Page 35 - Studio International - April 1971

The development Convict 1870
Ilya Repin
of the theory of 2 Ilya Repin
Detail from Zaporoshtyi Tribesmen Writing a Letter
to the Turkish Sultan 1878-1891
Socialist Oil on canvas

Realism in

Russia,

1917 to 1932

Andrew Higgens

Writing in 1933 and surveying an exhibition of
`Fifteen Years of Art in the USSR', Bela Utz
describes the 'four big steps of the Soviets in
the creation of a classless society'.1 These are
`War Communism, NEP, Reconstruction and
Socialist Construction'.2 He suggests that 'The
Exhibition also shows the progressive changes
in the attitudes of most of the best artists to
Soviet art'3, by which he means the style of
Socialist Realism. Admitting 'the backwardness
of the art of painting as compared to the
advances of socialist construction'4 he says 'one
must take into account the forces available for
building up a socialist culture'.5 In a brief
description of the period he neatly summarizes
official attitudes.
The 'Futurist-Cubists', who gained control
of art during the disorganized period of War
Communism, he sees as working in a
pre-revolutionary tradition. They were
`imbued with a purely bourgeois idealism's
creating 'inane things of the sort that posed for
"pure" art and were occupied with the purely
technical problems of colour, tone, line, space,
rhythm, mass, motion, etc....'7 At the same
time 'The Realists, Naturalists, Impressionists,
of this period stood aloof from the daily struggle Association of Revolutionary Artists (AHRR) Socialist construction in artistic rendering:
of the proletariat. They continued their work on who succeeded 'in turning the majority of shock brigades, collective farms, factories,
the problems of bourgeois art and painted artists to a proletarian subject-matter'.11 production centres, new structures, struggles
churches, landscapes, portraits, etc....'8 He By the 193os 'both AHRR and October stood against the class enemy, civil war themes
cites, among others, as being part of this group, firmly on the basis of the class struggle although The artists he singles out in this style are
Krilov and Konchalovsky, but praises the work differing somewhat on the value set by it'll, and Gerassimov, Brodsky, Juon, Petrov-Vodkin,
of Brodsky and, particularly, Kustodiev's it was this generation of artists which turned Deineka, Riaschkin, Yakovlev and others. He
Mayday and Bolshevik as 'symbolizing the AHRR, which stood for 'proletarian content in concludes 'the complete lack of "Party art" in
Party as the leader and central force of the international form, into AHR, which stood for 1917 has been overcome and in 1933 we have a
revolution'.9 He goes on to describe the period proletarian content in national form'.13 (This complete change in that all artists have become
of NEP and Reconstruction as a struggle refers to the reorganization of theoretically Soviet artists'.15
between LEF— 'the revolutionary middle-class independent artistic groups into party-created A year later, A. Lunacharski, who during
artists ... among them adherents of Trotsky and and party-controlled bodies in 1932.) war communism had supported the Futurists
Bogdanov, who considered the class struggle `Proletarian content in national form' is the and Constructivists, and who in 1924 had still
secondary to technical and psychological basis of Socialist Realism, whose themes he stressed the independence of the laws of art,
problems'10—and the party-orientated Russian goes on to describe as 'rich material on stated that 'To point out the direction in which