As stated in the Russian history, the avant garde artistic era reinvented architecture with the aim of providing the Russian Revolution a form that was livable. Designers of the avant garde did not place a lot of focus on history and tradition. Instead, it abstracted the elements of tradition and history to build basics such as balance, mass and usage space in egalitarian buildings that were socially progressive like workers’ clubs, housing, and factories. In the 1930s however, avant garde was denounced by socialist realists claiming it constituted antirealism and aspects of the decadent bourgeois type of formalism. The avant garde was banished from focused studies and its works of art unconstructed. Other forms of artistic expression came to existence and buried the avant garde. However, it remains one of the most significant eras of art in the Russian art and history as well. The glasnost, being one of the main successors of the avant garde took much credit for being accorded the role of restoring realism in the Russian art era. The aim of the paper is to relate the experiences under the Soviet Union rule during and after the World War II to the various experiences that are narrated in various films during the war like Song of Russia and The North Star and post-World War II films like Ballad of a Soldier.
Song of Russia
A 1944 American film of War, Song of Russia was directed by Gregory Ratoff, made and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Starring Robert Taylor, Robert Benchley, and Susan Peters, the film narrates the experience of an American Conductor (Meredith) who travels to the Soviet Union with his manager (Higgins), just before the Germans invade the nation. Meredith falls in love with Nadya, a Soviet pianist while they journey across the nation in a 40-city travel. Their moments of enjoyment are ruined by the invasion of Germany. The film was produced during the World War II and shows the experiences of Russian citizens in the hands of the Germans. The film uses the blissful experience of Meredith and Nadya before the invasion of the Germans to show the peaceful life that people led in the Soviet Union. It shows how the interference of the foreign forces destroys the peace of the nation.
In the case of the Soviet art, the uses Meredith and Nadya to symbolize the restfulness of the artistic forms in the society. The Germans, on the other hand, symbolize the foreign forces that may possibly disturb the rest of the artistic forms in the union. The foreign forces may include the interference by the national authorities by banning the use of a given type of work of art. Establishing restrictions on the works of art usually leads to a cultural as well as a historical unrest. Interference from outside cultures or forms of art as well leads to an unsettlement of the existing artistic forms existing in the union. The bliss experienced by the conductor and pianist show the peace that was enjoyed by Russia without the invasion of the Germans. Further, it portrays the positive results of the alliance between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The North Star
Also known as Armored Attack, the North Star is a war film produced in 1943 by Samuel Godwin Productions. It was distributed by the RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Lillian Hellman. Starring Anne Baxter, Walter Brennan, Walter Huston and Erich von Stroheim, the film narrates the Ukrainian Village resistance against German invaders using guerilla tactics. The film shows Ukrainian villagers living peacefully in the June of 1941. Some friends choose to go to Kiev for holiday. However, they find themselves being attacked by a German plane as a part of the Soviet Union Nazi invasion. Their villages are occupied by Nazis and people flee to the hills to make partisan militias. A brutal German Doctor is shown using children for blood transfusing wounded German soldiers, which kills some children. The Russians then attacked the village and rescue the children and a girl has a vision of a future where the world is free for all men.
Although the film consists of the resistance of the Ukrainian villages, it was a film on the pro-soviet propaganda at the peak of the war. The life that he Ukrainian villagers are living before the Germans attacks simply portrayed a peaceful nation that would provide people the freedom to live as they wished. On the event of the invasion of the German soldiers, all the peace is disrupted and the group of friends on holiday can no longer enjoy their tour. The retreat of the villagers shows the resistance of the Soviet Union to fall due to the attack of the Germans. When the villagers raid the village to save the children, they show just how the Soviet Union would be ready to defend its citizens in cases of attacks.
Ballad of a Soldier
Produced in 1959, Ballad of a Soldier was directed by Grigori Chukhrai. The film stars Zhanna Prokhorenko and Vladimir Ivashov. Although it was set during the time of war, the film is not precisely a film of war. The main agenda of the film lies in the context of the war turmoil, different types of love such as a married couple’s committed love, a child’s love from the mother and a young couple’s romantic love. The film rotates around the journey of a soldier of the Red Army on his journey home after being given a leave. He meets various civilians on his way and falls in love.
Symbolism in the film consists of the different people that are affected by the war and the attacks. The soldier is about to be rewarded for taking out the two German tanks that were about to attack the people of his nations. From the film, it is clear that the soldier managed to destroy the tanks out of his will to survive and not just his being brave. The soldier’s self-preservation ultimately led to an act of braveness. Therefore the film symbolizes the will of the Soviet nation to overcome the consequences of the war and rebuild itself out of self-preservation. The nation's own preservation ultimately leads to the conquering of the Germany invaders and it is able to restore its peace in the nation.
The Soviet Art
Soviet art constituted of the visual form of art that were produced in Russia in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union existed in Eurasia as a socialist state during the period between 1922 and 1991. IT works of art therefore only lasted during the period in which the Union was in power in Russia. The union’s economy and government were very centralized in a unitary state where all respects were coordinated under the central government. In a similar way, all works of art were controlled and limited by the central government. The government decided what types or artistic forms could be or could not be used in its territories. Visual arts were the most used in Russia during the rule of the Soviet Union. Different types of visual artistic expressions were born and buried during the period, depending on their acceptance by the central government. The various forms of art that can be associated with the Soviet era include the Soviet avant garde art, the Soviet non-conformist art, and the socialist realism. The avant garde art was, however, the most dominant during the Soviet rule in Russia.
The Soviet Avant Garde Art
Origin
During the period of the Russian Revolution, the government established a movement that was aimed at pulling all segments and aspects to the sole service of the ruling government. The instruments to achieve the unification were constructed only a few days before the occurrence of the October Revolution. Aleksandr Bogdanov was one of the prominent theorists of the said movement. Initially, the education ministry took charge of the arts and supported the movement, Prolekult. However, the movement wanted to be independent of the central government, which saw it get disbanded in 1932. The ideas behind prolekult attracted the attention of the Russian avant garde. The ideas of the avant garde however clashed with the newly risen and state-supported socialist realism. The avant garde was trying to eliminate the bourgeois art conventions. It had flourished in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire from 1850 to the late 1960s. Further, it reached its popular and creative height a time in the period between the 1917 Russian Revolution and 1932, during which its ideas clashed with those of Socialist Realism.
Russian avant garde is one of the most common words used when referring to a highly remarkable phenomenon of art that flourished in the country in the period between 1890 and 1930. Some of its early manifestations, however, can be dated back to 1850s while the latest ones are dated to the 1960s The Russian avant garde phenomenon does not match any artistic style or program. The term was used to refer to a radical innovative movement that began to take shape during the years of the war in 1907 to 1914, reached the revolutionary period foreground and matured during the first decade after the revolution. Trends of the avant garde art were brought together by a decisive breaking-off not just from the 19th century eclectic aesthetics and academic traditions, but also from the modern art style, which was at the top of all spheres of art ranging from painting and architecture to theater and design.
Russian avant garde despised the past cultural heritage and denied continuity in artistic creation. Coincidentally, it merged constructive and destructive urges, i.e. the nihilism spirit and aggression of revolution along with the massive energy that targeted the construction of new things in the art as well as in other areas of life. I diverse stages, the innovative practices was referred to using various terms such as new art, modernism, cubo-futurism, constructivism and futurism among others. Only a few years prior to that, there was nothing in the Russian art that heralded a dramatic switcheroo like that: official fine arts in Russia remained within its academic boundaries in the late 19th century. Most likely it seeks to account for the fact that artists like Borisov, Valentin, and Konstantin were viewed as innovative in the country, though rather traditional according to western standards of art.
Avant garde’s direction, for instance, the transformation from natural to notional, from modernist refinement to primitivism, or from sophistication to pruning and simplification was in a way similar to the one in European art. An analysis on the same shows that the factors leading to the tendency exist beyond the tradition of Russian art. Contrary to the case in Germany or France where the development of avant garde was supported and encouraged by aesthetic, philosophical and psychological theories, in Russia it was motivated by the pre-revolutionary environment and art patrons’ activities and enthusiasts whore drove the national art life into the European cultural tide. Pioneers of Russian avant garde had found themselves in the tideway of most European currents by 1910 to 1911. They were at the level of the most ground-breaking and daring approaches in the art of painting. For instance, most of Natalya’s innovative people came just after or with the popular ‘negro’ artworks by Picasso. By the mid-1910s, avant garde’s role was passed on to Russia. From then, the majority of pioneering creations were done in Russia or by Russian natives.
Evolution of the Avant Garde Art
Ivan Leodinov, one of avant garde renown artists in the 1920s, a young messianic talent became a target, as well as a victim of reactionary politics of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The avant garde, then advocating for a new age of architecture of social utopianism and abstract forms collided with the growing totalitarian state of Stalin. As a result, Leodinov spent his remaining years designing manuscripts that were never going to be published. For a given period of time, the avant garde reconfigured architecture to paint the Russian revolution in a more livable form. IN the 1930s however, Stalin and his socialist realists despised the modernist avant garde accusing it of antirealism and formalism that was decadent bourgeois. The new and once brave movement was turned to a no-subject in Russian architecture, was banished from studies and its works were unbuilt. Publishing avant garde ideas became unthinkable in Russia, its archives could no longer be accessed and research on the same became punishable. The brilliance that once provided a visual rhetoric, a sense of form and a square footage to the new state turned into a cultural night. The fear of the Stalinist state led to the exiling of avant garde both from practice and history of Russia.
Avant garde’s history and evolution are rather complex than straightforward. In 1937, the first Soviet architects erased the various achievements of the modernist Soviet architects, condemned their works. The architects relegated the works to biased historical records that were meant to interpret the avant garde only as a stage of socialist realism’s evolution journey. Political convenience was, however, the only aim that the architects aimed at achieving with the modifications. The accounts went ahead to affect treatments in the West, which kept its distance especially because of the devoted communism of the avant garde works. In the late 50s, however, the Soviet Union was in need of large quantities of housing and architects looked for constructive over decorative design base and was led to reconsider modernism. As a result, the avant garde architecture was reintroduced in the Soviet Union and would later find its way back to the Russian art and history.
Evolution from the 1960s to Glasnost
In 1962, Selim Magomedov, a Soviet scholar seized the moment of thaw requesting the reintroduction of avant garde architecture. He wrote a supporting essay that aimed at communicating the need to reassess the avant garde works of the period between the 1910s and 20s. The essay was written a decade after the death of Stalin and was precisely politically defiant. Selim’s stand enabled the opening of the door to the main subject and to the major role of understanding the work itself. The avant garde incorporated various schools of thought, movements, a wide range of disciplines and numerous figures. All the constituents of the avant garde went through diverse phases as they, the social conditions and the state evolved. Despite the setbacks that were encountered during the time of Leonid Brezhnev’s in power, the painstaking baseline by several individuals resulted in a slow books march in the early 1980s that were published externally from the Soviet Union. Approximately 5 years into Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, the writers who were at one point discouraged were being pushed to meet the demand. The rule became a publish-or-perish and not the initial publish-and-perish. New challenges, however, consisted of the sustenance of cooperation and quality standards between the Westerners and Russians mainly appearing territorial about the materials used as sources.
The Glasnost Era
In Russian, the term glasnost holds diverse and precise meanings. Firstly, its meaning publicity, in the criteria of the situation of being open for the public to know has been applied in Russia at least from the beginning of the 18th century. In the late 19th century Russian empire, glasnost was associated with judicial system reforms making sure that the public, as well as the press, could be present during court hearings and the final sentence of the case was read for them to hear. Further, it was exposed to popularity by Gorbachev as an enhancement for government transparency in the 1980s. As explained by Lyudmila, a Soviet activist of human rights has been used in the Russian language for many centuries. It had been included in books of law and dictionaries as long as they have existed. It was an ordinary nondescript word that was mainly used for referring to any process of governance or of justice being issued in the open.
Gorbachev and Glasnost
Gorbachev used the term glasnost to represent a political slogan that meant the increased transparency and openness in the government activities and institutions during the rule of the Soviet Union. Glasnost acted as a reflection of a commitment to getting citizens in the Soviet Union to engage in public discussions of their governing system and find solutions to them. Gorbachev also encouraged popular criticism and scrutiny of the system’s leaders. Further, he encouraged the use of mass media airing of the public’s concerns. Critics that are aware of the recent history of the term viewed the new slogan of the Soviet authorities as being vague and having a limited option to other fundamental liberties. Alexei Simonov, a member of the Glasnost Defense Foundation asserted that Glasnost is like a tortoise that slowly crawls towards the freedom of speech.
In the 6 years when the USSR tried to undertake self-reformation, glasnost was in most cases connected to the similarly imprecise catchphrase of perestroika and demokratizatsiya literally meaning restructuring and democratization. Glasnost was in most cases summoned by Gorbachev in its link with policies meant to reduce levels of corruption at the high places in the communist party as well as in the Soviet government and to moderate the misuse of administrative authority in the central committee. Additionally, glasnost can be used for defining the distinctive and brief period between 1986 and 1991, which at the end the existence of the USSR ceased. It was a period for reducing pre-broadcast and pre-publication censorship and greater extents of information freedom, but the central information control or censorship by both the government and the party were still basic aspects of the Soviet system to the end.
Soviet Artistic Avant-Garde during the Glasnost Era
Just the time when the avant garde art considered itself unfashionable to involve itself with arts or politics in Russia, a reactionary painter of the old guard of the Socialist realism, Glazunov took the opportunity to preach to the public masses. With the high retrospective at the former riding institution of the czar, he paid self-respect to the 35 years he served as an artist of the people in Russia. It is possible that the only bridge that existed between Glazunov and his young mates is a popular way of recognizing the preposterous gap between the promises made yesterday and the present day’s disillusionments. The distance separating the two generations remains quite extensive. As Astakhov, a pop Carver asserted Manezh was for the horses. Although the horses may have been taken away, their manure still kept reappearing. In the case of the Soviet artistic avant garde, the statement literally implies that although the active use of the avant garde artistic system may have stopped years in the past, the aspect of the art still remained in the Russian society and its impact could be felt in the society. Further, the benefits that the art provided the society were still evident after many years of inactivity.
Before the existence of glasnost, the part that was played by art in the Soviet Union was not considered as important. There was a common determinant of the mediums of art in the period after glasnost is the universal part that art plays in the soviet union. The ruling government of the Soviet Union would tolerate art that propagated opinions that were in support of socialism. As provided by the soviet union there existed two types of opinions, a correct opinion, and an incorrect opinion. A correct opinion was described as the result of socialist awareness and it tends to encourage the construction of a society that is socialist or communist. An incorrect opinion, on the other hand, consist of one that of a reactionary nature and tends to obstruct social processes. It is only incorrect opinion situation where freedom of speech is considered. In the incorrect opinion, is contrary to the socialist order and should not be protected.
In 1986, the glasnost era opened doors for the world to experience the unofficial art that was being within the Soviet Union. While what was referred to as official art had not been accorded a widespread acclaim, the unofficial art was considered a fresh and highly marketable product which had an impact on the international world of art. The Westerners accessed a taste of the Soviet avant garde with the assistance of Steven Reichard, Anne Livet, and Volkert Klaucke, who invented the Sovart, a company that took the role of connecting Soviet artists in American galleries that were responsible. The three individuals journeyed to the Soviet Union at the glasnost injection and met official artists in the day and unofficial ones by night. By the February of 1988, part-time and unofficial artists exhibited to one another, to several patrons and to diplomats and foreign visitors in the studios or in shows.
Soviet avant garde artists were convinced to sell their works of art to both domestic and foreign markets. The idea of the westerners that works of art were like precious objects and were marketable products invaded the Soviet Union and led to the adoption of the culture of selling works of art. Avant-garde artistic products were sold to both members of both the Soviet Union and to foreigners for the purpose of gaining profits. The adoption of the habit of trading works of art led to the resurrection of meat artistic forms of expression all over the Soviet Union. As a result, the avant garde art was brought back to active existence in the Russian culture and artistic practice. People actively made works of art and sold them either in their studios or under display in art show fairs.
Russian Artists
Russian artists always alienated themselves from most artists from other parts of the world. Most of the Russian artists were steeped deep in the habits, practices, and passions that gave them the characteristic of being Russian artists from Dostoevsky to modernism. Dostoevsky, for instance, touched on the subject of synesthesia when talking about his encounter with migraines. By the late years of the 19th century, Russian composers had made it a downright fashionable practice to make claims of suffering from, or to take inspiration and pleasure from the condition. It was always the same type of synaesthesia, which included the confusion of color and sound, although the modern synaesthesia authority had claimed that that was indeed a very scarce variety of the condition. Rimsky-Korsakov who was in a generation before Kandinsky claimed that he heard chords and keys as colors, but went ahead to compose his orchestral art Prometheus. Concerns similar to those of the Kandinsky generation were evident in the artworks of many experimental and modernist writers in Russia during the early years of the 20th century.
Beyond music, painting, and writing, the most dominant type of art in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was theater. The era was not only that of Stanislavsky but also that of his great student, director Meyerhold. The director spoke of changing theater into music, which resulted in a great stir in the year 1909 because of his Wagner Tristan und Isolde epic production where the set’s shapes and colors and the singers’ movements were choreographed carefully in time to the music for them to become part of Wagner’s final score. The age also incorporated that of Diaghilev and his massively prospering Russian Ballet. The specific point of Diaghilev’s epic spectaculars like the Rite of Spring and Firebird was mainly the way in which they united Russia’s greatest composers. Painters, choreographers, and dancers to build an extremely dramatic, colorful and musical experiences that were sold to audiences in the Western as purely of a Russian origin.
Similar to other Russian emigrants, Kandinsky appeared to never have had a doubt about his roots of culture and never stopped to speculate on how important they were to him. Although he had spent a remarkable period of time in Germany and in France as well, he would constantly speak of and write about Russia. Precisely. He would write about Moscow, his native town, and how its outstanding beauties had nurtured his relatively peculiar way of viewing the world. Images of Russia would constantly surface in his early works. The use of the language of symbolic shapes and piercing colors was clear in his works of art. Therefore, it is clear that Russian artists were not easily taken off their Russian culture, beliefs, and practices. The connection they had to their culture was relatively strong for foreign influence to divert them.
Russian Artists and the American Pop
Peculiar is one of the most relevant words that can be used to describe the Soviet artistic scenario. In order to understand it, therefore, various analogies are required from the West. For various reasons, Russia has been witnessed to lead a life that is to some extent isolated from the other parts of the world. In historical times, the nation has been recorded to not have any existing formations of genuine elements of the western traditions. Indeed, Russia’s literature has in all historical times given proof of an attitude that is ambivalently peculiar to the complex relationship between it and the West. Adopting a violent and an unsatisfied form of longing to get into and become part of the European mainstream life, presently made up of a resentful despite Western values, not by ways that are enclosed to proclaiming Slavophiles, but mainly of an unsettled, self-aware combination of the mutually opposing waves of feeling.
Such a mixed emotion of hate and love is evident in the writings of almost all well-known Russian authors. At times it rises to great extents of vehemence in the efforts to protest against the events of foreign influence. Foreign influence in one way or another tends to cloud the masterpieces of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Griboedov, and Chekhov among others. As far as history goes, Russia has been known to alienate itself from the other parts of the world, the Western in precise. As a result, the inborn cultures of Russia have been intact for a very long time in history. In the recent years, however, Russia has been witnessed to let a little of the Western culture into its boundaries. As a result, Russian artists have had the chance to learn new artistic techniques and practices that enable it to match its standards with those existing in the rest of the outer world. The American artists are the closest to Russia and tend to have a major impact on Russian art as well as artists.
Modification of Western Paradigms to the Specificity of the Soviet Historical Situation
During the early years of the 18th century, Russian artists journeyed through Europe and America for training. Fine arts academies consisted of western teachers who would teach them on the various artistic forms of the west. Naturalism, for instance, was a fashionable way of art in France, Italy, and Germany and eventually became a fashion in Russia as well. Various 18th-century Russian writers made the efforts to make pieces of art that were better than juts imitative of their models in the Western. To begin, they attacked the chaotic and stilted state of the Russian language that was trapped in a place between Church Slavonic and dialects that were uneducated.
In the mid-18th century, Mikhail, who was a philosopher, an author, and a scientist standardized the literary language of Russia, grouping it into generic styles. Vasily, joined him to verify guidelines, while Alexander joined to systemize the literary genres. In general, the three were highly responsible for taking Russian literature through all the stages of Western literature and put it on its own feet within 50 years. The period they took to transform the literature is literally a blink of an eye in history for such a major change. All three would write in the forms that they theorized and would also practice the things that they preached. Although several false ideas and a notable level of mediocrity occurred, Russian literature was inexistent in places that it had not previously been by the end of the 18th century. Utilizing the newly established Russian literary language, Karazamin, who was an author of novels, plays and poetry produced a commendable amount of history of the Russian nation.
Music was left behind by literature in establishing its Russian idioms. Art music, or rather classical music, was generally an imported wholesale from the West all through the 18th century. Orthodox chant also took a turn towards the west. Dmitry, who was the Church’s most successful composer during the time he worked, was sent to Italy to get training. He wrote in a perfect Italian style. Eventually, the Orthodox chant was forgotten and the Western style of polyphony started to be considered as what was suitable for the Orthodox Church of Russia. The decision marked an additional step by the Russian artists to embrace the western paradigms into their culture and art. However, they were clearly modified to exist in a way that was suitable for the use by Russians.
Peter’s reforms and more precisely his totally intentional embrace of the Western art and architectural works made massive contributions in the history of Russia by setting the tone for all the aesthetic processes to follow, up to the present time. Peter’s initiated reforms at one and at a similar time opened the Soviet Union as well as its culture to the West and stimulated a fresh point of view on the native idioms of the Russian culture itself. Getting into the 19th century, Russian artists were sufficiently self-consciously aware, which was for the very first time since the times of early Christian architecture as well as art, especially of those traits that were out to define the Russian culture.
During the transformation process, Peter had put in the right place the long persisting worries of Russian art over its possible relationship with the Western culture. After Peter, another artist could possibly be open to the influence of the West into their work or he could resist it as well. However, it would not be possible to ignore its presence. Although Russia is on most occasions considered as always being left behind when it comes to adopting the latest trends in the field of art, Peter in some way was able to predict the principles of the 19th-century modernism. He instilled in the individual artist a self-conscious awareness of their place in the development of culture and aesthetic history. The various materials of culture and tradition with time became equally as essential and just as readily identifiable as the materials of word, paint or note.
Conclusion
Artistic representation in the Soviet Union was widely used for communication across individuals, parties and societal sub-groups in the nation. Films, for instance, were used as symbolic works of art to represent the experiences of the people during the Soviet Union’s time in power. Soviet films, especially those produced during the war period clearly acted as replications of the actual state of the nation. The various impact of the invasion by German Nazi soldiers were clearly shown in the films. Scenarios in the films were used to show the situation in the nations before and after the invasion. One of the most significant works of art in the Soviet Union is the Soviet artistic avant garde. The avant garde, although having been banned by the authorities in the 1930s was one of the biggest contributors to the structuring of the Soviet Union. The avant garde even started to be reused in the 1960s. Russian artists although very protective of their culture and tradition were in the end influenced by the Wets and adopted some of its forms of art and architecture. On adopting them the Russian artists modify the borrowed artworks to fit in the Soviet historical situation.
Works Cited
What A Classic '50S Western Can Teach Us About The Hollywood Blacklist. NPR.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 8 May 2017.
Michelle_Michy
Art130EssayHexiaoqi.docx
0
