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The Economic Dimensions of Art in the Stalinist Era: Artists' Cooperatives in the Grip of Ideology and the Plan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Galina Yankovskaya
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Abstract

In this essay Galina Yankovskaya explores the economic aspects of Soviet artistic life, which were often as important as political factors or censorship in determining the formal features and content of art production. Yankovskaya considers a complex of multisided trends: Russian artists' egalitarian imagination, the expectations of a new art audience, and the authorities' intentions. Exploring the confusing history of art institutions (mostly Vsekokhudozhnik, but also the Union of Artists and the Artistic Fund) within the everyday routines of the Soviet planned economy enables Yankovskaya to examine the clash of economic, ideological, and political motives in Stalinist culture and to look at how artists escaped from official ideology or exploited it for their own goals of appearing “busy.” Certain specific practices from this system of art production and distribution, such as the state's financial support as well as regulation of the art market, copyright law, and the mass production of handmade copies, survived into the post-Stalinist period.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , Winter 2006 , pp. 769 - 791
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2006

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References

I greatly appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions made by the anonymous reviewers, the editorial board of Slavic Review, and, especially, Diane Koenker. In addition I wish to thank the librarians and the community at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois for the friendly and creative atmosphere that aided my research during my stay there.

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51. “O merakh bor'bi s lzhekooperativami,” Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii pravitel'stva SSSR, no. 3 (1929): 70-72.

52. V S. Manin and Susan Reid also argue that the criticism of Vsekokhudozhnik was caused by the organization's excessive economic independence. See Manin, Iskusslvo v rezervatsii, 167-69, Reid, “Destalinization and Remodemization of Soviet Art,” 84.

53. On the role of the discussion of formalism and the Committee on Artistic Affairs in the 1936-1938 “cultural revolution,” see Maksimenkov, L. V., Sumbur vmesto muzyki: Stalinskaia kul'turnaia revoliutsiia, 1936-1938 (Moscow, 1997).Google Scholar

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55. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Permskoi oblasti (GAPO), f. 1130, op. 1, d. 147,1. 12.

56. GAPO, f. 1130, op. 1, d. 146,11. 21ob.-22.

57. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, d. 934,1. 9.

58. For a short study of prerevolutionary organizations dedicated to assisting artists, see Leikina-Svirskaia, Russkaia intelligentsiia, 158-72.

59. On parallelism as an endemic aspect of the institutional system of Soviet art, see Reid, “Destalinization and Remodernization of Soviet Art,” 91.

60. Materialy k pervomu s“ezdu sovetskikh khudozhnikov (Moscow, 1957), 7.

61. Biulleten’ vserossiiskogo kooperativnogo tovarishchestva “Khudozhnik “ (April 1931), 4, 9; RGALI, f. 1999, op. 1, d. 77,1. 10; RGALI, f. 2907, op. 1, d. 7,1. 82; and d. 85,1. 8.

62. Zezina, Sovetskaia khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, 54.

63. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, d. 2121,1. 6ob.

64. See, for example, the materials from the artistic councils of the cooperatives of Molotov and Saratov. GAPO, f. 604, op. 1, d. 10,1. 211; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv saratovskoi oblasti (hereafter GASO), f. 1359, op. 1, d. 31,1. 59.

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66. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, d. 2124,1. Hob.

67. We must distinguish between individual artistic replicas and copying on an industrial scale. Individual replicas were considered equal to independent artistic works and were priced accordingly. See Zwickl, András, “'Copyright': The Problem of Originals and Copies in the Paintings of the Fifties,” in György, Péter and Turai, Hedvig, eds., Art and Society in the Age of Stalin (Budapest, 1992), 65–68.Google Scholar

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69. GASO, f. 1359, op. 1, d. 31,11. 31-33.

70. GAPO, f. 1128, op.l, d. 7,11. 335-37. According to AndrewJenks's data, the same pay scale operated for folk crafts, only there the calculations were done in centimeters.

71. Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 19 September 1950.

72. GAPO, f. 604, op. 1, d. 22,1. 215.

73. On illegal enterprise in cooperatives, see A. A. Pass, “Kooperativy v sisteme ‘tenevoi’ ekonomiki na Urale (1939-1945),” Ural v kontekste Rossiiskoi modernizatsii (Cheliabinsk, 2005), 232-48.

74. Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 23 September 1937; RGALI, f. 2907, op. 1, d. 45,1. 2.

75. RGALI, f. 2907, op. 1, d. 7, 1. 5.

76. Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii saratovskoi oblasti, f. 2900, op. 1, d. 10, 11. 191-194ob.

77. Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 23 May 1937.

78. GAPO, f. 1128, op. 1, d. 5, 1. 331.

79. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, d. 2124, 1. 16.

80. RGALI, f. 2907, op. 1, d. 7, 1. 54.

81. Dunham, In Stalin's Time, 5, 15.