The Stalin Cult

by Jan Plamper

  Figure 3.4. Aleksandr Gerasimov, Hymn to October (1942). Oil on canvas, 406 × 710 cm. © 2007, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

  By about 1935, after Stalin had been firmly established in the center of visual culture, pictures of various kinds changed their strategies. After 1936, Stalin was shown by himself (rather than in groups) more frequently, and often he was merely invoked through a Stalin image or sculpture in the background. Again, concentric circles became the dominating pattern of spatial organization.42

  Perhaps no other painting illustrates this pattern better than Aleksandr Gerasimov’s Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, and perhaps no other painting in the Soviet Union ever attained more fame (Plate 3).43 Stalin and Voroshilov are shown walking along the sidewalk of the inner Kremlin with a Kremlin tower in the immediate background. The Moscow River and the city of Moscow lie in the more distant background. The spatial arrangement of this painting is predicated on concentric circles grouped around Stalin, the center. Technically speaking, even though Voroshilov’s folded hands (or more precisely, his army greatcoat cuff) occupy the picture’s geometric center Stalin takes center stage in every other respect. In perspective, he is closer to the viewer and therefore painted as the taller figure. Immediately next to him, in the closest circle, is his closest guard, Voroshilov—a member, incidentally, of the coterie around Stalin also known as his “inner circle” (blizhnyi krug). The subsequent concentric zones are occupied by the Kremlin tower, then the Kremlin wall, followed by the Moscow River and the masses crowding along the embankment right behind it. Finally we see the city sprawl of Moscow. The new Moscow, reconstructed according to Stalin’s general plan, is signified by the House of the Government (Dom pravitelstva), the newly built Great Stone Bridge (Bolshoi kamennyi most) across the Moscow River to the far right, and the smokestacks beyond. The old Moscow, symbolized by the three cupolas of a Russian Orthodox Church, has moved to the background. The old Russia, as it were, had been overcome. The House of the Government was specifically moved into the picture, as Gerasimov admitted, perhaps to imply that the Party and intelligentsia elites who resided there were ideologically close to Stalin.44

  The circle was the seminal Stalinist shape used to structure space. In the case of Gerasimov’s painting, Stalin is the sacral center of the Soviet cosmos. Following an observation from Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diary, Mikhail Yampolsky noted the absence of an anthropomorphic monument inside the walls of the Kremlin.45 Thus the sacral center of the Kremlin was uniquely freed for Stalin.46 Stalin (and Gerasimov) did not have to fear sacral doubling that might be caused by the proximity of a monument, nor would the monument be threatened with sacral overcharge from Stalin’s proximity. Stalin’s sacrality is underlined by his size, by the immobility of his body—a center, by definition, does not move—and by his lack of ornamentation. Whereas Voroshilov bears the full insignia of a high representative of the Soviet army (a star-shaped cap, collar badges, a belt buckle, an officer’s chest belt, and badges on his sleeves), Stalin does not need these, because he is already firmly established in the collective imaginary as the country’s sacral center.47 Stalin is dressed in nothing but his simple gray greatcoat, his cap, and army boots. This central circle containing Stalin and Voroshilov remains open toward the viewer, who is drawn into the picture and merges with the leader.

  If Stalin embodies the Soviet body politic, then Voroshilov embodies the Red Army. Thus the Soviet people, incarnated in Stalin, are protected by their army, incarnated in Voroshilov. The railing is a further symbol of defense. It is broken, jarringly and incongruously, at only one place, right behind Voroshilov, in order to show the Moscow River in more detail and, more importantly, the masses on the embankment. The gap in the railing permits the creation of a visual axis between Voroshilov and the people on the Moscow River embankment. The motif of the connection between the leader, Voroshilov, and the masses is thus unmistakably present in the painting.48 But the main theme is one of defense against outside aggression, against fascist encirclement, a theme that also finds symbolic expression in the smokestacks that represent the preparation of Soviet industry against outside attack.

  Figure 3.5. 1—Kremlin. 2.—Palace of Soviets. 3—Gorky Park. 4—Monument of the Stalin Constitution. Map on inside front cover, General Flan for the Reconstruction of Moscow (Moscow: Union of Soviet Architects, 1935).

  Other readings of the picture are possible. In 1939, one year after the appearance of the painting, one critic suggested that Stalin’s gaze was directed at a specific focal point: “Stalin and Voroshilov are standing on the Kremlin mountain, gazing to the place where a majestic monument in honor of V. I. Lenin is being erected—the Palace of Soviets.”49 Indeed, the winning design by Boris Iofan et al. of the 1931 architectural competition for the Palace of Soviets (415 meters high) had included an eighty-meter-high Lenin statue on its apex (2 in Fig. 3.5). The building was to be the world’s largest and tallest—topping the Empire State Building completed in 1931—and was to be erected at the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, Russia’s largest church, located five hundred meters southwest of the Kremlin (1 in Fig. 3.5) on the Moscow River bank. The destruction of the cathedral was duly finished by December 1931, the foundation poured, and the nearby metro stop was named Palace of Soviets station. But the building never got off the ground. Water filled the foundation pit, and after numerous redesigns the building ended up as a white elephant, eventually opening as the Soviet Union’s (the world’s, it was often suggested) largest open-air swimming pool.50 The Lenin statue on top of the Palace of Soviets had raised doubts from the beginning and in March–April 1934, visitors to an exhibition of the Iofan model at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum remarked in the comment book that the “significance of the leader of the masses, ascending into the clouds far from the people, is utterly lost here. What is more, Lenin is depicted in the pose of a provincial actor. Unbelievably inflated and banal.”51 Other critics of the Lenin statue worried that parts of it would be covered by the clouds, creating unintended meanings, if, say, only his genital region were visible. Yet the axis between the Kremlin and the Lenin statue on top of the Palace of Soviets had been intentional, as a 1934 decree—published in Pravda, thereby testifying to the centrality of this building to the state—goes to show: “The Lenin sculpture and the building’s main façade are oriented toward the Kremlin, from whose side a wide, monumental staircase leads which can also serve as a tribune for the reception of demonstrations.”52 How, then, are we to understand this version? One reading would view Lenin as the beginner of communism, Stalin as the completer and living incarnation; therefore the Lenin statue on the Palace of Soviets points to the living center of power: Stalin in the Kremlin. Another reading would see Stalin looking at Lenin and thus into the embodied beginning of the utopian timeline, for beginning and end are equally timeless and thus ultimately interchangeable. The Adamistic ur-moment, Lenin, is as utopian as the eschaton of “the bright future.”53 An absolute beginning of time and an absolute end are both literally and equally inconceivable, unthinkable—in a word: utopian.

  Yet there are more examples. Other Moscow construction projects were also reoriented toward the planned Palace of Soviets. In 1928, construction began on Gorky Park, officially termed the “Central Culture and Recreation Park” (3 in Fig. 3.5). Since the 1931 architecture contest for the Palace of Soviets, Gorky Park was supposed to create an axis from its location (between the banks of the Moscow River, Krymsky Val, and the Lenin Hills, formerly the Sparrow Hills) to the location of the palace diagonally across the river at the former site of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer. The axis of the Palace of Soviets–Lenin Hills “was supposed to direct the masses from the Kremlin, the center of power, to their site of political representation (the Palace of Soviets) along places of ideology and knowledge (the Institute of Red Professors, Komakademia) to ‘bread and circuses’ at Gorky Park.”54 Further along the embankment of the Moscow River, away from the Kremlin, was the proposed sit
e of the Monument of the Stalin Constitution (4 in Fig. 3.5). It was supposed to be built on the top of the Lenin Hills, which today are topped by the Moscow State University skyscraper. There was going to be a huge “staircase of the peoples of the USSR,” each step representing one people or republic. Most importantly, there was the intention to create an axis from the Kremlin to the Palace of Soviets to the Monument of the Stalin Constitution.55 Therefore it is also possible to interpret Stalin’s gaze in the Gerasimov painting as being directed not only at Lenin on top of the Palace of Soviets, but also at his own work, the 1936 Constitution. Seen this way, Stalin’s gaze became self-referential and circular.

  On the other hand, perhaps the Palace of Soviets was never built because no second, competing center to the Kremlin, and to Stalin within its walls, was supposed to exist. The Kremlin, ideally suited because it was without monuments, was to be filled by Stalin’s body and serve as the single center. At least the appearance of a competing center to Stalin was what a letter writer named Ganna Begicheva, a self-described “simple ordinary laborer (prostoi riadovoi truzhenik),” worried about in a 1945 epistle to Beria that was forwarded to Malenkov and to Molotov, into whose archive it found its way:

  Do not punish me for this bold letter; this boldness comes from the miraculous secret of the new life which allows the man in the street (malen’komu cheloveku) to address the very greatest people with the word “comrade” and to muse about the fate of our mother country. . . . I HAVE IN MIND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PALACE OF SOVIETS. The intended site for its construction is not sound for the following reasons: . . . First, given its size the grandiose building of the Palace in the very center of town kills, squashes the architectural ensemble of the Kremlin. . . . The Moscow River will seem like an insignificant rivulet, not to mention St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Mausoleum, which will look like mere toys. This monster will destroy the wonderful appearance of historical Moscow with its streets extending like sun rays from the heart of the city—the Kremlin. It will destroy the remarkable intention of the construction of the Kremlin—of the sun city, gazing in all four directions (na vse chetyre storony) and embodying Great Ivan’s ideal of Moscow as the Third Rome. . . . The Palace will profit from some distance to the center of town, say, at least on the Sparrow Hills where it will “rise above” the old Moscow, especially considering that the LENIN monument will be covered by clouds half the year long.

  Begicheva then went on to formulate her own, quite concrete, proposals for new buildings in Moscow. She suggested building a “Palace of Glory” with “reliquaries of the victories of 1812 and 1945” and tombs for the heroes. Enter Stalin:

  Maybe this is excessive Ukrainian lyricism speaking, but when I go to Ekaterina DZHUGASHVILI‘S tomb in Tbilisi I think with great tenderness and love about the woman who gave the world a magnificent son—the man of all men, and I mourn her like my own mother. Gravestones always touch the heart, through them you feel the interconnectedness of the ages (sviaz’ vremen). No monument speaks more to the heart than the shrine of LENIN, than the tombs of TOLSTOY, PUSHKIN, KUTUZOV, and others, only getting close to Gorky’s grave is impossible. Be patient, Comrade BERIA, do not take my words as an idle fantasy.

  Begicheva then returned to the subject of the Palace of Soviets and cast herself as a simple woman of the people, daring to say what everyone was thinking. All of Moscow, she contended, was afraid that the Palace of Soviets would dwarf the old town and that one would have to “raise one’s head to look at this monster like at a nice elephant who wandered into a room.”56

  THE MAKING OF STALIN AND VOROSHILOV IN THE KREMLIN

  Gerasimov spoke about his picture in public on at least three occasions: in November 1938, in 1947, and in December 1949. Each time the occasion was an evening at Moscow’s Central House of Art Workers (TsDRI), a club-like establishment where members of the artistic intelligentsia, especially actors and artists, gathered to watch plays, listen to lectures, and socialize.57 At the first meeting Gerasimov began by pointing out that Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin was originally his entry in a 1937 Stalin portrait competition:58

  I painted this picture for the IZOGIZ [Visual Arts Publishing House] competition “Portraits of our Leaders.” I could have painted Stalin . . . and other leaders with Comrade Stalin, but I chose Stalin and Voroshilov because it is impossible to paint portraits from photographs, without seeing the people; it is impossible, the photograph does not render the face exactly. You have to know a person well so that he is in your visual memory as though alive. Then the photograph will help you preserve the proportion, form, and everything else you must give from yourself. I had the high honor of being at Comrade Stalin’s several times. I was at Comrade Voroshilov’s many times. He posed for me.59

  From a letter to another painter, Isaak Brodsky, inviting him to participate in the competition, we can place Gerasimov’s description in context and trace the conditions of the contest—and ultimately the construction and constructedness of the picture—more fully.60 The competition was actually called the “IZOGIZ Competition for the Best Portrait of Comrade Stalin and His Closest Comrades-in-Arms.”61 Although some portrait competitions were public and open to all, in this one only fifty select artists were invited to participate. Portraits were acceptable “in any technique—oil, watercolor, gouache, drawing, lithography, linoleum cut, etching.” The painting was supposed to have a size of fifty by sixty centimeters and had to “satisfy the demands of reproduction for mass printing.”62 Upon signing a contract, the artists each received fifteen hundred rubles for their expenses and were allotted about half a year to finish their entries, so that the winners could be presented at an exhibition during the celebrations of the October Revolution. The jury included the members of the Party elite and of the artistic and literary intelligentsia, among them Aleksei Stetsky, Platon Kerzhentsev, Dmitry Moor, and Aleksei Tolstoy. Stalin’s own influence was guaranteed through the presence of a member of his personal Central Committee secretariat, Lev Mekhlis. The themes for the paintings were in fact more scripted than Gerasimov would have us believe. They included the “portrait/bust” of Stalin and images of Stalin “on the tribune of the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets,” “on the tribune of the mausoleum,” “with a raised arm/at the evening of the opening of the metro or at the Congress of Soviets ‘Forward to New Victories,’” “on the Moscow-Volga Canal,” “among children, aviators, heroes of the Soviet Union,” and “in the Gorky Park of Culture and Recreation.” The organizers further suggested a number of high Party figures with whom Stalin might be portrayed: Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, Kalinin, Mikoian, and Yezhov.63

  Gerasimov’s statement about the disadvantage of painting from photographic examples and the importance of live posing was a hint at the distribution of photographic and cinematic templates among the artists—an issue that was usually taboo in public discourse about art. “The publishing house is providing each participant of the competition with all the photographic records on the designated themes from its archive and is organizing the screening of the necessary films,” in the words of the invitation letter for the competition.64 During the 1930s, Stalin never posed for Soviet artists, and their sources for portraits of him were photographs, movies, the existing iconography, and—in the case of a privileged few—sketches drawn on occasions when Stalin spoke publicly and the artists were permitted to attend. Indeed, Gerasimov’s Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin was possibly inspired by a Pravda photograph by A. Kalashnikov, showing Stalin and Molotov walking inside the Kremlin (Fig. 3.6).

  Nonetheless, Gerasimov would have us believe that the subject of his painting was the product of his artistic inspiration alone: “I began to think about this theme and decided that they must be painted as incarnations of the Red Army and of all peoples. And yet, in poses that convey firmness (nepokolebimost’) and confidence (uverennost’). These poses are supposed to express that the peoples and the Red Army are the same, are one monolith.” Here, Gerasimov perpetua
ted the Romantic myth of autonomous artistic inspiration. He also unwittingly perpetuated the tensions that typically accompanied the continuity of this myth in Soviet Russia, where art was created according to plan, copied, and mass-produced.

  Gerasimov further said about his painting: “I liked the silvery gamut [of colors]. And suddenly I thought: what could be easier than to paint them in front of the Kremlin Palace, in which government meetings take place. I remember this sidewalk well. They might have come out, stood there, waited for a car, or looked at Moscow. As far as the idea was concerned, it was decided. I had to do a whole number of sketches because the silvery gamut was hard for me—I am used to cheerful colors, and the gray tone is awfully difficult. There are such a great number of nuances in it that I struggled with this painting for a long time.”65

  Figure 3.6. “Comrades Stalin and Molotov in the Kremlin on 14 May 1935.” Pravda, 5 June 1935, 1.

  After the war, Gerasimov gave a different gloss to his painting and claimed that he had sensed, in 1937, that the war was approaching. In his own words at a 1947 meeting at the Central House of Art Workers: “I painted Stalin several times, and I began the last portrait when war was already threatening on the horizon. . . . Earlier I called this painting Guarding Peace (Na strazhe mira). . . . The clouds appear to sense what is about to happen. It is clear that there will be a spring thunderstorm, but the clouds will pass, it is not going to be terrible and the clear day will return. The premonition was supposed to come to a good end.” He continued, “And so I ended up at the Kremlin and saw a standing person at the railing and understood at that point that this was what I was looking for. The painting went fast. The next day I had completed a sketch of the Kremlin. The Kremlin is not only the heart of Moscow but the hope of all of humanity”66 This 1947 interpretation and the detail of the thunderstorm must have led Vladimir Sadoven, the author of the course for Tretyakov Gallery excursion guides, to conclude that the pavement on which Stalin and Voroshilov were walking was “still wet from the rain that has just fallen.”67 And this interpretation must have laid the groundwork for the popular tongue-in-cheek rhymed epithet viewers later gave to the painting, “Dva vozhdia posle dozhdia” (“Two leaders after the rain”).68