Art of the Commune Politicsand Art in SovietJournals, 1917-20 Christina Lodder n October1917 the BolshevikParty overthrew the Provi- Socialist Revolutionaries' Znamia truda [The banner of sional Governmentof Russia, established in February, work],all of which concentratedon political and ideological and replaced it with a Councilof People'sCommissars questions. When aesthetic matters were broached, Gorkii committedto destroyingcapitalism and the bourgeoisieand emphasizedthe didactic role of art and promotedmore tradi- to establishingthe dictatorshipof the proletariat,as a prelude tional values, while artistic innovatorssuch as Vladimir to the ultimate creation of a fully socialist society. The Tatlin and KazimirMalevich were published in Anarkhiia, previouslyexiled radical political oppositionhad become the suggesting that therewere links betweenthe avant-gardeand ruling establishment.Issues of modernart and society were the short-livedanarchist movementafter the Revolution. 24 suddenlyno longer hypotheticaland "utopian."They had to One political body whose chief role was cultural was be confronted. Hence, amongst the organs of power in the Proletkult, or the independentproletarian cultural and edu- new governmentwas the Commissariatfor Enlightenment cational organizations(Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye (Narodnyikomissariat po prosvesheniiu-Narkompros),re- organizatsii),which were set up at the instigationof Alek- sponsible for educationand culture, with a separateDepart- sandr Bogdanovin November1917 in Petrograd,and rapidly ment of Fine Arts (Otdel IzobrazitelnykhIskusstv-IZO). spread throughoutRussia, attracting400,000 membersby The profoundpolitical and social changes posed real ques- 1920. Independentof the Party and the Government,Pro- tions for artists and their associates. Whatwas revolutionary letkult was specifically organizedto create "socialistforms of art? What relationshipshould exist between art and the new thought, feeling and daily life,"2 and a culture that would state, between art and the Bolshevikparty? Was avant-garde reflect the values and aspirationsof the proletariat.It pro- art inherently "bourgeois"in fact, or did it represent the motedworking-class education and the emergenceof a prole- emergenceof an alternativeand potentially"revolutionary" tarianintelligentsia, arrangingclasses foradults, organizing outlook?Could proletarianart itself be created only by au- schools, studios, clubs, and theaters, and publishing nu- thentic workers,or could it also be producedby artists who merousjournals such as Gorn[The furnace](Moscow, 1918- embraced a proletarianworld view? Debates on these com- 22), Proletarskaia kultura [Proletarianculture] (Moscow, plex issues foundexpression in diversejournals published in 1918-21), and Griadushchee[The future] (Petrograd,1918- the territoryof the formerTsarist empire. 21). None of these magazines was profuselyillustrated, al- The two most important publications promotingthe thoughtheir covers often carried images producedby mem- ideological position of the Communistparty and the govern- bers of the Proletkultor worksof art of an agitationalnature, ment were obviously the newspapersIzvestiia [News], pub- some of which possessed a slightly folk-artflavor. The jour- lished by the SupremeSoviet, and Pravda[Truth], issued by nals tendedto presenta rudimentaryand essentially unified the CentralCommittee of the Party. Both publicized impor- concept of illustrative art, based on Bogdanov'sMarxist tant governmentmeasures relating to artistic questions, such theory, according to which the cultural struggle was as as the decrees nationalizing private art collections and importantas the political and economicfight forthe achieve- Lenin'sPlan for MonumentalPropaganda, and a handful of ment of socialism: statements on art, particularly the importance of art for Artorganizes the living images of social experiencenot only in propagandaand agitation. Naturally, the amount of space the sphereof cognition, but also in the sphereof emotionsand devoted to artistic questions was severely limited, because aspirations. The consequenceof this is that it is the most the government'sprime concernfrom 1918 to early 1921 was powerfulweapon in the organizationof the collective'sforces in to consolidatethe Revolutionand successfully fight the Civil class society-of class power.3 War. After the decree of November9, 1917, banning the "counter-revolutionarypress,"'. only political publications As ValerianPolianskii emphasized in Griadushchee:"In the that recognized the governmentwere permitted. These in- days of Octoberwe defeatedcapitalist powerand took it into cluded newspapers such as Maksim Gorkii'sNovaia zhizn our ownhands; nowwe are going towardsa new, moremighty [New life], the anarchists' Anarkhiia [Anarchy], and the and majestic victory-towards the victory over bourgeois SPRING 1993 '61- Wom --maw culture."4Most Proletkulttheoreticians argued that the new aV;n culture could only be created by workersand thatthe new art would be realistic. Typically, Pavel Bezalko declared: "We proceed fromthe positionthat the workersthemselves create proletarianculture, and not the intelligentsiawho by chance, or notby chance, have arrivedat the ideas of the proletariat."5 Like the majorityof Proletkultcritics, Bezalko attackedthe so-called "Futurists," artists who had rejected academic realism and who had experimentedwith Cubism and ab- I'i~I'MIE A09W 25 straction. He condemnedthem for essentially "bour- AIN- being n- geois artists" who were unsuitable role models for the proletariat.6 Less doctrinaire were the journals published by the new local-governmentauthorities, all firmly allied with the Bolsheviks. Plamia [The flame] (1918-20), conceived as a "generallyaccessible scientific, literary, and artistic illus- trated journal,"' was issued by the Petrograd Soviet of FIG. K. Plamia no. 56 Workersand Red Army Deputies from 1918 to 1920. Its 1 Dydyshko,Revolution, [Flame], (June1919): 7. official nature was emphasized by the fact that Anatolii Lunacharskii,the Commissarfor Enlightenment, was its first paintings. As befitted a journal edited by the head of editor and an active contributorduring its initial year of Narkompros,a relativelylarge amountof space was assigned publication. Directed at a popularworking-class audience, to the discussion and illustration of specific government Plamia was primarilydidactic, and concentratedon dissem- artistic measures such as Lenin'sPlan for MonumentalPro- inating informationrather than on participatingdirectly in paganda. Between September 1918 and September 1919, the cultural debates of the time. It devotedfar morespace to Plamia published photographsof more than twenty monu- recent political history, importantsocialist figures, general ments, several featuredon the covers;for example, Grizelli's knowledge, and literaturethan to the visual arts. Neverthe- monumentto FrangoisBabeuf in Petrogradand ViktorSin- less, there were several illustrated articles celebrating im- aiskii's projectfor a Monumentto the GreatRussian Revolu- portantindividual artists such as Leonardoda Vinci, Fran- tion. The journal also illustrated new designs for postage cisco Goya, Auguste Rodin, and Vincentvan Goghas well as stamps and an official stamp for Sovnarkom,the Soviet of morepolitically directed pieces on subjects such as Gustave People'sCommissars, or the SupremeSoviet. In addition,the Courbet'sactivities during the 1871 Paris Communeand covers reproducedphotographs of prominentsocialists, both Oscar Wilde'sinvolvement with Socialism. In addition,there past and present. Lenin, forinstance, graced the coverof the was a long series of articles written by Lev Pumpianskii first issue. Otherwise,Plamia was illustratedby contempo- dealing with art-historicalproblems-for example, the rela- raryartists such as Ivan Puni and NatanAltman, or featured tionship between primitive painting and primitivism, the an item of propagandasuch as a posteror monument(fig. 1). natureof agitationalart, and howthe workingclass had been Overall, the journalpresented an artistic image that was not depicted in the visual arts before the Revolution.Individual particularlypartisan. ReflectingLunacharskii's own tolerant issues were often devoted to particularthemes, such as the attitudes, it was sympatheticto avant-gardeexperimentation anniversary of the Revolution or May Day, when articles as well as to moretraditional formal approaches. At the same about the celebrations were accompanied by documentary time, it clearly insisted, in accordancewith Partydirectives, photographsas well as reproductionsof various items of that "theproletariat must be equippedwith a generalhuman- agitationalart including decorations, posters, and relevant ist culture."8 ARTJOURNAL ::::r:ii-:;i~:~'::::::::::::::L:::::ii:::_::~i::::i::::::::::4W:::::i :l:iil :::i:_ ::::::::-?-~:i~--i~~-?~ii-li~~~i~i.ci-~:i::::::':::::'-::::::;::::: :::d::::m ninm,::21:::m 1,7/ A:a ~ il ::::::,r'4/7 ::I::::y <#' ~ i~ii::::: ii:i?is- 26 FIG. 2 Kazimir Malevich,Suprematist Painting,1916, reproducedin Irobrazitelnoe iskusstvo[Fine art], no. 1 (1919):29. The equivalent of Plamia in Moscowwas Tvorchestvo panied by a catholic selectionof illustrationsof worksby such [Creation], "a journal of literature, art, science and life,"'9 artists as Pieter Bruegel, Van Gogh, EdouardManet, Jules published by the MoscowSoviet of Workersand Red Army Bastien-Lepage, Jean-FrangoisMillet, AndersZorn, Kaithe Deputies from 1919 to 1922. Directed at a similar audience, Kollwitz,