This pamphlet contains a number of speeches and reports by Andrei Zhdanov, who for a few years was Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's “culture czar” (pun intended). During this period, roughly 1946-48, Zhdanov carried out a struggle against real or perceived anti-Marxist deviations in art, music and literature. The campaign is known as the Zhdanovshchina. Among his victims were the “formalists” in music (including world famous composers such as Prokofiev and Khachaturian), satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, crypto-dissident poet Anna Akhmatova and an opera by Vano Muradeli, “The Great Friendship”. The pamphlet also contains an attack on “bourgeois” science, including the Big Bang theory and the notion that electrons are really waves!
Although heavily loaded with the usual Soviet rhetoric, Zhdanov's speeches on culture are nevertheless intriguing. On the one hand, they sound “socialist realist” and emphasize that all art and literature must be “partisan”, optimistic and extol the virtues of the Soviet socialist order, the better to “educate the youth”. Stalin had called writers “engineers of the soul”, and Zhdanov concurs. The authors he mentions the most are Nikolai Chernyshevsky, whose novel “What is to be done” had been popular among the first generation of Bolsheviks, and Maxim Gorky, the purported founder of socialist realism. There is also a populist tendency in Zhdanov's speeches. He attacks modern art for being elitist and incomprehensible. Art should serve the people, not be “art for art's sake”. Zhdanov is particularly incensed at Symbolism and similar currents of the immediate pre-revolutionary period, especially their mystical streaks. He calls them bourgeois-aristocratic.
However, there is also a “conservative” and nationalist tendency in Zhdanov's view of culture. He constantly attacks the decadence of Western art styles. A certain kind of “realism” in which gangsters are turned into heroes, homosexuality is treated in detail, and everything ugly is obsessively extolled, sparks his ire. He also opposes “music” which mostly consists of noise, or innovations for the sake of it. Despite his seemingly populist streak, he emphasizes the need for professionalism in music and, in passing, attacks various pedagogical experiments which give students power over their teachers. Zhdanov's alternative to “formalism in music” turns out to be the 19th century Russian Romantic movement in music, including Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and the critic Vladimir Stasov. They represent a “realist” form of classical music, to a large extent based on folk music, which isn't “composed” by anyone, but rather grows organically from the depths of the people. The Russian nationalist aspect is also important, and Zhdanov criticizes those who claim that the classical Russian composers were influenced by foreign models. I cannot help wondering whether Andrei Zhdanov was a closeted Romantic! When discussing painting, Zhdanov mentions the so-called Itinerants as a positive example, being a group of 19th century painters who combined professionalism, realism and social criticism. However, he also mentions a number of more "Romantic" painters inspired by fairy-tale or myth.
Interestingly, the Bolshevik leader Lenin had a surprisingly “conservative” view of culture, too. While Lenin never stopped the experimentation with new artistic styles that took place after the October Revolution, his own view of culture was that “the proletariat” shouldn't attempt to create “its own culture”, but instead assimilate and creatively develop the culture of the old society. Exactly what this meant was anybody's guess, since Lenin, as far as I know, never appointed a culture czar all his own. Zhdanov's attempts to combine “socialist realism” with 19th century Russian romanticism (or pre-socialist Realism) is a perfectly serious attempt to follow in Lenin's footsteps. It's also an interesting position on cultural affairs in its own right. The problem with the Zhdanovshchina was, of course, that it was carried out in the only way cultural policy could be carried out in a highly repressive one-party state: by authoritarian decree from above. Thankfully, nobody was executed and after Stalin's death, Zhdanov's targets were rehabilitated (Zhdanov himself died already in 1948).
I have to admit, though, that part of me longs for another A A Zhdanov in today's cultural climate, which is arguably even more decadent than it was in Leningrad circa 1948!
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