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Socialist Realism «Post-Mortem»
(Late Soviet Aesthetics: Art Practices and Theory, Institutions, Cultural Contexts. 1970s — 1980s)
The culture of the late period of Soviet history, which became known as “stagnation”, cannot be considered forgotten. Nevertheless, there are few comprehensive works addressing the art and aesthetics of the 1970s and early 1980s, and there are practically no complex collective studies integrating the accumulated experience. This is especially noticeable against the background of recent summary studies that focus on Soviet literature and art of the preceding periods (see, for example, the works of N. V. Kornienko on the 1920s, E. Dobrenko on the 1930s-1950s, and S. I. Chuprinin on the Thaw). The proposed project is intended to fill this gap. In the reputable monograph by A. Yurchak “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation” (2005), practically the only large-scale work on the culture of “stagnation”, the problems of art and aesthetics are addressed with a prevailing focus on the “unofficial” landscape. This approach is important but insufficient. The role of “officioz” in late Soviet culture remained dominant, and this determined the choice of perspective for the proposed project: to attempt to look at this culture from the point of view of the “sunset” of socialist realism.
The metaphor “post-mortem,” referring to the genre of post-mortem photography popular in the second half of the 19th century, which captured the recently deceased as if they were alive, characterizes quite accurately what was happening to the doctrine of socialist realism in the 1970s and 1980s. The term “socialist realism,” coined in 1932, already began to lose its position in the mid-1950s. Yet it remained one of the key terms in official discourse until the end of the Soviet era. Figures in late Soviet culture participated in a “game” where one could either orient oneself toward the canon, adapting it to the changed conditions, resist, or ignore it. However, the “strategy of ignoring” implied neglecting certain forms of art, specifically socialist realism. How did Soviet aesthetics of the 1970s-1980s continue the “socialist realist” aesthetic of its heyday in the 1930s-1950s, in which respects and to what extent was it disconnected from it, and how did it evolve in this respect? This is how we can formulate the main questions posed by the research group.
In accordance with the selected approach, the project is not intended to provide a purely descriptive, all-encompassing and self-contained history of late Soviet art. Its main goal is to rethink the already accumulated experience of addressing the late Soviet period and to analyze a wide but still identifiable range of phenomena and issues, both well-known and little-studied, in order to understand what united the very different aesthetic practices of the art of that time, on the one hand, and what determined their specific nature in relation to the aesthetics of the preceding periods, on the other.
The focus of the research group will be primarily on approved, i.e., mass-oriented, culture – literature, cinema, theater, painting and plastic arts, popular music, as well as the aesthetic theories of the late Soviet period, expressed in the most significant critical texts and academic works. At the same time, not limiting the study to the situation in official culture, the project participants plan to approach, if necessary, peripheral “underground” culture as its contrast.
Though primarily focused on aesthetics, the project is not a purely literary or art historical project, but a much broader historical and cultural study that takes into account and analyzes political, ideological, institutional, and everyday contexts.
The results of the research will be presented in a series of articles, in presentations at prestigious international conferences, and, at the final stage of the project, in a collective monograph.
The research group will concentrate its efforts on exploration of the following areas and themes:
– The philological and cultural-historical analysis of the presence of socialist realism («post-mortem socialist realism») in literature;
– The cultural, historical, and film studies of the socialist influence and strategies for avoiding it in the late Soviet cinema, including television films.
– The cultural, historical, and art criticism analysis of the presence of socialist realism and the tactics of countering it in Soviet theater.
– The cultural and historical analysis of the struggle between socialist realism and competing artistic principles in late Soviet popular music.
– The cultural and historical research of socialist realist art forms in the fields of visual arts, specifically sculpture and painting.
– The cultural and historical analysis of the representation of the socialist realism «norm» in everyday life, as reflected in personal writings, «naive literature», and documents that bridge private and public spheres (honor certificates, socialist vows, Komsomol tickets, etc.).
– The theoretical understanding of the literary and artistic practices characteristic of the period of «stagnation», and attempts to interpret them in terms of Socialist Realism. The transformation of Socialist Realist theory.
– The history of the Writers’ Union, in particular, the history of writers’ congresses and other creative organizations.
The research is being conducted with the assistance of the Russian Science Foundation, project № 24-18-00787 Socialist Realism «Post-Mortem» (Late Soviet Aesthetics: Art Practices and Theory, Institutions, Cultural Contexts. 1970s — 1980s).