This was written over a decade ago, so please, please don’t judge it too harshly. My writing sucked, I know, I’m over it. I’m just publishing it because one of my favorite readers and commenters asked.
One of the most fascinating issues surrounding the history of the modernist art in the XXth century is its relationship with the totalitarian regimes that are themselves an invention of this century. There are interesting parallels in the way that modernist art was treated in the Soviet Union, the Nazi Germany and the Fascist Italy. It has been pointed out that in their fight for power, and then in the first years of working towards establishing their respective regimes Communists, Nazis and Fascists did not reject or persecute the artistic avant-gardes. To the contrary, as Eksteins demonstrates in Rites of Spring, there are numerous affinities between the modernist way of seeing the world and the ideas that brought Nazis to power in Germany. In the case of the Soviet Union, avant-garde artists were not initially controlled by the government. More than that, as Margolin points out in The Struggle for Utopia, these artists wanted to participate in the project that the communists were supposedly trying to carry out, and strived to either adapt their art to these goals, or to interpret it in ways that would be helpful to the program of changing the society. Yet again, there seems to be a genuine interest on the part of the modernist artists towards this political system, and even a certain identification with its goals. As for Fascist Italy, as Stone demonstrates in The Patron State, Fascist cultural functionaries created a system of patronage in which avant-garde artists were afforded an unparalleled government support irrespective of the political content of their work and their artistic affiliations. At the same time, some groups of modernist artists, such as the Futurists, genuinely and consistently supported Fascist ideas and the Fascist government, seeing them as related to and reflective of their own vision.
In spite of the initial support that these totalitarian regimes first accorded to the artistic avant-gardes and the modernists’ affinities with some of the ideas that inspired the rise to power of Nazism, Fascism and Communism, there comes a point in the history of all three of these regimes when they reject, to a greater or lesser degree, the modernist art they initially supported. While the Nazis in Germany organize the Degenerate Art Exhibition to signal their dismissal of this kind of art, there is a similar (although a less successful, as Stone demonstrates) tendency to denounce modernist art in Fascist Italy. In the most extreme case of all, the Soviet Union not only completely withdraws its support for avant-garde artists, but also chooses to prohibit creative efforts in any style other than that of Socialist Realism. The Western modernism, and later post-modernism, would not be criticized or denounced for the simple reason that their very existence will be concealed from the reading public. Taking into the account the initial attraction between the ideas that inspire modernist art and the ideology that brings to power these totalitarian systems, one is bound to wonder: why do these political regimes always seem to arrive at a point where they feel the necessity to reject, condemn and even conceal the existence of modernist art? If, as Stone suggests, “the dictatorships of the twentieth century all located aesthetics at the core of their centralizing drives” (3), and the aesthetics in question was that of modernist art, then why would this aesthetics eventually come to be perceived by the dictators as incompatible with the needs of their totalitarian regimes?
- Rites of Spring: the affinities between modernism and Nazism.
In Rites of Spring Modris Eksteins tries to demonstrate how the forces that arise in Germany at the turn of the century and push for the first World War, and which later lead to the coming to power of Nazism, are inspired by the same ideas that are associated with modernism. Compared with France and Britain, Germany enters the process of industrialization, urbanization and quest for political unity in a belated fashion (64). As a result of an industrialization that was extremely rapid, a significant segment of the country’s population found itself experiencing feelings of depersonalization, isolation and vulnerability: “As consolidation took place on one level – in the population, industry, and the state structure – disintegration characterized the social, political, and, perhaps most significantly, psychological realms” (70). In the search for political and spiritual unity of Germany, there was a need for a common idea that all Germans would be able to rally behind. In these circumstances there appears an understandable tendency to describe Germany in spiritual terms, and to define it against the French and the British, which would be perceived as enemies, due to their position of cultural hegemony that Germany would need to contest in order to keep growing. What is significant is the way in which Germany’s spiritual enemies would be described, as opposed to the definition given to the German culture: “Anglo-French civilization [. . .] was based on rationalism, empiricism, and utility; in other words, on externality. [. . .] German Kultur, by contrast, was said to be concerned with ‘inner freedom, with authenticity, with truth rather than sham, with essence as opposed to appearance” (77). Add to this “a concern with newness and inevitable change” (72), the persuasion that “no other country had a greater right to summon up impressions of movement and transitoriness” (67), calls for aesthetization of life (77), and what emerges is a consistent effort to define German national identity in terms almost identical to those which could be used to describe modernism. At the same time, Germany’s enemies seem to possess the precise qualities that modernism strived to reject. In arts, this push for a change in old and outdated systems would translate into a greater openness to experimentation that would be acceptable in France or Britain at the time (81). It is no wonder that persuaded of their historical missing of being a carrier of progress and change, the Germans would enthusiastically accept the necessity of an upcoming war with nations that had come to be seen as obstacles on the way to this progress. Leaving aside the question of whether this enthusiasm and the feeling that war was a historical mission for the German people was really part of a set of feelings shared by large segments of German population, or whether it was generated by those in power in order to provoke popular support for a war and endow it with a spiritual meaning, what is important for the present discussion is that arriving at the idea that the war is necessary seems to be a result of sharing many of the beliefs that inspire modernism in its meaning as a new set of values. According to Eksteins, those Germans who were convinced of the need to go to war against France and Britain shared the values first introduced by the avant-garde artists before the war and wanted to defend precisely those values: “The war, for Germany, was [. . .] a quest for authenticity, for truth, for self-fulfillment, for those values, that is, which the avant-garde had evoked prior to the war and against those features – materialism, banality, hypocrisy, tyranny – which it had attacked” (92).
After the war, as a general sense of disillusionment settles in in Germany, the feeling that old systems of values have been irremediably shattered by the war calls for a creation of a new system of ideas that would be more compatible with the post-war reality. The apparent meaninglessness of the war and its victims led people across Europe to question whether there was a meaning to life at all: “As people became less able to answer the fundamental question of the meaning of life – and the war posed that question brutally in nine million cases – they insisted all the more stridently that the meaning lay in life itself, in the act of living, in the vitality of the moment. The twenties, as a result, witnessed a hedonism and narcissism of remarkable proportions” (256). Other feelings that seem to be shared by most in the aftermath of the war are “a flight from reality” (257), a general preoccupation with newness (257), “a sense of transitoriness” (259), indulging of the senses and the instincts (256), “heightened emphasis on spirituality, inwardness, and the unconscious” (261), an interest in “movement melancholy and neurosis” as opposed to “sanity and reason,” “fixity and faith” (261). This set of ideas, shared by all Europeans, and later brought to America, allows Eksteins to state that “the modern temper had been forged; the avant-garde had won. The ‘adversary culture’ had become the dominant culture; irony and anxiety, the mode and the mood” (293). In other words, the European public that was shocked by the first representation of Le Sacre du printemps in 1913, now largely shared the ideas and preoccupations that informed this artistic creation. The result of the war was that it turned the ideas formerly shared only by avant-garde artists and scandalous to the general public into a commonly held way of seeing the world.
This way, Nazism can be seen as a product of this system of ideas that is modernism. As Eksteins states: “Nazism was a popular variant of many of the impulses of the avant-garde. It expressed on a more popular level many of the same tendencies and posited many of the same solutions that the avant-garde did on the level of ‘high art’” (311). One of the sides of Nazism that can be recognized as being shared with modernism is “irrationalism crossed with technicism” (303). At the same time, Eksteins points out that “if the tendency of modernism, from its roots in romanticism, was to ‘objectify the subjective,’ to translate into symbol subjective experience, Nazism took its tendency and turned it into a general philosophy of life and society” (314). This way, Nazism appears to be a popular response to a new way of seeing the world, a new set of ideas than started to emerge at the turn of the century, and that, after World War I, came to be shared by most. Nazi atrocities seem to be a directly connected to the ideas of narcissism, hedonism, and preoccupation with death and violence, which, as has already been mentioned, acquired special importance in the aftermath of the war. Still, in the case that it is true that Nazism should be seen as a popular expression of modernist ideas, why would something like the Degenerate Art Exhibition eventually come about? In other words, if there is such an affinity between ideas expressed by modernist writers and the ideas informing Nazism as a political movement, which can also be seen in the interest that many major European artists felt towards Nazism, why, then, would modernist art eventually be rejected in such a violent fashion by the Nazi leaders? If the ideas inspiring this art are the same that helped these politicians come to power, why would there be a need to present this art as mad, depraved and degenerate?
- The Struggle for Utopia: the fate of avant-garde art in the Soviet Union.
In The Struggle for Utopia Margolin demonstrates how such modernist artists as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy identified with the proclaimed goals of the Socialist revolution in Russia and tried to make their art serve the purposes of creating a new society that this revolution proposed. In 1915, even before the revolution, Rodchenko rejected traditional art forms and declared a rebellion against bourgeois norms and values (12). This allowed him to identify with the revolution and led him to express his support for the Bolshevik regime (13). In his work during the first decade after the revolution, Rodchenko’s primary goal was “to create and disseminate objects that would help bring about a new way of life” (102). This new way of life would, of course, find its reflection in the changes that the revolution was supposedly trying to bring about in the society. The same goal of helping to create a new world was professed by Lissitzky in presenting his Of Two Squares. In a similar way, Moholy-Nagy believed that art had a “revolutionary role in changing mass consciousness” (66). As avant-garde artists, Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy felt a profound dissatisfaction with the bourgeois values of the previous century. There is no wonder that the goals of the Bolshevik revolution, which called to the overthrowing of the old structures and abolition of outdated values, would allow these artists an opportunity to identify with this new regime and provoke in them a desire to work for its benefit.
At the same time, it is important to remember that in the first decade of its existence the Communist regime did not persecute artistic avant-gardes: “The period of war communism provided an open horizon which revolutionaries of all types used to give shape to their hopes for the future. This was a moment when visionary speculations, particularly artistic ones, were relatively unrestrained and unchallenged by the party leadership” (11). The same tendencies can be observed up to the late twenties: “Due to the party’s decision to allow a wide range of artistic initiatives during the NEP period, the artists encountered few restrictions of style” (82). The Constructivists’ production seemed to be in high demand from state institutions, which allowed these artists to create their work without a direct dependence on the limitations normally imposed by the laws of the market (82). This support of the government for avant-garde artistic endeavors, which can be seen in the range of works put on display at the exhibition of Russian art that took place in Berlin in 1922, was also aimed at attracting Western intellectuals to the ideas of Bolshevism (69-70). As it is well known, this tolerance of the Soviet government towards modernist art did not last very long. Starting in the early thirties the government’s acceptance of the artistic avant-gardes would become more and more tenuous. In his speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Zhdanov dealt a final blow to the modernist art in the Soviet Union by proclaiming that the only art that would be accepted will be the art that directly serves the goals of the revolution in the form of Socialist Realism.
When it comes to analyzing the reasons behind the decision to effectuate this sudden turn away from modernist art, which will result in a complete prohibition not only to practice it, but eventually to even mention its existence in the West, Margolin simply states that “in the long run [. . .] the avant-garde’s vision of communist culture was never accepted by large numbers of people nor was it one which the party chose to adopt” (120). Still, there must be some reasoning behind the decision to turn away from modernist art, especially taking into account the fact that many avant-garde artists were ready to see in the revolution an inspiration for their work. Another explanation that Margolin gives for the persecution of modernist artists is the tendency to create a unique kind of culture that would be unparalleled by anything in the West: “As part of Stalin’s promulgation of ‘socialism in one country,’ there was an increasing critique of Western culture and a striving to emphasize the development of a uniquely Soviet one. As Stalin continued to talk about the capitalist encirclement of Russia and the need to resist it, any link with artistic strategies that were identified with the West became a liability” (150). It should be remembered, though, that of all the literary movements realism was chosen as the one most useful to the Soviet readers and viewers. While the contemporary artists were limited by the constraints of Socialist Realism, the history of world art as taught and given access to for the public was reduced to realism and naturalism. In view of this, it seems that it would be more useful to look to the deeper ideological differences between realism and modernism for an answer about the reasons why realism was chosen as the only movement known to the Soviet public. This issue will be investigated in more detail further on, but for the moment it seems necessary to concentrate on Margolin’s statement that even in the thirties, when the earlier tolerance towards avant-garde art was revoked, it was still possible for some modernist artists to preserve certain avant-garde techniques in their art. Thus, Margolin tries to demonstrate that Lissitzky’s work in USSR in Construction was not marked by a complete renunciation of his avant-garde principles of art: “In this and other early issues of USSR in Construction that Lissitzky designed, we can, in fact, see continuations and amplifications of the visual strategies he developed in his avant-garde publications of the 1920s” (172). While it is true that some of the techniques of photomontage, use of colors, etc. are undoubtedly owed to Lissitzky’s avant-garde inspirations, this can only be said as to form, for the content is obviously one over which the artist did not have much control. This content also has such a strong ideological message that it seems to completely override the role the form plays in this kind of work. There is a marked difference between this work by Lissitzky and his earlier production, Prouns, the aim of which was to create “a new kind of painting that could more actively engage the viewer” (33). It seems to be evident that the aim of USSR in Construction is not to make a viewer produce a personal response to the work, but rather to present an ideological message that should be absorbed and accepted as it is, without being analyzed. In this respect, Rodchenko’s goal for his work might be called to mind: “Users would realize this potential by interacting meaningfully with the objects rather than relating passively to them” (89). The traces of avant-garde techniques that would be preserved in some works of art would definitely not be aimed at reaching this purpose anymore. It should also be remembered that even such modest experimentation with artistic form will not be possible with such art forms as literature or painting.
The relationship between modernist art and Soviet regime seems to be reminiscent of the attitude that developed towards this art in Nazi Germany. In the first stages of creation and establishment of the Soviet state avant-garde art was encouraged and supported by the state. Ideas expressed by these artists even before revolution allowed them to identify with the new regime as one that will bring about the desired changes. For this reason some of the avant-garde artists would be more than willing to work towards the creation of the new society that the revolution seemed to promise. Nevertheless, a moment will come when this art and the services it might have given to the regime would be rejected, and modernism as an artistic movement will be persecuted in the Soviet Union with even more vigor than in Nazi Germany. Why did this sudden change in the relationship between the Soviet regime and the modernist art occur? Why would realism decisively win the battle as the only accepted art movement in the Soviet Union?
- The Patron State: modernist art in Fascist Italy.
In her book The Patron State, Marla Stone establishes the three different stages of state
patronage of art in Fascist Italy. After establishing in 1925-30 control over arts through creation of administrative and bureaucratic organizations dedicated to this purpose, Fascist regime exhibited considerable cultural eclecticism in 1930-36, aimed at creating a cultural consensus to Fascism that would gain it an approval in artistic circles, and among wider strata of the population. This eclecticism would gradually be curtailed in the final years of the regime (1937-43), when attempts would be made to imitate an attitude towards modernist art that existed in Nazi Germany.
As one could see in the analysis of the relationship between modernist artists and German Nazism, or Soviet regime, some avant-garde movements in Italy felt that Fascism expressed the same ideas that informed their art. This is particularly true of Futurists, and, as Stone points out, one should not overlook the “overall significant contribution of futurist cosmology and aesthetics to Fascist ideology. Futurist syntaxes and aestheticized politics, in their pre- and post- World War I guises, were fundamental to and constitutive of the Fascist project and deeply imbedded within it” (52). Still, in the first stages of government patronage, not only Futurists, who felt ideologically close to Fascism, but all groups of artists received support from the state. The reasons for the nature of this patronage being so inclusive are explained by Stone as mostly centered around the regime’s looking for cultural legitimation and popular support. On one level, through supporting even the most avant-garde movements the Fascist government strived to create an image of a party that understood and appreciated culture. At the same time, appropriating the cultural structures inherited from earlier regimes allowed Fascists overcome the hostility that higher social classes felt towards them: “Some emulation of the patronage styles of the bourgeois and aristocratic elites of liberal Italy gave the emergent regime cultural legitimacy and strengthened class alliances” (68). On a different level, by making culture more accessible to the masses, Fascists tried to win support of the broader masses of population, which could now identify with a regime that admitted them to spheres, from which they had previously been excluded. By supporting artists and freeing them from being subjected to the perils of market demands, the Fascist government could also hope to discourage artists from dissent and win their support for their regime: “The patronage of modernists gave the dictatorship the support of prominent artists and architects and tied them to the dictatorship – a patron willing to risk patronage of new and modern forms” (132-3). Thus, the political and social danger that artists could pose to the regime was subverted through attracting them to the side of the governing political force.
As time went by, it became more and more obvious that this artistic eclecticism and the system of state patronage that did not deny support to artists on ideological grounds was failing to produce works that could serve the needs of propaganda. The competitions at the Biennales in 1930 and 1932 demonstrated to the artistic functionaries that, while alternative ways to earn money by their work were accessible to artists, they would not produce works of openly ideological content: “Artists resisted the competitions, despite the explicit rewards. [. . .] The dictatorship’s patronage style led artists to believe that government and party support could be obtained without having to adapt their art” (85). While the regime’s cultural eclecticism served to achieve certain goals, it failed to induce artists to produce works that would create a consistent ideology of Fascism or carry out propagandistic tasks. As Stone points out, the lack of interest on the part of artists towards the thematic competitions was embarrassing to the government functionaries (88-9). The freedom that this system of patronage offered to the artists was precisely the reason why art in Fascist Italy could not be made to serve the needs of propaganda as strongly and persuasively as in the Soviet Union, where there was no interest from the start in strengthening class alliances, or looking for cultural legitimation from the former aristocracies or the bourgeoisie, and, consequently, no need to offer the same kind of artistic patronage that Italian Fascists tried to practice.
The last stage of state patronage in Fascist Italy was marked by a turn away from the eclecticism and the all-inclusive nature of the previous stages. Historical circumstances that defined this moment (an stronger dependence on Nazi Germany and Italy’s entrance into war) presented a growing need for propaganda and a unified ideological vision of Fascism and its culture as a priority that would override the previous way of reasoning that lied behind the cultural openness to different artistic movements: “Aesthetic pluralism had failed to produce an identifiable, unitary Fascist art and this failure became painfully obvious in the context of the regime’s post-1935 propaganda exigencies” (178). As a result of these changed priorities, the system of state patronage also had to undergo significant changes: “State patronage after 1936 became more coercive and more bombastic. The Fascist state as a coercive patron demanded more explicit adhesion from artists and adopted a didactic and condescending attitude toward audiences” (196). It is important to remember that the passage from cultural eclecticism and aesthetic openness to demands for explicitly Fascist art forms that could serve ideological purposes did not occur either in an instantaneous, or in a complete manner in Fascist Italy, as it did, for example, in the Soviet Union. Representatives of different groups within the cultural and political bureaucracies pushed to bring to the fore their own vision of what the state patronage of art should be like. The influence of Nazi Germany and its rejection of modernism played an important role in these Culture Wars:
The Nazi purifying crusade did encourage reactionaries within Italian Fascism to seize
the initiative. Polemics between the hard-liners and defenders of modernism and
diversity reached a fevered pitch in the wake of Degenerate Art Exhibition. [. . .] In
late 1937 and 1938, the anti-pluralists, taking their cue from Hitler, appropriated a new
vocabulary, which attacked modern art as ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Jewish.’ (192)
Those who insisted on adopting an attitude towards modernist art that would be similar to the one promoted by German Nazis did not manage to impose their point of view as the dominant attitude towards art (193). Still, after the beginning of World War II, openness to different artistic movements diminished considerably, as the government could no longer afford to choose the quest for cultural legitimation over the requirements of war-time propaganda: “By 1940 overt exertions of state power and restriction over content and style defined much of state patronage. [. . .] Static and celebratory works dominated the 1940 Venice Biennale. [ . . .] This Biennale dictated both form and content to those competing” (203). The 1942 Biennale demonstrates a growing tendency towards exclusively admitting works with purely propagandistic meaning, which in artistic terms favored realism over any other style: “Taken together, the art of this War Biennale consisted of a lifeless collection of illustrationist and Fascist-realist renderings on combat and war” (209). Thus, in spite of an openness towards different artistic movements and styles, which defined the first years of the Fascist regime in Italy, and which distinguished it from the way modernist art was treated in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, it can be seen that gradually a realization that a much stricter control over the works of art that were produced in the country was needed to serve the goals of the regime started to dominate the approach to art patronage in Fascist Italy. It also seems significant that works with realistic tendencies would yet again be chosen over modernist art, which reminds of the example set by the Soviet Union, where realism became one and only accepted artistic movement.
As an explanation for this gradual turn away from cultural eclecticism and from modernist art towards works inspired by realist techniques, Stone suggests that a search for “ideological consistency” (220) and the requirements of war-time situation caused this change in the official attitude towards art. Still, if one keeps in mind that the other two totalitarian regimes analyzed here also arrived at an eventual rejection of modernist art, in spite of the affinities that might have existed between the ideologies inspiring those regimes and the ideas that constituted the essence of modernism, the question arises of whether the rejection of modernism was not in the normal course of events for Fascist Italy. If the regime had been allowed to continue to exist, would it have returned to its policies of cultural eclecticism, or would it have invariably arrived at the need to completely reject modernism? To answer this question, as well as the ones posed before, it seems necessary to analyze the ideological dimensions of modernism, that is, some of the ideas that one would include in this concept. It also seems pertinent to see what the most salient characteristics that distinguish modernism from realism are, in order to understand why this artistic style would seem more acceptable to the authoritarian regimes than modernism.
- Modernism versus a totalitarian state.
As the three books analyzed here demonstrate, many of the modernist artists of the beginning of the century embraced Nazi, Fascist, or Communist ideologies and were initially supported by the regimes that came to power professing these ideologies. If one turns to the definitions of modernism provided by Eksteins in Rites of Spring, several characterizations of the ideas that inspired modernist artists seem pertinent to the understanding of an attraction that these political movements held for many of the representatives of the artistic avant-gardes. Thus, these artists looked for deliverance “from the social constraints of morality and convention, and from priorities of a western civilization” (30). At the same time, “vitality, spontaneity, and change were celebrated. Anything was preferable to stultifying conformism, even moral disorder and confusion” (31), “social and moral absolutes were thrown overboard” (31), sexual morality as defined in traditional and bourgeois terms was challenged (33). Eksteins also points out that “an important impulse behind experimentation in the arts at the turn of the century was a quest for liberation, a break, in aesthetic and moral terms, from central authority, from patriarchy, from bourgeois conformity” (48). There is a constant insistence on the need for a “rebellion against social convention” (52). This fascination with the newness and with subverting the established orders in society (political, social, artistic, etc.) by itself seems to point to an affinity between very new political systems that tried to establish themselves in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy. Whether this general feeling for a need for change actually produced these regimes, or whether these preoccupations were used by certain politician or political groups in order to come to power, is not as important here, as the fact that, whatever the case, a political power that offers to create a system that would be radically different from the previous ones, that would be new and challenging to the established order on may different levels will definitely find many beliefs and ideas in common with modernism. Thus, it is no wonder that these regimes seem to be initially inspired by the ideas professed by the artistic avant-gardes, and that they will be likely to use these artistic movements to break down the old systems, in order to be able to establish their own, radically new systems of power.
Still, when the goal of substituting the old power structures with the new ones is accomplished, and the moment to consolidate power through the creation of a totalitarian state arrives, the need for the ideology of modernism seems to disappear. More than that, for some reason, modernism starts being seen as dangerous, and more or less consistent efforts are now made to displace it, or eradicate it completely, usually by works of realistic inspiration, as happens in the Soviet Union. Interestingly, the Soviet Union, which is the most successful political system of the three discussed here (taking into the account that it managed to survive considerably longer than German Nazism and Italian Fascism), is also the one that is the most strident and persistent in its persecution of modernism. After coming to power under the banner of fighting for liberation from old constraints, these new political forces have to establish a state of their own, which will also have norms and constraints. At this point, an artistic movement calling for liberation becomes subversive, because now it can easily be turned against the system that presently occupies the space of power. At the same time, it is necessary to remember that modernism also strives to create a new kind of public for its works, to establish a new kind of relationship between a work of art and a viewer or a reader, a relationship, which is in many ways very different from the one that the writers of realism, for example, tried to establish with their readers. Here one can turn to Lissitzky’s and Rodchenko’s definition of the goals of their early work. As has been mentioned before, these artists wanted to create for themselves an audience with a “creative intelligence” (Margolin 89), which would be capable of “interacting meaningfully with the object rather than relating passively to them” (Margolin 89), or create works that “could more actively engage the viewer” (Margolin 33). As Stone demonstrates, the difference between the Fascist exhibitions before and after the turn away from artistic eclecticism consisted, in part, in a kind of audience that the works of art at these exhibitions required and tried to produce. At first, one of the goals seem to be “the collapsing of the space between the spectator, the artifact/document, and the art” (130), which would mean that, again, in order to appreciate a work of art, a viewer would have to become directly engaged with it, and try to produce his or her own interpretation of it. Later on, a need arose to create a more passive spectator, who would be more likely to simply accept the ideology that the works of art tried to promote without questioning it: “The post-1936 exhibitions pursued overawed, passive spectators convinced of Fascist supremacy, rather than the engaged participants of the Mostra della rivoluzione” (227). A radical rejection of modernism in favor of realism on the part of Soviet cultural functionaries becomes more understandable, if one sees it in terms of a choice between a work of art where an omniscient narrator informs the readers of everything they need to know and to think, and a work where shifting perspectives and often a much less ideologically consistent narratives force readers to elaborate at least some mechanisms of their own critical approximation to these texts. This does not mean that realism as an artistic movement is any less valuable than modernism, but it seems that it would be much more difficult to effectuate ideological indoctrination through artistic means that, by their nature, do not easily lend themselves to discourses of consistency, coherence, and ideological exclusivity. At the same time, if the people are used to a kind of art that requires them to have some skills of critical thinking, how easy will it be to make them believe the propaganda that by its nature needs to be believed and accepted through an act of faith and simple absorption, rather that personal choice and critical analysis? For how long will it be possible to have people consent to live in a repressive system without questioning it?
One of the main characters of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel The First Circle is Innokenty Volodin, a young Soviet diplomat, who belongs to the privileged elite that is able to enjoy a lifestyle, which ordinary Soviet citizens cannot even imagine. Innokenty never received anything other than constant benefits from the system, and was brought up to be completely happy and content with it. At a certain point, he gains access to books that are prohibited in the Soviet Union, and, to his great amazement, realizes that, in normal circumstances, readers are supposed to approach books critically, and elaborate their own point of view:
It turned out that you have to know how to read. [. . .] Since Innokenty, from youth on,
had been shielded from erroneous or outcast books, and had read only the clearly
established classics, he had grown used to believing every word he read, giving himself
up completely to the author’s will. Now reading writers whose opinions contradicted
one another, he was unable for a while to rebel, but could only submit to one author,
then to another, then to a third. [. . .] And he had reached a point where he felt less
tossed about from one writer’s ideas to another’s, felt that he himself had his hand on
the helm. (344-5)
After the discovery that differing points of view can actually exist and after developing his own ability of critical thinking, Innokenty starts to see the reality that, before this, he had been shielded from by the veil of ideological indoctrination. In another episode in the novel, he shows his sister-in-law how one can read Soviet newspapers critically, trying to see what lies behind the headlines. As a result of this critical development, Innokenty cannot stay passive in view of injustices that he is now capable of seeing. He becomes the only character in the novel, who actually does something to oppose the system. After finding out that the Soviet Union is trying to steal the secret of nuclear weapons from the United States and realizing what that would mean to the world at large, he tries (and fails) to prevent this from happening. It is remarkable that it should be precisely a person that never suffered any kind of persecution at the hands of the state, but on the contrary received all imaginable benefits from it, who would actively try to oppose its power. The only reason for Innokenty’s intellectual and critical awakening seems to be the discovery of books of a different kind than those which are normally accessible to the Soviet public. This example amply demonstrates the corrosive power that certain kinds of intellectual material have when introduced into a state, which can only exist if it manages to present its doctrine and its propaganda as the truth, counting for the success of this endeavor on the existence of a public that is incapable of thinking critically.
In the introduction to her book, Stone states that “modernism and its offshoots [. . .] were not genetically antifascist” (7). One could also demonstrate that modernism is not inherently anti-communist, or anti-Nazi, since many of the representatives of this artistic movement supported and even worked for these regimes. Still, there seems to always come a moment, when an authoritarian system that rises to power using some ideas it shares with modernism can not tolerate modernism within it and tries to reject it in a more or less decisive and violent manner. In this sense, modernism might be inherently anti-totalitarian or anti-repressive, even if it is not antifascist or anti-Communist. At least, it seems that some of the leaders of these totalitarian states considered it to be dangerous to their regimes.
Bibliography
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: the Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
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