Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

330

“The Divine Work of Art” Polemics

1919

D11

Boris Kushner

They used to think that art was beauty.

They defined art as divination.

Revelation, incarnation, transubstantiation.

Art ensconced itself like a great, unshakable god in their heads, empty and be-

mused.

It was served by the trivial godlings of ecstasy, intuition, and inspiration.

During the whole historical process endured by mankind, when the power of vio-

lence and oppression was being transferred constantly from one kind of democ-

racy, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie to another, nobody dreamed of assuming that 

art was simply work: know-how, craft and skill.

To King Solomon, art appeared in the guise of his regal wisdom.

To the iron feudal lord, art served as a kind of Roland’s trumpet of victory. Or it 

frightened him in the form of the black monk armed mightily with his weapon—but 

a weapon not made with iron.

To the romantics and theoreticians of the young, contemplative bourgeoisies—

sentimental and afraid of the devil and brimstone—to create works of art seemed 

to be an aff air of mystery like medieval alchemy.

In the bloom of its strength the bourgeoisie scorned wisdom, victory and mystery.

Amid the glitter of power and glory it was tormented by an insatiable greed, by an 

eternal mania for acquisition and accumulation.

The merchant and the industrialist entwined themselves greedily around the whole 

earthly globe like boa constrictors bloated with the whole brilliant visible world of 

objects.

The bourgeoisie acquired.

Everything that became its property bowed to it.

But suddenly on its fabulous path of advance, it came across a certain obstacle.

It could not buy nature, the invisible world, the world in its immensity, the sky, the 

stars, eternity.

They are not available for personal possession; they are nontransferable into pri-

vate property.

And a feeling of dissatisfaction, of a cold vacuum, stole into the sensitive heart of 

the bourgeoisie. It was consumed by a feeling of insatiable hunger.

Tormented by the grief of the property owner who has been unjustly insulted, tor-

tured by the bitter disappointment of the industrialist who has realized that his 

business cannot encompass everything, the bourgeoisie sought ways to oblivion.

Narcotics became a must.

Refreshing illusion was required.

They thought of a surrogate, of their own creation of genius, of their favorite 

Wun-

derkind of industrial ingenuity. They examined the world from all sides. Nowhere 

did they find the protective label, “made in eternity.” So fakes were not prohibited 

and were not prosecuted by the law. They decided to prepare a surrogate for the 

universe.

And so, to this end, a very chic and remarkable theory was made and elaborated 

that saw the real and the unreal worlds, the visible and the invisible worlds, as incar-

nated in the divine work of art.

Aesthetes and poets (those who could not mind their own business) vied with each 

other in their endeavors to dramatize the mystery of this incarnation.

They dressed up the artist in the dunce’s cap of the medieval magician, wizard and 

alchemist. They forced him to perform a kind of sorcery, a supernatural divination, 

a magic transubstantiation. 

And an ulterior force was ascribed to all the things that were made by this kind of 

duped artist.

They asserted and professed conscientiously: “The eternal harmony of the builder 

of the universe is reflected in the eternal beauty of artistic forms. Works of art re-

flect the world, the outer, material, inner, spiritual, and ideal nature of things, the 

essence and latent meaning of things.”

This splendid theory was elaborated beautifully by the great experts. The ends were 

carefully concealed. All contradictions were hidden. It did not occur to anybody 

that this was not the genuine product, but merely a surrogate, and a jolly good fake.

The highest goal of bourgeois aspirations had been attained.

The philosopher’s stone had been found.

The right of private property had been extended to the extreme limits of eternity. It 

crawled all over the planets, all over the stars near and far. It flowed throughout the 

Milky Way. Like sugar icing, it glossed all over the belly of eternity.

An unprecedented, world-wide achievement had been wrought.

The bourgeoisie had colonized the “ulterior world.”

The ecstatic triumph of world imperialism had been achieved. Henceforth every-

one who acquired a work of art prepared by the firm of the appropriately patented 

artist would acknowledge and feel himself the happy and assured possessor of a 

solid piece of the universe—moreover, in a pocket edition, very convenient and 

portable.

And the bourgeoisie coddled and warmed itself in the soft and gentle pillows of its 

consciousness of total power.

Such, briefly, is the history of the prostitution of art, solicited to serve all the incor-

poreal forces of religion and mythology.

Step by step we are depriving the imperialist bourgeoisie of its global annexations. 

Only so far the proletariat has not lifted its hand against this most wonderful an-

nexation of the spirit.

Because the bourgeoisie had put this valuable and prosperous colony under the 

lock and key of mysterious, mystical forces, and even the revolutionary spirit of our 

time retreats before them.

It is time to shake off  this shameful yoke.

Are we going to endure the interference of heavens and hells in our internal, earthly 

aff airs?

I think it is time to tell the gods and devils: Take your hands off  what is ours, what 

belongs to mankind.

Socialism must destroy the black and white magic of the industrialists and mer-

chants.

Socialism will not examine things exclusively from the point of view of the right to 

ownership.

It can aff ord the luxury of leaving nature and the world in peace, can be content 

with them the way they are, and will not drag them by the scruff  of the neck into its 

storerooms and elevators.

To the socialist consciousness, a work of art is no more than an object, a thing.

Boris Kushner: born Minsk, 1888; died 1937. 1914: made his literary debut with a book of 

verse, 

Semafory [Semaphores]; 1917–18: wrote several articles and futurist prose; 1919: 

leading member of Komfut; 1923: on the editorial board of 

Lef; close to constructiv-

ists and formalists; mid- and late 1920s: wrote a series of sketches on Western Europe, 

America, and the northern Caucasus; died in a prison camp.

The text of this piece, “‘Bozhestvennoe proizvedenie’,” is from 

Ikusstvo kommuny. 

Kushner’s anarchical tone betrays his keen support of the general ideas of Komfut (see p. 

329) and his ideological proximity to Natan Al’tman, Osip Brik, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and 

Nikolai Punin at this time. Kushner’s rejection of the subjective and idealist interpretation of 

art was shared by many critics and artists just after the Revolution and was an attitude iden-

tifiable particularly with 

Iskusstvo kommuny; moreover, Kushner’s conclusion (reiterated in 

many articles in that journal) that the work of art was no more than an object produced by a 

rational process prepared the ground for the formal advocacy of industrial constructivism 

in 1921/22.

— JB

Originally published in Russian as Boris Kushner, “’Bozhestvennoe proizvedenie’,” 

Iskusstvo kommuny 9 (Petrograd, 

February 2, 1919): 1. It is reprinted in 

Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, ed. Ivan Matsa (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), 169–71. 

The version here has been reproduced by permission, with minor changes, from “‘The Divine Work of Art’ (Polemics),” 

in 

Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt, rev. and enlarged ed. 

(London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 166–70. 

Fundación Juan March

Theses on Art Policy

1920

D12

Anatolii Lunacharskii

1) The preservation of true artistic treasures of the past.

2) The critical mastery of them by the proletarian masses.

3) The utmost assistance in the creation of experimental forms of revolutionary art.

4) The use of every kind of art for the propaganda and implementation of the idea

of communism, and also assistance in the penetration of communist ideas into the 

mass of art workers. 

5) An unbiased attitude toward all artistic currents.

6) The democratization of all artistic institutions and the broadening of their acces-

sibility to the masses. 

Lunacharskii presented these theses on October 29, 1920, at a meeting of the Visual Arts 

Section of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (IZO Narkompros) on the subject of 

popular illustration, together with the Presidium and the Central Committee of the Union 

of Art Workers (Vserabis) communist faction, understanding these to be the guidelines for 

the artistic policy of the People’s Commissariat. 

—HG / EG

Originally published in Russian as an excerpt in the column “V Tsentral’noi Komitete Vserabisa” [In the Central Com-

mittee of Vserabis] 

Vestnik rabotnikov iskusstv 1 (Moscow, 1920): 34. For a German translation see Zwischen Revolu-

tionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 

bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 61. 

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.

Basic Policy in the Field of Art

1920

D13

Anatolii Lunacharskii and Iuvenal Slavinskii

While recognizing that the time for establishing indisputable principles of a pro-

letarian aesthetics has not yet come, the Art Section of Narkompros and the Cen-

tral Committee of Vserabis [All-Russian Union of Art Workers] consider it essential, 

nevertheless, to elucidate adequately and accurately the basic principles by which 

they are guided in their activities.

1. We acknowledge the proletariat’s absolute right to make a careful re-examination 

of all those elements of world art that it has inherited and to aff irm the truism that 

the new proletarian and socialist art can be built only on the foundation of all our 

acquisitions from the past. At the same time we acknowledge that the preserva-

tion and utilization of the genuine artistic values that we have acquired from the 

old culture is an indisputable task of the Soviet government. In this respect the 

legacy of the past must be cleared ruthlessly of all those admixtures of bourgeois 

degeneration and corruption; cheap pornography, philistine vulgarity, intellectual 

boredom, antirevolutionary

1

 and religious prejudices—insofar as such admixtures 

are contained in our legacy from the past—must be removed. In those cases where 

dubious elements are linked indissolubly with genuine artistic achievements, it is 

essential to take steps to ensure that the new young mass proletarian public evalu-

ates critically the spiritual nourishment provided it. In general, the proletariat must 

assimilate the legacy of the old culture not as a pupil, but as a powerful, conscious 

and incisive critic.

2. Besides this, our Soviet and professional cultural and artistic activities must be di-

rected toward creating purely proletarian art forms and institutions; these would, in 

every way, assist the existing and emergent workers’ and peasants’ studios, which 

are seeking new paths within the visual arts, music, the theater and literature.

3. In the same way all fields of art must be utilized in order to elevate and illustrate

clearly our political and revolutionary agitational/propaganda work; this must be 

done in connection with both shock work demonstrated during certain weeks, 

days and campaigns, and normal, everyday work. Art is a powerful means of infect-

ing those around us with ideas, feelings and moods. Agitation and propaganda 

acquire particular acuity and eff ectiveness when they are clothed in the attractive 

and mighty forms of art.

However, this political art, this artistic judgment on the ideal aspirations of the 

revolution can emerge only when the artist himself is sincere in surrendering his 

strength to this cause, only when he is really imbued with revolutionary conscious-

ness and is full of revolutionary feeling. Hence, communist propaganda among the 

actual votaries of art is also an urgent task both of the Art Section and of Vserabis.

4. Art is divided up into a large number of directions. The proletariat is only just

working out its own artistic criteria and therefore no state authority or any profes-

sional union should regard any one of them as belonging to the state; at the same 

time, however, they should render every assistance to the new searches in art.

5. Institutions of art education must be proletarianized. One way of doing this

would be to open workers’ departments in all higher institutions concerned with 

the plastic, musical and theatrical arts.

At the same time particular attention must be given to the development of mass 

taste and artistic creativity by introducing art into everyday life and into industrial 

production at large, i.e., by assisting in the evolution of an artistic industry and in 

the extensive development of choral singing and mass activities.

In basing themselves on these principles—on the one hand, under the general con-

trol of Glavpolitprosvet

2

 and through it of the Communist Party and, on the other, 

linked indissolubly with the professionally organized proletariat and the All-Russian 

Council of Trade Unions—the Art Section of Narkompros and the All-Russian Trade 

Union of Art Workers will carry out in sympathy and in concord its work of art educa-

tion and artistic industrialism throughout the country.   

Anatolii Lunacharskii: born Poltava, 1875; died France, 1933. 1892: joined a Marxist group; 

entered Zurich University; 1898: returned to Russia; joined the Social Democrats; 1899: 

arrested for political activities; 1904: in Geneva; met Lenin; joined the Bolsheviks; 1905: in 

Saint Petersburg; 1906: arrested, again on political grounds; 1908: with Maxim Gorky, on 

Capri; 1909: with Aleksandr Bogdanov and Gorky organized the Vpered’ group; 1911–15; in 

Fundación Juan March

332

Paris; 1917: returned to Russia; 1917–29: People’s Commissar for Enlightenment; 1933: ap-

pointed Soviet ambassador to Spain but died en route to the post.

Iuvenal Slavinskii: born 1887, died 1936. 1911–18: conductor of the Moscow Grand 

Opera; 1916: founded the Society of Orchestral Musicians; 1917: member of the Bolshe-

viks; 1919: president of the All-Russian Union of Art Workers (Vserabis); 1929: founded the 

All-Russian Union of Cooperative Partnerships of Visual Art Workers (Vsekokhudozhnik); 

1930s: active as an administrator and critic. 

The text of this piece, “Tezisy khudozhestvennogo sektora NKP i TsK Rabis ob osnovakh 

politiki v oblasti iskusstva,” is from 

Vestnik teatra.

3

 Rabis, founded in May 1919, acted as a 

trade union for “workers connected with the arts, concerning itself with such problems as 

social security, education courses, accessibility of libraries, etc.

4

 The significance of the 

“Theses” was twofold: on the one hand, they stated very clearly certain basic principles of 

artistic policy, and on the other, they constituted an attempt to find common agreement 

on such matters between the various organizations within the cultural hierarchy, in this 

case between Narkompros and Rabis. The program advanced here shares certain ideas 

with Proletkul’t (e.g., the desire to create “purely proletarian art forms” and to “open work-

ers’ departments in all higher institutions”), of which Lunacharskii was an active member, 

although a dissident one, especially after 1920. If anything, the text betrays Lunacharskii’s 

attempt to steer a middle course between the extreme right and the extreme left, between, 

broadly speaking, preservation and destruction—a course diff icult to maintain in view of 

the inordinate number of radicals in the Visual Arts Section of the People’s Commissariat 

of Enlightenment (IZO Narkompros). Certain sections of this policy, therefore, appear to be 

formulated in a deliberately rhetorical and imprecise fashion: the ambiguities of the first 

stipulation, for example, found their tangible result in the slow and unsuccessful implemen-

tation of Lenin’s famous plan of monumental propaganda (1918 onwards); furthermore, the 

definition of a proletarian art is suff iciently vague as to allow a very free interpretation. Of 

course, it was thanks to the flexible and eclectic policies of IZO Narkompros that, paradoxi-

cally, the dictatorship of leftist art could exist in the early years and that even in the mid-

1920s a large number of conflicting tendencies and groups could still dominate the artistic 

arena. Lunacharskii was convinced that the “Theses” constituted an important document 

and regretted that they had not been publicized more widely.

5

 

— JB

1.  The actual word is 

chernosotennye, adjective from Chernosotenets. The Chernosotentsy, or Black Hundreds, 

were members of a secret-police and monarchist organization set up to counteract the revolutionary movement 

in 1905–7. 

Chernosotenets soon became identified with the more general concepts of “rightist” and “extreme 

conservative.”

2.  Central Committee of Political Enlightenment.

3.  “Tezisy khudozhestvennogo sektora NKP i TsK Rabis ob osnovakh politiki v oblasti iskusstva,” in 

Vestnik teatra 75 

(Moscow, November 30, 1920): 9. The text appears also in 

Vestnik rabotnikov iskusstv (Rabis) 2/3, (Moscow, 1920): 

65–66; 

Iskusstvo 1 (Vitbesk, 1921): 20; and Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, ed. Ivan Matsa et al. (Moscow-Leningrad, 

1933), 57–58.

4.  For details, see 

Vestnik rabotnikov iskusstv (Rabis) (Moscow, 1920–34), especially no. 4/5, 1921.

5.  For his own comments, see Anatolii Lunacharskii, 

Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh, ed. I. Anisimov et al. 

(Moscow, 1963–67), vol. 7, 501. 

Originally published in Russian as Anatolii Lunacharskii and Iuvenal Slavinskii, “Tezisy khudozhestvennogo sektora 

NKP i TsK Rabis ob osnovakh politiki v oblasti iskusstva,” 

Vestnik teatra 75 (Moscow, November 30, 1920): 9. It is reprint-

ed in 

Vestnik rabotnikov iskusstv (Rabis) 2/3, (Moscow, 1920): 65–66; Iskusstvo 1 (Vitbesk, 1921): 20; and Sovetskoe 

iskusstvo za 15 let, ed. Ivan Matsa (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), 57–58. For a German translation see Zwischen Revolu-

tionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 

bis 1934,  ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 62, 63.

The version here has been reproduced by permission, with minor changes, from “Theses of the Art Section of Nar-

kompros and the Central Committee of the Union of Art Workers Concerning Basic Policy in the Field of Art,” in 

Russian 

Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt, rev. and enlarged ed. (London: 

Thames and Hudson, 1988), 182–85. 

Revolution and Art

1920

D14

Anatolii Lunacharskii

1.

For a revolutionary state, such as the Soviet Union, the whole question of art is this: 

can revolution give anything to art, and can art give anything to revolution? It goes 

without saying that the state does not intend to impose revolutionary ideas and 

tastes on artists. From a coercive imposition of this kind only counterfeit revolu-

tionary art can emerge, because the prime quality of true art is the artist’s sincerity.

But there are other ways besides those of coercion: persuasion, encouragement 

and appropriate education of new artists. All these measures should be used for 

working, as it were, toward the revolutionary inspiration of art.

Complete absence of content has been very characteristic of bourgeois art of re-

cent times. If we still did have some sort of art then, it was, so to say, the last pro-

gency of the old art. Pure formalism was exuberant everywhere: in music, painting, 

sculpture and literature. Of course, style suff ered as a result. In fact, the last epoch 

of the bourgeoisie was unable to advance any style at all—including a life style 

or a style of architecture—and advanced merely a whimsical and absurd eclecti-

cism. Formal searches degenerated into eccentricities and tricks or into a peculiar, 

rather elementary pedantry tinged with various, puzzling sophistications, because 

true perfection of form is determined, obviously, not by pure formal search but by 

the presence of an appropriate form common to the whole age, to all the masses, 

by a characteristic sensation and by ideas.

Bourgeois society of the last decades has seen no such sensations and ideas wor-

thy of artistic expression.

The revolution is bringing ideas of remarkable breadth and depth. Everywhere it 

kindles feelings—tense, heroic, and complex.

Of course, the old artists have not the slightest understanding of this content and 

stand quite helplessly before it. They even interpret it as a kind of barbaric torrent 

of primitive passions and small ideas, but they think that only because of their own 

myopia. To many of them, especially the talented ones, this can be explained, and 

they can be, so to say, disenchanted; their eyes can be opened. But in particular, 

we must count on the young people, who are much more receptive and who can 

be, so to speak, nurtured in the very waves of the revolution’s fiery torrent. Hence I 

anticipate a great deal from the influence of the revolution on art; to put it simply, 

I expect art to be saved from the worst forms of decadence and from pure formal-

ism by its aspiration toward the real objective and by its infectious expression of 

great ideas and great experiences.

But in addition to this the state has another continuous task within its cultural ac-

tivity, namely, to diff use the revolutionary image of ideas, sensations, and actions 

throughout the country. From this standpoint the state asks itself: can art be of use 

to it in this? And the answer inevitably suggests itself: if revolution can give art its 

soul, then art can give revolution its mouthpiece.

Who is not aware of the full force of agitation? But what is agitation, how is it dis-

tinguished from clear, cold, objective propaganda in the sense of elucidating facts 

and logical constructions germane to our world view? Agitation can be distin-

guished from propaganda by the fact that it excites the feelings of the audience 

and readers and has a direct influence on their will. It, so to say, brings the whole 

content of propaganda to white heat and makes it glow in all colors. Yes, propa-

gators—we, of course, are all propagators. Propaganda and agitation are simply 

the ceaseless propagation of a new faith, a propagation springing from profound 

knowledge.

Can it be doubted that the more artistic such propagation, the more powerful its 

eff ect? Don’t we know that the artistic public speaker or journalist finds his way to 

the people’s hearts more quickly than those lacking in artistic strength? But the col-

lective propagandist is the collective propagator of our age; the Communist Party, 

from this point of view, should arm itself with all the organs of art, which in this 

way will prove itself to be of great use to agitation. Not only the poster, but also the 

picture, the statue—in less volatile forms and with more profound ideas, stronger 

feelings—can emerge as graphic aids to the assimilation of communist truth.

Fundación Juan March

The theater has so often been called a great tribune, a great rostrum for propaga-

tion, that it is not worth dwelling on this. Music has always played an enormous role 

in mass movements: hymns, marches, form an indispensable attribute of them. We 

have only to unfurl this magic strength of music above the hearts of the masses and 

to bring it to the utmost degree of definition and direction.

For the moment we are not in a position to make use of architecture on a wide scale 

for propaganda purposes, but the creation of temples was, so to say, an ultimate, 

maximum and extremely powerful way of influencing the social soul—and per-

haps, in the near future, when creating the houses of our great people, we will con-

trast them with the people’s houses of the past—the churches of all denominations.

Those art forms that have arisen only recently as, for example, the cinema or rhyth-

mics, can be used with very great eff ect. It is ridiculous to enlarge upon the pro-

paganda and agitational strength of the cinema—it is obvious to anyone. And just 

think what character our festive occasions will take on when, by means of General 

Military Instruction,

1

 we create rhythmically moving masses embracing thousands 

and tens of thousands of people—and not just a crowd, but a strictly regulated, col-

lective, peaceful army sincerely possessed by one definite idea.

Against the background of the masses trained by General Military Instruction, oth-

er small groups of pupils from our rhythm schools will advance and will restore the 

dance to its rightful place. The popular holiday will adorn itself with all the arts, it 

will resound with music and choirs and that will express the sensations and ideas 

of the holiday by spectacles on several stages, by songs, and by poetry reading 

at diff erent points in the rejoicing crowd: it will unite everything in a common act.

This is what the French Revolution dreamed of, what it aspired to; this is what 

passed by the finest people of that most cultured of democracies—Athens; this is 

what we are approaching already.

Yes, during the Moscow workers’ procession past our friends of the Third Interna-

tional, during the General Military Instruction holiday declared after this,

2

 during 

the great mass action at the Stock Exchange colonnade in Petrograd,

3

 one could 

sense the approach of the moment when art, in no way debasing itself and only 

profiting from this, would become the expression of national ideas and feelings—

ideas and feelings that are revolutionary and communist.

2.

The revolution, a phenomenon of vast and many-sided significance, is connected 

with art in many ways.

If we take a general look at their interrelation before the revolution and now, in the 

fifth year of its existence, we will notice its extraordinary influence in many direc-

tions. First and foremost, the revolution has completely altered the artist’s way of 

life and his relation to the market. In this respect, certainly, artists can complain 

about, rather than bless, the revolution.

At a time when war and the blockade were summoning the intense force of military 

communism, the private art market was utterly destroyed for artists. This placed 

those who had a name and who could easily sell their works in such a market in a 

diff icult position and made them, along with the bourgeoisie, antagonistic toward 

the revolution.

The ruin of the rich Maecenases and patrons was felt less, of course, by the young, 

unrecognized artists, especially the artists of the left who had not been successful 

in the market. The revolutionary government tried immediately, as far as possible, 

to replace the failing art market with state commissions and purchases. These 

commissions and purchases fell, in particular, to those artists who agreed willingly 

to work for the revolution in the theater, in poster design, in decorations for public 

celebrations, in making monuments to the Revolution, concerts for the proletariat, 

and so forth.

Of course, the first years of the Revolution, with their diff icult economic situation, 

made the artist’s way of life more arduous, but they provided a great stimulus to the 

development of art among the young.

More important, perhaps, than these economic interrelationships were the psy-

chological results of the revolution.

Here two lines of observation can be made. On the one hand, the revolution as a 

grand, social event, as a boundless and multicolored drama, could, of itself, pro-

vide art with vast material and to a great extent could formulate a new artistic soul.

However, during the first years of the revolution, its influence on art in this respect 

was not very noticeable. True, Blok’s The Twelve

4

 was written and other things such 

as, say, Mayakovsky’s 

Misteriia-buff ;

5

 many fine posters, a certain quantity of quite 

good monuments, were produced, but all this in no way corresponded to the revo-

lution itself. Perhaps to a great extent this can be explained by the fact that the 

revolution, with its vast ideological and emotional content, requires a more or less 

realistic, self-evident expression saturated with ideas and feelings. Whereas the re-

alist artists and those following similar trends—as I observed above—were less will-

ing to greet the revolution than those following new trends, the latter—whose non-

representational methods were very suitable for artistic industry and ornament—

proved to be powerless to give psychological expression to the new content of the 

revolution. Hence we cannot boast that the Revolution—and, I repeat, in the first 

years when its eff ect was strongest and its manifestation most striking—created for 

itself a suff iciently expressive and artistic form.

On the other hand, the revolution not only was able to influence art, but also 

need-

ed art. Art is a powerful weapon of agitation, and the Revolution aspired to adapt art 

to its agitational objectives. However, such combinations of agitational forces and 

genuine artistic depth were achieved comparatively rarely. The agitational theater, 

to a certain extent music, in particular the poster, undoubtedly had, during the first 

years of the revolution, a great success in the sense that they were disseminated 

among the masses. But of this only very little can be singled out as being entirely 

satisfactory artistically.

Nevertheless, in principle, the thesis had remained correct: the revolution had a 

great deal to 

give artists—a new content—and the revolution needed art. Sooner 

or later a union had to come about between it and the artists. If we now turn to the 

present moment, we will notice a significant diff erence in a comparison of 1922 

with 1918 and 1919. First of all, the private market appears again. The state, com-

pelled to finance art on a niggardly, systematic budget, has virtually ceased buying 

and ordering for about the next two years. From this point of view, because of NEP,

6

 

the wheel appears to have turned full circle; and in fact, we can see, almost side by 

side with the complete disappearance of the agitational theater, the emergence of 

a corruptive theater, the emergence of the obscene drinking place, which is one 

of the poisons of the bourgeois world and which has broken out like a pestilential 

rash on the face of Russia’s cities together with the New Economic Policy. In other 

fields of art, albeit to a lesser degree, this same return to the sad past is noticeable.

However, there is no need to be pessimistic, and we should turn our attention to 

something else. Indeed, together with this, the improvement in living conditions, 

which has come about during the calm time of late, reveals how powerfully the 

revolution has aff ected the artist’s soul. The revolution advanced, as we now see, a 

whole phalanx of writers who, in part, call themselves apolitical, but who nonethe-

less celebrate and proclaim precisely the revolution in its revolutionary spirit. Natu-

rally the ideological and emotional element of the revolution is reflected primarily 

in the most intellectual of the arts—in literature—but it does, of course, aspire to 

spread to other arts. It is characteristic that it is precisely now that magazines and 

anthologies are being created, that societies of painters and sculptors are being 

organized, and that work of architectural conception is being undertaken in the 

area where previously we had only demand and almost no supply.

Similarly, the second thesis, that the revolution needs art, will not force us to wait 

long for its manifestation. Right now we are being told about an all-Russian sub-

scription to the building of a grand monument to the victims of the revolution on 

the Field of Mars

7

 and about the desire to erect a grand Palace of Labor in Moscow.

8

 

The Republic, still beggarly and unclothed, is, however, recovering economically, 

and there is no doubt that soon one of the manifestations of its recovery will be 

the new and increasing beauty of its appearance. Finally, the last thing—what I 

began with—the artists’ living conditions and economic position. Of course, with 

the rise of NEP, the artist is again pushed into the private market. But for how long? 

If our calculations are correct, and they are, then will the state, like a capitalist, 

with its heavy industry and vast trusts in other branches of industry, with its tax 

support, with its power over issue of currency, and above all, with its vast ideologi-

cal content—will the state not prove ultimately to be far stronger than any private 

capitalists, big or small? Will it not draw unto itself all that is vital in art, like a grand 

Maecenas, truly cultured and truly noble?

In this short article I could sketch only with a couple of strokes the peculiar zigzag 

line of the relationships between revolution and art that we have hitherto observed. 

It has not been broken off . It continues even further.

As for the government, it will endeavor as before, as far as possible, to preserve 

the best of the old art, because recognition of it is essential to the further develop-

ment of our renewed art. Besides this, it will endeavor to give active support to 

any innovation that is obviously of benefit to the masses, and it will never prevent 

the new—albeit dubious—from developing so as to avoid making a mistake in this 

respect by killing off  something worthy of life while it is still young and weak. In the 

very near future, art in revolutionary Russia will have to live through a few more very 

bitter moments because the state’s resources are still small and are growing slowly. 

Fundación Juan March