Плаггенборг Шт.
Революция и культура. Культурные ориентиры в период между Октябрьской
революцией и эпохой сталинизма. СПб.: Журнал Нева, 2000.
Plaggenborg identifies the first post-revolutionary decade
as an experience of total cultural transformation driven by Bolshevik ideology
and practical necessities and restrictions and aims to study specific features
of this era, taking as separate cases (book
chapters) different fields of cultural production, including physical culture,
a new culture of reading, radio, posters, cinematography, museums and, finally,
feasts. In a way, this is an attempt to study how the new Soviet man was formed
through different spheres of cultural production, an “anthropological dimension
of the early Soviet history” (15). Also a certain teleological agenda to try
“show in outline what can be defined as ‘ideological predecessors and
ideological preparation of Stalinism’.” (13). His methodological part in
Introduction is, by the way, very contradictory (he discusses theories of political
culture only to reject them (!) and pledge allegiance to cultural analysis a-la
Clifford Geertz.
Chapter 1 focuses on Bolshevik
ideas in the sphere of cultural construction. Plaggenborg starts by arguing
that in the 1930s, a new bureaucratic elite came to power which brought into it
new cultural meanings which were then embodied in the process of Soviet
development; this elite was into material possessions and private life as
opposed to cultural guidelines of the early Soviet time. It was a failure of
Soviet cultural revolution (32). He then traces the origins of this failed
cultural revolution to early Bolshevik writing, arguing that they intended to
change to mentality (sic!) of people by imposing on them their own mental
makeup. He, however, fails to provide a description of what kind of character
this future Soviet man had to inculcate in himself, according to Bolshevik
ideologists: his main conclusion is overly obvious: “instead of studying the
human constitution, cultural planners were engaged in its construction; instead
of suggesting a realistic way for the development of what they had at hand,
they preluded (sic!) the future” (51). He makes some observations on Bolshevik
desires to “transform the everyday life (byt),” since their materialism dictated
that cultural transformation would follow changes in material environment, but
only in passing (53-55). Technical utopianism – in a similar manner.
In Chapter 2, Plaggenborg
explores competing conceptions of physical culture (prior to 1923): as part of
the production process, militarized and hygienist. He brings in ideas that
social Darwinism and eugenics were influential among enthusiasts of physical
culture in the Soviet Union. His conclusions are sometimes too
overgeneralizing: he argues, on the basis of analysis of works by a rather
low-rank Communist functionary, that “misunderstanding” of Social Darwinism and
eugenic project “prevented the development of a situation similar to the one in
Germany during National Socialism.” (116) Here’s a problem that often arises in
the field of Soviet studies: a tendency to regard historical development as
driven by some kind of uniform Bolshevik ideology, in a kind of “you’ve read
one work, you’ve read them all” fashion.
Chapter 3 focuses on the early
Soviet printed production (literature and press) and is interesting from a
perspective that Plaggenborg looks exactly at the process of mechanical
(re)-production of press and literature, rather than on the process of writing.
He makes an interesting comparison between this production and consumption of
literature by analyzing Soviet library collections; his conclusions are
interesting, but very restricted: “the regime’s printed production did not meet
the popular demand… State interests were always made the cornerstone…” (162) “The
meaning of it can be clarifies only if we interpret this process as a
reflection of the regime for its own consumption. Works published at all costs
were a marker of presence, especially in those places where party and state
institutions didn’t practically exist. They represented, substituted the state,
its agents and the party, which did not exist at the institutional level.
Several brochures, at least one newspaper, were compulsorily sent to those
places where the party and the state couldn’t reach.” (163) – it certainly
worked that way, but early Soviet printed production was never just a “marker
of presence,” it did play its part in the construction of the new symbolic
order – something which Plaggenborg totally misses.
Chapter 4 focuses on the radio
and its main message, and here Plaggenborg mostly duplicates earlier debates on
the role of radio in securing popular support among Soviet population – the chapter
is less than 20 pages, so was it worth the effort? His fifth chapter analyzes
the early Soviet poster, and here his thesis is arguably very reductionist: he
claims that the heyday of the Soviet poster took place during the Civil War,
while after 1921 the poster as a genre experienced a very notable decay, “died
as an artistic phenomenon,” in terms of Plaggenborg (208). His argumentation is
that the style based on elements of racism and social Darwinism (197-8) allowed
for a creation of very powerful images of enemies which mobilized Soviet public
opinion and population during the Civil War, but since 1921, “the main problem
was that there were no more true enemies” (208) – not very convincing.
Chapter 6 deals with the early
Soviet cinematography, and the main message of Plaggenborg here is that during
the 1920s it was a total failure: to write at least something, he focuses on
the cinematographic policy of the first years of Stalinism, which undermines the
border of his own research. Not surprisingly, the conclusion to this chapter (the
very last sentence) is about the heyday of the Stalinist cinematography (238). Chapters
7 and 8 examine two interesting phenomena: education of Soviet people through
tourism (7) and museum (8). In both cases, the Soviet state and intellectuals
with whom it cooperated pursued a clearly enlightening agenda, and the material
examined in this chapter is very interesting; it’s a pity that their analytical
part is second to the descriptive part in these two chapters. The chapter on
museums is concluded with a mixture of statements directly borrowed from
sources (“expositions failed to reach Marxist standards…” and in the same
sentence: “fruits of rational and productive work of previous years were
destroyed” – 285). The logic in the very last sentence is murderous: in the
1930s, he argues, despite 21mln registered visits (which he interprets as the
number of visitors), people “attended museums reluctantly and only in groups,
while in the early 1920s they came to museums voluntarily, that is, alone.”
(286) Turn off the light.
The last chapter again involves
an interesting problem and interesting material: Soviet holidays. The material
Plaggenborg analyzes show how holidays become a medium to enlighten, educate,
discipline and organize Soviet population into orderly subjects, on p. 314-315,
in particular - there is a
quintessential statement that Soviet leaders wanted to use holidays “in the
interests of socialist inculcation, education and organization of masses”
(315). But Plaggenborg seems unaware of contemporary theories of cultural
analysis, which is strange for a scholar of his stance. On p. 288, e.g., he
argues that “[Soviet] holidays had nothing to do with public education… and
speaking of holidays, we enter the sphere which is on the face value alien to
political temper (!) of Bolsheviks” – all this despite a huge scholarly body of
literature which analyze modern holidays and festivals as an integral part of
the modern visual culture, to which museums, tourism and cinematography
obviously belong. As a result, he violates his material to make the following
conclusion: “[Soviet] holidays degenerated into pomp, artificiality and
marching exercises… Didn’t it happen because that was the will of the state
(sic!) which had certain designs for it? Wasn’t there precise calculations
behind this form?” (320) – only to say no, the symbolism of Soviet holidays was
too eschatological and mythological, and “in the symbolic message of holidays,
there was no place for rationality, no reason that Politprosvet otherwise
pursued in each of its lines.” (321) How was this statement supported with
argument and evidence – that’s a question for me.
In Conclusion, Plaggenborg
combines in the same proportion interesting thoughts with ideas that can be
characterized as weird (or unjustified by his argumentation and evidence, to
put it in another way). First, he argues that Bolsheviks were too revolutionary
that their cultural projects could become viable. Second, there were two groups
of Bolshevik enlighteners, one—old specialists—“clever,” the second—radical revolutionaries—too
fast. Third, he introduces a third group, which advocated idea that bourgeois
order defragmented personality and revolution should bring it back into one
piece. He adds that Bolshevik enlighteners extensively used new revolutionary
mythologies to pursue their ideas, which brings him to a statement that “in the
sphere of culture, spiritual baggage of many revolutionaries demonstrated
immunity to Marx, Engels and Lenin” and then enunciate two common places: that
not only Bolsheviks were involved in the making of new Soviet culture and that
there was no single Bolshevik cultural project (327). Was this kind of
conclusion worth writing (and reading) a whole book? A disappointment.
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