Friday, 14 April 2017

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

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