Humanizing Utopia: Paradoxes of Soviet Folk Art

The Soviet call for art that embodied the aspirations of international communism inspired new styles and forms of art in the 1920s and 1930s. Some forms managed to convey revolutionary ideals while maintaining broad popular appeal and high professional standards. Soviet propaganda porcelain and textile design kept their revolutionary-era momentum well into the next decade. In large-scale public art, however — monumental sculpture and painting; architecture and designs for urban festivals; theater, music, and cinema — radical stylistic experimentation failed to produce the anticipated revolution in culture.

Initially optimistic about the positive role of art and tolerant of diverse styles when he laid the foundation for the art section of Narkompros, Anatolii Vasil'evich Lunacharskii declared that not only could the arts be the voice of the revolution, but "the more artistic such propagation [of revolutionary ideas], the more powerful its effect." ¹ Assessment of what was artistic and powerful was extremely complex however, and based on political rather than artistic concerns. Lunacharskii later wrote that, much as he admired the "dynamism" of the "leftist" artists, he realized that the radical styles were unacceptable to the proletariat and the peasantry. ² The sweeping changes and futuristic visions that had called so many vanguard artists to the service of revolutionary culture would have been difficult for ordinary people to accept regardless of the form of presentation.

The very concept of a new utopia, so compelling in the 1920s, was firmly rejected as alien in the 1930s. In his speech at the 1934 All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Andrei Zhdanov specifically contrasted "romantic" imagery of "an unreal world ... a world of utopias" and socialist realism's combination of "sober practical work with supreme heroism and grand prospects." He drove home this point in his peroration: "Soviet literature [and art] must be able to show our heroes, must be able to catch a glimpse of our tomorrow. This will not be a utopia, because our tomorrow is being prepared today by our systematic and conscious work." ³ Even 60 years later, when the exhibition Great Utopia, an encyclopedic survey of nearly 700 pieces of Russian and Soviet avant-garde art, opened at the Tretiakov Gallery, Russian viewers expressed dissatisfaction with the title as inherently negative and divorced from real life and experience. ⁴

The failure of the avant-garde to translate utopian dreams into forms and images that would reach ordinary people was to be remedied by the true "people's art," socialist realism. The consequent suppression of all other styles resulted in a monolithic culture of overblown propaganda, according to the simple formulation accepted in the West until the past few decades. Scholarly reassessments of Soviet socialist realism have concentrated mainly on the figurative forms in visual arts and corresponding narrative forms in literature and performing arts. ⁵ But attention to applied arts and popular culture, and to their formal properties, adds important additional elements to our sense of Soviet culture. ⁶ The decorative and applied arts, while sharing some functions, motifs, and styles of the major arts, were more adaptable to specific and temporary situations. Revolutionary festivals and other types of street art — as hybrid forms with elements of both religious ceremonies and pre-revolutionary workers' demonstrations — filled a distinct niche closer to popular art than to high art. ⁷ Cohorts of artists, writers, and theater troupes traveled the countryside, charged with the task of disseminating ideals of brotherhood, military preparedness, and Soviet citizenship to an undereducated and conservative peasantry. The designs on agit-prop trains, ranging from bold zig-zags and abstract shapes to flowers and birds based on embroidery patterns, and scenes of harvesting and factory work, shows that artists were trying out various ways to attract attention. ⁸ To get across the idea that peasants should be ready to defend the revolution, at least one painting team used a clever adaptation of the familiar icon of St...