Imagining the Unimaginable: World War, Modern Art, and the Politics of Public Culture in Russia, 1914-1917

2. In the Storm: Reshaping the Public and the Art World, 1914–1915

2. In the Storm Reshaping the Public and the Art World, 1914–1915 WorldWarIstruckImperialRussialikeasuddenanddeadlynaturaldisaster . Violent images of mass destruction, the war as deluge, fire, or storm, flooded the public culture, and within weeks the war had destroyed human life and property on an unprecedented scale. How Russians would meetthechallengeofthishuman-createdcalamitywasacrucialquestion from the very start. “Our minds and hearts,” observed one commentator in August 1914, “are naturally riveted to the place where great military operations take place and our soldiers’ blood flows. We live and breathe in war, for our future lies in its outcome.”1 Public figures knew the stakes were high, and they knew the Great War was something they had never imagined. Many understood that victory would require the cooperation and participation of the entire population. “This war is unprecedented, unique in world history,” wrote the symbolist poet and newspaper commentatorDmitriiMerezhkovskiiaboutwarfare ’snewimportanceinpublic life. “All previous wars seem private, conditional, and relative in comparison , as if they weren’t wars. This is the first war.”2 Historians have cast doubt upon the idea, once common, that a total mobilizationoftheeconomy,society,andculturetookplaceacrossEurope duringWorldWarI.3 Theassertionsofnationalunitythatcalmedprewar political strife and social tensions, the Burgfrieden in Germany and union sacrée in France, today appear to be short lived or illusionary, while the intense mobilization of the industrial economy and sudden bureaucrati- zation of government seem less real than historians once believed. These phenomena appeared to mark a sudden break with nineteenth-century politics, society, and culture, but specialists now suggest that such developments had roots in prewar trends or were not as significant as previously thought.4 Many question the effectiveness of propaganda and the depth of the public patriotism that contemporaries and historians once tookforgranted.5 ThisnewhistoriographyhasitsparallelsinRussianhistory .WesternandémigréhistoriansusedtoconsidertheFirstWorldWar thecrucialeventthatwreckedtheeconomy,destroyedsocialandpolitical progress, and brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917.6 Now most agree thatImperialRussiawasdoomedtosocialdisintegrationandviolentrevolution long before 1914.7 This demotion of the war’s place in European and Russian history, if perhaps accurate in a macroscopic sense, still obscures the ways the war could be an important agent for change. What matters, after all, is not whether total mobilization was achieved but how people’s engagement with the war was expressed in the imagination (through collective representation and belief systems) and in institutions (through the state and civil society).8 Human beings plan, fight, and end wars, but war itself, especiallythelarge -scalewarfareofthetwentiethcentury,doeshaveakind of impersonal agency. Like a natural disaster, Arthur Marwick explains, totalwarwasa“cataclysmicpsychologicalexperience.”Itinspired“aspirit of renewal and rebuilding,” projected “people into new situations, and, sometimes,newopportunities,”andprovidedanopeningforsubordinate groups to participate in the war effort, which enhanced their “bargaining position within society.”9 The First World War created havoc in ordinary lives and put existing institutions under great stress. It sent ripples through society that altered millions of lives, even those whom it did not touch directly, much as a tree blown down across a road can divert thousands of individual journeys. 52 | In the Storm MassmobilizationwasapervasivepartoflifeinImperialRussiathroughoutWorldWarI ,andthechangesitbroughttopublicinstitutionsandculture could be profound. It formed a new kind of war culture, defined by StéphaneAudoin-Rouzeauas“theaggregateofrepresentations,attitudes, practices, and literary and artistic productions which framed the investment of European populations in the war.”10 This culture of war was distinguishednotonlybyitscontent (propagandaandwarart)butalsobyits institutionalform(howitfocusedpublicactiononthewarandwarneeds). The wartime reconstruction of institutions and re-imagination of public rolescanbeclearlyseenintheRussianartworld,wheretherequirements of mobilization brought artists with various motivations, expectations, and interests into common cause and aligned their public action, professional behavior, and art. New ways to engage the art world and civil societyprovidedartistswithnewprofessionalandpersonalopportunitiesas the old rhythms of artistic practice and representation shifted. The participationofRussianartistsinwarmobilizationwasthereforenotprimar ily a matter of individual patriotism; it was vital to their development as professionals in the public sphere, especially as the customs and habits of Russia’s group-based art system destabilized. After 1914 civil society’s self-mobilization not only expanded, its public culture changed, and the art world changed with it. The Cold Spring: War and the Art World, 1871–1914 Before1914theRussianartworldwasscarcelytouchedbythecolonialcon- flictssurroundingthecountry,andtheisolationofRussianartistsandtheir artfromgreatinternationaleventsseemedcomplete.Warpaintinghadan important position in the official public of the state and high aristocracy servedbytheAcademyofArts,andImperialRussiawasaEuropeanGreat Power, expansionary imperialist state, and ambitious military competitorontheworldstage .Butwarwasnotprizedintheintelligentsiaculture or the art public, and Vasilii Vereshchagin was the only prominent RusReshaping the Public and the Art World | 53 sian painter in the nineteenth century who came close to reaching a wide audienceforwarart.ThemainforumforRussia’svisualcultureofwarwas nottheartworldbutthemassmedia,especiallythepopularprints(lubki), posters,pamphlets,andillustratedjournalsthatfloodedthebookmarket with wartime images during each new conflict. War and art...