Overview of Art and Propaganda under Lenin

• Most Russians saw their first films on agit prop trains
• Experimentation was encouraged and it was a time of creativity
• Futurists - they believed in art for a practical purpose
• Equality reflected in art - artists worked in teams and orchestras did away with conductors, taking notes on how the music was arranged
• Proletkult idea of Alexander Bogdanov
• By 1920 400,000 members
• Bogdanov believed proletkult would move people towards communism
• Lenin shut down it's regional and central offices in 1921 and 1922 as it had been developing as an independent organisation
• Flowering of creativity from before revolution to 1920s
• More than 1000 ROSTA posters were created over a two year period
• Moscow Soviet was draped with the huge banner reading 'the proletariat has nothing to lose but it's chains'
• Even more important than these in Lenin's view were statues
• he provided a list of 66 names and personally unveiled a joint statue of Marx and Engels on the first anniversary of the revolution
• May day and anniversary of the October revolution were great rituals
• Lenin encouraged revolutionary celebrations but he wanted them to be controlled rather than spontaneous

Reenactment of the storming of the winter palace in November 1920

• Involved 10,000 people and included the winter palace
• It had fireworks and music
• More dramatic and damaging to the building than the actual events

Lenin's art and culture

Proletkult

• Aim was to define a unique proletarian culture that would inform and inspire revolutionary Russian Society
• This was to be a collective culture where the 'I' of bourgeois culture would give way to 'we'
• By 1920 there were around 84,000 members working in over 300 studios
• It was an independent organisation - free of communist control
• Flourished from 1917-1920 which was an achievement in the context of the civil war
• Lenin was suspicious of the organisation
• Lenin had it's regional and central offices shut down during 1921 and 1922
• The national congress of proletkult voted and voluntarily merged with the commissariat of education
• Dissenting artists who wanted to stay independent were criticised in the Soviet press

Painting and Sculpture

• Artists associated with the avant-garde collaborated with the government to make posters, sculptures and paintings to encourage support for the regime
• El Litsizky, a graphic designer and photographer created the poster 'beat the whites with the red wedge' in 1918 one of the most famous experimental posters of the civil war
• The poster also inspired sculpture in which a red wedge splits a block of white stone. The sculpture was unveiled in Moscow in October 1918 to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution
• 'Beat the whites with the red wedge' was one of over 100 agitprop posters produced during the civil war
• The Russian Telegraph agency (ROSTA) worked with artists to produce posters that were displayed in shop windows or on the side of agit prop trains

Revolutionary cinema

• Lenin believed that cinema was the most important art form of the 20th century and argued that it should be used to inspire support for the government

Dziga Vertov

• He rejected the Hollywood style, including the use of scripts, sets and actors
• He preferred to make 'cinema of fact'
• He used mirror, sped up film, ran film backwards and used montages to achieve experimental effects
• His most famous film 'A man with movie camera' (1929) was filmed in some of the Soviet Unions biggest cities and tells the story of a day in the life of a soviet city
• The Soviet newspaper Pravda described them as 'insane', 'puzzling' and 'laughable'

Art under the NEP

• From 1918 to late 1920 Lenin was preoccupied with winning the war so there was relatively loose control of arts
• During this period Proletkult and Avant-varde artists flourished
• As the civil war came to an end Lenin started to enforce greater control of artistic expression
• Artists were forced to change their style and artistic institutions were attacked and in some cases closed
• E.g. Malevich sent his most radical paintings to Germany in 1927 and adopted a more conventional style at the end of his life
• The Petrograd institute of Artistic culture was forced to close in 1926 following a campaign against avant grade art in Pravda

Foreign Fashions

• From the mid-1920s the government was critical of the influence of American fashion and music on young people
• Fashion from the USA, particularly clothes associated with the flapper style and jazz were extremely popular with young people in the soviet cities
• Party leaders claimed that the new fashion and the rhythmic new music encouraged sexual promiscuity and drunkenness
• They were also concerned that young people would rather dance than attend lectures on revolutionary politics
• From the mid-1920s Communist party bosses were using OGPU to break up parties where jazz was played

Collective farms

• Larger farms merging together smaller peasant holders
• Pool labour and resources
• Improve efficiency
• Free up labour for industry
• Collect grain for workers and export and sellStalin makes up Marxism because wasn't specific
• Create "socialist agrotowns"

3 types

Toz (Least common)

• Peasants own land
• Share machinery
• Coop in harvesting

Sovkhov (Stalin preferred)

• Owned by state
• Peasants paid a regular wage

Kolkhoz

• Land joint owned
• Run by elected committee
• Land, tools, crops and livestock shared
• Peasants also had own plot of land for vegetables and animals if wanted to

Terror

• 25,000ers enforce collectivisation - return to Moscow with news of collapsing country side
• Took Kulaks' tools, machinery and animals
• Forced peasants to sign letters saying they wanted collectivisation
• Kulaks shot, sent to gulags or deported (approx. 10 million)

Propaganda

• Turn peasants against kulaks
• "dizzy with success"

1930s - Stalin realised workers need incentive

1932 - allowed peasants to sell in market

1934 - increased prices for state-procured wheat and rye

1940 - markets 19% of retail trade turnover - embarrassing for Party

The Show Trials - how to remember

1936 - Trial of the 16

• Targeted the left
• Kamenev and Zinoviev

1937 - Trial of the 17

• Trotskyites and wreckers

1938 - Trial of the 21

• Targeted the right
• Bukharin

Stalin's Government

How did the Politburo change?

1924

• Met weekly

1930

• Only surviving member of the group was Stalin
• Everyone else knew not to challenge
• Met only nine times a year

1936 Constitution

• Appearance of democracy
• Everyone can vote (kulaks and patients because they thought the classes no longer exists)
• Guaranteed jobs (compared to great depression everywhere else)
• Freedom of the press (in theory)

But...

• Can only vote for chosen candidates
• No need for political parties as there was no need