The idea - the word - the embodiment in the construction of the Soviet sociocultural space in the 1920s and 1930s

Rastorgueva Natalia Evgen'evna ORCID: 0000-0002-7540-0848 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Theory and History of Journalism; Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 10/2 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia rastorgueva_ne@pfur.ru Other publications by this author     Ovcharenko Alexey Yuryevich ORCID: 0000-0002-8544-5812 Doctor of Philology Professor; Department of Russian Language and Linguoculturology ; Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, Moscow, Obruchevsky district, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 10 K. 3 ovcharenko-ayu@rudn.ru

Can Emir Badegul ORCID: 0000-0003-1046-1188 Doctor of Philology Associate Professor; Department of Russian Language and Literature; Karadeniz Technical University Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey, 61080, Trabzon bcan@ktu.edu.tr

Introduction

For decades, the term "socialist realism" has been spoken of as an almost self-evident category applicable in all fields of creativity, as the main part of the project to create a new society and a new person.

However, the question arises: is there such a general concept as "socialist realism", or does "socialist realism" in practice have different conventions, different "realisms" for each field of culture and art? ^{[1, pp. 7-16]} The meaning of the term socialist realism is interpreted differently in different types of art ^{[2, pp. 129-134; 3, pp. 134-146; 4, pp. 146-166; 5, pp. 166-183]}.

Obviously, some types of visual art, such as painting, architecture, and later cinema ^{[6, pp. 64-85]}, as well as many types of artistic and creative activities, were limited in their choice of analogues of the verbal Soviet code. Many canonical works of socialist realism are based on spatial myths in which the hero or work functions as a human embodiment or a message of a higher, higher order of space. Even buildings in the style of socialist realism (the neo-Palladian monumentalism of I.V. Zholkovsky) ^[7] can be interpreted as expressions of such spatial myths. The artist became a kind of mediator between two different orders of space – sacred and secular. Consequently, architecture, as spatial architectonics, can be considered as the quintessence of the genre of socialist realism. It is significant that in the first half of the 1930s, during the very decade when the categories of socialist realism were being formed, architecture received the most attention from the country's leadership.

The central role of architecture in the culture of the 1930s has its own logic in that the building and spatial organization are, relatively speaking, at the heart of the Marxist approach to society: the model of the base and superstructure. This potential was reinforced by the rhetoric of "building communism." Construction also gained great importance in the culture of the 1930s due to the utopian aspects of the "bright future" mythologeme, the creation of which was still elusive by the mid-1930s. Perhaps the most striking example was the unfulfilled project to create a giant Palace of Soviets in Moscow, a kind of Soviet Babel Tower, a monument to the Soviet ideological imagination: "The Palace of Soviets will stand on the ground for many centuries. It will enter the new geography of the world (our italics are A.O., N.R., B.D.E.) Borders of states will disappear on the world map. The very landscape of the planet will change. Communist settlements will arise, unlike the old cities. Man will conquer space. Electricity will plow the fields of Australia, China, and Africa.

The Palace of Soviets, crowned with a statue of Ilyich, will still stand on the banks of the Moskva River. People will be born, generation after generation, to live a happy life, to age a little, but the Palace of Soviets, familiar to them from the sweet books of childhood, will stand exactly the same as you and I will see it in the coming years. Centuries will not leave their marks on it, we will build it so that it stands without aging forever. This is a monument to Lenin!" ^{[8, pp.14-15]}.

At the beginning of 1931, during the formation of the "Culture Two" (V. Paperny), architectural models began to be used to explain the current historical moment and its place in the general Marxist-Leninist model of history. Then, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) on June 15, 1931, a plan for the restoration of many large Soviet cities was announced and the thesis "A new city requires a new person" began to be introduced into the mass consciousness. (The CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. – M.: Politizdat, 1984. Vol. 5. 1929-1932. pp. 313-327).

After the revolution of 1917, there was a need for an aesthetic response to these epochal events, which consisted in creating new art for a new person. It is impossible to radically change social structures without changing people, therefore, at an early stage, the new government paid great attention to the field of culture, aiming to bridge the gap between art and the masses, forming a new way of thinking and creating conditions for creativity, discussion and the emergence of original ideas. It was the events of 1917 that created the conditions for the social creativity of the masses, from the "great initiative" of the communist clean-up workers to the Proletkult ^{[9, pp. 293-296]}, the "Blue Blouse", and numerous literary and artistic groups. One of the main issues in the historical and cultural process of the 1920s was the issue of creativity and the creative personality, the personality of the artist and its embodiment in prose and poetry, in new literature and in new visual arts. Artistic understanding and aestheticization of the revolution in artistic and literary creativity can only be discussed since 1921-1922, when the Civil War ended and original anthologies of canonical texts about this era were published (October in Literature 1924) and a new historical memory began to form. Writers, artists and cinematographers were faced with the task of creating an image of a new person who would put collective interests above individual ones ^{[10, p. 65]} and believed in a bright future (See, for example: Fisheva A. A. The image of the "new man" in Soviet cinema in the 1930s // Bulletin of the Orenburg State Pedagogical University university. Electronic scientific journal. 2020. No. 1 (33). pp. 144-157). L. Trotsky in 1923 emphasized that art develops with the revolution: "There is no art of revolution yet, but there are elements of this art, there are hints, attempts, and, most importantly, there is a revolutionary person who forms a new generation in his image and for whom it is Art is increasingly needed. How long will it take for it to indisputably reveal itself? It is very difficult to guess here, because this process is weightless and incalculable, and we are forced to limit ourselves to fortune-telling in determining the timing of even more material social processes. But why shouldn't this art, its first big wave, come soon, as the art of the younger generation that was born in the revolution and carries it forward" ^{[11, p.174]}.

The embodiment of ideas and words not only in literature, but in all kinds of art (from the windows of GROWTH to the symphony of horns by Arseny Avraamov), aesthetic and psychological perception of the emerging new Soviet mental space, complex relationships between social ideas, their transformation into ideas about the future world and the future man, not only in post-revolutionary literature, but also in In a broader historical and socio-cultural context, they are an extremely important topic for the entire revolutionary culture.

The main part

Mythologemes (a term whose boundaries are still being debated) played an important role in the process of updating political consciousness (see, for example, Goncharova O. M. Ritual and myth in the text of Soviet culture (1920-1940-ies) // Russian text. 1996. № 4. pp. 62-79). Based on intuition and feelings rather than logic, the mythologeme legitimizes history while eliminating the real. One of its main functions is the construction of reality, which occurs through the introduction of new meanings and models of human behavior. There is a repeated representation of the same myth using different means (See, for example: Nekrasova E. S. Mythological constructions in Soviet culture and art // Studia culturae. 2002. № 2. pp. 179-188; Lotman Yu. M., Mints Z. G., Meletinsky E. M. Literature and myths // Myths of the peoples of the world: An Encyclopedia. Moscow, Soviet Encyclopedia, 1980. Vol. 1. pp. 220-226). According to I. A. Edoshina, the mythologeme "gives the universal content of myth individual outlines, which are fixed in the meanings captured by consciousness and receive an artistic form ^{[12, p.80]} In other words, with its help, ideology becomes accessible and understandable to the mass consciousness. I. A. Edoshina's position is close to the opinion of A. F. Losev, who argued that "The myth is in words this wonderful personal story" ^{[13, p.194]}. At the same time, the content of myths is not constant: they can change over time depending on socio-political conditions.

Following the model of R. Barth, we proceed from the fact that a mythical message is created from the material processed for the purposes of a certain communication. At the same time, "everything can serve as a carrier of the mythical word – not only written discourse, but also photography, cinema, reportage, sports, performances, advertising" ^{[14, p. 266]}.

R Barth believed that as soon as an image acquires significance, it becomes a kind of letter, because, like writing, it forms an utterance. . ^{[14, p. 266]}. It should be noted that, according to Barth, a real revolutionary language cannot be mythical: "Wherever a person speaks in order to transform reality, and not to preserve it in the form of one image or another, wherever his speech is connected with the production of things, metalanguage coincides with language-an object, and the emergence of a myth becomes impossible. ^{[14, p. 309]}. A "leftist" myth arises when a revolution turns into "leftism," begins to disguise itself, hide its name, create an innocent metalanguage for itself, and deform into "Nature." Such a dereference of the revolution may or may not be tactical" ^{[14, pp. 309-310]}.

The Soviet socio-cultural myth that emerged after the revolution and was necessary for legitimizing the Soviet system and the ideology of the international communist movement proved to be stable. This was greatly facilitated by the special spirit of the revolution and its certain aesthetic charm.

Immediately after October 1917, there was a heated debate about the new role of art, and the leitmotif of that time was experimentalism and innovation. One of the most significant aspects of the government's policy was the expansion and transformation of aesthetic and socio-political ideas that existed in the mass consciousness, which was directly related to art and science as sources of imagination and driving forces of economic modernization. Many utopias that appeared at that time (in the field of literature, architecture, etc.) gave evaluative and programmatic content to reality, that is, they represented ideals and utopian images that were to become the basis for building a new society and socialist reality.

For the first time, art directly appealed to the masses of the people, which was consonant with the Marxist understanding of the specific essence of man: it is determined by the social environment, for this reason, art as a special kind of communication contributes to changes in the socio-cultural space. It should apply realistic postulates so that they can be easily understood by a large number of people. D. Bedny, in a letter to I. Stalin, quoted V. Lenin as saying that a party leading the working class can successfully fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat only when it "enjoys the confidence of all honest people in this class and knows how to monitor the mood of the masses and influence it" (RASPI. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 701. L. 31). V. Mayakovsky said this figuratively at a meeting on art on November 24, 1918: "We need ... not a dead temple of art, where dead works languish, but a living factory of the human spirit.... Art should be concentrated not in dead temples-museums, but everywhere: on the streets, in trams, in factories, workshops and in workers' apartments" ^{[15, p. 93]}.

In 1918, V. Lenin put forward a program for the development of monumental art, which provided for the dissemination of communist ideas among the people through fine art and poetry. In pursuance of this plan, on April 12, 1918, a decree was passed "On the removal of monuments erected in honor of the tsars and their servants, and the development of projects for monuments of the Russian Socialist Republic." On August 2, 1918, Izvestia VTsIK published a list of those to whom monuments should be erected. Among the individuals listed were revolutionaries and public figures, writers and poets, philosophers and scientists, artists, composers and artists.

After the revolution, a new "Leninocentric" hagiography gradually began to take shape. Already in the spring of 1918, commemorative tokens with his image were issued, and information about the installation of a monument to the leader in Korotoyak, Voronezh province, and the presence of his bust in Smolny dates back to the same year. Gradually, the image of a wise leader, a friend of children and the working people, caring for their well–being, began to be replicated in the works of Soviet art. These works then entered the ideological core of the art of socialist realism, fulfilling one of its main tasks: the creation and maintenance of the object of worship – V. I. Lenin.

Much attention was paid to cinema, which made a breakthrough in development in the 20s. Films by D. Vertov, A. Dovzhenko, L. Kuleshov, S. Eisenstein, and others appear. L. Trotsky wrote about cinema: "this is an instrument that asks for itself in his hands: the best propaganda tool – technical, cultural, industrial, anti–alcohol, sanitary, political - whatever, propaganda is publicly accessible, attractive, etched into the memory, and – a possible profitable article" (Trotsky L. Vodka, church and cinema // Pravda. No. 154. July 12, 1923).

At this time, the relationship between cinema and literature was especially pronounced. Many writers used cinematography techniques. V. Mayakovsky was also captivated by the new kind of art. He not only wrote the scripts of the films "Born Not for Money" (1918), "Chained by a Film" (1918), "The Young Lady and the Bully" (1918), but also played the role of the main character in them. L. Geller, comparing E. Zamyatin's texts with cinema, He pointed out that they embody "discontinuity with their rhythmized phrase, elliptical syntax, associative construction, chains of unexpected metaphors that shift and mix different levels of reality" ^{[16, p. 62]}.

In the 1922-1923's, the first architectural competitions began to be held in Moscow. The Soviet government quickly realized the propaganda potential of architecture, which V. Hugo, speaking about the times before Gutenberg, called architecture "the main chronicle of mankind": "... during this period of time, there was not a single complex thought in the whole world that would not express itself in a building; every publicly available idea, like and each religious law had its own monument; everything significant that the human race thought about, he imprinted in stone. [...] A torch or a barbarian is enough to destroy a word written on paper. To destroy a word carved out of stone, a social upheaval or an outrage of the elements is necessary" ^{[17, p. 187]}.

A large number of representatives of the artistic avant–garde supported (at least at the first stage) the young Soviet state - K. Malevich, V. Kandinsky, A. Rodchenko, V. Stepanova, V. Tatlin and many others. They were fascinated by the dynamism and technical possibilities opened up by the new era: the revolution was not only the strongest aesthetic factor in itself – A. Blok called for "listening to the Revolution ... that great music of the future, the sounds of which fill the air.... ^{[18, p. 19-20]}, B. Pasternak said that "the stage of revolution closest to the heart and poetry is the morning of the revolution and its explosion." ^{[19, p. 13]}. She gave a huge mass of people the opportunity not only to transform culture and literature to their advantage, but also to become a creator in this new collective work. In the book "Literature and Revolution" published in 1923, L. Trotsky wrote: "A socialist man wants and will command nature in its entirety, with grouse and sturgeon, through a machine. He will tell you where the mountains should be and where to part. It will change the direction of rivers and create rules for oceans" ^{[11, p.191]}.

One of the most daring representatives of the avant–garde in architecture was G.T. Krutikov, who presented in 1928 the diploma project "City of the Future", in which industrial buildings were to be located on the ground and residential buildings in the air: "Krutikov himself always called his diploma project, known as the flying city, the city of the future (the evolution of architectural principles in urban planning and housing organization)”. He considered his proposal among the evolution of human settlements – as a certain stage in the development of land and space. Krutikov proceeded from the assumption that nuclear energy would make it possible in the future to easily lift buildings off the ground. In his graduation project, he freed the land from residential and public buildings; it is for labor, recreation and tourism" ^[20].

But, if in the twenties the state encouraged the innovation of creative thought, then by the end of the period of the "big twenties" (A. Y. Ovcharenko) with the introduction of the "general line" (which must be understood more broadly than just the party line), an ideocratic regime was finally established – "Culture 2" (V. Paperny) with its centripetal tendencies, and the standardizing socio-political context. He was sharply criticized for "extremely unjustified semi-fantastic, and therefore extremely harmful attempts by individual comrades. Such attempts by some workers, who hide their opportunistic nature under the "leftist phrase", include projects that have recently appeared in the press to redevelop existing cities and build new ones, solely at the expense of the state, with the immediate and complete socialization of all aspects of workers' lives: nutrition, housing, raising children, separating them from their parents, with elimination of household ties of family members and the administrative prohibition of individual cooking, etc." (About the work on the restructuring of everyday life. Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) // CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee (1898-1986). – M.: Politizdat, 1984. Vol. 5. 1929-1932. pp. 118-119).

According to G.G. Pocheptsov, the emerging Soviet myth was mainly built "on the plane of forgetting certain (rooted even in biological foundations, i.e. especially fundamental) mythologies for the sake of prioritizing the mythologies of public order" ^{[21, p. 360]}.

Constructivism, which originated in the pre-revolutionary years, but developed in the USSR primarily as a revolutionary avant-garde movement, had to create new meanings. As a response to discussions about a new way of life, social projects are emerging – easily erected, economical houses for workers with an efficient interior configuration. In 1928, the Central Housing Union drew up a "Model regulation on the house-commune," which stated the need for collectivization of everyday life. This document was subsequently implemented in several projects. So, according to the project of architect I. S. Nikolaev, in 1930 a commune house was built on Ordzhonikidze St., which was conceived as a multifunctional building or the so-called "housing machine". Andre Gide, who visited the USSR in the summer of 1936, writes about the standardization of Soviet living conditions. In his book "Return to the USSR," he recalls how, while visiting one of the prosperous collective farms, he saw beautiful and picturesque wooden houses surrounded by large gardens. But their interior gave the impression of "absolute impersonality," the writer calls them "interchangeable dwellings": "A person has his own room just for sleeping. And all the most interesting things in his life moved to the club, to the "park of culture", to meeting places. What's to be desired? Universal happiness is achieved by depersonalizing everyone. The happiness of all is achieved at the expense of everyone's happiness. Be like everyone else in order to be happy."^[22].

In this regard, attitudes towards the family and the role of women in it have changed. Ideally, the organizational and managerial model of the young Soviet state should have been based not on the family, but, according to M. Meerovich's succinct definition, on a "work and household collective" that provided adjustments to the norms of people's daily behavior and the nature of their attitude to work ^{[23, p. 30]}. At the same time, women received equal rights with men and had to be freed from household management and the need to raise children. "The most remarkable thing about the process of socialist construction," wrote V. Feygin in the newspaper Pravda in 1934, "is that it created and creates, forged and is forging a new type of man" (V. Feygin). About a new man and a type of Bolshevik // Truth. № 134 (6020). 17.05.1934).

The principle of ergonomics, importance and functional significance of each element, applied in architecture and construction, was transferred to constructivist poetry, where "a poetic word subordinated to an idea was perceived as a construction based on meaning and meaning" ^[24]. The origins of constructivism in poetry were Alexei Chicherin, Cornelius Zelinsky and Ilya Selvinsky, who in 1922 created a literary association, which turned into a Literary Center of Constructivists in 1924. In 1925, K. Zelinsky contrasts the "artistic" architecture of the past with "engineering – machines full of incredible strength, elegant bridges, ocean steamships, cranes, elevators, steel structures and floors, and the whole world of flexible and powerful metal (our italics are A. O., N. R.; see for details about the "Soviet metal images": Hellebust, Rolf. Flesh to metal: Soviet literature and the alchemy of revolution. - New York: Cornell University Press, Sage House, 2003. 221 p.), that "the style of our era fluctuates between genre constructivism and monumental constructivist realism, shifting from one side to the other....Constructivism becomes a genre" ^{[25, p. 83]}.

Speaking about the socialist construction of the early years, it is impossible not to mention the attention with which the young Soviet state treated the younger generation: V. I. Lenin spoke about the need for proper education of the younger generation back in 1918 during the first Congress of Enlightenment Workers. The issue has been actively discussed since the early 1920s (in June 1921, a special commission on children's toys was even established under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR). ^{[26, p. 201]}, and on December 23, 1932, the Toy Research Institute was founded.

However, as already mentioned, the image of a "happy Soviet childhood" began to be widely replicated only from the early 1930s. First, it was necessary to change society's perception of intra-family relations, to "educate" mothers. Therefore, in the 1920s, "edifying" posters on the theme of childhood prevailed in Soviet art.: "Meeting of children" (A. Komarov, 1923), "Rather than scolding and beating children, it is better to buy them a book" (N. Pomansky, 1928), "Do not beat the child" (A. Laptev, 1929), "An illiterate child is a disgrace to the mother" (I. Gromitsky, 1930). Being a tool of mass suggestion, the posters of that time appealed more to feelings, and for this reason their authors appealed to the principles of justice, to the protection of the oppressed from the oppressors. Gradually, this approach loses its relevance, and the task of constructing the image of a "happy Soviet child" and a "happy childhood" comes to the fore. The main role in this process was played by the pioneer organization established in 1922, which was entrusted with the functions of social control over the new generation and its ideological education. In the thirties, new heroes of works of art appeared – budenysh, pioneer heroes, as well as children whose leisure time is aimed at activating cognition (for example, aircraft modelers). They helped to raise a new generation, loyal Leninists, defenders of communism, who believe in a bright future.

Conclusion

Nowadays, the ideas of the Soviet project are perceived both as a utopia and as a political experiment, and are analyzed as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Socialist realism remains not only a part of the cultural heritage of the Soviet Union, but also continues to serve as a model for understanding how ideology was shaped through art. The construction of social reality has become possible not only through political or economic reforms, but also through the process of restructuring the individual and society through art and cultural creativity. Discussions about what caused his failure – whether the goals he proposed were utopian or the erroneous methods of achieving them – continue. The state offered society a certain development project, suppressing at the same time those social forces, horizontal socio-cultural ties that could give it a greater impetus and guarantee its maximum social effectiveness. The artists who created at that time were at the forefront of the culture of the society under construction, they were the main actors in creating new art for a new person in a new society. In the early period of the Soviet government, most of them participated in propaganda work aimed at shaping ideological consciousness through art, speaking out in support of the socialist revolution, which they understood as socio-cultural. The mythologems they used at that time, which served to merge the concept, form and content, helped explain the meaning of the revolution to the population, break with the old tradition, and create a universal culture that could be appreciated and understood by all. Like the myths of ancient times, they were embedded in the life context, forming a kind of filter through which the Soviet people perceived reality. These mythologems reflected not only ideological demands and norms, but also the collective will of the people, their dreams of building a just society. They also served as a tool for ideological education, forming people's ideas about the future and the desired model of a new socialist society.

In the modern world, ideological art and propaganda continue to serve as an effective tool for constructing national identity. Modern political propaganda continues to shape the collective consciousness, using digital media, popular culture, and government mechanisms to support the arts. Today, a number of states consider art not only as an aesthetic value, but also as a means of political and ideological influence. The influence of socialist realism, both direct and indirect, is still felt, especially in cinema, visual arts and popular culture. As an example, ideological trends in Hollywood cinema, state film production in Russia, ideological attitudes broadcast by Western popular culture, etc. Socialist realism is not only a historical phenomenon, but also a socio—cultural concept that requires study in the context of the modern relationship between ideology and art. The issues of using art as a propaganda tool, the methods used by modern political systems to manage the cultural sphere, as well as ways to construct collective identity, necessitate further study of the legacy of socialist realism as a cultural phenomenon.

Table 1. The use of mythologies in the Soviet socio-cultural space in the 1920s and 1930s