Dobrenko, Evgeny, and Eric Naiman. The Landscape of Stalinism

Dobrenko, Evgeny, and Eric Naiman. The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space. University of Washington Press, 2005.

In Introduction, Eric Naiman  (UC Berkley) sets the agenda of the volume as an exploration of the relationship between the Soviet chronotope (a specific understanding of space in any given time, a Bakhtin’s term) and ideological production of meanings. Katerina Clark (Yale) in “Socialist Realism and the Sacralizing of Space” explores the centrality of Soviet “socialist realist” architecture for the sacralisation of Soviet space, with a focus on “purification or repurification” (a forerunner of the purges). Mentions the role of novels in the cartography of Soviet space. The relations between center and periphery became (1930s) vertical – hence many novels/movies end with a hero’s trip to Moscow. “Stalin is like a monument or a monumental building” (12). Clark does a bit of analysis to the sacralisation of Stalin’s figure in socialist realism (mentioning, for example, its connection with Soviet sexuality).

Jan Plamper (Goldsmith, University of London) in “The Spatial Poetics and the Personality Cult. Circles around Stalin” studies the representations of space in those objects of art where Stalin was present himself; he argues that the space is often organized “around” Stalin in these pictures, to the degree that by the late 1940s “he was sometimes represented indirectly, without showing his physical appearance at all” (43). Oksana Bulgakova (Universität Mainz) focuses on changes in spatial representation in the Soviet cinematography (spatial canon). The 1920s as the revolutionary transformation of (cinematic) landscape, esp. through montage; the 1930s as its “cementation” through introduction of vertical axis of semantic meanings (periphery-center). Hans Gunther studies how the archetype of Mother was used for the symbolic legitimation of the Stalinist ideology and regime.

Boris Groys in “The Art of Totality” explores the Stalinist aesthetics of totality. “Works of totalitarian art do not describe the world—they occupy the world” (98). He argues that avant-gardists claimed total authority over the masses (doubtful) which gives him the ground to call it a totalitarian project: “The inclusion of the spectator in the work of art represents the actual project of the avant-garde—and this project itself was from the beginning totalizing or, as it were, totalitarian” (100). He compares the Soviet and Nazi art of the 1930s as two totalitarian projects to draw a conclusion that “a fundamental similarity is obvious… in both cases, the issue is the replacement of customary rules governing the writing of art history with a vision of a single battle [class struggle or Arians vs. non-Arians]. This battle penetrates the innermost part of all history. Hence, all periods are synchronized, and all places are housed in a single, total space” (107). While much of Groys’s material is interesting, sometimes his analysis is too “kulturologicheskii,” based on no empirical or factual basis. “In Stalinist architecture, unlike in bourgeois architecture, every architect attempted to build something total, absolute, undifferentiable, and indescribable” (114). A-ha.

Randi Cox (Stephen F. Austin State University) in “All this can be yours! Soviet commercial advertising and the social construction of space, 1928–1956,” taking as her starting point the assumption that advertising in the Soviet Union played a didactic function of teaching citizens how to consume in a “correct” way, aims to explore the connection between advertisement and the construction of public and private space. Notes that new social characters are produced through advertisement which have nothing to do with production: “we know nothing about [characters] except that they are young, urban, and affluent… As class faded from advertising, youth and gender became increasingly important.” (147) A switch to female consumption. “Two kinds of women appeared in Stalin-era ads: the sentimentalized mother and the glamorous urbanite” (148). She can’t, however, distance herself from the authoritative picture of the Soveit state: speaking of the emphasis on consumption, she refers to some agent “outside” of the society (i.e., Soviet ideologists): “This transformation… was intended to encourage a Soviet identity in which politics and class carried far less weight than family life, gender, and leisure… Advertising from the very beginning of the Stalin period deemphasized production, politics, and class and focused instead on the private, emotional effects of consumption” (156). And what did she expect to find??? A kind of “all-resources-to-the-production-of-weapons” thing? Consumption wasn’t invented out of nowhere, it was culturally rooted in NEP-era consumption, in already existing social values. Perhaps, the best explanation of this is through Hegelian objectification: these advertisement were not part of social engineering by the Stalinist regime, it would be a very big simplification, but themselves embodied certain social trends and tendencies: for example, the figures of “glamorous urbanites” could actually be brought into Soviet discourse by “middle class” women during the NEP from pre-revolutionary and Western fashion (Ellochka-liudoedochka from 12 chairs).

Evgeny Dobrenko studies representations of space (‘cultural topography’) in postage-stamps, tourism journals and popular geography. John McCannon (University of Saskatchewan) explores “the Arctic’s space in the USSR’s modern cosmography” (242), arguing that it was more a testing ground for the making of a new Soviet man/woman and the last frontier rather than anything else (hence ignorance of conditions, costs, psychological influence, etc.). Use of the Arctic myth to reinforce the structures of authority (Stalinist mythology). Interesting observations: polar explorers and Arctic pilots typically came to Moscow to meet Stalin after the completion of their adventures; i.e., the archetypical plot of the socialist realism was materialized in these cases (249-250).

Davies, Sarah. Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941.

Davies, Sarah. Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

“The aim of this book is simple: to ‘release’ [the voices of “ordinary” people] and allow them to speak for themselves as far as possible” (1). She aims her agenda as a study of how people responded to the Great Retreat (which makes her framework pretty schematic) and Great Terror. She enters a debate with Kotkin and Kenez (who allegedly argue that the Soviet propaganda subdued other forms of discourse and made people ‘speak Bolshevik’, even without believing it), arguing that “new documents” demonstrate that popular dissent was wide-spread—true, but there was a huge difference between public discourse (where it was only possible to ‘speak Bolshevik’) and private discourse (where a huge possibility of discourses could exist). Emphasizes certain ‘carnivalesque’ elements in the use of official language (use of ‘second meanings’ to ‘steal’ first official meanings, thus deconstructing the official rhetorical and propagandistic clichés and models) – p. 8.

But then the book is built in a very simplistic way: the author takes a certain political or social phenomenon of Stalinism, looks at archival files about it, and deduces that there was a certain (but, of course, far from universal) popular opposition to it. So what? Is it really surprising that there was opposition to, say, the prohibition of abortions or the increase in bread prices? She seems to battle some old version of Sovietology at the time when it was long far from being on the cutting edge of scholarship about Soviet history.

Interestingly, she describes the rise of Stalin’s personality cult by 1936, although she doesn’t explain why it was supported (and it was!) from below. She, actually, resorts to explaining it through propaganda: okay, it did play a major role, but how did it resonate in the public opinion? When it comes to the analysis of public opinion, she once again repeats that there were those who believed and those who didn’t. The conclusion: “The [Stalinist propaganda] machine itself was far from omnipotent, lacking sufficient resources and personnel to make it fully effective” (183) – and what did she expect to find, an Orwellian state? The whole conclusion repeats the main theme of the book: some believed, some didn’t, some fell prey to propaganda, some remained immune.

Widdis, Emma. Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War.

Widdis, Emma. Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Emma Widdis’s (Cambridge) agenda is to understand the history of Sovietness (in particular, of Soviet identity) through the ways the Soviet power organized its space (imaginary geographies), using empirical evidence from feature films and documentaries, as well as popular journalism, avant-garde aesthetics, and architectural projects. Importance of the production of map: transformation of (unknown) space into (known and conquered) territory. Tensions in terms of visions of territorial composition of the USSR: contesting visions (esp. between center and periphery). Since there (always) is a strong relationship between the questions of national territory and of national identity, “mapping” of the Soviet state turned out to be a key to the forging of new revolutionary Soviet (non-national) identity. 1920s and early 1930s as period of experiments with different forms of spatial organization in cultural production; by the late 1930s – “the imaginary map of High Stalinism pictured an immobile space, hierarchically organized around a dominant centre from which lines of influence extended radially, and the relationship between centre and periphery encoded relations of power” (8). Osvoieniie as creation of dominated space (in terms of Henri Lefebvre).

In chapter 1, Widdis discusses transformations of the Soviet infrastructure, focusing on the electrification of Russian region and creation of new industrial objects during the two first Five-Year Plans. In chapter 2, Widdis explores the poetics of the early Soviet cinematography (esp. the techniques of montage) to understand what kind of geography was created by cinematographic means. Chapter 3 starts with a study of urban representations in the Soviet cinematography (the Soviet city of the 1920s as “urban chaos” and as decentered space) and private space as a safe haven from it. Chapter 4 looks at how cinematography and cartography was used to explore and represent the Soviet periphery and make it part of the new Soviet territory.  Chapter 5 explores visual representations of travel (aerial shots as “mapping,” while train travel as “experience”). By the early 1930s travel-as-exploration transforms into travel-as-tourism as part of a wider change in representational strategies of the Soviet space. Chapter 6 focuses on the grand shift of the 1930s: “the Soviet Union began to represent a world in itself. The space that during the 1920s was implicitly unbounded – always on the point of transition into the global workers’ International – was transformed into a self-contained and bounded space” (143). Border guard as a new hero. Soviet world depicted (from ever-changing) as static and eternal – example of Rodchenko’s photography between 1920s and 1930s. Moscow re-emerges as the focus and “folklorization” of the Soviet village.

Hoffmann, David L. Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941.

Hoffmann, David L. Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.

David Hoffman (Ohio State University) aims to study the production of new social norms and values in interwar Soviet society. Borrowing a term from Katerina Clark, he speaks of “cultural ecosystem,” a kind of symbiosis between Soviet elites and intellectuals created to achieve cultural transformation of the society. He also argues that the reforms of the 1930s were not a “retreat” from Communism, but rather an attempt at consolidation of socialist reforms. Actually, it is hard to say what new this book brings into the discussion about Stalinism. Hoffman writes about establishment of norms for the Soviet population (chapter 1), for VKP(b) members (chapter 2), sexual norms and gender policies (chapter 3), Soviet consumer policy (chapter 4), and attempts of Soviet leaders to create cultural and social unity (chapter 5). It all has been discussed before from the same perspectives; and he doesn’t succeed in contributing anything new to this dialogue, because primary sources remain deeply secondary in his analysis—remove them, and his argument won’t be principally disabled (a more illustrative role). This is an excellent compilation and a textbook, but the novelty of research is pretty much non-existent.

Also, sometimes Hoffman takes ideological/cultural explanations for granted: “Collectivization… was an attempt by Paty leaders to accelerate evolutionary time toward communism” (49). Sometimes a good skill to speak in commonsensical phrases (which is, once again, good for a textbook) makes him greatly simplify his analysis: “The Great Purges were… orchestrated by the Stalinist leadership to eliminate enemies and potential opposition within the Party and the country as a whole… The Party’s discourse on morality and purification was intended to justify the purges in the eyes of Party members” (71). A useful term: participatory (instead of democratic) politics as the nature of the Soviet political process.

Gregory, Paul R. (ed.). Behind the Façade of Stalin's Command Economy

Gregory, Paul R. (ed.). Behind the Façade of Stalin's Command Economy: Evidence from the Soviet State and Party Archives. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2001.

Paul R. Gregory’s article “The Dictator’s Orders” examines the interaction between the Politburo (including Stalin) and other economic bodies (primarily Gosplan, but also lower-level organs) in the planning and implementation of Soviet economic policy. He argues that the Politburo attempted to control the development of Soviet economy by controlling “key” sectors and defining the priorities, but due to its inability to encompass all spheres of Soviet economy, much decision-making was delegated to other bodies of power. The latter, therefore, could negotiate certain terms and conditions with the government. Moreover, interests of the center were often undermined by lower-level agents, as in the case of ministries: “Ministries hid information from the center, refused to present disaggregated targets, abused any decentralized authority offered them, and sought as much independence of action as possible” (33).

E. A. Rees’s discussion (“Leaders and their institutions”) of the evolution of power function in the supreme party organs (primarily, the Politburo) aims to revise the nature of Stalinist regime: in particular, the extent and limits of Stalin’s power, as well as “what measure of influence was exerted by other leaders apart from Stalin, and what influence institutional lobbies or social pressures had in shaping this regime” (35). Curiously, but Rees concludes his interesting analysis with a commonplace: “to all intents and purposes, the Soviet Union already from 1933 was under Stalin’s personal dictatorship” (58), and at this place, it looks like he squeezed new material into the Procrustean bed of his earlier views.

“Making Economic Policy” by R. W. Davies explores the extent to which Stalin personally shaped the development of the Soviet economy, especially in the latter half of the 1930s. He also looks at the manner in which reforms were negotiated between certain economic bodies and Stalin. “Providing for defense” by Mark Harrison studies the burden that the Soviet military effort exerted on economy; he also addresses the question of reasonability of this burden arguing that “Soviet plans to build a military-industrial complex were laid down… in spite of the absence of any immediate military threat” (86) – a statement which totally misses the point that the Soviet leadership dealt not with “real” threats, but rather with perceived threats of outside aggression which were formed as a result of the foreign military intervention in the Russian Civil War and their own rhetoric of “capitalist encirclement.” Harrison then explores finance-related problems of the Soviet defence industry, focusing on difficulties in controlling the value of production in a non-competitive economy.

Oleg Khlevnyuk’s “The economy of Gulag” explores “the relative size of the Gulag’s economy and the real value to Soviet industrialization of the facilities that prisoners built” (112). The article explores the dynamic and distribution of forced labor during the 1930s, as well as specific tasks that were given to the Gulag system. Khlevnyuk uses archival evidence to demonstrate that there were no specific economic requirements behind the Great Terror, but it was rather driven by political motivations. “The volume of capital projects performed by the NKVD on the eve of the war amounted to about 13-14 percent of the total volume of capital projects” (121). Their actual efficiency was, however, very low (BBK or railroad construction as two typical examples). Evidence that Oleg Khlevnyuk used in his article highlights some limits of Stalin’s power in his position of the Soviet leader. He mentions that at some point in 1940 Stalin attacked the extensive use of forced labor in Soviet capital projects (p. 128) and yet “these criticisms by Stalin did not have any serious consequences” (ibid.).

Eugenia Belova’s “Economic crime and punishment” looks at the criminalization of economic offenses, particularly at the practice of Soviet control commissions. Belova argues that the very Soviet economic system left to its practitioners no other choice but to become involved in illegal or quasi legal activities to meet the quotas given by supreme authorities (she discusses the phenomenon of ‘tolkachi’ as one case). Aleksei Tikhonov’s and Paul G. Gregory’s “Stalin’s last plan” poses the question to what degree the post-war Soviet economic system reflected earlier debates and problems of economic reforms of the 1930s. They study this question in the context of power struggle in the Communist leadership and explore the competition between agencies responsible for the development of the post-war economic policy (Gosplan, Gossnab and Ministry of Finances).