LE3 .A278 2010

2010

Duke, David

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

History

History & Classics

The 1920s were a remarkable decade for the USSR. After emerging from the October Revolution and the horrors of the Civil War, the tasks of socialist construction lay ahead. The artistic avant- garde produced art which was meant to inspire the masses and guide them towards the fulfillment of socialism. Realizing the didactic power of the artistic avant- garde, the Party began courting various groups of artists and commissioned them to produce “ agitational art”- posters, plays, and easel art containing revolutionary messages. The artists saw themselves as the ultimate Marxists, spare in their art and implacable in their didactic leadership of the masses. Beginning in 1923, a shift in avant- garde thought occurred: agitational art remained important, but it was carried in new directions in order to change the material basis of life inside the young USSR. By entering the field of production, the Constructivist avant- garde produced items for mass distribution with the intent of changing the proletariat’s attitude toward material goods. After Lenin’s death and the ascendancy of Stalin, the role of the artist gradually changed: the artist- constructor of the 1920s was replaced by the artist- advertiser. Easel art and installation art were replaced by the photomontage. This return to realism was cemented into official policy by 1932: the non- objective art of the 1920s was no longer acceptable to the Party. Henceforth the Soviet artistic community could only represent the idealized vision of Stalinist progress, and could only do so via the sterile genre of socialist realism.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:691