Education and Art in Soviet Russia/Document 19

We come now to one of the features of Soviet domination that distinguish it from any other government that has ever been established. For the first time in history a whole people is to have the opportunity, not only to see works of art, to appreciate them and study them, but creatively to produce art of a type consonant with their system of civilization. The efforts of the Soviet Government to stimulate the proletariat, now that it is dominant, to take advantage of its opportunities for culture, are nowhere more clearly stated than in Documents Nos. 19 and 20, which are concerned with the art education of the people.

 

DOCUMENT No. 19

The Main Problems of the Art Sections of the Soviets of
Workmen's Deputies

Each Soviet of workmen's deputies has a special section of people's education and to the latter is usually attached an art sub-section. What are, then, the fundamental problems of these art sections and sub-sections?

Four main problems can be distinguished upon examination.

J. Keats, the English poet, said that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." It would have been better had it been possible for him to say, "a thing of beauty is a Joy to everybody." The immediate duty of the art sections attached to the Soviets of workmen's deputies it to turn beauty and art into a "universal joy"—a joy to the whole city's population. The first problem is the "socialization of art" and there are two ways by which this aim can be accomplished best and most easily. The first step required is external beautification of cities (chiefly large cities, of course): turn them not merely into city-village, city-park, city-garden but also into a city-museum, a museum of magnificient buildings, beautiful monuments, in fine, make them externally resemble that picturesque London of the future described by William Morris in his utopian "News from Nowhere." Something has already been done in that direction: it will suffice to mention here the erection of fifty monuments in Moscow in honor of leaders and heroes of the world revolution; erection in the Mars Field of a memorial monument to the victims of the revolution; decision of the Penza Soviet to erect a monument to Marx, etc. The other way is, through the socialization of art, turn it into a joy for all—holding of solemn and sumptuous national revolutionary and socialist holidays, similar to those which were so frequently and gorgeously celebrated during the days of the Great French Revolution, when famous artists such as David, and many prominent composers had charge of these festivals and beautified them with their compositions. At these revolutionary and socialist feasts, art—music, songs, decoration—ought to play an important role, and the ceremonial pageant, already beautiful in itself, ought from time to time, at big squares and especially in summer time beyond the confines of the city, to rise to a real festival of art.

The second problem to be solved by the art sections or sub-sections attached to the Soviets of workmen's deputies, will consist not only in evoking in the large masses of the city populations an interest in all things artistic, not only the "democratization" of art, but also in laying a foundation and building up a genuine, democratic, proletarian, socialistic art. The best means for the solution of this second problem is, first, staging of such plays as represent bourgeois society in a negative-satirical vein—society's manners, its heroes, favorites and idols, or such as describe in tragic tone the struggle of the working class against its oppressors, the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation, and, finally, the birth of a new socialist culture and morality. The accomplishment of this aim—planting the seeds for a proletarian socialist art—can be also considerably aided through the organization, at People's Houses and workmen's clubs, and, on some solemn occasions, at theatres, of specially arranged literary-musical evenings devoted, from beginning to end, from the introductory word to the concert part (recitation, singing and music), to emphasizing the subject of the particular evening, for an example, the Idea of the Revolution, Significance of May 1st, or Proletarian Poetry, etc.

It is necessary not only to socialize and democratize art, but it is also a matter of great urgency—and this forms the third problem of the art sub-sections attached to the Soviets of workmen's deputies—to prepare the large masses of urban population for the comprehension of esthetic values and give them an artistic education. It is clear that the following measures should be undertaken to accomplish this: Publication of popular pocket editions, finely prepared, on the history of Russian and West-European art, which would give understanding for, and familiarize the worker with, the great masters in painting and sculpture; publication at popular prices of reproductions of representative specimens of Russian and European art, especially of works dealing with social themes, the toiling life of peasants and workers (Adler, Millet, Manet, Mentzel, Maddox, Brown and the Russian Traveling Exhibitors): arranging lectures on art which, in a popular way, with the aid of movies, will acquaint the toilers with the evolution of art styles, the influence of social surroundings on art, technical problems connected with the art of different epochs, and finally, the building at the art section of a special art library and reading room—these are the chief important means for the artistic education of the large masses of the toiling urban population.

And, lastly, the fourth—and perhaps the most essential and important problem facing the art sections attached to the Soviets of workers' deputies—is making the proletariat and the toiling classes capable of not only comprehending and criticising things beautiful, whether in the form of stage representations or creations of the brush or chisel, but also of themselves creating those beautiful things, first, in forms inherited from the past, and then, in new forms corresponding to the psychology of these new classes. Establishment of schools of drawing, modeling, recitation and theatrical art, creation of People's Art Academies with lecture halls and convenient studios—these are the means that could gradually transform the toilers from passive observers and critics of beauty into creative artists of beauty, builders of a new proletarian-socialist art which—we believe—will surpass in its grandeur the art of the past.

In connection with the above-stated problems of the art sections attached to the Soviets, there should naturally spring to life a number of committees entrusted with the task of beautification of cities, organizations of national holidays and pageants, organization of revolutionary-socialist concerts and performances; also committees in charge of publications, lectures, libraries, schools—committees composed of representatives from Soviets and labor organizations, artists, actors, stage directors and finally, specialists on the history of art.

Such are the manifold and difficult problems of the Soviet art sections. Their duty is to make art a "joy for all," not only in making the great masses of the urban population interested in things artistic, but particularly in strengthening and promoting the artistic aspirations of the revolutionary proletariat; giving, to the large masses of the urban population, as far as possible, a thorough artistic education, and lastly, finishing and crowning this work by training the toilers for active artistic creation. To prepare the ground for a new art created by a new people—such, briefly, is the aim which the art sections, attached to the Soviets of workmen deputies, should pursue.