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Subversion in the Soviet Animaton of the Brezhnev Period: an Aesopian Reading of Andrei Khrzhanovsky’S Pushkiniana

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Subversion in the Soviet Animaton of the Brezhnev Period: an Aesopian Reading of Andrei Khrzhanovsky’S Pushkiniana 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,
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