment to keeping a close eye upon his subjects and events in his empire found an expression in the expansion of the Royal Chancellery. The Royal Chancellery – a bureau organized to handle the matters that required personal participation of the sovereign – was abolished by Alexander I in the wake of Speransky's ministerial reform; it was, however, reinstated in 1812 due to the extraordinary circumstances of war.523 Under Nicholas's reign, the chancellery was expanded from a single office to six departments, each existing and functioning parallel to the official ministries attending to similar issues.524 The most prominent of these departments was the third one, also known as the Third Section. The Third Section's official responsibilities included administration of the newly created corps of gendarmes, or the secret police. Its ultimate responsibility was, however, control of the behavior of His Imperial Majesty's subjects, which it managed through surveillance, spies and informants, and perlustration of private correspondence. As Nicholas I's main weapon against subversion, the Third Department, understandably, was offered a part in the state censorship process and guided the policies of the Ministry of Education.525 Interestingly, the role that the Third Section played in the censorship process during Nicholas I's reign was very similar to that played by the KGB in the same process during Brezhnev's administration.
In response to the Decembrist revolt, the tsar signed a new censorship statute, drafted by Admiral Alexander Shishkov and his deputy Platon Shirinsky-Shikmatov.526 This “iron-cast” statute of 1826, as it came to be known, called for professional, i.e. full-time censors527, who, in contrast to Alexander's 1804 statute, were required to always assume the worst about ambiguous passages. It forbade to discuss any kind of rights or report favorably on any challenges to authority, even when the events in question were historical. It did not allow discussions of Christian dissent or
522 For a more serious treatment of 'official nationality' see Lincoln, pp. 241- 252 and N. Riasanovsky: Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855. Berkeley, 1959. 523 “Sobvstvennaja Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva kantselyarija.” In Brokhausa, F., Efrona. I., Entsiklopedicheskij Slovar'. 1890-1907. <
The 1828 statute, developed by Prince Lieven, established the Chief Administration of Censorship, responsible to the Ministery of public education. The Administration consisted of the following six members: the presidents of the Academies of Sciences, Fine Arts and the Study of the Russian language, the assistant minister of public education, representatives of the ministries of internal and foreign affairs.531 The new statute, thus, re-established educators and literati as censors. It understandably banned whatever threw a challenge to faith or the throne or was offensive to the good manners and honor of citizens, but instructed the censors not to read unfavorable meanings into the texts, nor did it allow them to make any alteration to any text without the author's approval.532 Moreover, authors and editors were once again free from any responsibility for the works that were published with censor approval.533
On the same day as Nicholas signed this new quite liberal statute, however, he also issued a secret directive that put the Third Department in charge of supervising the press as well.534 The directive required that censors report to the Third Department the manuscripts that “inclined to the spread of atheism or which reflect[ed] in the artist or writer violations of obligations of loyal subjects”535 The authors of such manuscripts would then be made note of by the secret police.
In 1829, alerted to the developing public opinion by the then director of the Chancellery Von Vock, Nicholas required that all printers send a copy of each and every paper to the Third Department. After the November 1830 uprisings in Poland, the statute of 1828 was modified even further. In 1831, Nicholas signed another secret directive that stated that an author of atheistic or seditious works, who “can be shown to have intentionally published them, must be handed over to justice on
528 Ruud, p. 53. 529 Ruud, p. 53. 530 Ruud, p. 54. 531 Ruud, p. 54. 532 Ruud, p. 55. 533 Ruud, p. 55. 534 Ruud, p. 57. 535 Glinka,Sergei. “Mojo tsenzorstvo”, p. 223, (cited in Ruud, p. 57.) 158 the basis of the general law, despite censorship approval given to him.”536 Whereas previously the editors could publish works unsigned, now they were obliged to provide all the names, which, as Charles Ruud rightfully points out, made the authors vulnerable to post-publication harassment by the Third Section.537 Following the condemnation of Kireevsky for publishing an article that urged Russia to learn from Europe538, Nicholas decreed that no new journal could begin to publish without his – the Emperor's – personal approval. Fearing loosing control over the public opinion due to the growing “taste for reading and literary activity” among even lower middle classes, Nicholas interdicted publication of cheap magazines.539
An interesting development in jurisdiction of Nicholas I's censorship took place when Sergei Uvarov, succeeding Lieven as the minister of public education, announced his intention to “not only follow the censorship rules and directives strictly, but also, to improve 'tone and exposition' of published works.”540 What he effectively meant was interference of the censorship into the creative process. Together with cultivating the ambition of advising authors on aesthetic matters, the censorship, supervised by the ambitious careerist Uvarov on the official side and literary unsophisticated and bullish, both toward the writers and editors,541 Alexander von Benckendorff on the side of the Third Department soon also acquired arbitrariness. Uvarov, as Ruud points out, acted freely “against censor-approved publications, if these struck him as offensive.”542 He also acted with vengeance, when journal editors did not pay heed to his “most detailed suggestions” for “rectifying the false and impertinent inclinations of their periodical publications.”.543 For example, when Nikolay Polevoy did not accept Uvarov's recommendations regarding what Moscow Telegraph should and should not publish, Uvarov made sure that in a short while Nicholas I ordered the journal to close.544
Both the arbitrariness of Nicholas's censorship and its “positive”545 character were characteristic of
536 Ruud, p. 63. 537 Ruud, p. 63. 538 See Ruud, pp. 67-68. 539 Ruud, p. 69. 540 Ruud, p. 69. 541 Ruud, p. 63. 542 Ruud, p. 69. 543 Ruud, p. 70. 544 Ruud, p. 70. 545 By “positive” I certainly don not mean “good”. In Political censorship in the USSR, 1917-1991, Goryajeva differentiates between functions of censorship in liberal democratic and totalitarian ideocratic regimes. In the former, censorship has well defined functions – protective (protecting the state secrets), standardizing (establishing standards of artistic quality), prophylactic (aimed at preventing potentially subversive activities), and sanctioning (making sure that the uncensored information is made widely available) – and operates negatively, i.e. by excising anything that crosses into the forbidden areas more or less well-specified. In relation to such “negative” censorship, the “positive” one is the 159 the Soviet censorship of Brezhnev period as well, and caused Soviet artistic intelligentsia a lot of anguish. As will be shown below, Khrzhanovsky makes sure to draw attention to this parallel by repeatedly engaging with the corresponding episodes of Pushkin's life, in particular in the second film, but I will address Khrzhanovsky's treatment of Pushkin's biographical material further along.
Among other features, characteristic of both Nicholas I's and Brezhnev's rule were suspicion of intelligentsia, wide-spread administrative corruption and economic and political stagnation546. Considering the events of the first days of Nicholas's reign, the tsar's wariness of educated nobility is not surprising. Nicholas was strongly affected by the Decembrist uprising, especially because the Decembrists were 'fine' young men from good families; why were they willing to risk absolutely everything, just so that Nicholas does not become the tsar? It is possible, as W.Bruce Lincoln speculates, that Nicholas's personal involvement with investigation of the causes that had led to the uprising on the Senate Square was an attempt by the tsar to find self-justification. It was as if the tsar wanted to somehow make sure that the reasons that convinced the Decembrists of necessity of such a drastic measure were external to his persona.547 Although both the uprising on 14th of December and the one of the Chernigov regiment were crushed and their leaders dealt severe punishments, the fear of a repeated and more widespread social movements never left Nicholas.548 The tsar's commitment to running all spheres of life in the image and likeness of the army549, where communication flows a predictable pattern and disagreements or discussions with respect to the orders do not have a place, censorship in press and art, extensive corpus of spies and informants incessantly collecting information on his subjects – all these were symptomatic of Nicholas's fear.
Wide spread corruption among the state officials of different ranks could also be attributed to the same fear and mistrust of educated gentry and creative initiative. When filling important state positions, Nicholas preferred obedience and heedfulness to competence; loyalty mattered to him more than aptitude and morality. This is not to say that Nicholas did not try to fight corruption -- collecting information about misconduct of officials was one of responsibilities of the Third Department. It is just that in doing so he could not think of a way to defeat it other than by creating kind that intrudes, recommends and inserts – not just removes, but replaces and actively restructures. In other words, while negative censorship specifies what should NOT be mentioned or alluded to and removes whatever does not respect these specifications, positive censorship operates according to the following principle: “ What is prescribed by the state is allowed and everything else is forbidden.” (Goryajeva, p. 6) 546 See the second chapter. 547 Lincoln, pp. 79-80. 548 Lincoln, p. 91. 549 Karatsuba, Irina, Kurukin, Igor, Sokolov, Nikita. “Apogei Samoderzhavija” In: Vybiraja svoju istoriju. “Razvilki” na puti Rossii: Ot Rjurikovichei do oligarkhov. KoLibri, 2006. <
Nicholas's effort at political and ideological stabilization through suppression of independent thought and creative initiative, his reliance on loyal rather than competent cadres, his unwillingness or inability to carry out fundamental reforms produced a cultural, political, and social climate in many respects similar to that of Brezhnev era. The final characterization of Nicholas's regime given by Riasanovsky reads surprisingly like a summary of Brezhnev's failures as a leader: “Nicholas[...] gave no new direction to the development of his country. Rather he clung with a desperate determination to the old system and the old ways. […] In a sense, Nicholas I and his associates […] froze Russia as best they could for thirty […] years.”552
From this brief historical excursion, one can see interesting parallels between the historical processes that affected Pushkin's life and those that Khrzhanovsky and his generation had experienced. Both Pushkin's and Khrzhanovsky's formative years coincided with periods of relative relaxation of political control: freer circulation of ideas, wider support for liberal thought, optimism with respect to possibility positive changes, and heightened political engagement among educated youth. Both of them saw this rising wave of optimism and involvement crush against the metaphorical walls of their respective regimes and both of them reached maturity during times of political 'stabilization', that focused on undoing the intellectual situation that made the ideas about change and its desirability thinkable. One can, moreover, observe that the strategies used by Nicholas I for neutralizing consequences of Alexander I's “wonderful beginnings” were similar to those used by Brezhnev to deal with the unsettling fruits of the Thaw. Finally, one can also make out that Decembrists share a lot of common features with the new Soviet intelligentsia – good education, a sense of historical agency, social altruism, and faith in human dignity. In fact, as Inna Kochetkova has pointed out, many historians trace the beginnings of old Russian intelligentsia, to
550 Karatsuba et al. 551 Karatsuba et al. 552 Riasanovsky, p. 340. ( my emphasis) 161 which Soviet intelligentsia of 1950s turned for identity building, to the Decembrists.553
There are, thus, many interesting parallels between political, cultural and social processes that were taking place in Imperial Russia in the early 19th century and those transpiring in Soviet Russiabetween Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the historical space of Pushkiniana is an appropriate Aesopian vehicle through which Khrzhanovsky could reflect on issues pertaining to his more contemporary history. I would now like to turn to the plot of the trilogy and its protagonist. I would like to suggest that both Pushkin and the story of his life can be interpreted as Aesopian vehicles for subjects much closer to Khrzhanovsky's immediate experience. To validate this supposition, I would first have to compare Pushkin's image as an artist to the (self) image of the new creative Soviet intelligentsia that emerged during Khrzhrushchev's thaw and then see how these two images converge in the narrative presented in the trilogy.
Pushkin as Aesopian Vehicle for Soviet Intelligentsia
The significance of Pushkin's legacy for Russian culture can hardly be overestimated not only with respect to his vast and incredibly diverse oeuvre, but also with regard to his attitude to literature and the profession of a writer. Besides revolutionizing literary Russian language, inventing modern Russian prose, challenging the pre-existing theatrical conventions and professionalizing literature, Pushkin also came to play an important role in the myth of Russian intelligentsia. In 1993, Novyi mir published a letter by Dmitry Likhachev, in which the author, a famous member of Russian intelligentsia, tries to sketch out the main features of a Russian intelligent. In agreement with Solzhenitsyn, Likhachev states that a member of intelligentsia is not only an educated person, but an individual of strong moral principles, who never sells out. According to Likhachev, the essential principle of intelligentsia is intellectual independence. A true intelligent should be independent from anything that could limit his or her freedom to think critically and speak truthfully – “party membership”, “economic or career benefits and even interests of the profession, when these go beyond what his conscience permits”. Among the historical examples of true intelligents, Likhachev, among few others, names Pushkin: “Pushkin is doubtlessly an intelligent. He never received golden tobacco boxes from anyone and even though he did live of honorariums, these never influenced him in his creative process. He walked his own way and 'lived alone'.”554
553 Kochetkova, pp.16, 19. 554 Dmitry Likhachev “O russkoj intelligentsii.”( Дмитрий Лихачев. “О русской интеллигенции.”) In: Novyi Mir (Новый мир) no. 2, 1993, pp. 3-9. (http://www.lib.ru/POLITOLOG/lihachev.txt_with-big-pictures.html) 162
This importance of intellectual and moral independence, for which one often paid with official recognition, financial stability, and at times physical freedom, was one of the key values for the new Soviet intelligentsia. Without this independence such other desirable qualities as fidelity to truth, personal courage and integrity would have been hard to master and practice. It was the same independence that won those artists who moved into the unofficial realm of culture admiration and often envy from their like-minded colleagues who remained “official”. It was likely also responsible for making the dangerous but exciting “games with the censor” appear worth the while.
Living in a political context comparable to that of the new Soviet intelligentsia, Pushkin confronted a lot of similar challenges with respect to maintaining his personal independence and integrity as a writer and a person. He avoided a profitable collaboration with the Nicholas' department of secret police555; he openly admitted to Nicholas I that he was friends with many of the Decembrists; he refused to publish his work if censor's corrections made it unacceptable to him556; he treated his appointment as kammerjunker as a mistake and did not miss an opportunity to skip official ceremonies that this title required him to attend;557 he refused to make friends with useful people if he did not like them558, he openly defended his work or personal honor, when these were unjustly attacked and, most importantly, he continued working despite the impossible censorship situation and financial difficulties caused by the latter. He thus created work that satisfied his own standards of literature, despite the pressure exerted by his many critics to generate work with more pedagogical value.
Born in 1799, Pushkin grew up during exciting times of the first half of Alexander's reign. At the
555 According to Lotman, between 1826 and 1829, Nicholas I's regime was actively seeking to engage some member of opposition to collaborate with the Third Department. With respect to this, many literati, some former members of secret societies, most known for their liberal leanings, were approached by Benckendorff with a request to produce a note on education, i.e., an essay on how they envisioned education in the new Russia. Pushkin's recommendation was to adopt the system of the lyceum, which of course was not much appreciated by Benckendorff. (Lotman, p. 65.) 556 For example, when Pushkin received Benckendorfff' note about Nicholas's suggestion to rework Boris Godunov into a historical novel, Pushkin replied that he agreed that the drama possibly at times resembled a historical novel, but added that he had no strength to rework what he had already written. (Original: «С чувством глубочайшей благодарности получил я письмо Вашего Превосходительства, уведомляющее меня о Всемилостивейшем отзыве Его Величества касательно моей драматической поэмы. Согласен, что она более сбивается на исторический роман, нежели на трагедию, как Государь Император изволил заметить. Жалею, что я не в силах уже переделать мною однажды написанное.” (Tyrkova-Williams, Ariadna. Zhizn' Pushkina. Molodaja Gvardija. 1939. p. 63) 557 Khrzhanovsky actually includes two such examples into the episode of opening of Alexander's Column – Pushkin escaping the opening of the monument and his skipping the grand celebrations of Nicholas I's son's sixteenth birthday. 558 See Lotman's story of the failed efforts of Uvarov to win Pushkin's friendship and the harsh consequences that it had for the poet. ( Lotman, pp. 80-81) 163 age of twelve, he was admitted to the Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoe Selo, one of the fruits of Alexander's education reform. The Lyceum, in many respects, was a unique institution for its times. Many of the poet's teachers held humanist liberal ideas about education; the students were encouraged to think independently, and to not be afraid of expressing their differing points of view; they were taught to treasure individual honor, dignity and friendship. Also, the Imperial Lyceum was the only educational institution of its kind that did not practice corporal punishment. It thus appears that the Lyceum and the unusual 'spirit' it cultivated, the 'spirit' that would later become a target of Nicolas I's regime, played a vital role in Pushkin's personal and intellectual formation.559
After graduating from the lyceum, Pushkin relocated to St. Petersburg, where he received his first post in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. In the last years of the second decade, St Petersburg was bustling with political and cultural activity. Around this time Pushkin was noticed by Alexander's secret police for his quick mind, passionate temperament and political radicalism. Finally, Pushkin's widely circulated Ode to Liberty was intercepted. Besides the famous lines “Let me/ Sing to the world of Liberty/ And strike vice upon thrones.”, the poem contained a fragment that made a reference to the events preceding Alexander I's ascension to the throne – the murder of his father Paul. Naturally, Pushkin was arrested and was sent in exile to the south – Chisinau and then Odessa, where he was going to spend four years, before being transferred to Mikhailovskoe, his mother's familial estate, for two more years.
Pushkin's exile ended unexpectedly. On the night of 5th of September, 1826 a gendarmerie officer arrived at Mikhailovskoe estate in order to 'deliver' the poet to Moscow, where Nicholas I lingered after his coronation. The departure had to be immediate and no reasons for it were given. Although Pushkin was never accepted into any of the secret societies and was in Mikhailovskoe when the events of December 1826 took place, he was friendly with a lot of Decembrists and many of the arrested had his verses among their books. So, Pushkin had good reasons for worrying. Instead, after a nearly two hour conversation, Nicholas I lifted Pushkin's punishment under the condition that the latter would not write anything contrary to the government. To top this off, he promised that from that point onward it was him, Nicholas I, who was going to be Pushkin's personal censor.
Considering that during this conversation Pushkin openly admitted his close friendship with many of the accused in connection to the event at the Senate Square, and, moreover, confirmed that had he been around on December 14th he would have joined the lines of the insurgents, Nicholas's
559 Lotman, pp. 7-8. 164 kindness is remarkable560. Lotman suggests that the reason for Nicholas's mercy had nothing to do with either his generosity or appreciation of Pushkin's talent. Nicholas knew that the cruelty with which he punished leaders and participants in the Decembrist revolt angered and antagonized the nobility. Pushkin, who, despite being away from the cultural centers of the country, succeeded not only at remaining present there through his published works, but also at building a strong literary reputation and even a fan base561. So, returning Pushkin was Nichoals' attempt at restoring his reputation with the higher tiers of society. Pushkin, in other words, became Nicholas's appeasing gift to the educated public.
Unsuspecting Pushkin was deeply impressed and touched by this royal gesture: he, a banished poet, was invited for an honest and friendly conversation with the new tsar! To him Nicholas appeared as a reformer and an honest man, a tsar who held writers in respect. 562 And he was open about his sympathy to the new ruler with his friends and in December 1826, a year after the event on the Senate Square produced Stances, in which he made a rather flattering comparison between Nicholas I and Peter the Great, whom both Pushkin and Nicholas admired. In response to harsh criticism that this warm welcome of the tsar by the poet of Decembrists drew, Pushkin wrote an interesting poem To My Friends – a eulogy to Nicholas, in which he explains his reasons for feeling grateful: “My life was flowing in exile,/ I was carrying the burden of separation with my dear ones,/ but he reached out to me with his royal hand,/ and I am with you again. In me He honored inspiration. He set my thinking free, and would I not sing him praise in the moment of affection”563 The final strophe of the poem is particularly interesting: “Woe to the land, where only the slave and the flatterer/ Are favored by the throne,/ While the bard, chosen by heaven/ Keeps silent and lowers his gaze.”564 In these lines, Pushkin seems to be arguing for the importance of the progressive nobility to participate in history not only by opposing the autocracy but by cooperating with it.565
Unfortunately, the relationship of respect and trust that Pushkin believed he was offered did not
560 Lotman, p. 61. 561 Lotman, p. 53. 562 Lotman, p. 61, Tyrkova -Williams, p. 40. 563 Pushkin, Druz'jam. (All Pushkin'a texts, unless otherwise indicated, are from Russkaja Virtual'naja Biblioteka. << http://www.rvb.ru/) “Текла в изгнанье жизнь моя,/ Влачил я с милыми разлуку, /Но он мне царственную руку/ Подал – и с вами снова я. /Во мне почтил он вдохновенье./ Освободил он мысль мою, /И я ль, в сердечном умиленье, /Ему хвалы не воспою?” (translation mine) 564 “Беда стране, где раб и льстец/ Одни приближены к престолу,/А небом избранный певец/ Молчит, потупя очи долу.” << http://www.rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/01versus/0423_36/1828/0454.htm>> 565 Russian nobility has historically held an oppositional stance toward autocracy, since autocracy limited nobility's interests. This lead Decembrists to interpret the special role of nobility as a revolutionary class, a position that Pushkin himself supported. During his work on Emilian Pugachev, based on the data that he collected, he came to realize the falsity of such an assumption. (Lotman, p. 100) 165 materialize. Toward the end of the 1820s, Pushkin began to feel that the freedom he received from Nicholas's hands was no freedom at all. First, it was not Nicholas, but Benckendorff, a man of little appreciation for Russian literature and mistrust for anyone choosing literature as a profession, who acted as Pushkin's de-facto censor. Second, having a special censorship arrangement566 turned into a serious obstacle when Pushkin was commissioned texts for publications with strict deadlines. Having a single censor at his disposal, who besides being a censor is also the head of the secret police, often meant that Pushkin missed deadlines and, consequently honorariums. Third, the poet was required to obtain Benckendorff's permissions not only for publishing, but also for traveling; he was, in fact, expected to inform Benckedorff each time he wanted to leave or travel to Moscow, St. Petersburg or to Mikhailovskoe. Because the exact conditions of Pushkin's contract with the tsar were never clearly formulated and presented to the poet, it was very difficult to know what the protocol actually was, and before long the relationship between Benckendorff and Pushkin consolidated into one of boundless and unrelenting mistrust on the side of the former and bitter frustration and resentment on the side of the latter. To Pushkin, the persistent suspicion with which he was being treated despite his having given his word to the tsar 'to behave' was humiliating. What made Benckendorff's overwhelming and unwelcome patronage unbearable was also his omnipresence through spies and ordinances dispatched to local representatives of power to keep an eye on the famous verse writer.567
One serious breach of trust and respect between Pushkin and Nicholas I – certainly in the eyes of the former – was the poet's appointment as kammerjunker in the last days of 1833. This grade was among the lowest in the Table of Ranks created by Peter I. It was usually given to young men right after they had completed their studies. Because Pushkin had not done much for his career as a state servant, technically Nicholas I could not have granted him anything more respectable. However, Pushkin was not interested in receiving a recognition of that kind – he was fine with his status as a poet, a writer and a historian. Giving Pushkin, at the time an author well-known even outside Russia, one of the smallest official state positions was a certain proof that contrary to Pushkin's initial impression, Nicholas I had little respect for writers. Based on the poet's diary entry reflecting the event, Pushkin believed that his promotion was a response to his wife Natalia's success with the court.568 There was, however, another explanation as well: as a kammerjunker Pushkin was obliged
566 Lotman suggests that to Pushkin, Nicholas I's promise to be Pushkin's personal censor sounded like a promise to lift censorship. He reasoned that because the tsar could not be bothered with short works and journal articles, Pushkin was to rely on his own sense of responsibility. ( Lotman, p. 71, the first footnote) 567 Tyrkova-Williams, p. 62. 568 In a highly structured society of Nicholas I, attendance of social events was in strict accordance with the Table of the Ranks. Being made a wife of a kammerjunker, Natalia received a permission to participate in balls to which only 166 to participate in a wide range of court activities – from balls to church services, which made it very easy for Nicholas and Benckendorff to keep their eyes on him.569 For Pushkin the corollary of this keeping in sight meant that he had less and less time to devote to what he considered to be his job – writing. To add insult to injury, the post provoked a lot of speculations with respect to Pushkin's independence.570
Possibly the final straw in Pushkin's relationship with Nicholas I was in1834, when Pushkin found out that one of his personal letters to his wife had been opened by postal services and its content delivered to His Majesty. In fact, since almost as early as Pushkin's graduation and until his death, the poet remained under close watch of the secret police.571 Even after he was officially pardoned, and gave his word to Nicholas not to write anything negative about the government, anywhere he travelled a letter asking the local authorities to keep an eye on the poet followed.572 His personal letters were often opened and his conversations and behavior were closely monitored through a network of spies. Surprisingly, Pushkin was either unaware or unconcerned about being under watch until the incident with his letter to Natalia.573 Perlustration of private correspondence not only made the extent of the state control very tangible to the poet, but also dealt the final blow to any illusion of trust and respect he initially hoped for.
On top of feeling betrayed by the regime that he was initially optimistic about, in the final years of courtiers were invited. Here is what Pushkin wrote: “ Третьего дня я пожалован в камер-юнкеры что довольно неприлично моим летам. Но двору хотелось чтобы Наталья Николаевна танцевала в Аничковом.” ( “Three days ago I was made kammerjunker, which is inappropriate in my years. But the court wanted to see Natalia Nikolaevna dance in Annichkov
When in 1830 Anton Delvig and Pushkin finally obtained a permission to publish Literary Gazette, which the censorship confined to literary matters only, the publication could not compete with Faddey Bulgarin's Northern Bee or Nicholay Polevoy's Moscow Telegraph575 , which aimed at more general audiences. The Gazette was closed in 1831 in response to Delvig refusing to take Benckendorff's blame for publishing a poem cleared for publication by censorship.576 Meanwhile, Pushkin came under regular attacks by critics and other writers for having betrayed the ideas of Romanticism, for creating works that lacked in ideinosti, for being a representative of Russian nobility, and for “literary aristocratism”577 Even Vissarion Belinsky, who after the poet's death would evaluate Pushkin's late work very highly, in early 1830s wrote that Pushkin “had ended in 1830”, that his talent was “used up”578.
Despite all these challenges, aggravated by the continuous shortage of money, Pushkin continued to work and move in the direction that he deemed important. In 1834 he was invited to contribute to Alexander Smirdin's monthly journal Библиотека для чтения (Library for Reading), which engaged a wide range of talented Russian authors. However, when the journal, under the pressure of Osip Senkovksy, one of its editors, started catering mostly to the taste of an average reader, Pushkin
574 Lotman, p. 64, 74. 575 Северная Пчела and Московский Телеграф respectively. 576 Ruud, p.62. 577 Lotman, pp. 74 -75. 578 Lotman, p. 102. ("Тридцатым годом кончился или лучше сказать, внезапно оборвался период Пушкинский, так как кончился и сам Пушкин, а вместе с ним и его влияние; с тех пор почти ни одного бывалого звука не сорвалось с его лиры" Белинский В.Г. Полн. собр. соч., т. 1. М., 1955, с. 87.: “In 1830 Pushkin's period ended, or, to express it better, suddenly snapped and that's how Pushkin and along with him his influence came to an end; almost no sound has fallen from his lyre since.” (translation mine) 168 quit. 579
In 1836, he finally received permission to publish his own journal, Sovremennik580, which he hoped to use as an antidote both to the Northern Bee and the Library. Just like the Literary Gazette, however, Sovremennik was too demanding for wider audiences and did not bring Pushkin, who served as the journal's editor, writer, technical manager and financial administrator, the income he had hoped for. To make the task of keeping it running even more challenging, Uvarov made sure that besides the censorship of Benckendorff's office, the journal was to pass regular, military and religious censorship as well. Nonetheless, Pushkin did not surrender. In a way he could not, because, as Lotman has pointed out, he saw himself as the head of Russian literature and thus felt personal responsibility for its future.581 So, even before leaving for his fatal duel with George d'Anthes, he had been planning the next issue, requesting articles and setting appointments with authors.582
In the above outline of Pushkin's life – apparently focused through the evolution of the poet's relationship with the power and his sense of historical agency – one can easily recognize the trajectory of the new Soviet intelligentsia's relationship with the Soviet state. One can easily detect themes of hope and betrayal, willingness to cooperate and misunderstanding, mistrust and resentment, pressure and resistance that structure the narrative.583 One can also notice that the driving forces of the poet's resistance were his personal and professional integrity, the very same qualities that made cooperation with Brezhnev regime seem so unsavory to some members of Soviet intelligentsia, that they either moved into the cultural underground or resurted to the “cat- and-mouse” games with the Soviet censorship. Thus, in addition to the outlined similarities between Pushkin's and Khrzhanovsky's historical contexts and the parallels between the image of Pushkin as an artist and a person and the self-image of the new Soviet intelligentsia, Pushkin's biography as a subject is also a potentially suitable vehicle for expressing grievances and struggles of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia during stagnation.
Recognizing that Pushkiniana's apparent protagonist, his historical context and his biography bear significant resemblances to the context, protagonist and narrative of the proposed taboo subject is only half the work toward defending the Aesopian reading developed here. As has already been
579 Lotman, p. 101. 580 Современник or Contemporary 581 Lotman, p. 102. 582 Lotman, p. 104. 583 See the first two chapters of this project for details. 169 mentioned, the second half would have to be identifying Aesopian markers that support it. I have already mentioned that Khrzhanovsky's artistic decision to make the films based solely on Pushkin's drawings and texts could function as one of the markers. I would now like to focus on elements of the plot that in my view also work as Aesopian markers. The first of these is Khrzhanovsky's selection of biographical events and experiences to include into his narrative.
Passions of Pushkin according to Khrzhanovsky
While all of the episodes that Khrzhanovsky chooses to create his narrative are indeed factual, they are of course not all episodes of Pushkin's life. Clearly, they represent the director's carefully considered selection and as such are marked with intention. What biographical events does Khrzhanovsky select and what themes do they allow him to explore? How does the narrative he construct relate to the narrative of the Soviet intelligentsia?
The first film “I am flying to you as a memory” narrates Pushkin's life between 1811 and 1825, that is between him entering the Imperial Lyceum and beginning his work on Boris Godunov.584 When looked at in terms of life events, this period seems a bit strange: although starting education can be considered an important life event, starting to work on something is not quite as much. Since it was in the lyceum, where Pushkin first discovered his literary talent and because Boris Godunov was seen as Pushkin's graduation into literary maturity, I would suggest that the first film tells the story of the poet's coming of age with respect to his literary genius. Indeed, Khrzhanovsky opens the lyceum chapter – the first chapter after the introduction – with a strophe from Eugene Onegin in which the poet looks back at his lyceum days, when his “Muse first came near”585; the narrative part of the film ends with the following lines: “I no longer seek the smile of fashion. Voluntarily, I leave the rows of its favorites. I feel that my spiritual powers have reached their fullest development. I can create!”586
Khrzhanovsky's narrative of Pushkin's path to literary maturity is subdivided into the following
584 The letter to Pjotr Vyazemskii, in which Pushkin presents the title of the work and which is included in the story line of the film is dated 1825. 585 “[...] yes, in that spring-time, in low-lying/ secluded vales, where swans were crying,/ by waters that were still and clear,/ for the first time the Muse came near.” (Onegin, 8, I: (translation Charles H. Johnston)) <
One important theme that Khrzhanovsky addresses in the lyceum chapter is Pushkin's serious attitude toward poetry. Khrzhanovksy constructs a scene based on two fragments – a poem titled To Delvig, 1815, and a poem To my friend, a verse writer, 1815. The first text describes a situation in which a poet is surrounded by witty strangers, who, wanting to show that they understand what poetry is all about, ask the poet whether in his poetry he too depicts small streams, wild flowers, quiet breeze, and groves. The reply offered in the few lines chosen from the second text read as follows: “Fear the fate of those useless bards, who are killing us with the sheer volume of their poems./[...] Fear bad reputation!”588 In the poem To my friend a verse writer Pushkin tries to dissuade his 'friend' Arist from becoming a poet; he warns him of hardships and risks of devoting one's life to poetry, unless he is certain that he indeed has a lasting talent, unless he feels certain that his gift will set him apart from the already existing crowds of already verse writers, those who sing about streams, forests and dismal looking graves and whose books are rotting away in libraries. He warns Arist not only about poetry being hard work, but a hard work that is poorly paid. Although the poem most likely expresses young Pushkin's own doubts regarding his Muse, in the film sequence it sounds almost like Pushkin's commitment to follow his calling, thus marking the beginning of the poet's journey toward the maturity seen in Boris Godunov.
The St. Petersburg chapter shows Pushkin plunge right into the inebriating cultural life of the capital, partaking of its various excesses – theaters, balls, romantic opportunities, bordellos, and circles, where philosophy and politics are discussed as freely and earnestly as literature.
587 As has already been mentioned, the Literary Gazette was closed, because Delvig had the courage to defend his editorial right to publish a text allowed to publication by official censorship in front of Benckendorff. 588 “Страшися участи бессмысленных певцов,/ Нас убивающих громадою стихов!/ [...] Страшись бесславия!” (Translation mine) 171
Khrzhanovsky includes a fragment from a note written by Pushkin much later, in which the poet reflects on his reckless behavior in 1820 and, of course, the most famous strophe from the Ode to Liberty for which Pushkin was sent to the outskirts of the empire.
The next chapter shows Chisinau as the exact opposite of St. Petersburg – hopelessly conservative, as suggested by the orthodox liturgy scene; provincial, possibly best expressed by the wallpaper designs in the house of Konstantin Katakazi (fig. 12), who at the time was the governor of Bessarabia and exotic, as can be seen from the dress of the locals, the soundtrack and of course the gypsies (fig. 13). The gypsy sequence is a reference both visually and textually589 to Pushkin's narrative poem Gypsies – the third and the last one of Pushkin's so-called romantic narrative poems. Another one of these –The prisoner of the Caucasus – is referenced, this time only visually, in the short, apporximately minute-long, intermission between the Chisinau and Odessa chapters.
The intermission sequence is composed of panning and zooming shots of Pushkin's sketches that try to capture his Bessarabian milieu, his trip to the Caucasus on the way to Chisinau and illustrations; among the latter, one recognizes several from the manuscript of The Prisoner. The southern exile of Pushkin is known as his romantic period, so by including this short intermission, accompanied by waves and whirls of romantic music and commented by a fragment from the Journey of Onegin,in which the poet reflects on these days as a distant past, Khrzhanovsky in a way brings the narrative of poetic maturation back to focus.
The Odessa chapter opens with a reference to Elizabeth Vorontsova, with whom Pushkin was in love during his short stay in the city and who reciprocated his feelings. Unfortunately, Elizabeth's husband, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, was Pushkin's boss. Vorontsov, a man of pragmatic mind, had a rather modest opinion of Pushkin's literary talent and was less than impressed with the poet as an employee. Pushkin's liaison with Vorontsov's wife further complicated the relationship between these two men and eventually led to Pushkin's relocation to Mikhailosvkoe. Shortly before Pushkin was fired, a very interesting incident took place – the so-called “Locust affair”, to which Khrzhanovsky allots more than half of the chapter.
Wanting to be rid of Pushkin, Vorontsov sent him to inspect uyezds of Kherson, Elizavetgrad and Alexandrija in response to increase in the population of locusts. Vorontsov did not expect to see
589 The image upon which the episode is built is taken from an auto-illustration found in Pushkin's draft of the poem. In terms of the script, Khrzhanovsky uses the first two lines from the poem. 172
Pushkin for a month at least. Pushkin, however, infuriated by the assignment, returned in five days and submitted the following report. “Locusts flew and flew and then landed; then they sat and sat, ate everything and then flew away again.”590 The story regarding the content of the report surfaced only after the poet's death and came from a colleague of Pushkin, V.Z.Pisarenko, but Khrzhanovsky uses it nonetheless. He turns it into a grand piece of choral pomp, and illustrates it with an army of locusts marching and then landing on Vorontsov's head (figs. 14a-b)
Khrzhanovsky's rendition of Pushkin's stay in Mikhailovskoe begins with landscapes; in fact, landscapes seem to dominate this chapter's visual narrative. Some landscapes come directly from Pushkin's pages, as for example, in the opening sequence; others are constructed from the poet's scrawl, as in the sequence of horse riding; still others, are built from shapes cut from Pushkin's manuscripts, as in Count Nulin episode591. There are quiet landscapes, windy landscapes, landscapes tormented by rain, and landscapes covered with snow (figs. 15a.b). This abundance and variety of landscapes, I would suggest, serve to better convey the poet's isolation during that time.
Mikhailovskoye was a period of intense reading, studying, thinking and working. In Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin outgrew Romanticism and re-defined to himself both the meaning of “poetic” and the image of the poet; the property of being poetic no longer depended on “extraordinary subjects” and the poet was no longer a “strange person', instead, a poet was just a person, whose profession it was to write, but who also needed to eat and spit and poetry could be found in the most banal elements of the everyday. 592 A humorous narrative in verse, Count Nulin, and Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse, which Khrzhanovsky chooses to cite in this chapter, are good examples of this shift in Pushkin's attitude to poetic.593
Two central episodes of the chapter, however, are the imaginary conversation with tsar Alexander I and the sequence about the trial and execution of the Decembrists. The first one of these is a dramatization of Pushkin's short text, written in 1824, possibly to make his friends understand that his banishment to Mikhailovskoye was too harsh a punishment for his expression of interest in atheism and that there must have been a misunderstanding.594 The Conversation opens with
590 Original: “Саранча летела, летела и села; сидела, сидела, все съела, и вновь улетела“. ( translation mine). 591 I am flying to you as a memory, 19'01''-19'17''. 592 Lotman, p. 53. 593 Both works incorporate very casual language into the text and treat seemingly banal, everyday situations. Eugene Onegin, moreover, is full of the author's commentary on his contemporary Russia – law, politics, arts, fashion, mores and customs. 594 Pushkin's exile to Chisinau and the subsequent transfer to Odessa were not officially presented as an exile, but rather as job-related transfers. Pushkin even received some money for carrying out his duties. Mikhailovskoe was a real 173
Alexander I recognizing Pushkin as a great poet, after which, the tsar moves on to mention the Ode to Liberty. Pushkin tries to excuse himself by mentioning his other works, and when the tsar draws attention to his mercy toward the poet, despite the latter's disobedience, Pushkin praises Alexander for being the best of all contemporary rulers. Pleased with the answer, Alexander decides to let the poet go, but his decision immediately proves to be a mistake, because Pushkin suddenly explodes and tells the tsar a lot of unnecessary things, for which he ends up being exiled to Siberia, where he continues working. The scene appears to be a failed scene of repentance; in the sequence in which Pushkin's double mimics being dragged into Siberian exile, he turns in the direction of the tsar and sticks his tongue out (fig. 16).
In Mikhailovskoe Pushkin found out about the outcome of the Decembrists uprising. First hoping for Nicholas I's mercy, he, like the rest of Russia, was dismayed by the sentences.595 Khrzhanovsky builds the episode about the Decembrists on the following five texts: first, a compilation from two letters written in February 1826 to Delvig, in which Pushkin expresses his nervous anticipation of the outcome of the trial, and hope for Nicholas's mercifulness; second, a very short and powerful diary entry: “Heard about death of Ryleev, Pestel, Muravjov, Kakhovsky, Bestuzhev”596; third, Arion, an allegorical poem of a skiff wreck, survived only by the poet; fourth, the famous inscription under the sketch of gallows with five figures hanging (fig. 17): “And I could too...”597 ; and finally, a strophe from 19th of October, a poem written on the occasion of an anniversary of the Lyceum. The last fragment celebrates the beautiful union of friends formed during the lyceum years, and declares the whole world outside Tsarskoe Selo to be a foreign country to them. The visual sequence that illustrates these last lines looks like a farewell to the poet's youth: a sketch of the building occupied by the lyceum, followed by a sheet with profiles of friends, among which one notices the already familiar images of Kuechelbecker, Delvig and Pushchin, and then a cut to ornamental birds flying over pages of Pushkin's manuscripts and finally out of the frame (fig.18).
What Khrzhanovsky seems to be saying is that the end of the Decembrists movement, especially the exile and the official reason for it was a letter Pushkin sent to a friend, in which the poet expressed his growing interest in teachings of atheism. ( Lotman, p. 49.) 595 Lotman draws attention to the fact that public hanging of five of the movement's leaders must have been seen as unbelievable cruelty, since there had been no death penalties meted out since the reign of Elisabeth of Russia, with few exceptions – Pugachev and Mirovich and soldiers regularly flogged to death. (Lotman, p. 110) 596 Original, abbreviated: “Усл.<ышал> о с.<мерти> Р.<ылеева>, П.<естеля>, М.<уравьёва>, К.<аховкого>,Б.<естужева>. 24.” (translation mine) 597 Original: “«И я бы мог, как [шут ви...]» (And i could also, like [a jester be hang.
Khrzhanovsky concludes the film with strophes from André Chénier, in which the French poet addresses his friends with a request to keep his manuscripts – the poet's whole life – and from time to time gather to read them. “And, listening for long, say: this is him;/Here is his speech. While I, forgetting the slumber of the grave/ Will come invisible and sit between you/ And also will listen spellbound…”599 The poem is often interpreted as autobiographical600 and Khrzhanovsky makes it clear that that's how he means it by illustrating “this is him” with Pushkin's Decembrist self- portrait. So, if “I” in the above lines stands in for Pushkin himself, Khrzhanovksy's decision to conclude the film “I am flying to you as a memory” with an invitation to keep the poet's memory alive by reading his work is fully justified. There is, however, an interesting implication that the interpretation of André Chénier as an autobiographical poem can have for an Aesopian reader. If the text is autobiographical, then Pushkin uses André Chénier as a mask to reflect on the events of his own recent history, which means that the poem is an Aesopian text. It is, moreover, created by using the same strategy as an Aesopian reader would see in Pushkiniana.601 Therefore, for an
598 Here is how Lotman has described this era: “ the era of bogatyrs of 1812: Raevsky, Ermolov, Witgenstein, and Miloradovich, the era during which the tradition of Catherine II – filling big position with great individuals was still alive. The time of secret societies was over, as well as the time, when firmness of civil stance was respected, the title of 'carbonari' flattering, and independence of opinions and actions were valued in the society.”( Lotman, Pushkin, p. 109. (Original: “Кончился период богатырей 1812 г.: Раевского,Ермолова, Витгенштейна, Милорадовича, время, когда еще жива была традиция Екатерины II —крупные должности занимают крупные личности. Кончилось время Тайного общества, время, когда гражданская твердость была в почете, звание «карбонария» — лестным, а в обществе ценилась независимость мнений и поступков.” (translated T. I. Krasnoborodko) 599 Original “И, долго слушая, скажите: это он;/ Вот речь его. А я, забыв могильный сон,/ Взойду невидимо и сяду между вами, / И сам заслушаюсь [...]” (translation mine) 600 Tsyavlovkaja, Tatjana, commentaries to André Chénier in Alexander Pushkin. Polonoye sobranie sochinenii v 10 tomakh. 1959-1962. <<(http://rvb.ru/pushkin/02comm/0376.htm)>> 601 The text of the poem praises the French poet's bravery: in the last hours of his life, awaiting to be guillotined, Chénier still sings praise to liberty. In a short moment of weakness, the ill-fated poet becomes angry with himself for not keeping away from the turbulent events, but regaining his courage, commands himself to be proud and joyful, because he did not surrender, because he used his word to shine light on infamous rulers and to lash at their heads. Chenier's imaginary soliloquy concludes with threats addressed to the tyrant, prophesying the latter's death. So, the Aesopian taboo subject of the poem is unfair treatment of a poet by the tyrannical state. After the Decembrist revolt, however, a part of this poem was circulated under the tile of 14th of December and its relevance to those events seemed so obvious, that when a copy of this fragment fell into the hands of secret police, Pushkin was called in to explain himself– four times during 1827. ( http://rvb.ru/pushkin/02comm/0376.htm) This anecdote is a great example of how Aesopian reading of a text change with context and the reader. (Loseff, p. 39.) 175
Aesopian reader, such an end to the film serves as a marker. Because, however, this marker occurs at the level of utterance, rather then the plot, I will return to it later, when I consider markers at the level of utterances.
The title of the second film of the trilogy “And I am again with you” is possibly taken from the poem To My Friends, referred to earlier.602 The film is largely about Pushkin's return from the exile – his unusual conversation with the new tsar, his return to society, his disappointment with the social life in the post-Decembrist era, his longing for Mikhailovkoye, and finally the horrible public reception of Boris Godunov, which effectively signifies decline in Pushkin's mass popularity. The film, thus covers the years between approximately 1825 and 1830, when Godunov was published.
However, the film begins in Mikhailovskoe, allowing Khrzhanovksy not only to revisit the poet's situation before his return to Moscow, but also to address the aspects of his intellectual and emotional life during the northern exile that did not make it into the first film – the poet's growing interest in “the people”, his loneliness and boredom. The first of these, i.e. Pushkin's interest in people – their language, their culture, their history603 – finds expression in the market scene; the theme of loneliness is briefly addressed in a short sequence built on a strophe from the 19th of October, and finally boredom is explored through the Faust scene, based Pushkin's Notes to Faust and the Scene from Faust and the album scene, built from images found in Ekaterina Ushakova's album.
The market scene604 is full of wonderfully clever details appropriate for the event – a boy stealing a money bag from the pocket of an idle onlooker (fig. 19a) , a lady trying out various hats (fig. 19b), a puppet theatre performance (fig. 19c), a bearded man skillfully displaying the extraordinary length of his beard (fig. 19d), a woman joggling bottles (fig.19e), etc. Pushkin is placed in the midst of the bustle – he walks around, stares at performances, eats oranges, sharing one with a boy and shakes hands with a peasant. Unlike the other landlords, who would never leave their carriages, when crossing the market, Pushkin happily mingled with “the crowds”, the latter consisting of pilgrims, peasants, traders, beggars, cripples and blind bards.605 Possibly to point out the immediacy of
602 It could also come from the poem 19th of October, a fragment of which is used in the previous film. 603 In Mikhailovskoe Pushkin started collecting folk songs and tales. (Lotman pp. 54-55.) 604 The market in the scene is a reference to the one that took place around the Svyatogorsky monastery, located five and something kilometers away from Mikhailovskoe. It was the perfect place to meet and get to know 'the people', to hear them speak, to listen to traditional songs and stories. 605 Tyrkova-Williams “Opal'nyi domik” (Tyrkova mentioned a beautiful anecdote from Pushkin's life, that was passed around by the monks of the monastery: How once Pushkin joined the folk singers in performing spiritual verses about Lazarus; he was dressed in a white long shirt with a red belt and took upon himself the role of the choir conductor, 176
Pushkin's engagement in the festivities the main feature of which was as much to see as to be seen, Khrzhanovsky includes an extract from the diary of a merchant Ivan Lapin, where the latter relates seeing Pushkin, peculiarly dressed, among the market crowd. The text, written in a characteristic manner and read in northern dialect also adds to the folkloristic atmosphere of the scene, under- scored by folk tunes and folk songs as well as images from lubok woodcuts.
Besides the Lapin's account, Khrzhanovsky includes a fragment from Pushkin's letter to his brother Lev, in which the poet tries to denounce the gossip about his intent to escape abroad606 and, interestingly, a few lines from a report by a secret agent607, which informs the respective authorities that Pushkin is friendly with peasants, takes acquaintances by the hand, and having arrived to his destination on a horse, orders his servant to let the horse go, saying that every animal has a right to freedom.608
19th of October, already cited in the Decembrists sequence of the previous film, was written to commemorate the day of the lyceum. Because Pushkin was “chained” to Mikhailovskoe and could not attend the celebrations, the poem is full of melancholy and shows longing to be with his friends. “I am sad: the friend is not with me,/ [the friend] with whom I could wash down long separation, [the friend], whom I could give a hearty handshake and wish many joyful years.”609 Written before the Decembrists revolt and its consequences, the poem reads quite differently when the reason for Pushkin's friends not being with him could be interpreted as being due not only to the poet's exile, but also their exile to Siberia or even death. Khrzhanovsky visually references the fragment to the Decembrist images – the gallows with five hanging bodies and Pushkin's self portrait with the Decembrists.
The Faust scene and album scene are as different as the types of boredom that they seem to capture. My reasons for interpreting them as being about boredom are as follows: the Faust scene actually opens with Faust complaining to Mephistopheles about being bored and asking the latter to find
rhythmically swaying his walking stick to which he had some bells attached. (Tyrkova-Williams, p 10.) 606 According to Tyrkova Williams, Pushkin was indeed plotting an escape, planning to use an invented aneurysm in his leg as a pretext. (Tyrkova-Williams, pp. 5-6.) 607 The agent in question is Aleksander Boshnyak,who after the execution of the Decembrists, was sent to the Pskov gubernija with the purpose of thoroughly investigation Pushkin's beahavior (B.L. Modzalevskiy) 608 B. Modzalevskiy, p. 82. ( ...Пушкин дружески обходился с крестьянями и брал за руку знакомых, здороваясь с ними. [...]иногда ездит верхом и, достигнув цели своего путешествия, приказывает человеку своему отпустить лошадь одну, говоря, что всякое животное имеет право на свободу.(translation mine) 609 “Печален я: со мною друга нет, /С кем долгую запил бы я разлуку, /Кому бы мог пожать от сердца руку /И пожелать веселых много лет.” (translation mine) 177 some means of distraction610. Thus, the logic of the whole episode is motivated by boredom and the desire to be rid of it. The album scene, in which Khrzhanovsky cleverly exploits the idea of “the album of a provincial Miss”611 – a peculiar artifact often kept by unmarried Russian ladies of noble origins and containing poems, drawings, caricatures, and epigrams, entered there either themselves or their friends and acquaintances612 – in a way becomes an embodiment of leisure time of Russian noble youth, and thus their means of addressing boredom.
The Faust scene, 'starring' a host of demons, monsters, ghosts, and witches, who dance, fly, and swirl against hellish glow of red (fig. 20) is an embodiment of disorientation and anxiety produced by the apparent lack of structure or sense. This anxiety seems continuous and appears to have no end; the scene ends with Faust ordering Mephistopheles to drown a ship, which offers at best an interruption to the torment, not a solution. The album scene, built from short episodes, each based either on an isolated image or a single page from Ushakova's album and accompanied by a playful epigram, a sassy remark, or a romantic dedication, becomes an album in itself (figs. 21a-c). Even transitions from one episode to the next, accompanied by changes in the musical score, resemble the process of turning album pages. So as much as the Faust scene is about anxiety of seemingly unbearable duration, the album scene is about playful and frivolous discontinuity. Thus, in terms of boredom types, the latter corresponds to situative boredom, which is typically expressed by a yawn or swinging feet, whereas the former is boredom of existential kind, which is caused by perceived lack of meaning in a world profoundly indifferent to one's existence.613
The scene of Pushkin's sudden departure to Moscow is built around the account given by Pushkin's coachman Peter Parfenov and is played out as a recollection of the event over a cup of tea614. Khrzhanovsky finds a beautiful means for conveying Pushkin's unease about meeting the new tsar – the poet trying out different hats before finally deciding on the suitable one for the occasion. Each
610“ - Мне скучно, бес. - Что делать, Фауст? Таков вам положен предел [...] - Найди мне способ как-нибудь - Рассеяться.” (Pushkin Alexander. Stsena iz Fausta. <
One final important detail in the scene that I would like to draw attention to is the appearance of the forbearing, in the Chekhovian sense, gun. According to Parfenov's account, Pushkin would not leave Mikhailovskoe without his guns, which he kept in Trigorskoe; so a person had to be sent to fetch them. When the guns arrived, the gendarmerie officer expressed his concern about the danger of taking these along. “What do I care?” replied Pushkin. “Without them, I can not travel anywhere! They are my consolation!”617 Toward the end of this line, a shot with a drawing of a gun is montaged and at the end of the line, the gun shoots. I would suggest that this gun shot serves as an overture to the new life of the poet, the life of creative and emotional intensity, political surveillance, social and intellectual isolation, disappointment and frustration, all of which would be ended by just such a shot.
The glowing red background of Moscow in the arrival sequence, the wind and the image of a hanging body bring to mind the Faust scene, thus putting Pushkin's journey to meet Nicholas I in parallel to Faust's journey to hell/the Satan's ball. The textual support for the scene comes from Oh what a night! The frost is creaking, a poem most likely describing executions of the archers who participated in the 1698 uprising against Peter the Great. It is, however, reasonable to think that Pushkin had the more recent tragedy of December 1825 in mind when writing the horrifying lines: “While all of Moscow's dead in slumber,/ The restlessness of fear forgetting,/ The square, in murkiness of night, /Stands filled with yesterday's beheading.”618In Khrzhanovsky's narrative, in
615 Avtoportrety Pushkina. http://shmurnoff-v.narod.ru/index/0-120 616 Klobuk (клобук) is a cone-shaped hat with a veil covering the sides and back – a part of non liturgical religious vestment in Christian Eastern Orthodox tradition. 617 Original: “А мне какое дело? Мне без них никуда нельзя ехать; это моя утеха.” (translation mine) 618 Original: “И вся Москва покойно спит,/Забыв волнение боязни./А площадь в сумраке ночном/ Стоит, полна вчерашней казни.” In the original, what Kneller has translated as “beheading” is “execution”. ( Translated Mikhail Kneller) 179 which the poem expresses the poet's impressions upon his arrival at Moscow, the first visit of the city since the December events, the poem is clearly interpreted as an Aesopian text about the aftermath of the uprising – yet another Aesopian marker at the level of utterance.
From panning, zooming and tilting shots of various views of Moscow, glowing like dying coals of a recent fire, Khrzhanovsky cuts to a mid-shot of Nicholas, wearing a resplendent military uniform and a helmet adorned with impressive plumage. The tsar observes the view from his balcony, but what he sees, although disquieting,619 causes not a stir in his military posture (fig. 23). Nicholas opens the conversation with: “My brother, the late emperor, sent you to live in a village, while I excuse you from this, under the condition that you do not write anything against the government.” After Pushkin replies that it has been a long while since he has written anything contrary to the government, the tsar proceeds to inquire about Pushkin's link to the Decembrists and ask the poet about what the latter would have done had he been in Moscow on that day. The poet replies by confessing that he still felt close to and respected many of the insurgents and that had he been in the capital on 14th of December, he would have joined their lines. After a brief pause, as if letting the impact of Pushkin's words sink, Nicholas, still facing away, turns the conversation toward literature; he asks Pushkin about his most recent work. The poet's response is again very direct: he complains that he had been writing very little because censorship is too strict. When Nicholas follows up with the expected “why are you writing such things that the censorship does not let through?” Pushkin replies that the censorship forbids even the most innocent things. “It is acting quite unreasonably!” he concludes. At this point the conversation fades away and is replaced by a succession of dissonant chords.
The shot showing the conversation from inside the building dissolves into one that presents it as if viewed through a window from the outside: Pushkin, Nicholas turning into silhouettes – that of Pushkin expressively gesticulating and that of His Majesty listening (fig. 24a). The difference between these two men now seems to be absent – they are the same scale, both silhouettes, and appear to be gesticulating in synch. The dissonant chords, however, suggest that despite the
619 By the logic of the script, Nicholas observes the following: “The metal teeth are sticking out, / And bones with ashes are consumed, / Upon the stakes, above the ground, /Dead bodies darken from the fume... “ from Oh, what a night! (Translated: Mikhail Kneller). It is interesting that Khrzhanovksy decides to rely fully on a verbal description here. On one hand, depicting these traces of impressive cruelty toward the insurgent archers would compromise the credibility of the narrative, since Nicholas I's punishments were far less spectacular than those of Peter the Great. (Peter the Great executed 2000 people – five he beheaded personally. Dead bodies remained on display for about eight months and were afterward buried not on cemeteries, but along the road leading to Moscow.) But also, by not illustrating the contents of the strophe, Khrzhanovsky accomplishes a much more sinister effect, suggesting that what is described in words is too gruesome to be shown. 180 seemingly easy flow, the conversation might not be of complete agreement and that despite the mutual fascination, a friendship between these two men would have been unlikely.
The temporarily unclear hierarchy between the tsar and the poet, however, is quickly brought back into sharp focus when the inaudible, magical conversation transpiring behind the window is forced into report-like bureaucratic clarity in Nicholas's account of it: “To my question whether his way of thinking has changed and whether he could give his word to think and act differently if I let him free, he told me lots of compliments about 14th of December.”620 As this commentary rolls, the viewer watches the conversation grow increasingly out of control: Pushkin increasingly agitated, helps himself to His Majesty's paper, quill and ink, scribbles something, sits on the table and offers the paper to Nicholas. Nicholas takes the paper, stands up, once again looking taller than the poet, and tears it to pieces (fig. 24b). “From now on, I will be your censor!” he declares and exits, his chest lifted high and his countenance strict. “Send to me everything that you write!”621 The last replica is delivered sitting on a horse and is accompanied by the parental, warning gesture of the index finger; finished with the poet, Nicholas rides away, to the sound of a Cossack song622
The following scene of the poet's return to the society opens with Nicholas, who appears in the doorway of a large hall on his horse and introduces the rehabilitated poet with the following recommendation: “ Gentlemen! Here is a new Pushkin for you! Let us forget about the old one!” This announcement is accompanied by him pointing at the shrunken figure of the new poet (fig. 25), whose change in magnitude is further emphasized through having the members of the audience pull out monocles in order to better see the gift they had just received. After a few moments of awkwardness, the new Pushkin plunges into the social life of new Moscow head on.
The next scene begins with a mazourka, showing Pushkin's different self-portraits dance with different women. The dance is accompanied by a rather idle talk about skirts and hairstyles. When the music is over, Pushkin walks across the ballroom toward a gentlemen's table, swigs a drink, pulls the visor of his hat lower and starts telling a saucy joke about Louis XIV. When he finishes, he is surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, who follow him across the room, until he stops and tells
620 Interestingly, despite the importance of this meeting, neither Pushkin nor Nicholas left any detailed account of it. What we know about it comes from accounts given by each to third parties. The above cited one, for example was recorded by the secretary to the Committee of Ministers Baron M.A. Korf. In the original: “На вопрос мой, переменился ли его образ мыслей и дает ли он мне слово думать и действовать иначе, если я пущу его на волю, он наговорил мне пропасть комплиментов насчет 14 декабря [...]” (Tyrkova-Williams, p. 40) 621 Original: "Ну, так я сам буду твоим цензором. Присылай мне все, что напишешь."(Translation mine). 622 The song in question is “Ездил русский белый царь” (The white tsar was riding around) – a song written to commemorate Alexander I's victory over Napoleon in Europe. 181 another one. This time the joke is about him successfully making a fool of Benckendorff. From the shot of the admiring crowd shaking with laughter, Khrzhanovsky cuts to a profile of a suspicious member of the crowd, who is not in the least infected by the laughter: flaring his nostrils in disapproval and aiming his monocle at the poet (fig. 26), this man must be a reference to the already mentioned part of Pushkin's new deal, i.e., nearly continuous control and supervision through spying agents – professionals and volunteers.
As a text to support the scene, Khrzhanovsky choses Pushkin's letter to Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, where the poet, in an ironic tone, expresses his 'fascination' with routs623: “We should have guessed long ago that we are created for routs, because at these one needs neither intelligence, nor a sense of humor, nor some general conversation, nor politics nor literature. You walk on feet as if they were the carpet, apologize and there is a substitution for a conversation.[...]”624 As these eager to hear his jokes dissipate toward the final sentence of this fragment, the poet, all on his own, is shown carefully wading through a fog of faces which are hard to make out, apologizing for every crushed foot. Both in Pushkin's text and in Khrzhanovsky's image one can read disappointment. This disappointment finds an open expression at the end of the following episode – the episode that addresses the poor public reception of Boris Godunov.
As the music picks up the tempo and the background grows dark, not only the mood of the party changes, but also the appearance of the revelers. Locked in a frenzied dance, fluttering in circles like moths around a fire, are a horse in a suit, a demon, a rotting skeleton and a wide range of ugly fantastical creatures, in whom on easily recognizes the demonic host of characters from the Faust scene (figs. 27 a,b). By 'engaging' the creatures from the Faust scene, Khrzhanovsky clearly draws a parallel between Nicholas I's beau monde and the witches' sabbath; he also uses a visual trope that was very well explored in his earlier film The Glass Harmonica – ugly appearance signifies an ugly soul. So, by having the human crowd of guests turn into a host of monsters and demons, Khrzhanovsky expresses the transformation of the Russian society under Nicholas I – its changed values and interests.
In the beginning of the dance sequence, Khrzhanovsky focuses on one segment of the madly spinning circle of dancers; one of them shares his opinion about Pushkin and Boris Godunov625. “I 623 A rout is a type of reception, which unlike a ball, lacks or does not emphasize the dancing component. 624 The letter was written in 1829, ( so not immediately after the arrival). Original “Давно бы нам догадаться: мы сотворены для раутов, ибо в них не нужно ни ума, ни веселости, ни общего разговора, ни политики, ни литературы. Ходишь по ногам, как по ковру, извиняешься – вот уже и замена разговору.” (Translation mine) 625 This opinion belongs to the director of Moscow post office A.YA. Bulgakov. 182 have met the poet Pushkin – a mug of little promise! He was reading Boris Godunov at Vyazemsky's.” Another one picks up by offering his evaluation of the drama, which basically boils down to the text being too difficult to read, because it is written neither in prose, nor in verse, here in French, there in Latin and on top of all this without a rhyme.626 This dance macabre is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Nicholas on his horse; as it turns out, the tsar had crushed the party in order to deliver his own critique of Godunov (fig. 28): “I consider that Mr. Pushkin's aim would have been achieved if he had, with the necessary expurgations, changed his Comedy into a historical narrative or novel in the manner of Walter Scott.”627 Nicholas's comment is received with 'hurray' and the tsar rides away yet again.
As the dance resumes, Pushkin, through whose eyes the celebration is seen, concludes: “And among these orangoutangs I am condemned to be living the most interesting times of our century!” His final verdict coming from a letter to Osipova is as follows: “Banality and stupidity of both our capitals are equal, be it different [...]” Krhzhanovsky cuts to Pushkin's 'Decembrist' portrait and the poet continues: “If I were offered a choice between them, I would choose Trigorskoe, almost like Harlequin, who to the question of whether he would prefer a breaking wheel or a noose replied that he would prefer milk soup.”628
The final sequence of the film is, as expected, in Trigorskoe –a zooming out shot of a mill, resting in the fields (fig. 29), followed by a shot of young green wheat moved by a gentle play of the wind. The sound of a folk song, melodious and free, adds to the overall contrast between the peaceful coolness of this sequence and the convulsive intensity of the previous one.
The last film, Autumn, begins in the fall of 1830s in Boldino, where the poet travelled in order to settle some issues related to his wedding629; it ends with the poet's death in 1837. Because the film covers the last few years of the poet's life, its title could be interpreted in terms of the seasonal 626 “Ну что это за сочинение? Инде прозою, инде стихами, инде по-французски, инде по-латыни, да еще и без рифм.” (translation mine) 627 These words, allegedly written by the tsar himself are found in Benckendorff's cover letter submitted with the returned manuscript. ( Wolf, Tatiana (ed.) Pushkin on literature. Methuen&co, 1971, p. 181) 628 Original: “И среди этих-то орангутангов я осужден жить в самое интересное время нашего века.” (A letter to Elizaveta. Khitrovo, 1830.). “[...] пошлость и глупость обеих наших столиц равны, хот и различны, если бы мне дали выбирать между обеими, я выбрал бы Тригорское, – почти как Арлекин, который на вопрос, что он предпочитает: быть колесованным или повешенным?– ответил: я предпочитаю молочный суп.” ( A letter to P. Osipova, 1827) (translation mine) 629 Boldino was an estate belonging to Pushkin's father's family and the reason Alexander traveled there in September of 1830 was to officially come in possession of his father's gift – two hundred peasants from the neighboring Kistenevka village, which also belonged to the Pushkin's. In 1830, Pushkin became engaged to Natalia Goncharova, but the bride was dowry-less and her mother insisted that not the parents, but the future husband provided for that. So, the peasants of Kistenevka became the means to secure Natalia's dowry. ( Lotman, pp. 78-79). 183 metaphor for life, according to which spring corresponds to birth and winter to death.630 The title, however, also supports another reading: it could be interpreted as a reference to the time of harvest, thus implying Pushkin's productivity during the period that the film spans and ripeness of his genius. Autumn was indeed Pushkin's preferred season for creative work and having the film open with the most legendary autumn in terms of Pushkin's creative and intellectual output autumn, (the first Boldino autumn), Khrzhanovsky in a way warrants such a reading. As the film is both about Pushkin's last years and about his most fruitful and mature period, both interpretations of the title work and the fact that they overlap brings out the tragedy of the poet's untimely death.
The film, built around the following biographical episodes – two autumns spent in Boldino in 1830 and 1833 respectively, marriage, appointment as a kammerjunker, a brief stop in Mikhailovskoye on the way to collect information about the Pugachev-led insurrection, public celebrations of Alexander II's sixteenth birthday and the opening of Alexander's column, receiving back the corrections to the Bronze Horseman, which required so much change that Pushkin decided not to publish it, and, finally, the poet's death – tells the story of poet's increasing loneliness, intellectual, creative and social isolation, his talent being unappreciated and misunderstood, his struggle for preserving his personal independence and the battle with shortage of money, self-doubt, age and melancholy. Even the happy events such as marriage and the incredible yield of both Boldino autumns seem to be downplayed by Khrzhanovsky: in the case of the former by including references to Pushkin's pre-marriage jitters631 and in the case of the latter by inserting the episode about Boldino fruitfulness between a sequence that refers to the censorship-imposed impossibility for the poet to use his talent to the fullest and a sequence addressing the transformations of the reader, the writing profession and understanding of literature. After an episode which introduces the poet's future wife Natalia and a dramatic sequence about cholera which was responsible for Pushkin's much delayed return to Moscow, Khrzhanovsky includes two episodes based on the first two texts written by the poet in Boldino – Demons and Elegy. Possibly triggered by Pushkin's anger about the unnecessarily complex process of his engagement and wedding arrangements, the texts are also perfectly suited to convey the poet's
630 Pushkin did, in fact, die in winter (February 10), so in the context of his life “autumn of life” would also be an Aesopian metaphor. 631 The pre-marriage blue is communicated through two fragments – one from the essay known by its opening lines “My fate is decided. I am getting married” << http://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/06prose/02misc/01misc/0877.htm >> and the other from another letter to Pletnyov << http://feb-web.ru/feb/pushkin/texts/push10/v10/d10-2402.htm>> In the first one the poet shares his concerns about being able to find happiness for two, considering that he had never cared for happiness for one; the second one reads as follows: “As Baratynsky says, only a fool is happy as a groom; any thinking person is anxious and worried about the future. Previously he was “I” and not he will have to be “we”! Hardly a joke!” 184 professional and social frustrations and disappointments four years into his “free” life.
The first of the poems, Demons, narrates the story of a journeyer, who transversing an unknown field, is caught up in a blizzard so thick and so violent that in the frenzy of snowy gusts of wind, he starts seeing and hearing demons: “Why are they so wild, so restless?/ Why so weird the sounds they make? /Could this be a witch's wedding?/ Could this be a goblin's wake?”632The intensity of the verse, achieved through bloodcurdling imagery, alliterations and shortness of lines is further amplified by Sergey Yurskiy's recitation and Shnitke's musical score. It is also fully supported visually: glowing outlines of demonic creatures, appearing, hovering, disappearing, reappearing, peering through the incessant blizzard of words and punctuation marks, possibly right next to the horses and the coachman, barely visible through the fretwork of the storm (fig. 30a). The sinisterness of this ill-boding hide-and-seek game reaches a culmination when the party is discovered (fig. 30b.) One sees demons wildly dancing in a circle – the same sequence as in the final minutes of he party scene in the previous film. This intensity is finally resolved, when the spirits take off in a frantic twister directed at the moon; disappearing into the dark spot in its center as if into the hole of a wedding ring (fig. 30c).
In Elegy, which opens with the following lines “The vanished joy of my crazy years/ Is as heavy as gloomy hang-over./ But, like wine, the sorrow of past days/ Is stronger with time”, Pushkin laments the hardships and grief that the future, he feels, has in store for him.633 Despite the anticipated tribulations, however, he expresses his strong desire to live, for it is worth it as long as he is able to create, and hope that at his “sorrowful decline/ Love will flash with a parting smile”. 634 The visual sequence progresses in the following way: from sketches of rainy Boldino landscapes, to live footage of a grove of birch trees, gilded by the fall, to an animation of the poet's self-portrait in a Caucasian burka astride a galloping horse, to a live shot of the sky, over which zooming shots of different pages of Pushkin's drafts are superimposed one after another. The pages chosen for this superimposition sequence are references to some of the works completed by Pushkin in Boldino: a page with a sketch of Don Juan from The Stone Guest – one of the dramas from the dramatic cycle Little Tragedies (fig. 31a); a page with what for a long while was interpreted as a portrait of Eugene Onegin; a page with the covetous knight – another character from the Little Tragedies (figs. 31b).
As if in response to the hopes expressed in the last lines of Elegy, Khrzhanovsky includes into the
632 Translation Irina Zheleznova. 633 “My path is sad. The waving sea of the future/ Promises me only toil and sorrow.” (translation by Dmirti Smirnov) 634 Translation by Dmitri Smirnov. 185 sequence the last two octaves – X and XI – from the poem Autumn, written during the second Boldino fall in 1833. In the lines of the X octave the poet describes inspiration as an overpowering force that puts his creative process in motion; he compares it to the wind that awakens a sleeping ship in still waters. The octave ends with the following lines: “The sails are filled, they belly in the wind— /The monster moves—a foaming track behind.” 635 Visually, Khrzhanovsky establishes a clear parallel between the sails of the metaphorical ship and pages of Pushkin's work. After a few repetitions of superimposition of single pages, Khrzhanovsky superimposes a shot of several pages arranged in a manner that evokes the sails of a frigate. A similar but smaller scale structure composed of glowing sails appears in the center of the superimposed image of Pushkin's manuscripts. Being more compact, it visually further condenses the metaphor already recognizable in the arrangement of the pages – still closer to Malevich's architectonics than a figurative representation of a ship, the glowing structure nonetheless is very effective at signifying its referent (figs. 32 a-c).
The XII strophe consists of a single line which reads as follows: “It sails, but whither is it our ship goes?”636Although in the line itself there is no indication of either melancholy or impossibility of a destination,637 the way Yurskiy reads it transforms the question into a negative statement; in other words, Yursky's rendition of the question implies that there is nowhere for Pushkin's ship to go. Krhzhanovksy's visual interpretation of this line, however, offers an answer. Toward the end of the sequence, the shot with the pages fades out and the frame with the glowing structure remains. As the the question of the XII strophe is read out, the structure is seen sailing across the dark cosmic space into what mostly likely signifies eternity. Thus, Khrzhnovsky's answer to the question appears to be this: despite the poet's frustration caused by multiplying critical assaults from all sides and on all levels; despite dwindling appreciation of his literary work and its ever more restrictive public life caused by unreasonable attention of censorship, the poet's oeuvre in the final decade of his life was in fact headed toward timelessness and immortality.
635 “And thoughts stir bravely in my head, and rhymes/ Run forth to meet them on light feet, and fingers/ Reach for the pen, and the good quill betimes/ Asks for the foolscap. Wait: the verses follow./ Thus a still ship sleeps on still seas. Hark: Chimes!/ And swiftly all hands leap to man the rigging, /The sails are filled, they belly in the wind— /The monster moves—a foaming track behind.” ( “И мысли в голове волнуются в отваге,/ И рифмы легкие навстречу им бегут,/ И пальцы просятся к перу, перо к бумаге,/ Минута - и стихи свободно потекут./Так дремлет недвижим корабль в недвижной влаге,/ Но чу! - матросы вдруг кидаются, ползут/ Вверх, вниз - и паруса надулись, ветра полны;/Громада двинулась и рассекает волны.” (translated Avrahm Yarmolinsky) 636 “Плывет. Куда ж нам плыть?” (Translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky) 637 In fact, in the early draft of the poem there were five options listed: Caucasus, Moldavia, Scotland, Normandy and Switzerland. Tatjana Tsyalovskaya's commentary to the poem, A.S. Pushkin. Polnoye Sobranie Sochinenii. <
From the cold space of eternity, Khrzhanovsky descends into the cluttered, but cosy space of Pushkin's room in Boldino (fig. 33a). It is inside this small room that the next scene, listed in the titles as “Poet and rabble” begins with the poet bragging to his turban-wearing double about the unbelievable literary yield of his first Boldino autumn. As can be easily deduced from the title, the scene addresses the question of the position of the writer in a society and the role of literature in general. Interestingly, the scene does not feature any lines from the poem after which is it named; using other texts in a creative and playful way it carries, however, the same idea – poetry does not have to fulfill any social purpose. Poetry and art should be free to develop “from inside”, according to their own inner logic. The poem concludes with “Not for the wordy agitation,/ Not for the gold or bloody ways,/We have been born for inspiration,/ For charming sounds and for prayers.” 638
How does Khrzhanovsky construct the scene? Remaining inside the same private setting of Pushkin's room in Boldino, he has Pushkin utter the words from the first chapter of his unfinished novella “Egyptian nights”639, in which the narrator elaborates about the disadvantages of the writing profession: “The most bitter, most unbearable of evils for a poet are his status and ranking, which mark him and never fall away from him. The public sees him as their own property; in their opinion, he is born for their use and pleasure.…”640 While the first sentence is read out with bitter resignation, in the the second one, one hears notes of indignation; and the last few words sound almost like a challenge, articulated by Pushkin standing and gesticulating expressively.
From the poet's room Khrzhanovsky cuts to a beau monde gathering at which Pushkin is surrounded by eager spectators. One hears impatient giggles and whispers and finally a few somewhat exaggeratedly grandiose piano chords announce the opening of a variety show, which stars Pushkin and his turban-wearing double. By dramatically framing the scene as a variety show, Khrzhanovsky beautifully expresses the attitude to art that became the target in both “Poet and crowd” and the fragment from the “Egyptian nights”. As a form variety show, or estrada concert as it would be better known in 1982, serves as a signifier of something rather shallow, predominantly entertaining and humorous, at times containing a moral lesson; it is also a genre that caters to tastes of wider audiences.
638 “Не для житейского волненья,/ Не для корысти, не для битв,/ Мы рождены для вдохновенья,/ Для звуков сладких и молитв.” (translated Evgeny Bonver) << http://www.poetryloverspage.com/yevgeny/pushkin/poet_and_crowd.html>> 639 The novella was written in the fall of 1835 in Mikhailovskoe. 640 “Зло самое горькое, самое нестерпимое для стихотворца есть его звание и прозвище, которым он заклеймен и которое никогда от него не отпадает. Публика смотрит на него как на свою собственность; по ее мнению, он рожден для ее пользы и удовольствия.” <
So, the first number on the program consists of few humorous and well-known aphorisms from Eugene Onegin.641 It is followed by a satirical fragment from “Experience of deflecting some non- literary accusations”, which points to the miraculous power of typography and namely the ability of the latter to impart the aura of unquestionable truth to even the silliest ideas merely by printing them on paper.642Right after comes a number based on Pushkin's poem “Collection of insects” in which the poet, playing with the idea of piercing sarcasm, describes some of his professional opponents as various types of dead beetles pinned up for display. As Pushkin reads out brief characterizations of the “beetles”, his turban-wearing double tries his skill at impersonation (fig. 33b.) Between these impersonations, he manages to insert a few more satirical comments. One of these, also found in “Experience”, presents the strategy of “eat this yourself, described in the essay as a strategy of using jokes and pokes of one's opponents against the latter as a means of retaliation, thus betraying both its author's identity and lack of inventiveness.”643 Another comment is an epigram about the book market, which addresses the sad state of Russian publishing business. The epigram is followed by a brief scene back in Pushkin's room in Boldino. The poet, slouching forward makes the following observation: “ Once upon a time, literature was a noble, aristocratic occupation. Today it is a lousy market. So be it.”644 When the camera returns to the stage, the satirical circus act gives way to a re-enactment of “The imaginary conversation with the tsar” featured in the first film. After a few replicas, however, this number is suddenly interrupted by a squad of gendarmes marching in front of the stage. When they pass, the satirical mood of the performance changes. Unexpectedly the final number of the show is an overly sentimental salon romance set to a strophe from the poem To my friends, the features in the second film: “No flatterer am I,/ When I freely praise the tsar;/ I courageously express my feelings/ I speak the language of my heart”645, sings Pushkin and suddenly stops, as if forgetting the words. While he is thinking, his double informs the audience in a conspiratorial tone that the streets have grown dangerous, because the police are busying themselves not with thieves, but with
641 “Чем меньше женщину мы любим, Тем легче нравимся мы ей,[...].” (“The less we show our love to woman,/ The easier she is to win.” (from Onegin. 4, VII, translated A.S. Kline.). “Мы все учились понемногу,/ Чему-нибудь и как-нибудь, [...]” (“We’ve all acquired some education/ A bit of this a bit of that” (Onegin, 1, V, translated A.S. Kline), “И вот уже трещат морозы/ И серебрятся средь полей... / (Читатель ждёт уж рифмы розы;/ На, вот возьми её скорей!)” (“Frost already, frozen noses,/ Meadows silver, sunlight meagre…/ (My Reader thinks the rhyme is roses:/ Take it then, since you’re so eager!) (Onegin, 4, XLII, translated A.S. Kline) 642 “Opyt otrazhenia nekotorykh neliterturnykh obvinenii." << http://feb- web.ru/feben/pushkin/texts/push17/vol11/y11-166-.htm>> 643 “Сам съешь” (translation mine) (http://feb-web.ru/feben/pushkin/texts/push17/vol11/y11-166-.htm ) 644 “Было время, литература была благородное, аристократическое поприше. Ныне это вшивый рынок. Быть так.” (from a letter to M. Pogodin, 1834, translation mine) 645 “Нет, я не льстец, когда царю/ Хвалу свободную слагаю:/ Я смело чувства выражаю,/ Языком сердца говорю.” (translation in David Bethea (ed.) The Pushkin Handbook, p. 292.) 188 politics.646 Finally, Pushkin remembers the next strophe of the ode: “I am simply fond of him/ He is ruling us vigorously, honestly/ He suddenly enlivened Russia/ With fear, hopes and toil.” As he finishes these lines of praise, which sound strangely ironic, the gendarmes march back. Once they have passed, in a movement of a drawn curtain, the snow storm of words begins and Pushkin, left alone with his double, speaks the last strophe of the poem: “Woe to the land, where only the slave and the flatterer/ Are favored by the throne,/ While the bard, chosen by heaven/ Keeps silent and lowers his gaze.”647 Krhzanovsky zooms out and cuts to a recognizable frantic dance sequence (fig. 33c) 648 and finally, to Pushkin's self-portrait from the sketch, on which his portrait appears between portraits of his Decembrist friends.
In the “poet and rabble” scene, one can easily identify the major sources of Pushkin's discontentment in the 1830s. The frame of a variety show as well as the aphorisms from Onegin refer to Pushkin's disappointment with new, democratized audiences; the satirical circus of “Collection”, in combination with Pushkin's comment about literature made in private, target his frustration with the writing profession, and finally, the sudden appearance of marching gendarmes that changes the flow of the show expresses the poet's frustration with censorship and ideological control.
The pause that Khrzhanovsky inserts into the song before the stanza in which the poet elaborates on why he loves the new tsar is loaded with meaning with respect the poet's changed relationship with power. Also, it is remarkable how Khrzhanovsky's separation of the final strophe of the poem from those included into Pushkin's stage “number” changes its meaning completely. It should be remembered that when To my friends was written (1828), Pushkin indeed felt very positively about the new ruler. The last strophe could have thus been directed at his friends, to whom Pushkin's admiration of the tsar who so severely punished the Decembrists was quite disconcerting. As a message to his friends, the last strophe could be interpreted as a call for them to get aboard and become a part of the unfolding change. In the poet and rabble scene, the final strophe is clearly a challenge thrown at the tsar; it becomes a warning about the perils of not allowing a poet to participate in the history of his country.
646 “Улицы не безопасны. [...] Полиция, видно, занимается политикой, а не ворами и мостовою.” (from Diary, 1833) 647 “Беда стране, где раб и льстец/ Одни приближены к престолу,/ А небом избранный певец/ Молчит, потупя очи долу.” (translated in Bethea, David. (ed) The Pushkin Handbook. University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, p. 292.) 648 The same sequence appears in the Faust scene, then repeated in the sequence concluding the re-introduction to the high society sequence at the end of the second film and, finally, is once again used in the Demons sequence. 189
In a pattern common for the trilogy, the intensity of the last sequence of the “poet and rabble” scene is followed by live footage of open landscapes. To the sound of a folk song, Yursky reads lines from two letters written by Pushkin to Natalia: One during his research trip to collect information about Emilian Pugachev in 1833 and the other during the least fruitful of Pushkin's autumns in Mikhailovskoe in 1835. The overall content of this combined letter is worry about the financial future of Pushkin's growing family: “ What will we be living of? [...] The tsar allows me neither to become a landowner, nor a journalist. Writing books for money, God knows, I can not.[...] What will come out of it, God knows.649” The episode serves as a transition to the next chapter of the film, which introduces the new chapter in the poet's life – Pushkin's life as kammerjunker.
The scene opens with incredible laconism and expressiveness – in only three chords: when the first chord is played, a jacket appears next to Pushkin's self-portrait, positioned in the right half of the frame; in the second chord striped pants find their place under the jacket (fig. 34a); the sound of the third chord conjures a close up shot of Nicholas I, doing his blood-curdling commanding stare from over the shoulder (fig. 34b). Afterward, the camera returns to the shot with Pushkin's self-portrait framed on the left by his new uniform, at this point also including a pair of tall boots (fig. 34c). The event is then explained by Pushkin's diary entry, illustrating the court's wish to see Natalia dance in the Anichkov palace through a zooming out shot of a window pane struggling to contain the radiance and gaiety of a crowded ball room (fig. 34d). When the camera zooms in again the blurry image of the window crossfades into a page with some calculations on it; a series of crossfading shots of calculations follows: notes, calculations, bills, promissory notes slide over each other (fig. 34e) accompanied first by a fragment from Pushkin's letter to Natalia, in which the poet regrets the vanity that drives women to enslave themselves financially, then a request for money in order to fix a coach, uttered presumably by Pushkin's servant and finally a fragment from another letter to Natalia, which reads: “I am wasting time and mental powers, throwing hard-earned money out of the window and do not see anything positive in the future. What will come out of this? God only knows!”650
Krhzahovnsy follows up with the poem Verses Composed During a Night of Insomnia, which, although written in 1830 in Boldino, fits the Kamerjunker chapter wonderfully, because of the themes it explores – anxiety, confusion, uncertainty about the future and agony caused by 649 Original: “[...] чем нам жить будет? [...]Царь не позволяет мне ни записаться в помещики, ни в журналисты. Писать книги для денег, видит бог, не могу.[...] Что из этого будет, бог знает.” (http://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/10letters/1831_37/01text/1835/1856_668.htm, (translation mine ) 650 “Я теряю время и силы душевные, бросаю за окошко деньги трудовые, и не вижу ничего в будущем. Что из этого будет? Господь ведает!” (translation mine) 190 meaninglessness of chores required for everyday subsistence.651 The motif of passing time is beautifully integrated into the sequence through the sound of a ticking metronome and a visual reference to pendulum which transforms scales and cats' tails into time-measuring devices. Obeying the rhythm set by the metronome, the camera zooms in and out of different pages of Pushkin's drafts, capturing faces of friends, playful sketches from Ushakova's album, dueling figures trying their swords. Day and night cycles of time become expressed through alternation of positive – black on white – and negative – white on black – shots (fig. 35a-d). Finally, the waves of thus articulated time bring up an image of a sketched pistol (fig. 35e), which is followed by another image of a funeral procession inching its way through a heavy snow-fall of words right underneath the busy ball room window featured earlier (fig. 35f). Khrzhanovsky chooses to pair the visual sequence of the procession with a text from another letter to Natalia: “If I die tomorrow, what will happen to you? Little consolation that I will be buried in a striped uniform and, moreover, on a crowded St.Petersburg cemetery and not in a church in an open space, as befits a decent person.”652 These lines provide a good summary for the poet's appreciation of his title, and therefore serve well as a closure for the scene; in the same letter, moreover right before the selected text, Pushkin informs his wife about his strong desire to retire.
“Oh how do I wish to escape to fresh air!” is the line with which Khrzhanovsky opens the next scene dedicated to the poet's dealing with the change and nostalgia. The sentence has a history, which goes beyond Pushkin's inability to leave the capital due to the obligations and responsibilities that came with his kammerjunker title. As has been mentioned, in 1834 Pushkin found out that the secret police opened his private letter to Natalia. Although initially furious with everyone including Nicholas I, Pushkin eventually excused the latter, explaining it as follows in a letter to Natalia: “living in a public toilet, one necessarily gets used to the stench, and this stench is no longer disgusting to you, even if you are a gentleman.” Following this rationale is “Oh how do I wish to escape to fresh air!” Thus, the sentence refers to more than just lack of freedom imposed on the poet by making him a kammerjunker, but also to the increased political control in general and of the poet
651 "Мне не спится, нет огня;/ Всюду мрак и сон докучный./ Ход часов лишь однозвучный/ Раздается близ меня./ Парки бабье лепетанье,/ Спящей ночи трепетанье,/ Жизни мышья беготня.../ Что тревожишь ты меня?/ Что ты значишь, скучный шепот?/ Укоризна или ропот/ Мной утраченного дня?/ От меня чего ты хочешь?/ Ты зовешь или пророчишь?/ Я понять тебя хочу,/ Смысла я в тебе ищу.” (“I can't sleep, the light is out;/ Chasing senseless dreams in gloom./ Clocks at once, inside my room,/ Somewhere next to me, resound./ Parcae's soft and mild chatter,/ Sleeping twilight's noisy flutter,/ Life's commotion -- so insane./ Why am I to feel this pain?/ What's your meaning, boring mumble?`/ Disapproving, do you grumble/ Of the day I spent in vain?/ What has made you so compelling?/ Are you calling or foretelling?/ I just want to understand, /Thus I'm seeking your intent...” ( translated Mikhail Kneller, 2000)) 652 “Умри я сегодня, что с Вами будет? мало утешения в том, что меня похоронят в полосатом кафтане, и еще на тесном Петербургском кладбище, а не в церкви на просторе, как прилично порядочному человеку.” (translation mine) << http://feb-web.ru/feb/pushkin/texts/selected/ppl/ppl-054-.htm>> 191 in particular. It also clearly contains the poet's perspective on the situation – to him it was stench.
The following chapter of the film addresses change – change both as a natural process of life and change as an imposed transformation. The chapter is built around three texts: two letters to Natalia and a fragment from Onegin. In the first of the letters, the poet describes change he found in Trigorskoye, which he visited in summer 1833 on his way to Kazani and Orenburg provinces, where he was allowed to travel to collect material for his work on Emilian Pugachev; in the second letter, written in 1835, he mentions transformations that had transpired in Mikhailovskoe since he last visited it. The Onegin bit speaks of the narrator's memories of white summer nights, when young, surrounded by friends, he spent hours recalling past romances, drunken on memories of happy days of their youth.653
Pushkin's longing for his past, besides being a part of the common disillusionment with adulthood is also a reaction to his current political, social, and cultural situation; not only is the poet yearning for his youth, but also for the times of Alexander, who, although was not very kind to him, was not asinvasive and unscrupulous in matters of state security as his younger brother. Pushkin's nostalgia is not just a response to change as a natural process of history and life, but also a critique of Nicholas's Russia.
Change is also the topic of the following episode of the chapter, for which Krhzhanovsky uses lines from Pushkin's letter to Osipova, in which the poet expresses disbelief at how much has changed since the Decembrist revolt. “It seems to me that everything was just a dream. So much has happened since then! So much has changed”.654 This episode almost organically flows into the last strophe of the poem written to commemorate the anniversary of the lyceum in 1827: “God help you all, my dear, dear friends,/ In storms or everyday griefs blowing,/In foreign lands, in desert ocean,/ Or in Earth's dark, abysmal ends!”655
The next chapter of Khrzhanovksy's narrative addresses Pushkin self-distancing from the regime
653 “How often, on a summer’s night,/The sky aglow above the Neva,/With that pale diaphanous light,/Where no face showed of Diana/ In the water’s smooth still glass,/ Recalling romance of time past,/ Recalling many a lost love there/ Sentimental, free from care,/ In silent joy, of night’s bounteous/ Benediction we drank deep!/ Like prisoners released in sleep,/ To roam the forests green, so us,/ Carried in dream to that land where/ All life, before us, seemed so fair.” (Onegin, chapter 1, 47:<< http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Onegin1.htm >>) 654 “Как подумаю, что уже десять лет прошло с времен этого несчастного возмущения. Мне кажется что все это было во сне. Столько событий, столько перемен!” (Translation mine) 655 “Бог помочь вам, друзья мои,/ И в бурях, и в житейском горе,/ В краю чужом, в пустынном море,/ И в мрачных пропастях земли!” 192 and the literary scene as well as this act's consequences. It begins with an episode about the opening of Alexander's column, which in the film is conflated with the public celebrations of Alexander II's birthday656, both of which Pushkin escaped. Following the logic of crime and punishment, the following episode is about the unreasonable corrections to the Bronze Horseman that Pushkin received from his censor. Pushkin's indignation about these “recommendations” transforms into despondency through a short sequence based on the initial introduction to The Little House in Kolomna and reaches its lowest in following episode about the mad house.
Possibly the most interesting of the documents used in the chapter is one of the supporting texts for the Alexander's Column episode – the letter to Pyotr Chaadaev. A contribution to the philosophical discussion that the two men had been engaged in through correspondence since the late 1820s, Pushkin's reply is also a response to Chaadaev's first philosophical letter, a published translation of which the latter had sent to the poet. In this first letter Chaadaev, who was influenced by Hegel's and Schiller's philosophical visions, puts forward a proposition that Russia, isolated from the rest of the world by “incomprehensible fate,657had not come to play any significant role in process of world history658. “On our own in the world, we have not given the world anything, have not taken from it anything, we have not contributed a single thought to the pull of human ideas, we have not assisted the progress of human reason in any way, and whatever was left over for us from this movement, we have distorted”659 [...] “In our blood there is something that resents any real progress. In a word, we have lived and are living for the purpose of offering our remote descendants some great lesson, which they will be able to understand; so far, however, despite what is being told, intellectually we are nothing, but a blank space. I can not stop being surprised by emptiness and incredible detachment of our social existence. Possibly, at least partially, our incomprehensible fate is to be blamed for this.”660
656 As textual support for the episode, Khrzhanovsky uses documents related to both events: a diary entry, in which Pushkin mentions that 100,000 guardsmen are expected to be present at the ceremony; the letter to Natalia that was opened at post, i.e., the one in which he explains to her his plan for being excused from having to attend Alexander II's brithday; a letter to Chaadaev, another diary entry in which Pushkin records that he had left St. Petersburg five days before the opening, so that he does not have to be present at the ceremony with other kammerjunkers. 657 In Chaadaev's view, the strongest factor that had separated Russia from Western Europe was Russia's having accepted Byzantine and not Roman branch of Christianity. In his view, it was Catholicism that provided intellectual and moral grounds for development of Western philosophical and political thought. ( Chaadaev, Pjotr. “Philosophecheskie pis'ma.” Polnoje sobranie sochienij i izbrannyje pis'ma. Vol 1, Nauka, 1991. << http://www.vehi.net/chaadaev/filpisma.html#_edn1>> 658 By world history he, of course, means history of the West. 659 “Одинокие в мире, мы миру ничего не дали, ничего у мира не взяли, мы не внесли в массу человеческих идей ни одной мысли, мы ни в чем не содействовали движению вперед человеческого разума, а все, что досталось нам от этого движения, мы исказили.” << http://www.vehi.net/chaadaev/filpisma.html#_edn1 >> (translation mine) 660 “В крови у нас есть нечто, отвергающее всякий настоящий прогресс. Одним словом, мы жили и сейчас еще живем для того, чтобы преподать какой-то великий урок отдаленным потомкам, которые поймут его; пока, что бы там ни говорили, мы составляем пробел в интеллектуальном порядке. Я не перестаю удивляться этой пустоте, этой удивительной оторванности нашего социального бытия. В этом, наверное, отчасти повинна наша непостижимая судьба.” << http://www.vehi.net/chaadaev/filpisma.html#_edn1 >> Understandably, when in 1836 the first letter was published in Telescope it drew a lot of heat from the government: Telescope was closed and Chaadaev 193
Pushkin responded with disagreement, but interestingly, his objections were not directed agains Chaadaev's critique of Russia's present, but against the thesis of Russia's insignificance in the process of world history as well as Russia's isolation from Europe. Khrzhanovsky re-arranges the order of paragraphs in Pushkin's reply in such a way that Pushkin's letter begins with critique of social and political life of Nicholas I's Russia, but concludes with an affirmation that Pushkin would never have wanted to change his motherland or “have a different history from the history of our ancestors, the way God has given it to us.”661 So, unlike Chaadaev, with whom Pushkin agreed with respect to miserable state of Russia's social and political present, Pushkin does not attribute this to Russia's historical fate: what Pushkin seems to be implying is that the “sad state” that he and Chaadaev are witnessing “[...] this indifference to any kind of duty, justice and truth, this cynical contempt for human thought and dignity”662 is a consequence of more recent political decisions.
Visually the text of the letter is accompanied by live footage of complex but orderly lattice resembling the supporting structures that featured in the previous images showing the process of putting the Alexander's column together (fig. 36a). Paired with Pushkin's words regarding Russia's history, these supporting fixtures seems to embody the complexity of history itself. When a monument is erected, the scaffolding is removed and nobody remembers what made the monument stand, just as when the glorious history of the country is told, many of those who made it glorious are forgotten. As has been mentioned earlier, the Column was meant to commemorate Alexander's victory over Napoleon, but Alexander was not a military man and rather weak in strategic planning. It was not him, but his generals, officers and soldiers who won the war. And yet, at the top of the Column, there is an angel with the Bible and a cross, which among other interpretations can certainly be read as a reference to Alexander I, who because of his fine features was often compared to an angel (fig 36b).
Besides serving as a narrative 'prop' for indicating Pushkin distancing himself from Nicholas I and his regime, the column also provides a reference to a significant work in Pushkin's oeuvre – a poem
was proclaimed insane – a practice frequently applied to the individuals who were skeptical of Brezhnev's “developed” socialism. 661 “[...] но клянусь что ни за что на свете я не хотел бы переменить отечество или иметь другую историю, кроме истории наших предков, такой, какой нам Бог ее дал.” (Lovetskaya T. (ed.), Perepiska A.S. Pushkina. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, Vol. 2, 1982. <
The episode about the corrections to the Bronze Horseman begins with Pushkin looking through the comments left on his manuscript by the censor. Having examined them, he exclaims: “Censorship regards me with prejudice and finds everywhere hidden meanings, allusions and difficulties – and the accusations concerning allusions and hidden meaning have no bound and no justifications, if the word tree is understood as meaning constitution, and the word arrow, autocracy.”666 His exasperated complaint is interrupted at “no bounds and no justifications” by an army of gendarmes, who to the jolly sound of a military march stomp right over the poet, his turban-wearing double, and the pages of the manuscript, their intervention expressing the attitude of the tsar and his
663 “Я памятник себе воздвиг нерукотворный”, (translated Vladimir Nabokov) 664 “И долго буду тем любезен я народу,/ Что чувства добрые я лирой пробуждал,/ Что в мой жестокой век восславил я Свободу/ И милость к падшим призывал.” (translated Vladimir Nabokov) 665 “Веленью божию, о муза, будь послушна,/ Обиды не страшась, не требуя венца,/ Хвалу и клевету приемли равнодушно,/ И не оспаривай глупца.” (translated V.Nabokov) 666 From a letter to Benckendorfff, February 1832, “[...]цензура будет смотреть на меня с предубеждением и находить везде тайные применения и затруднительности — а обвинения в применениях и подразумениях не имеют ни границ, ни оправданий, если под словом дерево будут разуметь конституцию, а под словом стрела самодержавие.” So, in the original text, Pushkin uses future tense, i.e., “Censorship regards” but “censorship will regard”. I am using a translation from Tatjana Wolff's Pushkin on Literature, p. 325. However, in Wolff's book “ дерево” -- “tree” appears as “free”. I believe this to be a typo and have thus replaced it with “tree”. 195 office toward Pushkin's concerns.
After they have passed, and the poet assisted by his double has picked all of the scattered manuscript pages, the poet leans against a boom barrier and recites the following lines from a draft to The little house of Kolomna: “While I am being mercilessly scolded/ for the purpose of my poems – or their purposelessness, and as important persons keep repeating,/ that the craft of a poet is no idleness, /that lasting glory I am unlikely to achieve, /that I can make it to the yellow house just in time for the housewarming party/ and that it is about time for me to compose with decency and intelligence...” 667 Khrzhanovsky decides to complete this lengthy clause with “God grant that I not loose my mind”, the first line of the poem, around which the mad house episode is developed.
The poem “God Grant that I don't Loose My Mind” is divided into two parts: the first part describes the Romantic notion of madness, i.e., madness as a state of mind closest to creative inspiration; the second part, however, presents madness in its institutional sense – as social isolation. Opening the poem with the plea, the author continues to explain that his fear of loosing his mind has little to do with the value that reason has for him; it is a fear of being locked up like a little animal that visitors tease. Visually, the episode follows the same pattern as the text: the first part of the poem is rendered through a sequence of live footage shots – of a forest, a field, the sky; the second part is an animated depiction of various possible day to day activities among the institutionalized individuals, who consist of characters from Pushkin's sketches, of course.668
The last biographical episode of the film is based on Pushkin's short novel in verse Bronze Horseman, also known as Petersburg Story. The Bronze Horseman is a reference to the equestrian monument to Peter the Great, commissioned by Catherine the Great from Etienne Falconet. The poem commemorates the horrible deluge that afflicted St.Petersburg in November 1824. It is not a historical account of the disaster, however, but an allegory of the irresolvable contradiction between the highest interests of the state on the one side and hopes and aspirations of a single individual on
667 The Little House in Kolomna, written in 1830 and published in 1833, is a narrative poem, but Unlike Count Nulin,or Gypsies, The little house in Kolomna contains very little narrative; a third of it is taken by metaliterary commentary on the process of writing in general and of writing The little house in Kolomna in particular. The text, written in formate of octaves, was written in response to Pushkin's critics, who attacked his work for lack of serious ideas. The introduction Khrzhanovsky includes here did not make it to the final version of the text. “Пока меня без милости бранят/ За цель моих стихов — иль за бесцелье,/ И важные особы мне твердят,/ Что ремесло поэта — не безделье,/ Что славы прочной я добьюся вряд,/ Что в желтый дом могу на новоселье/ Как раз попасть – и что давно/ Пора мне сочинять прилично и умно...” (translation mine) 668 Khrzhanovsky intelligently exploits the trope of madness in which one imagines him or herself as a famous historical character – one sees a Napoleon, recognizable by his triangular hat, Peter the Great astride the bronze horse of the monument commissioned by Catherine the Great, there are portraits of Marat and Goethe. 196 the other669; it is a reflection on the theme of autocracy670, inevitability of the historical process and courage of facing up to the more powerful oppressor.
In the introduction to the poem, Pushkin sings praise to St. Petersburg and its creator Peter the Great, who had tamed the waters and created a wonder of architecture where there was no land. In the first part of the story, Pushkin introduces his protagonist Eugene, a poor, quiet man, an office clerk who dreams about building a family with a woman he loves. His simple dream is not meant to come true, however, because on the very next day the Neva, decides to revolt against Peter I and his city, “plundering” the city, terrifying and killing its citizens. When the waters retreat, Eugene, having survived the cataclysm, rushes toward the house of his loved Parasha to discover no traces of either. This realization is to much for him to take and his mind clouds. Eugene never returns to his home, wandering the streets and talking to himself. A year passes and one afternoon Eugene finds himself in the same place where he was waiting to the great flood to calm down: “By a big house where were placed,/ With their paw up, as if quite living,/ Two marble lions, overseeing,/ And in the height, strait o’er him posed,/ Over the rock, fenced with cast iron, /With arm stretched into the skies, sullen, /The idol sat on his bronze horse.”671
Eugene's mind clears, he walks around the foot of the monument and then filled with anger, clenching fists whispers: “Well, builder-maker of the marvels, You only wait!...”672 Suddenly, Eugene spots anger rising in the face of the Horseman and in fear takes off. However, no matter how fast he runs, everywhere he is he hears the metal sound of the bronze hooves. This horrible incident causes Eugene to completely loose his mind, but from that point on, whenever Eugene passes the large idol, he takes his worn out cap off. The poem ends some years later, when unsuspecting fishermen find Eugene's body on one of the islands and finally,”for a sake of the Divine”, bury it.
Krhzhanovsky's seems to further allegorizes the poem: it seems that the flood waters, defined through strings of words from the poet's manuscripts, represent the uncontrollable surge, torrent of Pushkin's creativity, revolting against the autocracy's efforts to be neatly contained. The association
669 Bondi Sergei, commentaries to the Bronze Horseman in A.S Pushkin. Polnoje Sobranije Sochinenij. << http://rvb.ru/pushkin/02comm/0795.htm>> 670 Briusov, Valerii. “Mednyi vsadnik.” In Briusov, V., Kritika i publitsistika. << http://as-pushkin.ru/index.php? cnt=6&sub=7>> 671 “Он очутился под столбами/ Большого дома. На крыльце/ С подъятой лапой, как живые,/ Стояли львы сторожевые,/ И прямо в темной вышине/ Над огражденною скалою/ Кумир с простертою рукою/ Сидел на бронзовом коне.” (Translated by Yevgeny Bonver) <
The Bronze Horseman episode is probably the most daring interpretation of the poem in the context of the narrative of Pushkin's life. First, Khrzhanovsky separates the visual narrative from the textual: the strophes chosen for the sequence all come from the introduction and thus lack any mentions of the flood. The visual sequence, however, is all about the flood, and destruction. I would suggest that by separating the two components of the image, Khrzhanovsky is signaling that they should be followed separately. Since not much, in terms of action, happens in the chosen fragments of text, one is tempted to watch the dramatic action on the screen. So, in the visual narrative, in the midst of the storm, Pushkin astride his horse, charges the Bronze Horseman and is killed by the latter. Pushkin died from a gun wound received at the duel with George d'Anthès, but there is no mention of d'Anthès in Khrzhanovsky's narrative: instead, the pistol appears on its own, held by none. The visual logic of the scene, however, is built in such a way that it becomes clear that the gun is fired by the Bronze horseman. The scene of confrontation between the poet and the monument is built as follows: a shot of Pushkin riding a horse on the right half of the frame facing left (fig. 37a), followed by a shot of the Bronze Horseman occupying the left half facing right (fig. 37b); reverse cut to Pushkin riding toward the left; and then the gun firing rightward (fig. 37c). Thus, according to Khrzhanovsky's story on the screen, Pushkin falls the victim of the confrontation with the Bronze Horseman – the symbol of autocracy. This is the same idea as the one suggested by Lotman, i.e., that although Nicholas I did not participate in the intrigue against Pushkin, he was responsible for having created the environment in which the poet could not live.
The last five minutes of the film address the poet's death and legacy. As the Neva calms down and the waters recede, Khrzhanovsky cuts to a shot of a landscape sketch; the camera zooms in on a dot in the foreground and suddenly it becomes Pushkin's profile, facing upward (fig. 37d). For the musical score Khrzhanovsky chooses one of the folk songs recorded by Pushkin during the Mikhailovskoe exile. The song is a dialogue between a man, who is enquiring a young woman about his run-away stallion, and the woman replying that she had seen it running to the river, running and cursing the owner all the way. The words of the song seems an allegory of a sudden loss of something or someone important, but previously unvalued. The cursing of the horse, is clearly a reference to unfair treatment and the river as a destination could be a reference to suicide by drowning. Thus, the song could, in a very elegant way, contain the moral of the film, once again 198 blaming Pushkin's death on the cruelty of his social and political context.
From an image of a running horse, Khrzhnaovksy cuts to a photographic recording of Pushkin's death mask, facing upward, just like previously the profile on the 'snow'. As the song nears the end – the line about cursing – the camera pans across a multilayered image composed of different negatives of Pushkin's self-portraits, glowing against the black background – a beautiful visual trope using a negative image to signify the negative space of death (fig. 38a). At the end of the shot, the camera reaches the self-portrait in turban – the poet's faithful “companion” through the trilogy, who looking in the direction of off-screen location of the dead mask takes his turban off to attest the poet's death (fig.38b).
After a strophe from a funeral song, Khrzhanovsky includes a fragment from Zhukovsky's letter to Pushkin's father, describing the poet's face after death; he was surprised to discover on the poet's face something suggesting of a vision so clearly, that Zhukovsky wished he could ask the poet: “What do see, friend?” 673 Khrzhanovsky's answer to this question is Tsarskoe Selo, live footage of which follows, accompanied by lines from the 1829 poem Memories in Tsarskoe Selo.674
Connected to Tsarskoe Selo is also the final text of the trilogy – a fragment form a poem written in 1831 on the occasion of the day of the lyceum. Unlike other poems commemorating and celebrating the institution, this one is filled with melancholy and dolefulness. The poem is both a celebration of the lyceum's anniversary and a lament for all those who have perished. Pushkin counts six empty places, which should have been filled with old friends. He remembers Delvig and suggests that he, Pushkin, is probably the next one to go. The fragment that Khrzhanovsky chooses as an epilogue to the whole trilogy is the last strophe of the poem: “Draw closer, you, O, dear friends/ Let us make our circle tighter,/ I've finished my song for the dead, / Let us now congratulate the living with hope/ to at some later point once again/ find themselves in the midst of a lyceum feast/ To hug everyone remaining yet again/ And no longer fear new victims.”675
The strophes are illustrated by shots of Pushkin's manuscripts, the particular attention given to the sheet with portraits of Pushkin's friends-Decembrists among whom the poet sketched his own three-
673 Zhukovkiy Vasily. Pisimo S. L. Pushkinu. In Zhukovsky V.Sobranije sochinenij: v 4 tomakh. <
Pushkiniana and Soviet Intelligentsia of the Sixties
How, then, does Khtzhanovsky's narrative of Pushkin's life relate to the story of Soviet intelligentsia? What aspects of Pushkin's life does Khrzhanovsky prefer to focus on? How does the image of Pushkin created through the film relate to intelligentsia's self-image? Although Khrzhanovsky does include few sequences devoted to Pushkin's romantic interests, he seems to be more interested in episodes of the poet's life that relate to Pushkin's ideas about literature and the responsibility of a writer, his relationship with bureaucracy and power, his reflections on history and contemporary society, and his integrity as a person and a writer. Considering that, as has been shown earlier, Pushkin's historical context is comparable to that of Khrzhanovsky, such selection is interesting, especially because according to the trilogy, Pushkin's attitude toward literature is that it should not be serving anyone's interests; his creative credo is that the responsibility of the writer is to remain faithful to his muse only and his view of bureaucracy is marked by suspicion and resentment. It is also curious that Pushkin's initially trusting approach to Nicholas I in the course of the film transforms into a bitter disappointment. However, the most relevant of Pushkin's opinions – relevant to Khrzhanovsky's historical context have to do with the state of (official) social and political thought and censorship: about the former he observes that it is a sad sight, and about the latter, that it is ridiculous and counterproductive.
The claim that literature should be independent and that the poet should listen to his Muse alone resonates rather critically with the official position of the Brezhnev administration, which elevated party-mindedness above all other qualities in arts; the suspicion of bureaucracy and resentment toward it sound very contemporary for Brezhnev era, the latter characterized by the 'stability of cadres, hegemony of nomenklatura and mistrust of intelligentsia. Finally, the steady deterioration in Pushkin's relationship with Nicholas I strongly resembles the failed romance between the creative Soviet intelligentsia and the Brezhnev administration. Parallels can also be drawn between the cynical, superficial and consumerist society of Nicholas I's Russia that Pushkin is so disappointed about and the situation of Brezhnev's late socialism. 200
It is also interesting that among Pushkin's major sources of frustration is his frustration with censorship. The poet's indignation with accusations about allusions and hidden meanings in the episode where he receives censorship's corrections of the manuscript of the Bronze Horseman must have been all too familiar to Krhzhanovsky and his fellow artists. As familiar as the censorship's active involvement in the creative process, illustrated in the episode in which Nicholas I interrupts the frantic revelry in order to deliver his opinion about Boris Godunov.676
One other fact of Pushkin's life that Khrzhanovsky steadily returns to is the poet's connection to the Decembrists. The significance of the Decembrists to the myth of the Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties has already been touched upon; in the context of Pushkin's life, however, after the repressions that followed the events of December 1825, the Decembrists seem to provide a reference not only to the new liberal intelligentsia, but to its dissenting members as well. Pushkin does not deny his friendship with the Decembrists, even when admitting to it could put him in great danger; in every film, Khrzhanovsky includes multiple references to Decembrists – be it a whole sequence, or a portrait of of Kuechelbecker, or Pushkin's Decembrist self-portrait. Even in the album sequence in the second film, in a nostalgic lyrical episode, in which the poet reminisces about his “goddesses” of the former days, Khrzhanovsky includes a reminder of hung Decembrists. Into and otherwise frivolous sequence, Khrzhanovsky inserts the following poem from the Ushakova's album: “Even when I'm far away/ I will always be around/ Luscious lips and deep eyes true/ In my memory will be keeping./ Suffering from boredom insilence/ I do not wish to find consolation./ Will you sigh for me/ If one day they hang me?677
To illustrate this passage, Khrzhanovsky uses various sketches of women's feet (fig. 39a-c). Pushkin allegedly had a weak spot for women's feet and there is no shortage of sketches of these in Pushkin's drafts –female feet dancing, walking, resting. However, after the image of hanging bodies (fig. 17), their feet dangling, all feet appear as a reference to the execution.
The narrative of the trilogy as a whole shares a lot with the narrative of the betrayal of Soviet creative intelligentsia by the Soviet state. The relatively liberal period of Alexander's reign, (embodied in the image of the lyceum), that had nurtured the poet as well as the euphoria of political and social life in the secret societies, which had prepared way to December 14, could be
676 II, 26'04''-26'21'' (Nicholas I recommends that the drama should be re-worked into a historical novel so as to resemble works of Walter Scott) 677 “В отдалении от вас/ С вами буду неразлучен,/Томных уст и томных глаз/ Буду памятью размучен;/ Изнывая в тишине,/ Не хочу я быть утешен, /Вы ж вздохнете ль обо мне/ Если буду я повешен?” ) (Translation mine) 201 paralleled to the cultural and political climate of the early ears of the thaw. The sobering blow of the consequences of the Decembrist uprising although, of course, incommensurable in the degrees of severity of meted punishments, could be compared to the aftermath of the Manege affair. In turn, Nicholas I's diplomatic move to release Pushkin in order to improve his standing with the educated nobility could be likened to Brezhnev's initial gestures aimed at appeasing the intelligentsia.678 The slow, but certain deterioration of the poet's trust and respect toward the regime, provoked by dishonoring his intellectual and literary talent with the kammerjunker position, by the Third Section's interference into private matters, by increasingly unreasonable censorship, by impossibility of dialogue, corresponds well to a similar sentiment of the Soviet liberal creative intelligentsia under close watch in the late 1970s early 1980s. Finally, the poet's death can be said to correspond to many members of Soviet liberal intelligentsia joining their dissident friends in the underworld of Soviet unofficial culture.
Thus, considering Khrhzanovksy's choice of biographical episodes in terms of issues that they allow him to address, as well as the perspective on those issues that the mask of Pushkin enables him to express, an Aesopian reader would consider them to be Aesopian markers at the level of the plot. Moreover, the fact that both in sjuzhet and in fabula the narrative of the trilogy strongly resembles the story of the Soviet intelligentsia's relationship with the Soviet state would encourage the Aesopian reader to treat these similarities as Aesopian markers as well.
As for the image of Pushkin, Khrzhanovsky's representation of the poet in the trilogy certainly fits Likhachev's characterization of a true intelligent.Throughout the trilogy Pushkin's integrity as well as his moral and intellectual independence are brought to attention: the poet's failed attempt of excusing himself in The imaginary conversation with the tsar, his courage to admit both to his friendship with the Decembrists and express the complaint about unreasonable strictness of censorship during the conversation with Nicholas, his unwillingness to compromise whether with the ideological demands of the state or with the tastes of the new readers, despite the emotional and financial repercussions of such firmness – as can be seen, for example in the Boris Godunov scene at the second film, the “poet and rabble” scene in the third film, episodes in the kammerjunker sequence and the “yellow house” sequence. Interestingly Khrzhanovsky also includes episodes in which Pushkin carries out what can be referred to as subversive acts – the report submitted to 678 In an attempt to restore his reputation with the intelligentsia after Daniel and Sinyavsky trial, Brezhnev gave permission for publication of some controversial authors, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, after the Sinyavsky and Daniel trial. ( Lowel, Stephen, Marsch,Rosalind. “Culture and crisis: The intelligentsia and literature after 1953.” In Kelly, C., Shepherd D. (eds.), Russian Cultural Studies: an introduction. Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 62.) 202
Vorontsov about the situation with locusts in the first film and the joke about Benckendorff that features in the second.
Besides the selection of the biographical events, the organization of the narrative, and the emphasis on Pushkin's qualities that inspired Soviet intelligentsia's self-image, an Aesopian reader would also consider frequent “inaccuracies” in using images and texts as possible Aesopian markers. What I mean by “inaccuracies” here is essentially the same as “artistic license”– namely, placing author's artistic vision before documentary veracity. In the case of images, 'inaccuracies' have to do with one or more of the following: a) using images to illustrate something other than what they are of; b) combining images that do not belong together; c) using images anachronistically. I have already mentioned two examples of the first type of image inaccuracy earlier in this chapter 679, but this group can be easily expanded. Consider, for example the image of Ivan Lapin in the market scene of the second film being 'acted' by a peasant drinking vodka (fig. 40a) or, possibly even worse, having a caricature of Dimtry Venevitov – the leader of the liubomudry680 society 'perform' a pickpocket boy (fig. 19a). Both of these instances are also anachronistic with respect to the narrative time, that is both of them were sketched after the return from the exile.681 The image that seems most out of place is the one signifying the grave of Pushkin's nanny Arina Rodionovna in the last film (fig. 40b).The image is in fact a caricature commemorating a rejection of marriage proposal made to Elisabeth Ushakova by Alexander Laptev682
One example of an image that is a combination of elements that originally do not occur together, is the image that opens the sequence about Pushkin starting his work on Boris Godunov at the end of the first film (fig. 40c). The characters in it come from different sources: an illustration to Poltava (fig. 40d), a sketch of a coachman found in Ushakova's album (fig. 40e), a vityaz' found in the draft of the poet's early narrative poem Ruslan and Ludmila (fig. 40f), the face the muzhik who acts Lapin in the second film (fig. 40g) and a face of Todor Balsh, a nobility from Moldova with whom Pushkin had a conflict because of the former's wife (fig. 40h).
679 The image of the protagonist of “The lady peasant” used as Natalia Goncharova or Pushkin's illustrations of Gotlieb Schultz and Adrian Prokhov from “The coffin maker” representing K. Timofeev and Pushkin's coachman Peter. 680 Liubomudr (любомудр) archaic for philosopher. The name was given to a philosophico-literary group that formed in the eary 1820s and whose members followed teachings of Schelling. 681 Abram Efros dates the first one 1833 and estimates that the second one should have been made after the return from the exile, so after 1826. (Efros. Abrahm. Risunki poeta. Academia, 1933, pp 443, 368.) 682 On the tombstone, besides the name of Laptev, one can actually read the following short text: “He was captivated by a cute face,/ he died, we'll die,/ and you will die too.” («Пленился он смазливой рожей, / Он умер, мы умрём, / И вы умрёте тоже». (translation mine) 203
The richest instances of 'misplaced' images are, of course, crowd scenes, such as balls and routs, where finding enough characters to fill the scene is more important that making sure they all belong there chronologically. Consequently, as in the market scene, which because of its multilayered and panoramic quality is possibly the most complex crowd scene in terms of the image construction, one discovers a surprising constellation of characters, where none of them should have been if historical accuracy had been respected: the underdressed juggler from the bordello episode of the St. Petersburg chapter (fig. 41a,b), a Turkish man with a chicken under his hat (fig. 41c,d), Ushakov's housekeeper Stepanida Ivanovna (fig. 41e,f), a pope from The Tale of a pope and his servant Balda (fig. 41g,h), and a Russian inventor Pavel Schilling von Cannstatt (fig. 41i, j).683
In the case of using Pushkin's texts, “inaccuracy” mostly684 refers to anachronistic, with respect to the narrative time, use of a text. For example, Khrzhanovsky inserts a fragment from Pushkin's poem written to commemorate Pushchin's birthday in 1815, in St. Petersburg chapter, a strophe from another 1815 poem, titled Awakening, in a sequence of Chisinau chapter, an extract from the poem Village, written in 1819, in the beginning of the Mikhailovskoe chapter. In the end of the second film the comment of Nicholas I's recommendation that Pushkin reworks Boris Godunov into a historical novel appears after the evaluation of the drama offered by the dancers, but historically it predates it.685 Khrzhanovsky uses texts written during the second Boldino autumn as a reference to the first one, and the poem about insomnia, written in 1830, to illustrate the aftermath of Pushkin's life as a kammerjunker.
A very special case with respect to inaccuracies is, of course, Khrzhanovsky's free re-interpretation of the circumstances of Pushkin's death. As has been described earlier, the director replaces the true biographical story, in which Pushkin dies from a shot wound received at a duel with George D'Anthes with a story in which Pushkin dies from a gun shot that seems to have been fired by the Bronze Horseman.
683 Chamberlain of Fath Ali Shah is the caption under the image, which is found in Ushakova's album. 684 It can, however, also be manifested through b) conflation of references to different events into a reference to a single event and c) changes in the original text. The best example of conflation of references is the combination of Pushkin's diary entry about opening the Alexander's column with lines from his letter to Natalia about him not planning to attend Alexander II's birthday celebration in the opening of the Alexander's column scene. Pushkin's angry soliloquy in response to the corrections ( in the film) to the Bronze Horseman is an example fitting both the anachronistic use of text and changes in the text: the lines Pushkin's character utters are taken from a letter to Benckendorff, written apropos of official corrections to a different poem Antaris (Анчар), written in 1828. In the original text, in which Pushkin tries to explain to Benckendorff why having him as the only censor makes it hard for the poet to make a living, it is written “this censorship (meaning Benckendorff) will be regarding me with prejudice and will be finding everywhere hidden meanings [...], but in the film Pushkin uses present simple to exclaim “ Censorship regards me with prejudice and finds everywhere hidden meanings [...]. 685 The first one comes from Benckendorff's note from 1826 and the second one must have appeared after the drama's publication in 1830. 204
The way the above described instances of inaccuracies work as Aesopian markers is by reminding the readers that even though Khrzhanovsky builds his animated scenes from Pushkin's images and texts, they are not used as documents; the trilogy is not a documentary, but an essay based on the life of Pushkin and thus an expression of Khrzhanovksy's individual position on the life and image of the poet. As an expression of Khrzhanovsky's personal interpretation, the trilogy thus invites a wider range of interpretation possibilities.
As has been mentioned earlier, including Pushkin's Aesopian texts such as André Chénier and Oh, What a Night! The Frost is Creaking into the films of the trilogy, and more importantly, treating them as Aesopian texts, can be interpreted as an intention to mark the trilogy as an Aesopian text itself. This proposition is particularly tempting because of the ways in which these two texts are Aesopian. In the first one, Pushkin assumes a mask of the French poet in order to express his own thoughts and feelings about the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt; in the second, the poet uses thehistorical events of the 1698 uprising as a vehicle for condemning Nicholas I's cruelty against the Decembrists. Assuming a mask of a different historical figure as well as using one historical event in order to reflect on another are precisely the Aesopian strategies which Khrzhanovsky is using in Pushkiniana: he assumes the mask of Pushkin and, using the poet's life and historical context, expressese concerns and frustrations of the 1960 generation of Soviet artistic intelligentsia.
Another feature of the films that I would like to suggest functions as an Aesopian marker is “artistic attention”686 with which different sequences and episodes are treated. Stylistically, the texture of all three films of Pushkiniana can be characterized as heterogeneous and uneven. It has already been mentioned that besides the animated episodes, the films include live footage sequences. However, the animated episodes themselves vary with respect to the animation technique and logico-semantic relationship between the visual sequences and the texts that they are built on. Where the former is concerned, the films contain both cut-out and drawn animation sequences. Some episodes are animated purely cinematographically, that is by having the camera zoom, and track over static images. Regarding the image-text relationship, the episodes can be roughly divided into the following three groups: a) episodes in which the relationship between the image and the text is predominantly illustrative; b) episodes in which this relationship is predominantly complementary; and c) episodes in which the text is acted out by characters – the dramatized episodes.
686 My reason for using inverted commas here is quite obvious: I do not mean to suggest that any of the episodes were accorded less attention. What I mean here, and this should become clear in the course of the following paragraphs, is is that some episodes stand out in terms of their dramatic complexity. 205
The predominantly illustrative relationship can be described as a relationship in which the visual sequence illustrates a word, a place, a person or an idea mentioned or referred to in the text. For example, the call roll sequence at the beginning of the lyceum chapter (I, 2'19''-2'24''), when the called out names of Pushchin, Delvig, Kuechelbecker and Pushkin are followed by their respective portraits, is an example of such a relation (fig.8b). The scene at Katakazi's home (I, 10'10''-11'00'') is illustrative as well. References to Katakazi, his home and the strangeness of the gathering, which are voiced in the text fragment are all found in in the visual sequence: the Pushkin's sketch of Katakazi's profile greets his guests; the home reference is carried through the wallpaper background and the bizarreness of the event is, actually, the content of the scene. The scenes based on texts about Faust (II, 5'53'' – 9'25'') and Demons (III, 4'21''-6'43'') are also illustrative, as is the scene about Pushkin visiting Wolf's estate Malinniki (III, 19'14''-21'01''). All three of these, despite very creative rendition and plenty of interesting added details, are well anchored in the texts they illustrate, through characters and the narrative.687
The predominantly complementary relationship is a relationship in which a visual sequence provides some additional information about a concept, event, character or idea mentioned in the text. An examples of this type of relationship can be seen in the lyceum triton sequence (I, 3'40'' - 4'15'') which expands the idea of “amusement” mentioned in the text to drinking and dancing. Another example, also from the first film, is the Vorontsova sequence based on the poem Talisman (I, 13'38''-13'53''): although dedicated to Vorontsova, the poem does not reveal her name, so paralleling the fragment of the poem with Pushkin's sketches of her add the information that the text does not reveal.(fig. 42a). Moreover, the line “you were given to me on a day of sadness” is accompanied by Vorontsova's full body figure moving into the depth of the frame and disappearing, which is a reference to talisman being a parting gift (fig. 42b).688
Images that provide visual references to places and historical period associated with their respective text fragments are also complementary. Most of on location live footage sequences shot in Mikhailovskoe and Tsarskoe Selo belong to this subgroup; so do sequences such as Pushkin's ride
687 For other examples of predominantly illustrative relationship between the text and the image see the following: a sequence based on a fragment from “My friend, already three days” ( I, 11'03''-11'20''), the Count Nulin sequence (I, 18'59'' – 19'17'), an episode that directly follows (I, 19'18''-19'41''), Tatjana sequence (I, 23'03''-24'38''), the sequence about the title of Boris Godunov, (I, 26'33''-27'02''), opening to the Album sequence (II, 9'27''-9'37''), live footage episode that precedes the departure scene (II, 13'55''- 14'15''), opening episode of the kammerjunker sequence (III, 16'15”-16'34''), the sequence based on “Remembering in Tsarskoe Selo” and “Tsarskoe Selo” (III, 36'38''- 38'02'') 688 The talisman is indeed a reference to a ring given by Vorontsova to Pushkin when they became separated. 206 across Bessarabian landscapes (I, 9'32''-9'53''), the latter constructed from landscape elements found in Pushkin's papers and populated with sketches of various interesting-looking inhabitants of Chisinau at the time. The rainy landscapes of Mikhailovskoe (I,16'27''-17'31''), used also to signify Boldino in the last film belong to the same group. Some context-providing shots, as, for example, in the sequence of Pushkin's arrival at Moscow (II, 18'09''- 18'46'') or the episode about Alexander's column (III, 24'00''-24'35'') are constructed using available images of the events in question from the period in question – lithographs of 19th century Moscow in the case of the former (fig. 42) and lithographs depicting the process of transporting, assembling and opening of the monument in the case of the latter (Fig. 42b). The market scene that opens the second film can also be classified as a context- setting complementary type of scene; to approximate the spirit of the place and time, Khrzhanovsky, includes a sequence featuring pieces of traditional art popular at the time – lubok – into the scene (fig. 42d).689
Episodes that fit into the dramatized category are those in which texts are made part of a dramatic act. The texts, in other words, are not embodied in images, but are acted out by characters. It is as if the camera assumed an 'external' position – recording the events, rather than expressing them. For instance, the scene based on the Imaginary Conversation with the Tsar (I, 20'22''-22'47'') is acted out as a dialogue, and relies fully on 'acting' skills of the poet's turban-wearing double, who acts both the poet and the tsar. The actual conversation with Nicholas I (II, 18'53''-21'14'') belongs to the same category: with the exception of a lyceum flashback it is staged as an external event. Also, consider the scene of Pushkin responding to the comments left by the censor on his Bronze Horseman (III, 25'49'' – 26'38''): Khrzhanovsky does not allow the viewer a single peek into the manuscript, does not suggest through a portrait or a caricature who the censor might have been, he does not change the background color to suggest the poet's anger, sadness, frustration. The scene, instead, is played out by the character of Pushkin and his double, all feelings expressed through gesture and intonation, very much like on a theatre stage (fig. 43a,b). Another good example of dramatization taking precedence over illustration is the 'sarcastic circus' sequence in the poet and rabble scene, in which “insects” from the “Collection of Insects” are acted out by the character of Pushkin's double (III, 12'10''- 13'13'').
Why are these different types of sequences interesting in the context of an Aesopian reading? To an 689 For more examples of complementary relationship see the following: the theater sequence ( I, 5'56''- 6'29''), the opening –window- sequence of the Chisinau chapter (I, 8'32''- 9'17''), the episode based on Arion (I, 24'39''-25'46''), and the episode right after (I, 23'53''-26'23''), the sequence remembering the Decembrists (II, 5'32''-5'46''), the opening of the third film (III, 0'21''- 1'30''), the Natalia sequence (1'53''-2'55''), Elegy sequence (III, 7'55'' – 9'43''), the financial difficulties sequence (III, 16'36''-18'46''), the folk song episode after the shot (III, 33'28''-34'38'') 207
Aesopian reader, who looks for clues in everything, the heterogeneous composition of the films could be an invitation to consider this heterogeneity as a possible system of markers. Within this system, it is reasonable to assume that the episodes of greater importance are marked by greater visual or dramatic complexity, or a significant and consistent difference from the others. From the types of episodes described above, in terms of image to text relationship, the fully dramatized one certainly stands out in complexity. It also differs from the illustrative and complementary types because it treats texts and images as relatively independent from each other. Whereas illustrative and complementary image sequences in one way or another reflect on the content of text fragments that support them, in the fully dramatized episodes texts are as much a part of the sequence as is the image. Therefore, as an Aesopian reader working from inside the Loseff's model, I would suggest that full dramatization of episodes in Pushkiniana could be interpreted as an Aesopian marker at the level of utterance. From this assumption, I would like to see whether the episodes that fit under this category might reveal any interesting patterns, which could, in turn, be fruitful and revealing in the context of an Aesopian reading that is being developed here.
According to the description of the fully dramatized episodes offered above, the following sequences, some of which have already been mentioned earlier, would qualify: the Vorontsov episode (I, 14'04''- 15'50'')690, the scene of imaginary conversation with tsar Alexander I (I, 20'22'' - 22'47''), the departure to the capital (II, 15'02'' – 17'45''), the conversation with Nicholas I (II, 18'53''-21'14''), the rout (II, 21'24'' – 27'00''), the poet and rabble ( III, 9'56''- 15'28'') and finally the episode of receiving the comments on the Bronze Horseman ( 25'49'' – 26'38''). It is easy to see how marking these episodes as 'special' puts narrative accents that bring a biographical essay about Pushkin's life much closer to the narrative about frustrations of the creative Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties with Brezhnev's regime. In essence, the episodes that are marked as being more important than others are the ones that ridicule bureaucracy's pompous asininity, show the futility of dissimulating one's critical position toward the regime, remind of a brief moment in which a possible dialogue between the regime and the artists seemed possible, critique the society that takes more interest in gossip and display of opulence than in big ideas, that understands the purpose of art to be either entertainment or vulgar moral edification, the society that tolerates unprincipledness, fosters cynicism and shelters spies. These are the episodes that make a clear reference to censorship – its unpredictable and overly suspicious attitude and its interference into the creative process.
690 The episode, although mostly using a dramatic structure also includes sequences that can be classified as illustrative , as in the sequence with marching locusts, or complementary – doodling of legs to give reasons for “not being very familiar with business discourse”, or the sketch of Byron, to illustrate the reference to him implied in the text. 208
Moreover, the departure to Moscow episode, in which the gendarme arrives in the middle of the night and tells Pushkin to come with him without giving any reasons or explanation, bears striking resemblance to KGB night arrests.
It, thus seems reasonable to believe that full dramatization with respect to the image-text relationship is an Aesopian marker: the episodes that are marked in such a way form a meaningful unit consistent not only with the Aesopian interpretation proposed here, but also with the central themes of Khrzhanovsky's oeuvre – the role of art and the artist in society and the relationship between the artist and power.
Another Aesopian marker that I would like to suggest is the way the poet and rabble scene is played out – as an estrada concert. As described earlier, the scene opens with a descending progression of chords, which Pushkin, with his legs crossed, pretends to be extracting from an imaginary piano (fig. 44). The progression is characteristic of the so-called couplet genre – sung satirical, humorous and at times publicistic verses, in which each strophe contains a different and complete story. As a part of the usual vaudeville program, couplets were indeed popular in Russia in the first half of the 19th century,691 that is “within” the narrative time of the scene. However, as has been mentioned earlier, in the 1980s, by most of the Soviet viewers the couplets would have been recognized as the typical element of the Soviet estrada show and not vaudeville.Thus, in the 1980s, most viewers would have identified Khrzhanovksy's framing of the scene as an anachronism and thus, a likely Aesopian marker. As an Aesopian marker, it would have signaled to them that the events and ideas of the scene, and by extension the whole film, should be interpreted beyond and above their literal meaning.
One other element that I believe qualifies as an Aesopian marker is an image of a cat whose facial features bear a lot of similarities to those of the director. This portrait of a cat, or, rather, Khrzhanovsky's portrait as a cat, is part of the lubok-based sequence in the market scene (fig 45a,b). It is not just the physical similarity that invites the interpretation of the image as a marker, but also the portrait's strategic position. Because the function of the market scene in the film appears to be contextual, that is trying to bring the viewers closer to Pushkin's experience, the portrait of a cat that makes one think about the director is clearly disrupting, putting the alleged effort of making the film seem more historically accurate in quotation marks. If interpreted as Khrzhanovsky's veiled self-portrait, the image acts as the metaphorical “director's wink”, signaling to the audience yet once
691 “Kuplet.” Encycloedia Estrada Rossii. << http://www.ruscircus.ru/ganr/estrada2-3.shtml>> 209 again that the removed-in-time context of Pushkin's life should be treated as a vehicle through which more contemporary events are reflected on.
One final utterance that caught my attention as being potentially Aesopian is the final sequence based on the 1831 poem dedicated to the lyceum that opens with “The more the lyceum celebrates.”692As has been mentioned, the lines that are chosen to conclude the film call on the living alumni to draw closer and celebrate the hope of once again returning to the circle of the lyceum friends and no longer fear new sacrifices. Although the visual sequence accompanying these lines consists of shots of Pushkin's manuscripts, singling out the sheet with portraits of Pushkin's Decembrists friends and focusing on the poet's three quarter portrait for a good eight seconds, the “I” behind the strophes is ambivalent. “I” is identifiable only through the following line “I've finished my song for the dead”, but is it not true that this description would also be a suitable reference to Khrzhanovsky at the end of the film? Is Pushkiniana not Khrzhanovsky's song for the dead poet and his times? If this is the case, one can see Khrzhanovsky finally, at the end of the performance, letting down of the poet's mask and revealing himself; not to just anyone, of course, but to an Aesopian reader.
Moreover, the words of the strophe as a whole, calling the living to cherish hope despite all the hardships and to draw nearer in the face of difficulties, bring to mind very famous lines from the song Union of Friends. This song, which was written shortly after the XX congress of the communist party by one of possibly most famous bards of the sixties generation, Bulat Okudzhava, and which became something of an anthem for the Zhivago children, also calls to friends to hold hands so that they do not perish one by one.693
My goal in this chapter has been to produce an Aesopian reading of Khrzhanovsky's Pushkiniana. I have tried to show how the trilogy about life and work of the famous Russian poet, woven mostly from fragments of his texts and illustrated by his drawings, can be read as an allegory of the Soviet creative intelligentsia's changing relationship with Brezhnev's regime.
I have started out by outlining Loseff's model of Aesopian language. According to this model, which is based on the principle of metonymicity, in an Aesopian text, the real subject of which is taboo, this taboo object is replaced with a vehicle subject; as in a folk riddle, the vehicle subject and
692 “Чем чаще празднует лицей, свою святую годовщину” (translation mine) 693 Okudzhava, Bulat. “Soyuz druzei.” 1967. << http://www.bokudjava.ru/P_48.html>> (a website devoted to the author.) 210 the taboo object should share sufficient attributes. Because, according to Loseff, the characteristic feature of the artistic Aesopian text is that it should support both an Aesopian and a non-Aesopian reading, in order to indicate that the similarities between the taboo and the vehicle subjects are both intended and not incidental, an Aesopian author has to rely on a dual system of what Loseff refers to as screens and markers. Screens are devices that are meant to dissimulate any similarities between the taboo and the vehicle subjects and are intended for non-target audiences, markers, one the other hand are devices that work as signals to target audiences that all the similarities are intended and that the vehicle subject should be read as a taboo one.
A process of Aesopian reading, thus, can be roughly divided into the following steps: a) guessing the taboo subject from the attributes of the vehicle; b) locating markers that support the guess. Since my proposed taboo subject of the trilogy is the relationship between the sixties artistic intelligentsia and Brezhnev's administration, I have first outlined similarities between Pushkin's historical context and the historical context between the beginning of Soviet creative intelligentsia and Khrzhanovsky's times, showing how the period of Alexander I's reign can be compared to Khrushchev's thaw, and how Nicholas I's course for stabilization of autocracy after Alexander I's death has interesting parallels with Brezhnev's approach to undoing the thaw. I have then briefly touched upon Pushkin's image in the trilogy living up to Likhachev's characterization of “true intelligent”, thus providing the rationale for considering his character a reasonable vehicle for Soviet creative intelligentsia of the 1960s. Finally, I have shown why Pushkin's biography itself can serve as a vehicle for the narrative of Soviet creative intelligentsia's changing relationship with the Soviet state.
Having identified the Aesopian taboo subject of the trilogy, I proceeded to identify what I believe to be Aesopian markers. Using Loseff's three-level classifications of Aesopian devices in literature, I explained why no Aesopian reading at the level of the audiences was needed. I then pointed out that although Khrzhanovsky does build the narrative around actual biographical episodes of Pushkin's life and organizes the narrative chronologically, he often disregards both biographical and chronological accuracy. I also demonstrated that the angle from which Pushkin's life is told and, thus, the choice of biographical events, reflect on themes and topics that seem all too relevant to the period of the films' production; moreover, the perspective on these issues held by the poet and expressed by his character sound too similar to that of the Soviet creative intelligentsia in its waning dialogue with power authorities. 211
I also drew attention to the fact that the intentionality behind the episode selection, that is Khrzhanovksy selecting the episodes that allow him to explore specific topics, seems further emphasized through formal marking. I pointed out that the episodes that are fully dramatized, and thus marked with greater importance, are the ones that appear most relevant to the taboo subject of the trilogy proposed here. I also suggested that the character of Pushkin in the film embodies the values and qualities that had great importance to the Soviet intelligentsia's identity: independence, courage, commitment to truth, faith in critical thinking, respect for individual freedom. I also pointed out that in addition to these, Khrzhanovsky, through such sequences as the report on locusts, the joke about Benckedorff in the rout scene, and simulation of illness not to attend royal celebrations, suggests Pushkin's capacity for what could be characterized as subversive acts.
Finally, I have suggested that inclusion of Pushkin's texts that are traditionally viewed as Aesopian, and their narrative use in quality of their taboo subjects should also be interpreted as an Aesopian marker pointing at the Aesopian nature of Pushkiniana, as well as the anachronistic framing of the poet and rabble scene as an estrada concert. Finally, I have demonstrated why the shot with an image of a cat who resembles Khrzhanovsky and final episode of the trilogy should be treated as markers as well, both revealing that Khrzhanovsky and not Pushkin is the true narrator in the story.
All these findings, which I believe provide reasonable support for the Aesopian reading of Pushkiniana proposed in this chapter, can be thus summarized into the following table:
Screens Markers The level of the intended audience: As has been explained earlier in this chapter Pushkiniana is not an Aesopian text at the level of intended audience.
The Level of Plot/Genre
The films of the trilogy are based on a. The episodes are chosen with intention; Khrzhanovsky actual events of Pushkin's life, prefers biographical episodes that allow him to address therefore it is about the poet. issues contemporary to his own context.
b. Khrzhanovsky re-interprets the events of Pushkin's death in a way that not only explains the director's interpretation of the causes, but also fits better the allegorical narrative of creative Soviet intelligentsia, some of members of which went underground ( metaphorically were killed), because the of the futility of the struggle with the totalitarian state. 212
c. There are biographical inaccuracies with respect to which images are chosen to represent whom/what. The episodes are organized a. There are some inaccuracies with respect to chronology. chronologically, therefore it is Some texts relating to a particular biographical event are biographical chosen thematically.
b. In Khrzhanovsky's organization of the narrative of Pushkin's life, one can recognize the patterns characteristic of the narrative of Soviet intelligentsia's failed collaboration with the state in the process of reforming and transforming the post-Stalinist state. Pushkin is a famous Russian poet and For the new Soviet intelligentsia, Pushkin was also an therefore a safe character to make a example of a true intelligent, i.e., someone they would film about gladly appropriate as an example. The character created by Khrzhanovksy fit well the image of an ideal shestidesyatnik. The films are made from poet's texts a. The practice of using already existing, preferably and drawing, so that the director classical texts in order to express critical thoughts about approximates Pushkin's subjective contemporary events was a common strategy among experiences as closely as possible writers, films directors and animators in the late 70s - early 80s, since it allowed them to avoid attacks from censorship. Krhznahovsky using both texts and images appears especially suspicions in this context, pointing with greater certainty toward him assuming the mask of Pushkin.
b. The director discloses his presence through the shot of self-portrait as a lubok picture of a cat and the “I” of the last text fragment of the film.
Film is stylistically heterogeneous and Stylistic heterogeneity is a system of markers, according to thus difficult to watch ( or wanting in which more significant episodes, with respect to the unity) Aesopian subject, can be separated from others.
The Level of Utterance: The film tries to recreate the contexts The poet and the rabble scene clearly stands out as being of Pushkin's life by using on location out of its historical context; dramatized as an estrada live shooting, or lithographs from 19th concert, the scene points toward the film's bearings on the century depicting events or landscapes period of Brezhnev's late socialism. relevant to the development of the narrative. Khrzhanovksy includes Pushkin's Aesopian texts into the narrative, using them as Aesopian.
Inclusion of the joke about Benckendorff, which refers to inevitable self-disclosure of the censor. Table 4: Summary of Aesopian screen and markers in Pushkiniana. 213
What remains to be stated, yet again, is that the proposed Aesopian reading has been carried out from the position of an ideal type of an Aesopian reader, who not only has the necessary historical and cultural background, is familiar with Pushkin's literary and artistic lore, and is somewhat familiar with traditional approaches of avoiding suspicion of the censorship, but also someone who would be willing to engage with the films very closely. It is, of course, unlikely that any given viewer in the target audience would have uncovered all of the markers that I have included in the above table, or would have considered all of them very important – my bias as a researcher actively looking for clues that would reinforce my intuition is all too clear. However, considering Loseff's reflections on rearing of the Soviet Aesopian reader, Monas' recollection of subversive readings of The red snowball tree film by his non-dissident friends and Khrzhanovsky's own certainty that his Aesopian messages were always understandable to his audiences, I think it is reasonable to believe that some of these markers would have been recognized by the target audiences and however few, would have been sufficient. 214
Conclusions
When I started working on this project, as with many of my fellow doctoral students, I felt anxious: what if no answers presented themselves to me; what if the evidence I found did not suffice or, even worse, ran contrary to my initial hypothesis? I must admit that, even now, writing this conclusion, I have not completely shook this uncertainty. However, it no longer frightens me, and I now see it as an inevitable part of the research process—something of a guarantee that this process will continue. This project is thus but a beginning, a first probing look into tactics employed by Soviet artists in order to avoid, or at least anticipate, the unwanted intervention of the censor. My inquiry, as can be inferred from the preceding pages, aimed to answer the following questions: first, I wanted to know if documented evidence for such practices could be found. Second, I hoped to understand how and why these practices evolved and became relevant to Soviet artists working in the last two decades of the Soviet regime. I wanted, moreover, to know what some of these tactics and strategies were. Finally, I was very curious to see how and why these preventative, anti-censorship measures could and often did work.
I found out that accounts of artists playing the “cat and mouse” game with Brezhnev's censorship apparatus could indeed be found. In order to understand how and why anti-censorship tactics became part of the creative process during the Brezhnev regime, then, I turned to the historical context and discovered that the genesis of the practices considered here could be traced to changes in the cultural, social and political climate brought about by Brezhnev's policy of ideological, political and economic stabilization. The intensified ideological control over culture, as well as the suspicion and mistrust with which the liberal Soviet intelligentsia of the sixties was treated by the Brezhnev administration, often resulted in impossibly difficult conditions for artistic and intellectual production. This circumstance was reflected especially dramatically in the growing influence the unofficial culture had on the official one (see chapter two). Thus, the idea of reviving the 19th century aesthetic methods of evading censorship (see chapter four) and adapting them to the reality of late Soviet Socialism emerged in response to: a) the intelligentsia's increasing frustration with the official cultural guidelines and the bureaucracy enforcing these; b) the growing presence of unofficial culture in the official realm of Soviet culture, which made it hard for the official artists to avoid its influence. As has been mentioned, by the1970s the unofficial culture came to be viewed as the only culture that was worth the attention of sophisticated audiences (see chapter two) and artists working in the official realm, subject to the censorship, had to reckon with this fact. Thus, I have 215 argued, anti-censorship strategies and tactics developed as a possible solution to the challenge of producing work compatible with the artistic standards of the unofficial culture, which, simultaneously, would be likely to pass censorship with as few alterations as possible.
It should thus be emphasized that the rationale for incorporating anti-censorship strategies into the creative process was often to protect the artistic quality of the work and one's own professional reputation, rather than to compromise the stability of the state by communicating critical or seditious messages (see chapters two and three). Notwithstanding these seemingly insufficient political intentions, I have argued that these practices were subversive with regard to the Soviet state, because they exposed weaknesses in the Soviet institution of political censorship—one of the major pillars of the Soviet ideological project (see chapter four).
These strategies worked because the artists knew how to play upon the weaknesses of the system of censorship. These weakness included, for example, the unmanageably long lists of proscribed names and titles, the inefficiency with which new directives travelled the vast territories of the Soviet state and the difficulty of separating aesthetic form from ideological content in an artistic work. As has been pointed out, in the case of the Soviet animation industry, the weakness that was the easiest to exploit had to do with the educational background held by most Soviet censors. The majority of censors, it was pointed out, possessed a university degree in philology (see chapter three), which meant that when a film's narrative shifted from the textual to the visual plane, i.e. from dialogue or narration to visual metaphors, citations, music and materials, the job of the censor became very difficult. Unfortunately for the censors, the aesthetic revolution in the language of Soviet animation – the revolution, which, as I have argued, was precipitated by re-discovery of the aesthetic category of uslovnost' – enabled animation artists to discover manifold possibilities for communicating without words, or beyond them. In addition, unlike artists in other creative domains, animation artists continued to enjoy relative freedom in terms of formal experimentation, even during the Stagnation.
Having explained how anti-censorship practices made use of the blind spots and inefficiencies of the Soviet institution of censorship, I turned my attention to the question of how they worked at the level of artistic texts. Although, as has been described, Soviet artists were inventive in their tactics of evasion (see chapter four), this project focuses on a single aesthetic strategy: the device most commonly known as Aesopian language. To understand how Aesopian language functioned as a concealing, or dissimulating technique, I read Andrey Khrzhanovsky's Pushkiniana trilogy as an 216
Aesopian text. Using Lev Loseff's model as my analytical framework, I approached the films as a riddle, in which everything that was apparent stood, in fact, for something else. Paying close attention to possible Aesopian markers, i.e. stylistic and structural elements of the narrative which suggest that the text is Aesopian (see chapter five), I have discovered that, in addition to the obvious interpretation of the trilogy as a biographical essay about the life of Pushkin, the films supported an alternative, allegorical reading, which through Pushkin and his historical and political context narrates the story of the Soviet state betraying the new Soviet intelligentsia (see chapter five). Through this analysis, it became clear how it was indeed possible to make the same text simultaneously ideologically neutral and critical. This ambiguity, present at every moment of the trilogy, must have been precisely what made censorial intervention futile: it did not matter what the censor changed, removed or added, because the interplay of screens and markers continued at all times through the plot, the protagonist and the style.
As I have stated earlier, this project is only a beginning and many questions remain. For example, I have presented the story from the perspective of the artists, but what would the story told from the perspective of the censors be? What about the strategies other than the Aesopian language? I do mention some of them here, but only as examples: a more extensive historical investigation would be illuminating and helpful for future inquiries. And what about other creative industries? Or creative industries in other Soviet republics or countries of the Soviet Block? Finally, it would be interesting to approach the anti-censorship practices critically, whether through Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields and capital, as Ann Komaromi, for instance, has done with the unofficial Soviet culture in the study cited here; or through Chantal Mouffe's interpretation of the process of hegemonic struggle. These, however, are questions for other projects.
217 218
REFERENCES
1. Abramov, A., Belyaev, A., (eds): Estetika: Slovar'. Moscow, 1989. 2. Agnoli, Johannes. Subversion: Die Sach Selbst und Ihre Geschichte, Ca Ira Verlag, 1999. 3. Alexeeva, Ludmila. Istorija inakomyslija v SSSR. Novejshij period. Vest', 1992. 4. Alexeeva, Ludmila, Goldberg Paul. The Thaw Generation: Coming of age in the post-Stalin era.University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. 5. Asenin, Sergei. “Puti sovetskoj mul'tiplikatsii.” In Asenin. S., Mir Mul'tfil'ma. Iskusstvo, 1986, pp. 42-103. 6. Asenin, Sergei. Volshebniki ekrana. Iskusstvo, 1974. 7. Atamanov, Lev. “..a perestraivat'sya nado bylo.” In Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 80, 2006, pp. 201-209. 8. Babichekno,Dmitry. “Dovol'no mul'tshtampov!" In: Iskusstvo Kino, 10, 1961, pp. 33-44. 9. van den Berg, Hurbert. “On the Historiographic Distinction between Historical and Neo- Avant-Garde.” In Scheunemann, Dietrich (ed.), Avant-garde/Neo-avant-garde. Rodopi, 2005, p. 63-77. 10. Best, Steven, Kellner, Douglas. The Postmodern Turn. The Guilford Press, 1997. 11. Bljum, Arlen. Kak eto delalos' v Leningrade. Tsenzura v gody ottepeli, zastja i perestrojki. Akademicheskij Projekt, 2005. 12. Bondi Sergei, commentaries to the Bronze Horseman in A.S Pushkin. Polnoje Sobranije Sochinenij. << http://rvb.ru/pushkin/02comm/0795.htm>> 13. Borodin, Georgy: “Animatsia podnevol'naja.” In Kinograf, no. 16, 2005, pp. 54-153. 14. Borodin, Georgy. “V boribe za malenikie mysli”, In Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no. 73, 2005. 15. Bown, Mathew C. Art Under Stalin. Holmes & Meier Pub, 1991. 16. Briusov, Valerii. “Mednyi vsadnik.” In Briusov, V., Kritika i publitsistika. << http://as- pushkin.ru/index.php?cnt=6&sub=7>> 17. Bürger Peter. Theory of the avant-garde. (translated by Michael Shaw.) University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 18. Chaadaev, Pjotr. “Philosophecheskie pis'ma.” Polnoje sobranie sochienij i izbrannyje pis'ma. Vol 1, Nauka, 1991. << http://www.vehi.net/chaadaev/filpisma.html#_edn1>> 19. de Certeau, Michel. The practice of everyday life. (Translated by Steven F. Rendall), University of California Press, 1988. 20. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, 1995. 21. Diederichen, Diederich. “Subversion – kalte Strategie und heiße Differenz.” In Diderichsen, D., Freiheit macht arm. Das Leben nach Rock'n'Roll. 1990-93. Kiepenheuer&Witsch, 1993. pp. 33-53. 22. Doll, Martin. “Für eine Subversion der Subversion.” In Ernst, Th., Cantó, Gozalbez, Richter, Sebastian, et al. (eds.), SUBversionen. Zum Verhältnis von Politik und Ästetik in der Gegenwart. Transcript, 2008, pp 47-69. 23. Dovnar-Zapolsky, Mitrofan. Idealy dekabristov, reprint, Al'faret, 2011. 24. Dusenbajev, Ajdar, Voevodina Natalja. “Reformy kontsa 1960-1970 godov: sushnost', metody, tseli, itogi.” In Dusenbajev, A., Voevodina N., Ekonomicheskaja istorija Rossii. <
28. Fedorov, Vladimir. Dekabristy i ikh vremya., Moscow State University, 1992. 29. Finkel, Stuart. On the ideological front. The Russian intelligentsia and the making of the Soviet public sphere. Yale, 2007. 30. Foster, Hal. Vision and Visuality. Bay Press, 1988. 31. Ginzburg, Semion. Risovannyj i kukol'nyi fil'm. Ocherki razvitija sovetskoi mul'tiplikatsionnoi kinematografii, Iskusstvo, 1957. 32. Goder, Dina. “Russkaja animatsia: Prodolzhenie sleduet.” <
51. Kochetkova, Inna. The myth of the Russian intelligentsia: Old intellectuals in the new Russia. Taylor &Francis, 2009 52. Komaromi, Ann. “The unofficial field of late Soviet culture.” In Slavic Review, vol. 66, no. 4, 2007, pp. 605-629. 53. Krivulja, Natalia. Labirinty Animatsii. Issledovanie khudozhestvennogo obraza rossijskih animatsionnyh fil'mov vtoroj poloviny XX veka. Graal, 2002. 54. “Kuplet.” Encyclopedia Estrada Rossii << http://www.ruscircus.ru/ganr/estrada2-3.shtml>> 55. Lamoureux, Johanne. “Avant-Garde: A Historiography of a Critical Concept.” In Jones, A., A companion to contemporary art since 1945. Blackwell, 2006. pp. 191-212. 56. Lenin, Vladimir, “Partijnaja organizatsia i partijnaja literatura.” 1905. <
2004, pp. 1045-1049. 76. Norshtein, Yuriy. “Kuda prishli my?” Iskusstvo Kino, no.8, 2006, pp. 71- 87. 77. Organov, A. "Uslovnost' khudozhestvennaja." In: Stepin V.S. (ed) Novaya filosofskaya encyclopedia. Moscow, 2001. 78. Party Ordinance Concerning Zvezda and Leningrad. Published in Pravda on August 21st, 1946. <
79. Plotkin, L. “Postanovlenia kommunisticheskoj partii Sovetskogo Sojuza po voprosam sovetskoj literatury.” In Slovar' literaturovedcheskih terminov. L. Timofeev, S. Turaev (eds.), Moscow, 1974. << http://litena.ru/literaturovedenie/item/f00/s00/e0000405/index.shtml>> 80. Pushkin, Alexander. Polnoje Sobranie Sochinenij v 10-ti tomakh. Moskva, 1959. In Russkaja Virtual'naya Biblioteka. << http://www.rvb.ru/pushkin/toc.htm> (Unless otherwise indicated all Pushkin's texts are accessed from this source) 81. Pushkin, Alexander. Pis'ma k Chaadaevu. In Lovetskaya T. (ed.), Perepiska A.S. Pushkina. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, Vol. 2, 1982. <
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Other: A fragment from a recording of Khrushchv's meeting with intelligentsia on March 7, 1963. (0'19''- 0'30'') <
Filmography:
And I am again with you. ( I s vami snova ya). Dir. Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1980.
Autumn. (Osen'). Dir. Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1982.
The Bathhouse. (Banja). Dir. Anatoly Karanovich, Sergei Yutkevich. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1962.
Cloud in Love (Vljublennoe Oblako). Dirs. Anatoly Karanovich, Roman Kachanov. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1959.
A Fox, a Beaver and the Others. ( Lisa, Bober i Drugie). Dir. Mikhail Tsekhanovsky. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1960.
I am flying to you as a memory. ( Ya k vam lechu vospominan'em). Dir. Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1977.
The Little Red Riding Hood. (Krasnaya Shapochka). Dirs. Zinaida Broomberg, Valentina Broomberg. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1937.
Non-drinking Sparrow. ( Nepiushii Vorobei). Dir. Leonid Al'marik. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1960.
Story of one crime. (Istorija odnogo prestuplenia). Dir. Fedor Khitruk. Sojuzmul'tfil'm, 1962.
IMAGES*
* Copyrights of all films cited here, except for Story of One Crime (Istoria Odnogo Prestuplenia) belong to Soyuzmul'tfilm. The copyright for Story of One Crime belongs to Films by Jove. All images reproduced here are reproduced under fair use license.
Fig. 1. A still from Zinaida and Valentina Broomberg's The Fig. 2. A still from Vera and Mikhail Tsekhanovsky's Little Red Riding Hood (1937). Fox, Beaver and the Others (1960).
Fig. 3. A still from Leonid Amalrik's Non-drinking Sparrow Fig. 4a. Ayse. A still from Anatoly Karanovich and (1960) Roman Kachanov's Cloud in Love (1959)
Fig. 4b. Seyfi. A still from Cloud in Love Fig 4c. Cloud. A still from Cloud in Love
Fig. 4c. Wind. A still from Cloud in Love Fig. 5a. Pobedonosikov. A still from The Bathhouse (1962), directed A. Karanovich and S. Yutkevich. Fig. 5b. Optimistenko. A still from The Bathhouse. Fig. 5c. Momental'nikov. A still from The Bathhouse.
Fig. 5d. The Phosphorescent Woman. A still from The Fig. 5e. Interior of Pubedonosikov's flat. A still from The Bathhouse. Bathhouse.
Fig. 6b. The father “sends refrigerators to the left.” A Fig. 6a. The whole family “sitting on the father's neck”. A still still from Great Troubles. from Great Troubles (1961), directed by Z. Broomberg, V. Broomberg.
Fig. 6c. The father trying to “oil auditor's palm.” A still from Fig. 6d. The father being “planted.” A still from Great Great Troubles. Troubles. Fig. 7a. Inside Mamin's living room. A still from Story of One Fig. 7b. One can see potted plants in the window of Crime (1962), directed by F. Khitruk. unfinished house. A still from Story of One Crime.
Fig. 7c. Men playing domino. A still from Story of One Crime. Fig. 7d. The platform before the train arrives. A still from Story of One Crime.
Fig. 7e. The train carryign the platform onboard. A still from Story of One Crime.
Fig. 8a. Pushkin's self portrait. A still from I am flying to you as Fig. 8b. Pushkin's self-portrait with the Decembrists, the a memory (1977) source for the self portrait in the previous still ( 8a). (Image from T.Tsyalovskaya (1987) Risunki Pushkina, p. 286-287. Fig. 9b. Pushkin's sketch of Lisa, for “The Lady Fig. 9a. Natalia. A still from Autumn (1982). Peasant”, the source for the previous still ( Image from A.S Pushkin Collected Works in ten volumes. Moscow, 1959-1962, electronic publication))
Fig. 10a. K.Timofeev and Peter. A still from And I am again with you (1980). Fig. 10b. Gotlieb Schultz and Adrian Prokhoroff. Pushkin's illustration to “The Coffin Maker.” ( Image from A.S Pushkin. Collected Works in ten volumes. Moscow, 1959-1962, electronic publication))
Fig. 11. Pushkin, Delvig, Kuechelbecker, Pushchin. A still from I Fig. 12. K. Katakazi welcoming his guests. A still from I am flying to you as a memory. am flying to you as a memory.
Fig. 13. Bessarabian landscapes. A still from I am flying to you Fig. 14a. Marching locusts. A still from I am flying to as a memory. you as a memory. Fig. 14b. Locust perching on Voronstov's head. A still from I Fig. 15a. Mikhailovskoye landscape. A still from I am am flying to you as a memory. flying to you as a memory.
Fig. 15b. Mikhailovskoye landscape. A still from I am flying to Fig. 16. Pushkin's double sticking his tongue. out. A still you as a memory. from I am flying to you as a memory. The imaginary conversation with the tsar scene.
Fig. 17. Hanging bodies. A still from I am flying to you as a Fig. 18. Ornamental Birds. A still from I am flying to you memory. Decembrist scene. as a memory. Decembrist scene.
Fig. 19a. Picking pockets. A still from And I am again with you Fig. 19b. Trying hats on. A still from And I am again (1980). Market scene. with you. Market scene. Fig. 19d. A man displaying the remarkable length of his Fig. 19c. Puppet theatre performance. A still from And I am beard. A still from And I am again with you. Market again with you. Market scene. scene.
Fig 19e. The juggler. A still from And I am again with you. Fig. 20a. Demons. A still from And I am again with you. Market scene. Faust scene.
Fig. 20b. Dancing demons. A still from And I am again with Fig. 21a. 'Do not tempt me.” Pushkin's self-portrait in you. Faust scene. Ushakova's album. A still from And I am again with you. Album scene. Retrieved from
Fig. 21b. Lady-chelo. A still from And I am again with you. 21c. “A woman's figure as a chelo.” Pushkin's sketch in Album scene. Ushakova's album, the source image for the previous still. Retrieved from
Fig. 24a. Conversation with Nicholas I, view from outside. A Fig. 24b. Nicholas tearing paper presented to him by still from And I am again with you. Conversation scene. Pushkin. A still from And I am again with you. Conversation scene.
Fig. 26. One of the member of the guests taking a better Fig. 25. Nicholas reintroducing new Pushkin. A still from And I look. A still from And I am again with you. Raut scene. am again with you. Raut scene.
Fig. 27a. Dance. A still from And I am again with you. Raut 27b. Dance. A still from And I am again with you. Raut scene. scene. Fig. 28. Nicholas interrupts the rout to deliver his critique of Fig. 29. The mill. A still from And I am again with you. Boris Godunov. A still from And I am again with you. Raut The concluding sequence. scene.
Fig. 30a. Demons dancing. A still from Autumn (1982). Demons Fig. 30b. Demons dancing. A still from Autumn. Demons scene. scene.
Fig. 30c. Demons flying toward the moon. A still from Autumn. Fig. 31a. Pushkin's cover to “Don Juan.” A still from Demons scene. Autumn. Elegy sequence.
Fig. 31b. Pushkin's cover design for “Covetous Knight.” A still 32a. Frigate composed from pages of Pushkin'a from Autumn. Elegy sequence. manuscripts. A still from Autumn. Elegy sequence. Fig. 33a. Pushkin and his double in the poet's room in Fig. 32b. Frigatte. A still from Autumn. Elegy sequence. Boldino. A still from Autumn. Poet and Rabble sequence.
Fig. 33b. Pushkin's double doing impersonations of Pushkin's Fig. 33c. Demonic dance. A still from Autumn. Poet and fellow literati. A still from Autumn. Poet and Rabble sequence. Rabble sequence.
Fig. 34a. Pushkin granted the title of Kammerjunker. A still Fig. 34b. Nicholas I's stare. A still from from Autumn.Kammerjunker sequence. Autumn.Kammerjunker sequence.
Fig. 34c. Pushkin's Kammerjunker uniform complete. A still Fig. 34d. A ball at Annichkovo palace.A still from from Autumn.Kammerjunker sequence. Autumn.Kammerjunker sequence. Fig. 34e. Bills. A still from Autumn.Kammerjunker sequence. Fig. 35a. Positives/Negatives sequence. A still from Autumn.
Fig. 35b. Positives/Negatives. A still from Autumn. Fig. 35c. Positives/Negatives sequence. A still from Autumn.
Fig. 35d. Positives/Negatvies sequence. A still from Autumn. Fig. 35e. Pistol. A still from Autumn. Insomnia sequence. Insomnia sequence.
Fig. 35f. Funeral procession. A still from Autumn. Insomnia Fig. 36a. Supporting structures to the Alexander column. sequence. A still from Autumn. Alexander column sequence. Fig. 36b. Angel. A still from Autumn. Alexander column Fig. 37a. Pushkin charging. A still from Autumn. Bronze sequence. Horseman sequence.
Fig. 37b. The statue of Peter the Great. A still from Autumn. Fig. 37c. The gun. A still from Autumn. Bronze Bronze Horseman sequence. Horseman sequence
Fig. 37d. Pushkin's profile on the snow. A still from Autumn. Fig. 38a. Pushkin's self-portraits. A still from Bronze Horseman sequence Autumn.Death sequence.
Fig. 38b. Pushkin's double taking his turban off. A still from Fig. 38c. Pushkin's self-portrait with Decembrists. A still Autumn.Death sequence. from Autumn. Legacy sequence. Fig. 39a. Women's feet. A still from And I am again with you. Fig. 39b. Women's feet. A still from And I am again with Album sequence. you. Album sequence.
Fig. 39c. Women's feet. A still from And I am again with you. Fig. 40a. Ivan Lapin. A still from And I am again with Album sequence. you. Market sequence.
Fig. 40c. Boris Godunov. A still from I am flying to you Fig. 40b. Arina Rodionovna's grave. A still from Autumn. as a memory. Godunov sequence. Mikhailovskoye sequence.
Fig. 40d. One of the characters from the Godunov still, Fig.40e. A character from the Godunov still. A originally occurring on Pushkin's sketch on the manuscript of coachman. Pushkin's sketch in Ushakova's album. Poltava. ( taken from A.S Pushkin, Collection of Works in Ten Retrieved from:
Fig. 41a. Juggler. A still from And I am again with you. Fig. 40h. Pushkin's sketch of Todor Balsch. Market sequence.
Fig. 41c. A man with a chicken. A still from And I am Fig. 41b. Pushkin's sketch to Demon in Love. The source for the again with you. Market sequence. juggler, taken from A.S Pushkin, Collection of Works in Ten Volumes, 1959-1962, (electronic publication at www.rvb.ru)
Fig. 41e. A woman at the market. A still from And I am Fig. 41d. Turk with a young slave. Pushkin's sketch in again with you. Market sequence. Ushakova's album – source for the previous still. Fig. 41f. Housekeeper of the Ushakovs. Pushkin's sketch in Fig. 41g. A man selling oranges. A still from And I am Ushakova's album – source for the previous still. Retrieved from again with you. Market sequence.
Fig. 41h. Pushkin's illustration of the Pope from the Tale of a Pope and his worker Balda, taken from A.S Pushkin, Collection Fig. 41i. A man at the market. A still from And I am of Works in Ten Volumes, 1959-1962, (electronic publication at again with you. Market sequence. www.rvb.ru)
Fig. 41j. Pavel Schilling von Cannstatt. Pushkin's sketch in Fig. 42a. Moscow. A still from And I am again with you. Ushakova's album – source for the previous still. Retrieved from Arrival sequence.
42b. Alexander Column. A still from And I am again with you. Fig. 42c. Lubok “Mice are burying a cat”. (1760) A still Arrival sequence. from And I am again with you. Market sequence. Fig. 43b. Returned pages of Bronze Horseman. A still Fig. 43a. Returned pages of Bronze Horseman. A still from from Autumn. Autumn.
Fig. 45a. A cat bearing strong resemblances to the Fig. 44. Pushkin accompanying himself on an imaginary piano. director. A still from And I am again with you. Market A still from Autumn. Poet and rabble scene. sequence.
Fig. 45b. Andrei Khrzhanovsky. Retrieved from <