Komiks: Comic Art in Russia

2. Comics during the Soviet Era

31 2 comics during the Soviet Era Revolution The Bolsheviks, led initially by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, sought a radical break with the traditions of the past as well as with the capitalist West, and launched a bold refashioning of what they saw as backward Russian society into a modern industrialized state grounded on Marxist principles.1 As a result , the seventy-year Soviet domination of Russia inaugurated by the Communist revolution of November 7, 1917 (new style), proved on the whole disruptive to the development of comics as an art form, consigning it to the margins of culture. Contrary to popular perceptions of comics (or their absence ) under communism, however, we should view this as the beginning, not the end, of the story. Almost from the moment they wrested the country from the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky, the Soviets set off a wide-ranging propaganda war aimed at winning over the populace to the new order and discrediting the old regime (parts of which were still fighting the Reds in a civil war). As the historian Victoria Bonnell noted, for the Bolsheviks the issue was “not only the seizure of power but the seizure of meaning” (1). The new state embarked on a mammoth campaign to destroy the old czarist emblems of the Romanov Dynasty (toppling statues, destroying churches, assassinating the former czar himself along with his family) and erecting its own symbols (the hammer and sickle, the heroic proletariat, the emancipated woman ).2 This campaign encompassed all available means, from the old (posters, public speeches, gazettes) to the new (cinema, radio, street reenactments of history). Censorship was for the most part lifted, and artists of various persuasions were encouraged to pursue their most radical visions. In so doing, the Soviets in the first decade of the revolution unleashed an unparalleled 32 Historical Background era of social and artistic experimentation. As Richard Stites notes: “A whole array of new symbols and rituals were introduced and infused with anti-capitalism, the collective spirit, atheism, and machine worship. Bolshevik artists and propagandists went to the people with a culture for the people and in doing so they tried to combine the new with the old, self-consciously infusing circus, fairbooth, lubok, folk ditties, songs and dances with revolutionary content” (1992: 39). Few images better captured this spirit than Dmitry Moor’s iconic 1920 poster Have You Volunteered? which depicts a Soviet army soldier in blazing red, rifle in hand, pointing at the viewer with a steely gaze, challenging him to join up and fight the Whites. Behind him stands a factory (also burning red), its smokestacks belching black—emblem of the new state’s industrial might. Moor’s poster repackages the old tropes of bravery, patriotism, and masculinity with the promise of a brave, new, electrified world.3 In short, visual culture formed a central front in the war of ideas. The turbulent condition of the arts in Russia after 1917, the emergence of proletarian culture as seen in such leftist groups as the Proletcult,4 and the continuation of projects from the prerevolutionary Silver Age all saw themselves reflected in the diversity of the comics and proto-comics language which survived into this time of great innovation. In this process, the dynamic visual strategies of the lubok, both in its traditional form and as reimagined by the Futurists, held strong appeal for its efficacy as a mass medium. But, as noted, the lubok also represented a vestige of the old world the Soviets increasingly sought to expunge. One arts movement from that era of particular interest, due to its focus on the interaction of word and image, is the Constructivists. This loose association of artists and theorists (chief among them Vladimir Tatlin and the husband/wife team of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova) valorized the new values of utility, functionality, and the machine. As “artist-engineers,” they emphasized industrial materials (metal and glass), architectural forms, and pragmatic objects, all intended to bring art out of the museums and into everyday life.5 Yet by the end of the first Soviet decade, with Lenin dead, the country depleted , and the New Economic Policy (NEP)6 undermining (as some saw it) the hardcore principles of War Communism, the state began clamping down on free expression, particularly on the avant-garde—which it now accused of bourgeois obtuseness and “formalism.” Starting in earnest in the 1930s, with Joseph Stalin having eliminated his rivals, consolidated power, cancelled NEP, and launched the first Five Year...