Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

The Communists were utopians: they believed they could and should transform people’s consciousness. Armed with the latest technology and with the only correct theory of social evolution, the ‘new Soviet man’ would be able to transform nature and build a more humane society. ‘The average human type’, Trotsky declared, ‘will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx. And beyond this ridge new peaks will rise.’

How this was to be done was much debated during the 1920s. Proletkult, Constructivists, Futurists, and others with attractive Russian acronyms advertised their own nostrums for ‘breaking down the barrier between art and life’ – something they all agreed should be done. Mostly they were experimental and modernist, as seemed to befit a revolutionary culture.

By the 1930s, however, once the Soviet state was firmly established, the party aspired to dominate culture, as it did every other aspect of life. It no longer wanted innovative or ‘revolutionary’ artists: on the contrary, it favoured art forms which reflected the greatness and stability of the state, that is, a conservative, classical, easily appreciated style. In architecture, the pure straight lines and right angles of the international avant-garde gave way to voluptuous neo-Baroque motifs: sculpted banners, statues, and decorative friezes depicting the battles of the class struggle and the triumph of the workers. In the visual arts, abstraction and stylization were supplanted by simple genre scenes of everyday life or heroic tableaux of party leaders receiving the acclaim of an adoring public. In literature, experimentation and obscurity yielded to a sober, easily understood traditional realism, increasingly tending towards the optimistic and idyllic in its portrayal of Soviet life. In all the arts, this saccharine neo-conservatism was dignified with the title ‘socialist realism’.

It was imposed through the nomenklatura-dominated organization of the arts. All professional cultural workers were enrolled in party-supervised ‘creative unions’, whose function was to take care of their material needs and ensure their access to the outlets they needed to bring their work to the public. The Writers’ Union, for example, maintained a network of apartment blocks, holiday homes, and health resorts for writers’ use; it also ran literary journals and publishing houses, and it negotiated contracts for writers. The journal editors played the key role in ensuring that what was published conformed to the ideology and taste of the party leaders. They consulted regularly with Writers’ Union secretaries, with officials of the Central Committee cultural department, and with the state censorship, often negotiating minute and subtle changes to texts to render them acceptable.

This situation was ideal for technically competent, conformist writers. But for mavericks and the highly talented, it posed great difficulties. They might want to fit into the new society, but they found it difficult to curb their own personal creative traits, which disconcerted the second-rate writers whose job it was to supervise them. Boris Pasternak devoted himself to translation; Anna Akhmatova wrote ‘for the desk drawer’; Isaak Babel and Osip Mandelstam were arrested and died in labour camps.

12. A contrast in architectural styles: (a) the constructivist Kharkov Palace of Industry

(b) the neo-Baroque Kievskaia Metro station

Family policy likewise reverted to older values. Initially, the party had aimed to undermine the family, which in their view perpetuated inequalities and old-fashioned outlooks. They were especially anxious to free women from the duties of cooking, cleaning, and child care. In the 1920s, inheritance rights were curtailed, women’s property rights were made equal to men’s, de facto unions were considered as equal to registered marriages, abortion was available on demand, and a spouse could obtain a divorce by simply informing his or her partner.

It was soon discovered, though, that the state could not replace families in looking after children, old people, the sick, and disabled. Hundreds of thousands of orphans appeared on the street, begging and sometimes attacking passers-by or shops. The birth rate fell, which in the long term threatened both industrial development and the armed forces. Family legislation was not the sole cause of these problems, but nevertheless, Communists decided that it was important to have stable families to build socialism. Abortion was again virtually outlawed, and divorce was made much more difficult. Inheritance rights were restored, but only to the offspring of registered marriages.