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The Ideological Origins of “Stalinism” in Soviet Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Joseph Schull
Joseph Schull*
Affiliation:
International Affairs Program of the Ford Foundation
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Extract

More than anything else, ideology dominates in literature

Lunacharskii, 1923

Yes, we will stamp intellectuals, we will produce them, as in a factory.

Bukharin, 1925

The 1920s remain one of the most debated periods of Soviet history. Central to these debates is the issue of continuity between leninism and Stalinism, and the role of ideology under their respective leaderships. Supporters of “continuity” have usually emphasized the role of ideology as an intellectual bridge from the 1920s to the 1930s; conversely, those who question the continuity thesis usually point to major differences between leninism and Stalinism. I shall address this issue in relation to the history of attempts to organize writers in the early post-revolutionary period. My central claim is that Soviet discourse on writers and literature, articulated shortly after the revolution and elaborated during NEP, set a pattern which led to the absorption of writers into a unitary organizational apparatus and which culminated in the formation of the Writer's Union in April 1932. From 1917 to 1928, a clearly-articulated and largely consensual strategy of absorption of Soviet writers into a state-directed stream was spelt out well before Stalin was installed as the privileged speaker of “marxism-leninism.”

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 468 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1992

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References

1. Lunacharskii, A, “Marksizm i literatura,” Krasnaia Nov’ 7(17) (December 1923): 233–41Google Scholar.

2. Sud'by Sovremennoi Intelligentsia (Moscow: 1925), 27.

3. It is not my intention to address questions related to “Stalinist aesthetics'’ or the “Stalinist literary canon.” In my view, Stalin and Soviet power penetrated literature in the first instance (and arguably foremost) as an organizational phenomenon which defined by institutional fiat the role of the writer in society. Naturally, this came to be reflected in the literature that was produced and several studies have explored the special features of Stalinist art. See, for instance, Gunthcr, Hans, The Culture of the Stalin Period (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985 Google Scholar.

4. Perhaps the two most prominent scholars to have re-oriented critical perspectives on early Soviet history are Moshe Lewin and Sheila Fitzpatrick. See Lewin, Moshe, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985 Google Scholar. See also Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and The Russian Revolution: 1917-1932 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Among Fitzpatrick's articles see also: “The Emergence of Glaviskusstvo. Class War on the Cultural Front, Moscow, 1928-29,” Soviet Studies (October 1971): 236-53; “Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-32,” Journal of Contemporary History 9 (January 1974): 33-52; “The ‘Soft’ Line on Culture and its Enemies: Soviet Cultural Policy, 1922-27,” Slavic Review 33 (June 1974): 267-87; “Culture and Politics under Stalin: A Reappraisal,” Slavic Reviexo 35 (June 1976): 211-31; and “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite,” Slavic Review 38 (September 1979): 377-402. Among the younger generation of “revisionist” social historians, see Viola, Lynne, Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Google Scholar; and Chase, William, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918-1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987 Google Scholar. For a critical discussion of the social history approach, see the “Discussion” in ‘The Russian Review 45 (October 1986): 357-413. See also the “Discussion” in Slavic Review 47 (Winter 1988): 599-626.

5. Certainly the image of total state power in the 1930s is mythical if the latest vanguard of social-historical revisionists are to be believed. See in particular Arch Getty, J., Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Rittersporn, Gabor T. “The State against Itself: Social Tensions and Political Conflict in the U.S.S.R., 1936-1938,” Telos 41 (Fall 1979): 87–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Société et appareil d'tat sovietiques 1936-1938: Contradictions et interferences,” Annals E.S.C., no. 4 (1979); and idem, Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflicts in the USSR, 1933-1953 (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic, 1991).

6. The best studies of Soviet history written under the influence of totalitarian theory repeatedly presented evidence of the state's inability to control society totally; in this sense, they were the first “revisionists.” See, in particular, Fainsod's, Merle classic study of Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958 Google Scholar).

7. For a fuller discussion of the approach to ideology on which this study is based, see my doctoral thesis, “Ideology and the Politics of Soviet Literature under NEP and Perestroika” (Oxford, 1991). This is also discussed in my essay “The Self-Destruction of Soviet Ideology,” The Harriman Institute Forum (July 1991); and in “What is Ideology? Theoretical Problems and Lessons from Soviet-Type Societies,” Political Studies (forthcoming, 1992).

8. See Sochor, Zenovia, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988 Google Scholar). See also Mally, Lynn, “Intellectuals in the Proletkult: Problems of Authority and Expertise,” in Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War; Explorations in Social History, eds. Koenker, Diane P., Rosenberg, William G. and Suny, Ronald Grigor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 29 Google Scholar(5-31 1; and idem, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). See also Biggart, John, “Bukharin and the Origins of Proletarian Culture, '” Soviet Studies 22 (April 1987): 229–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. See Fitzpatrick, , Commissariat of Enlightenment, 179 Google Scholar. See also Bugaenko, Pavel, A. V. Lunacharskii i literaturnoe dvizhenie dvadtsatykh godov (Saratov, 1967), 42 Google Scholar.

10. The draft resolution is printed in Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Vol. 31, April-December 1920 (Moscow Foreign Publishing House, 1966): 316–7Google Scholar.

11. Cited in Il'ina, G. I., Kul'turnoe Stroitel'stvo v Petrograde oktiabr’ 1917-20gg (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982), 8 Google Scholar. See also Gorbunov, V. V., Lenin i Proletkul't (Moscow, 1974), 150 Google Scholar.

12. Cohen, Stephen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 272–73Google Scholar.

13. For an interpretation of NEP that is similar in many respects to that presented here, see Clark, Katerina, “The ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Soviet Intellectual Life,” in Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, eds. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Rabinowitch, Alexander and Stites, Richard (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 210–30.Google Scholar

14. Voprosy Kul'tury pri Diktature Proletariata-Sbornik (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925), 79.

15. See Dom Iskusstv 1 (Petrograd, 1921). “I am Afraid” is also reprinted in Zamiatin, E., A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ed. and trans. Ginsburg, Mirra (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 53–58 Google Scholar.

16. Voronsky, A. K., “Ob otshel'nikakh, bezumstsakh i buntariakh,” Krasnaia Nov’ 1 (June 1921): 29.Google Scholar.

17. Krasnaia Nov1 2(6) (March-April 1922): 263, 274.

18. In my discussion of attempts to form a writers’ union in 1922 I have drawn on the account of Stephan, Halina, ‘Lef and the Left Front of the Arts (Munich: Verlag OttoSagner, 1981), 20–24 Google Scholar.

19. For Krug's founding declaration, see Literaturnye Manifesty: Ot Simvolizma k Ohtiabriu, torn 1 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969), 283–85.Google Scholar

20. Stephan, 24.

21. VAPP was formed at the First All-Russian Proletarian Writers’ Congress in October 1920. Its leading founders came from Kuznitsa, a group of “proletarian” writers (mainly poets) who had broken with Proletkul't in February 1920. In April 1924, Kuznitsa was displaced at the head of VAPP by the leadership of MAPP (the Moscow Association of Proletarian Writers), a more radical and numerous group led by L. Averbakh. VAPP became the spearhead of the drive for “proletarian” literary hegemony in the 1920s.

22. Trotsky, Leon, Literature and Revolution, trans. Strunsky, R. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957), 139–40Google Scholar.

23. The meeting took place on 9 May 1924. A stenographic report of the meeting was published in Voprosy Kul'tury pri Diklature Proletariata (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925).

24. Voprosy Kul'tury pri Diktature Proletariata, 83.

25. Ibid., 64, 66.

26. Ibid., 74.

27. Ibid., 83.

28. Gleb Struve, Herman Ermolaev and Halina Stephan have characterized the 1925 resolution essentially as a victory for the “fellow-travelers,” while Robert Maguireand E. J. Brown interpret it more as a victory for the proletarian writers. See Brown, E. J., The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953 Google Scholar; Ermolaev, H., Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963 Google Scholar; Maguire, Robert, Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968 Google Scholar; Halina Stephan, ‘Lef and the Left Front of the Arts; Struve, Gleb, Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953 (Oklahoma Press, 1971)Google Scholar. More recently, Chris Read has written an excellent study of cultural politics in the 1920s. Read sees a gradual shift from a “strong defense” of the “fellow-travelers” in May 1924 toward greater support for the “proletarian” artists in the 1925 resolution. Yet he adds, “a closer reading of the complex documents … suggests… …… that in the longer run neither side had a particularly bright future … the fundamental weight of the document is towards the assertion of greater and more effective supervision of intellectual life by the Party leadership.” See Read, Chris, Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia: The Intelligentsia and the Transition from Tsarism to Communism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 214–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. O Partinoi i Sovetskoi Pechati: Sbornik Dokumentov (Moscow, 1954), 346. The resolution was published in Pravda on 1 July 1925.

30. Ibid., 345.

31. Vareikis, I, “Doklad tov. Vareikisa o rezoliutsii moskovskogo gubsoveshchaniia rabkorov i sel'korov,” Rabsel'kor i pechat’ (Moscow, 1925), 9 Google Scholar.

32. As Voronsky said: “The proletarian writer with us is a historically created, concrete type, with very definite views and habits. It is a writer who has entered some association or other, some circle or other.” Voprosy Kul'tury pri Diktature I'roletariata, 62.

33. Ibid., 83.

34. Ibid., 138.

35. Trinadsatii S'ezd RKP(b): Stenograficheskii Otchet (Moscow, 1963), 654.

36. Ibid., 653.

37. This discursive shift was resisted by some of RAPP's leaders who, according lo V. Akimov, saw the very concept of “Soviet literature” (as opposed to proletarian literature) as “eclectic, impermissibly liberal, virtually ‘above-class’ (nadklassovoe).” See Akimov, V., V Sporakh o Khudozhestvennom Metode (Iz Istorii Bor'by za Sotsialisticheskii Realizm) (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1979), 212 Google Scholar.

38. O Partinoi i Sovetskoi Pechati, 343-47.

39. Ibid., 345.

40. Ibid., 346.

41. For writers’ responses to the 1925 resolution, see two issues of Zhurnalist 8-9 (24-25) (August-September 1925): 29-32; and 10(26) (October 1925): 7-13.

42. Vareikis, I., Zadachi Partii v Oblasti Pechati (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), 29–30 Google Scholar.

43. Maguire, , Red Virgin Soil, 183 Google Scholar.

44. Sheshukov, S., Neistovye Revniteli (Moscow, 1970), 106 Google Scholar.

45. Literaturnye Manifesty, 286-89.

46. Metcalf, Amanda, “The Founding of the Federation of Soviet Writers: The Forgotten Factor in Soviet Literature of the Late Twenties,” Slavonic and East European Review 65 (October 1987): 612.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., 615.

48. This seems to be the view of Katerina Clark in her otherwise excellent study of Soviet literature. See The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 33.Google Scholar