The Landscape of Stalinism

The Landscape of Stalinism
Author: Evgeny Dobrenko
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2011-11-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0295801174

This wide-ranging cultural history explores the expression of Bolshevik Party ideology through the lens of landscape, or, more broadly, space. Portrayed in visual images and words, the landscape played a vital role in expressing and promoting ideology in the former Soviet Union during the Stalin years, especially in the 1930s. At the time, the iconoclasm of the immediate postrevolutionary years had given way to nation building and a conscious attempt to create a new Soviet �culture.� In painting, architecture, literature, cinema, and song, images of landscape were enlisted to help mold the masses into joyful, hardworking citizens of a state with a radiant, utopian future -- all under the fatherly guidance of Joseph Stalin. From backgrounds in history, art history, literary studies, and philosophy, the contributors show how Soviet space was sanctified, coded, and �sold� as an ideological product. They explore the ways in which producers of various art forms used space to express what Katerina Clark calls �a cartography of power� -- an organization of the entire country into �a hierarchy of spheres of relative sacredness,� with Moscow at the center. The theme of center versus periphery figures prominently in many of the essays, and the periphery is shown often to be paradoxically central. Examining representations of space in objects as diverse as postage stamps, a hikers� magazine, advertisements, and the Soviet musical, the authors show how cultural producers attempted to naturalize ideological space, to make it an unquestioned part of the worldview. Whether focusing on the new or the centuries-old, whether exploring a built cityscape, a film documentary, or the painting Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, the authors offer a consistently fascinating journey through the landscape of the Soviet ideological imagination. Not all features of Soviet space were entirely novel, and several of the essayists assert continuities with the prerevolutionary past. One example is the importance of the mother image in mass songs of the Stalin period; another is the "boundless longing" inspired in the Russian character by the burden of living amid vast empty spaces. But whether focusing on the new or the centuries-old, whether exploring a built cityscape, a film documentary, or the painting Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, the authors offer a consistently fascinating journey through the landscape of the Soviet ideological imagination.

The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953

The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953
Author: Anita Pisch
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2016-12-16
Genre: Design
ISBN: 176046063X

From 1929 until 1953, Iosif Stalin’s image became a central symbol in Soviet propaganda. Touched up images of an omniscient Stalin appeared everywhere: emblazoned across buildings and lining the streets; carried in parades and woven into carpets; and saturating the media of socialist realist painting, statuary, monumental architecture, friezes, banners, and posters. From the beginning of the Soviet regime, posters were seen as a vitally important medium for communicating with the population of the vast territories of the USSR. Stalin’s image became a symbol of Bolshevik values and the personification of a revolutionary new type of society. The persona created for Stalin in propaganda posters reflects how the state saw itself or, at the very least, how it wished to appear in the eyes of the people. The ‘Stalin’ who was celebrated in posters bore but scant resemblance to the man Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, whose humble origins, criminal past, penchant for violent solutions and unprepossessing appearance made him an unlikely recipient of uncritical charismatic adulation. The Bolsheviks needed a wise, nurturing and authoritative figure to embody their revolutionary vision and to legitimate their hold on power. This leader would come to embody the sacred and archetypal qualities of the wise Teacher, the Father of the nation, the great Warrior and military strategist, and the Saviour of first the Russian land, and then the whole world. This book is the first dedicated study on the marketing of Stalin in Soviet propaganda posters. Drawing on the archives of libraries and museums throughout Russia, hundreds of previously unpublished posters are examined, with more than 130 reproduced in full colour. The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929–1953 is a unique and valuable contribution to the discourse in Stalinist studies across a number of disciplines.

The Stalin Cult

The Stalin Cult
Author: Jan Plamper
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300169523

Between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, one of the most persuasive personality cults of all times saturated Soviet public space with images of Stalin. A torrent of portraits, posters, statues, films, plays, songs, and poems galvanized the Soviet population and inspired leftist activists around the world. In the first book to examine the cultural products and production methods of the Stalin cult, Jan Plamper reconstructs a hidden history linking artists, party patrons, state functionaries, and ultimately Stalin himself in the alchemical project that transformed a pock-marked Georgian into the embodiment of global communism. Departing from interpretations of the Stalin cult as an outgrowth of Russian mysticism or Stalin's psychopathology, Plamper establishes the cult's context within a broader international history of modern personality cults constructed around Napoleon III, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao. Drawing upon evidence from previously inaccessible Russian archives, Plamper's lavishly illustrated and accessibly written study will appeal to anyone interested in twentieth-century history, visual studies, the politics of representation, dictator biography, socialist realism, and real socialism.

Building Stalinism

Building Stalinism
Author: Cynthia A. Ruder
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786733560

Today the 80-mile-long Moscow Canal is a source of leisure for Muscovites, a conduit for tourists and provides the city with more than 60% of its potable water. Yet the past looms heavy over these quotidian activities: the canal was built by Gulag inmates at the height of Stalinism and thousands died in the process. In this wide-ranging book, Cynthia Ruder argues that the construction of the canal physically manifests Stalinist ideology and that the vertical, horizontal, underwater, ideological, artistic and metaphorical spaces created by it resonate with the desire of the state to dominate all space within and outside the Soviet Union. Ruder draws on theoretical constructs from cultural geography and spatial studies to interpret and contextualise a variety of structural and cultural products dedicated to, and in praise of, this signature Stalinist construction project. Approached through an extensive range of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary documentary materials these include a diverse body of artefacts - from waterways, structures, paintings, sculptures, literary and documentary works, and the Gulag itself. Building Stalinism concludes by analysing current efforts to reclaim the legacy of the canal as a memorial space that ensures that those who suffered and died building it are remembered. This is essential reading for all scholars working on the all-pervasive nature of Stalinism and its complex afterlife in Russia today.

Soviet Impressionism

Soviet Impressionism
Author: Vern G. Swanson
Publisher: ACC Distribution
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2001
Genre: Art
ISBN:

"Soviet art of the 1930s to 1980s is now considered the twentieth century's major realist school of painting. Yet, during its heyday, and thanks to the politics of the Cold War and the shortsightedness of western critics, the treasures of Soviet artists of the period remained hidden. Now art historians are turning the balance and addressing the presence of Soviet Impressionist paintings passing through the sale rooms of Europe and North America, and finding their way into museums in the West. These are testament to a powerful and vibrant school of art. Vern Swanson has given us a book which is not only illustrated with 176 colour plates, but also accompanied by an account of the tradition of painting for a proletarian society and how this developed into a full-blown form of Working-class Impressionism. The message was dictated by the policy-makers: the art should be readily understood and appreciated by the people, reflecting their hopes and aspirations for themselves and their efforts. The subject matter is the intimate life of the Soviet man, woman and child - at work in school, field, factory and mine, and at home and play."--BOOK JACKET.

Central Asia in Art

Central Asia in Art
Author: Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-06-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1838608133

In the midst of the space race and nuclear age, Soviet Realist artists were producing figurative oil paintings. Why? How was art produced to control and co-opt the peripheries of the Soviet Union, particularly Central Asia? Presenting the 'untold story' of Soviet Orientalism, Aliya Abykayeva-Tiesenhausen re-evaluates the imperial project of the Soviet state, placing the Orientalist undercurrent found within art and propaganda production in the USSR alongside the creation of new art forms in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. From the turmoil of the 1930s through to the post-Stalinist era, the author draws on meticulous new research and rich illustrations to examine the political and social structures in the Soviet Union - and particularly Soviet Central Asia - to establish vital connections between Socialist Realist visual art, the creation of Soviet identity and later nationalist sentiments.

Drawing from Life

Drawing from Life
Author: Christine I. Ho
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-02-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520309626

Drawing from Life explores revolutionary drawing and sketching in the early People’s Republic of China (1949–1965) in order to discover how artists created a national form of socialist realism. Tracing the development of seminal works by the major painters Xu Beihong, Wang Shikuo, Li Keran, Li Xiongcai, Dong Xiwen, and Fu Baoshi, author Christine I. Ho reconstructs how artists grappled with the representational politics of a nascent socialist art. The divergent approaches, styles, and genres presented in this study reveal an art world that is both heterogeneous and cosmopolitan. Through a history of artistic practices in pursuit of Maoist cultural ambitions—to forge new registers of experience, new structures of feeling, and new aesthetic communities—this original book argues that socialist Chinese art presents a critical, alternative vision for global modernism.