Unlike the artistic shift that took place during Peter’s Cultural Revolution, in which artists moved away from traditional Muscovite art styles to adopt a style that was wholly European, the Symbolist movement was an attempt by Russian artists to look inward, not only to themselves as individuals, but once again within Russian culture, rooting themselves in their own history, yet attempting to reconcile traditional Russian imagery with the established European style. This trend can be seen in the performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in which costumes and choreography are influenced by traditional Muscovite styles, yet with a contemporary twist that incorporates elements of both Western European and Russian culture. It is also seen in Ilya Repin’s painting: Ivan the Terrible and his Son, in which an important event in Russian history is depicted using elements that are more characteristically European. Similarly, Viktor Vasnetsov’s Three Princesses uses Western Realism to portray three women in traditional Muscovite dresses. Irina Paperno explains that “western cultural paradigms were…rearranged to fit into a new context; they were alloyed with ideas and images specifically Russian.” (Paperno, 5)
While Symbolism emphasized Russia’s history and Muscovite roots, it was not a backwards-looking cultural movement. It was inherently modernistic, and the artists and poets attempted to break new ground by looking ahead to a Utopian ‘new world’. Paperno describes their perspective: “the accepted model of reality, or the world itself, is up for rearrangement. This mentality drew its strength from a characteristic feeling: the apocalyptic sense that humankind was living at the “breaking point” of history, destined for totally novel times and a new world.” (Paperno, 3) Therefore, the Symbolist movement appears to be simultaneously looking inward, to Russia’s own history and culture, and looking ahead to a new future: a reform of society in uncharted ways.
Paperno suggests that the Symbolist movement helped to advance a culture which facilitated Stalin’s rise to power, when she writes: “it is no accident that commentators as diverse as the emigre Symbolist Fedor Stepun, the repentant revolutionary Nikolai Valentinov, and Nadezhda Mandelshtam came to see Symbolist “life-creation” as contributing to an atmosphere that allowed the totalitarian control imposed by Stalin.” (Paperno, 9) Is this opinion valid? Did the Symbolist movement, in its adoption of a more Russian-centered aesthetic, along with its Utopian, “new world” ideals contribute to a culture that was more receptive to Stalin’s Russocentric, Socialist rule?
I believe that the opinion that the Symbolist movement helped to advance a culture allowing Stalin’s rise to power is valid. One of the key aspects of the movement was that art and life became one and the same, that an ideal could be found in the material world through human intermediaries channeling the spiritual into art. Paperno quotes Solov’ev, “…contemporary realism returns man to earth…This, however, should lead not to total immersion in the earthly life, but to renovation of this world.” (Paperno, 17).
Thinking of what Stalin did in his time, it becomes clear that many of his policies and ideologies can be seen in a Symbolist light. The five year plans were to renovate the material world of the Russian people in that the material would now be infused with Soviet ideals. Soviet Realism, as a style, was the propagandist realization of Soviet ideals in the flesh. Moreover, the climate in which Symbolism was born was one of apocalyptic thinking, something we see echoes of after the Russian Civil War and the Great War especially. Through tragedy and the philosophies of utopia surrounding it, particularly Symbolism, Stalin had a clear cut system of ideals and motivations on which to build himself up.
If we consider Socialist Realism as the construction of an idealistic society (or depictions of an idealistic society), it would certainly make sense that the element of “life-creation” emphasised in Symbolism was informative to Stalin. After all, for Fedorov, the task of art was not “representation of life” but “[re]construction of life” (Paperno, 7).
My question regards the religious quality of Symbolist art. Paperno describes the religiosity of much of this art, citing Solov’ev’s dualism as an example (the duality of heavenly and earthly; material and spiritual; ideal and real).
If Symbolism was arguably influential to Stalin, what happened to its religious qualities in the revolutionary period? Religion was repressed and art was closely monitored by the state. If art was the creation of life and the artist the creator, there is a great irony in Stalin’s desire for artistic control. Were the religious qualities of art (predominantly Symbolist art) later channeled into propaganda and Stalin’s cult of personality?
(I’d be interested to know what religious art or literature, assumedly subtle or clandestine in nature, was produced in the post-revolutionary era.)
An insistence upon Orthodoxy and the apocalyptic, two themes vital to the development of the Russian oeuvre across history, informed the Symbolist philosophy. Its goal of a utopian collectivization of life, through a comprehensive “aesthetic organization,’ expressed themselves through a merging of lived experience and art. The proponents of this philosophy sought to remove the plaque of convention imposed by history by animating creative production. Habituated life, merely a repetition of tired motifs, had lost its swaying power. Through the synthesis of art and life, a unified function of generation, was motivated by a constant interplay between “antagonistic entities” (Paperno, 13), and by a transcendence of the physical. Life required new motivation through its marriage with the dynamic force of art, and derived import from its union of “the material and spiritual” towards immortality.
How does the emphasis on “resurrection” speak to later Formalist constructions concerning receptions of reality through the written word? In what ways does Symbolism articulate its return to Russian roots in the artistic representations of Slavic myth? And, as the Symbolists sought to mold Western cultural schemes towards the accommodation of Russian tropes and themes, how was a distinct Russian identity both altered and amplified?
Bogdanov declares that, “it is the proletarian culture in a proletarian state…that is uniquely equipped for the global [re]organization of life.” This assertion sheds light on the ways in which a path was paved towards Stalin’s regime, under Soviet utopian ideology.
Also, How could the promotion of “metamorphosis” over “mimesis,” (7) in artistic representation, further a regeneration of Russian identity? How does this notion interact with the precepts of Socialist Realism, as it conveyed idealized images of Soviet society?