For the soviet system, all art had to be political, “revolutionary” and “non-individualistic” — in effect bland, soulless, replicas of each other
What do we make of the art project that was the Soviet UnionIJ As the story goes, this was an artistic and cultural paradise. The reality was very different. Far from being the enabler of the unique genius of Russia, it aborted what Russia could have been dumbing it down to a society that celebrated the institution of the broken record.
Despite the horrors of the Russian civil war that followed the 1917 revolution, the decade till 1927 witnessed some of the most stunningly creative turns of art and architecture. The modern constructivist school that went on to influence Bauhaus had already started well before the revolution, but the fusing of a new ethos led to magnificent new modern building and art that would’ve been sneered on in the Ancien Régime, with it beautiful glass corners and facades that now influence every major modern commercial building. It made sense to co-opt and promote a movement as bringing in fresh ideas, and make it the mascot of the revolution. The issue was that these gems like the Zuev workers club and Melnikov house were too reminiscent of capitalism. After all, if bland boxes were good enough for the politburo, why should Melnikov get to build his own quirky cottage that attracts attention and reeks of class privilegeIJ By 1933 all of this waywardness was well and truly over with Stalin forcing his grotesque neo-classicism down the peoples (and architects) throat, woe betide anyone that had a dissenting opinion — it was after all oh so “scientifically” approved by a committee of party ideologues. And so we move from these quirky delights to the not entirely unpleasant Vysotki, Melnikov by this time having been condemned for the crime of “formalism”. To be fair grotesque monumental art isn’t a soviet monopoly. The monumental area of Washington DC for example is a Greco-roman version of Pyongyang, The Capitol building for example vying in hideousness with the very worst of North Korean monuments. The difference was in the USA Frank lloyd Wright and William Van Allen could go elsewhere and build their exquisite Fallingwater and Chrysler buildings.
The musical scene was no different. All three Soviet giants of the time: Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Khachaturian (Stravinsky and Rachmaninov having fled) shone at a time when Europe (save Italy) were facing a glut of truly great music. Arguably, Copeland, Britten, Bartok and Schoenberg hardly enjoy the level of frequency in the popular repertoire the way these 3 soviet masters did. All of them were also products of Imperial Russia, and yet were co-opted as triumphs of the Soviet system. Shostakovich’s little charmer, the Tahiti Trot improvisation of “tea for two” still retains that unique ability to delight. What greater representation of a modern Russia than his waltz from jazz Suite No 2, a piece that fuses the distinctly Slavic music of the Russian musical renaissance with bashful jazz orchestration and ends up being a triumph of both genres. Khachaturian’s Gayaneh was altogether pioneering, bringing in the best of Rimski-Korsakov’s orientalism with fresh new music. Prokofiev, more prone to syncopation than his contemporaries, was for his own safety reduced to writing scores for movies. While the score for Eisenstein’s Nevsky remains the most played, the real gem here is lieutenant Kije, revolving around the story of a completely fictional officer invented as a scapegoat by the retainers of Tsar Paul. This was a brave move, the irony of which was completely lost on the hooligans that ran the propaganda committee, since everything that it portrayed happening in the tsarist period was just as if not more applicable to the USSR. Far from giving these giants of 20th century music the artistic freedom they deserved, chose to terrorise them and banish them through “denunciations” largely masterminded by cretins like Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s heir apparent who had pretensions of high culture. For the soviet system, all art had to be political, “revolutionary” and “non-individualistic” — in effect bland, soulless, replicas of each other.
This irresistible urge to homogenise everything, brutally if necessary, took its toll across all walks of life in the USSR. Gorky was kept under house arrest, Bulgakov and Pasternak lived in terror & Isaac Babel was executed. In film geniuses like Eisenstein were spared execution only because other scapegoats were found. The extraordinary Zen like sophistication of Russian and Siberian peasant food was converted into standard soviet fare, that had all the simplicity and sophistication of a bullock cart. For Europhiles, the conversion of centres of learning and culture like Bokhara and Samarkand into bland Europeanesque cities and the full scale wipe out of their culture was highly scientific — moving it from the savagery of steppe life, to fully appreciating the abstraction of the soviet idea into a post religion society; something the Russian empire never felt the need to do. In a sense this is undeniably true, but equally the cultural loss it represents is no less devastating than the whole scale Spanish wipeout of meso-american culture.
The effects of this can be seen to this very day. Almost all the achievements of the Soviet Union were fostered during the dying days of Tsarist Russia, during a window when the Russian people were able to decide much for themselves. Tellingly the artists and architects and cinema of the Soviet Union influenced no one after the 1950s content at regurgitations of past glory by excellent automatons churned off a culture production line. This of course explains why communist ranks in India are usually full of third rate artists, fourth rate litterateurs and fifth rate composers that make flatulence sound melodious by comparison, because the “idea of the USSR” was the celebration of mediocrity through conformity. And that was the greatest tragedy of the October revolution — it didn’t make Russian great again, it nipped Russian greatness in the bud. It held back the boundless talent and innovation of the Russian people and that sadly is the story of Russia — greatness in spite and not because of its ulers.
(The writer is the Senior Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies)