by Jan Plamper
One leading artist, Boris Ioganson, in a similar vein said of Aleksandr Gerasimov’s own Hymn to October: “When I was at the Tretyakov Gallery and stood in front of the painting, I was very interested in the opinion of the people who were looking at this painting. The painting is much liked, it evokes interest. I think that the compositional aspect of the painting is very interestingly done, in the sense that the spectator seemingly is present in the room, seemingly takes part in a big meeting, where he can hear the words of his beloved leader, Comrade Stalin, where he can see the government, where he can see representatives of the sciences and the arts.”33 Both Gerasimov in his discussion of Katsman’s Visitors with Kalinin and Ioganson in his discussion of Gerasimov’s Hymn to October in effect are crediting the painter with creating a participatory effect himself: the painting now is as if life-giving and allows for the spectator to partake in sacral processes. This comes close to iconic perception, as in Russian Orthodox icon painting, where the image transmits sacral charge into the world.
Artists took the comments in comment books very seriously. At the 1939 exhibition “Stalin and the People of the Soviet Land” one artist wrote to the director of the Tretyakov Gallery: “Is the exhibition well-frequented? Do you have a visitor comment book and do they criticize me a lot there?”34 The comments were also used in the press for the public shaming of artists, at artists’ union and organization meetings, and in attacks on individual artists by colleagues. Artists themselves could retain the all-important image of modesty and still praise their very own pictures by mentioning positive comments about them.35
Artists also received letters from people who had visited a museum and gone on a guided tour. These people related what the tour guide had said about the artist’s work and the artist, in turn, at least in one case tried to protest to the director of the museum, demanding that the treatment of his painting by the tour guide change. Thus Isaak Brodsky wrote to the direction of the Tretyakov Gallery that he regularly received letters from his aficionados in which they complained that certain pictures of his had been treated unfairly by the tour guide. One letter claimed that a tour guide had commented on Brodsky’s classic, Lenin at the Smolny (Plate 1), as follows: “Brodsky was the first of the artists to side with the Revolution, but his art has turned bad (iskhalturi-los’). Look only at the portrait of Lenin at the Smolny. Everything is delineated scrupulously—the covers of the chairs, the floor—only Lenin does not look like himself. You cannot feel the restlessness of the time, Lenin is too calm, there is no sense that the blaze of the revolution is burning close by.” Brodsky was not amused: “I am astonished that tour guides are allowed to say such nonsense about a painting that has received general recognition here and abroad. As is well known, the second version of the painting is at the Lenin Museum and I doubt that the painting gets subjected to such ignorant attacks there.” As if to emphasize the seriousness and authenticity of his source, Brodsky cited the letter writer’s name and address.36
As far as the comments themselves are concerned, it is noteworthy that these were extremely codified and positive at exhibitions of Stalin cult art—and thus at the sacral center of the Soviet Union. The following comment on the 1949 exhibition on the occasion of Stalin’s seventieth birthday is typical: “The exhibition ‘The Image of Stalin in the Arts’ has touched us deeply. The guided tour of Comrade M. M. Epshtein managed to show graphically and clearly what the artists and sculptors of the Stalin epoch want to express in their works. We are grateful to Comrade Stalin that he created wonderful conditions for the blossoming of our art. [Signed] The 8th grade students of School 407, Pervomaisky Raion, 24 December 1949.”37 Other comments were more detailed: “By and large the exhibition creates a strong, radiant impression. The picture Hymn to October by Aleksandr Gerasimov is particularly uplifting. Shurpin’s Morning of Our Motherland [Plate 8] is excellent. In [this picture] there is so much light, so much air! You want to take a deep breath when you look at it. The huge fields on which the first tractors are already plowing, this light, blue-green spring sky—together they serve as a wonderful background for the most important figure on the canvas—the figure of Comrade Stalin. It was he, the leader of peoples, who defended the blossoming expanses of our motherland against the enemy, thanks to his wise leadership the sun will never be extinguished above our country.”38 Consider also a particularly lengthy comment by Moscow art students, which began by noting their enthusiasm:
We looked at the exhibition “Comrade Stalin in the Visual Arts” with great excitement. Among the many good pictures, we very much liked Oreshnikov’s picture, Lenin and Stalin in the Petrograd Defense Headquarters, to which the guides pay little attention, despite the fact that this picture is painted with great skill. Granted, it does not impress with bright colors, but the space and tense atmosphere of those years are well expressed in it. At the exhibition there is also a large painting by the artist Khmelko which bears the title To the Great Russian People. They say that there is a lot of light in it, but in truth there is no light in it and the illumination even seems weak, which lends a somewhat sad look to the Georgievsky Hall. Moreover, if you pay attention to Kaganovich’s face and the figure to the right of Kaganovich (apparently Zhdanov), one could imagine that the artist wanted to show a different content of the picture and not the content it is supposed to have. Brodsky’s portraits in oil and pencil are very good, and we all like Yar-Kravchenko’s pencil portraits of Stalin a lot. By the way, Brodsky’s Stalin is the one with the most verisimilitude at the entire exhibition. And we wish that these portraits and Oreshnikov’s picture Stalin and Lenin in Petrograd would stay at the Tretyakov Gallery, because we are afraid that they will be removed at the end of the exhibition. We also very much liked Shurpin’s picture The Morning of Our Motherland. The Students of MSKhSh [Moscow Secondary Art School].39
Critical comments at Stalin exhibitions were exceedingly rare. This was because of the sacral status of representations of Stalin, which were to be revered rather than examined, but also because a museum guard controlled the comment book and because some of the few-and-far-between critical comments that were entered were then removed. A critical comment (by a student) at the 1937–38 exhibition “Art of the Georgian SSR” ran as follows:
The general impression of the exhibition of Georgian art is overwhelming. It is a great pleasure to be able to follow the lives of our leaders—from many years ago to the Great Constitution that bears the beloved name of Stalin. For us, the youth of the land of socialism, this is a wonderful gift. Thanks to Comrade Beria, the initiator of these outstanding works of art! It is all the more saddening to see among these fantastic pictures the work Reception of the Georgian Delegation at the Kremlin by one Krotkov. The faces of Comrades Kaganovich and Yezhov are so distorted that they are hardly recognizable. The face of Comrade Voroshilov has a strange, untypical expression. It is annoying that the Commission which has organized this fantastic exhibition let in this painting—a painting that elicits unanimous displeasure and anger among the visitors.40
Many of these comments were hardly distinguishable from professional art criticism in Stalin’s time. Indeed, one of the totalizing ambitions of socialist realist art was to erase all boundaries, including those between lay art appreciation and professional art criticism, ultimately between art and criticism.41 Socialist realism was not quite successful in erasing these boundaries, as the self-referential logic of differentiating professional, specialized discourses proved overpowering. Stalinist art criticism did develop its own voice, but its borders remained porous. Professional art critics continually pillaged comment books for ideas expressed in “the voice of the people” to buttress their specialized, Hegel-saturated rhetoric. This was one of the abiding functions of the comment book, besides its role in furnishing ammunition for debates within the artist community.
During the 1920s the comment book also had the function of providing genuine sociological information on visitor reactions. It could change the art that was be
ing produced, or readjust the ways in which it was presented in exhibitions and museums (the hanging and surroundings, including the guided tours, noise level, and lighting). It could teach museum-goers the expected repertoires of reception, and, quite simply, to teach them how to behave as cultured viewers. By contrast, during the 1930s—this is especially true for Stalin portraits— the comment book turned into a symbolic, pseudodemocratic practice. Its main purpose became to show to the Soviet Union and to the world that Soviet art was produced by the people and for the people, and hence was “popular” in both senses of the word. Reception turned into performance.
THE CELEBRITY EVENING: MEETING THE
MAN WHO PLAYED STALIN
In the wake of the new Stalinist emphasis on heroes and the individual (lichnost’), Soviet screen and stage actors began to be revered no less than Hollywood stars. From Liubov Orlova during the 1930s to Andrei Mironov during the 1960s and 1970s, actors set beauty standards, were emulated by countless teenagers, and were consulted on questions entirely unrelated to their profession. In the absence of a commercialized fan culture, Soviet actors communicated with their audience through different channels. Famous actors received fan mail, to be sure, but in answering this mail they took care to point out that their relationship to their audience was a socialist one. Just as the painters emphasized how indebted they were to the popular masses, actors also stressed that they were “of the people” and produced art “for the people.”
Aleksei Denisovich Diky (1889–1955) was one of Moscow’s best-known stage actors during the 1930s (Fig. 6.1).42 His career took an abrupt turn when “he was arrested (on criminal charges, it seems) at the end of the 1930s and later set free.”43 During the 1940s Diky attained new fame as a movie actor, at first in the lead role of Marshal Kutuzov in Kutuzov (1944) and later as Stalin in three movies, Private Aleksandr Matrosov (1947), The Third Blow (1948), and The Battle of Stalingrad (1949).44 Diky’s performance as Stalin, in which the vozhd’ was stripped of his Georgian accent and at times wildly gesticulated with his hands, was widely perceived as incongruous with the established film iconography. After Semyon Goldshtab had played Stalin early on in the movies Lenin in October (1937) and Man With a Rifle (1938), Mikhail Gelovani, a Georgian actor, had done more than any other for the canonical film image of the leader: Gelovani’s Stalin spoke with a thick Georgian accent and moved hardly at all Plate 19). In the perception of Soviet moviegoers, Gelovani’s Stalin was the celluloid Stalin, and Diky’s version therefore was a shock to many. Diky’s Stalin was also perceived as contributing to the “russification” of Stalin during a time when the battle against “cosmopolitanism” was in full swing.45 While Diky’s tenure as Stalin was relatively short-lived, it still exhibited the characteristics of Soviet stardom: Diky not only received a Stalin Prize and was celebrated in the highest echelons of the world of culture, he also cultivated a special relationship with his audience, whose letters from home and questions on scrap paper, passed to the stage at the celebrity evening, he occasionally answered with round-robin letters.
Figure 6.1. Actor Aleksei Diky at a make-up session for his role as Stalin in the movie The Battle of Stalingrad (1949). Source: RGALI, f. 2376, op. 1, d. 82, l. 8. © RGALI.
In 1948 Diky thus introduced a radio address tellingly entitled “An Open Letter by A. D. Diky about His Work on the Image of J. V. Stalin in the Movie The Third Blow” as follows: “While looking through my papers, I found your request to recount how I worked on the making of Admiral Nakhimov’s image. It is only now that I found your letter to me. Time has gone by, but the anguish over this annoying misunderstanding has remained, and I hasten to get in touch with you and make up for my small fault. The movie The Third Blow, in which I participated in the role of Comrade Stalin, has just appeared. Many are writing to me with the request to tell how I worked on the making of the image of the man of genius who is our leader.” Diky closed by invoking the advantage of the medium of radio in reaching across large distances: “It is my pleasure to do this primarily for you, our faraway kin.”46 The modern mass media allowed Diky to answer letters and queries en masse and to create an impression of particular closeness to even the most remote of his fans.
A thoroughly typical fan letter was the one that young Yevgenia Bocharovaia sent to Aleksei Diky on Victory Day (May 9) 1949:
Dear Comrade Diky!
This little letter will be a surprising mystery for you. First, where is it from? Second, who wrote it? Yes, indeed, a girl you do not know by the name of Zhenia is writing this little letter. From the industrial town of Kramatorsk in the Donets Basin, a student learning to become a master craftsman. . . . Dear comrade, I cannot express my happiness, my enthusiasm about today, about the day of 9 May 1949. They showed the new movie The Battle of Stalingrad in Kramatorsk, in which you participated in the role of J. V. Stalin. Our entire group of students was absolutely delighted. And we want to wish you the greatest success for your further work. We wish you lots of good health for many years. Please forgive what might be a somewhat forward step on my part, but I am hoping to receive a tiny letter back from you. So write and we will be happy to receive a letter from you. Our address: Kramatorsk, Ordzhonikidze Factory OTO. Bocharovaia Ye. Iv. Stay well.47
A postcard from an elderly man, who was clearly more educated, addressed the famous actor as “Dear, esteemed Comrade Diky” and continued in a tone that suggested an equality between the actor and the writer in terms of age, education, and worldview: “Forgive an unknown person for writing to you, but I want to express my gratitude for the creation of the image of Comrade Stalin in the movie The Third Blow. You have depicted Joseph Vissarionovich the way everyone knows him, that is, as a politician, a military man, and a statesman of enormous talent. Therefore I felt great satisfaction when I saw your name in the list of the new Stalin Prize laureates. Please allow me to sincerely congratulate you and to wish you new, great successes. Respectfully yours, A. Gaidaryov.”48 Aleksei Grigorievich Shabanov, from a village in the Primorie region, began a letter by telling how difficult it had been to find out Diky’s address and by saying that he was his greatest fan. He continued: “For a while I knew that a new film, The Battle of Stalingrad, had come out, but I did not have a chance to watch it and I racked my brains over how to get to watch this movie [since] I knew that Diky played the role of Comrade Stalin there.” After returning from a trip to Voronezh oblast, Shabanov finally got a chance to watch the long-awaited movie: “And when I found out that they were going to show the movie The Battle of Stalingrad in the evening I grew sick with waiting for the evening. And here I am sitting with my old lady, my mother, and she sees the living Stalin for the first time. She sees how Comrade Stalin calmly works in his office on the making of a plan, she sees how Comrade Stalin calmly leads, without agitation and confusion gives orders to our generals for the defeat of the Hitlerites at Stalingrad. On the screen she sees for the first time what war means, she couldn’t remain seated on her bench and decided to leave, but I made her finish watching the first part after all. Dear Diky, many thanks for masterfully creating the image of Comrade Stalin.”49
After receiving a Stalin prize, Diky indeed became the veritable object of a small personality cult, albeit in the sphere of entertainment rather than politics, and thus outside the definition of personality cult in this book. Though he had been so recently a prisoner in Stalin’s labor camps, Diky, as a cult object, invariably received requests for patronage. The two social processes of personality cult and patronage were inextricably linked, as we saw in Chapter 4.50
The typical and more direct form of connection between the actor and his audience was, however, not the epistolary genre but the live celebrity evening, at which the audience jotted down—mostly anonymous—notes on pieces of scrap paper and passed them forward to the stage (Plates 20, Plate 21). One such note is strictly congratulatory: “To A. D. Diky, the performer of the role of Comrade Stalin. In the name of soldiers from Gorky allow me to express sincere affection t
o you for the beloved image of our leader, which you have performed in the movie The Third Blow. We are sending you and your colleagues wishes for good health and further productive work in the sphere of art. With greetings, L. A. Zaikov, private in Army Unit 41491.”51 But most simply wondered, “How was the image of Comrade Stalin created? What materials did you use for the creation of this image?”52 They also wanted to know if Diky had received personal instructions from Stalin, if he had met with Stalin, and if he had “met, then please tell about it.”53
Many spoke of the different Stalin images of the actors Gelovani and Diky with astonishing openness: “We just watched the movie and the deep shock that we felt over first seeing the true portrayal of our leader has yet to subside! We were used to seeing Comrade Stalin performed by M. G. Gelovani, and all acting possibilities were limited to likeness in appearance. Gelovani was good at that, and only that! In your performance the viewer for the first time saw the man and leader in the way in which he lives in the soul and consciousness of every one of us. Words are powerless, especially in this moment. It seems that this is the peak that cannot be topped by anything. But knowing your unlimited creative potential we believe that we will again see you on the screen, where you will further perfect the image of the beloved leader.” The writer signed anonymously as “a viewer” and requested “that comrade chairman,” the master of ceremonies at the celebrity evening, “publicize this letter.”54 Another writer asked “why Comrade Gelovani no longer stars in the role of Stalin?”55 Yet another even inquired: “Tell us why you speak without the characteristic accent, when you play J. V. Stalin” (Plate 21).56 And “because we want to know Comrade Stalin, we want to know him in detail down to his accent.”57 Presumably in reply to Diky’s statement that an actor need not portray the leader mimetically, but rather must represent his essential psychological traits, one person asked, “in that case, why did Shchukin, the best actor in the role of V. I. Lenin, take into consideration the peculiarities of Lenin’s manner of speaking,” probably referring to Lenin’s habit of burring.58 Yet other notes gave concrete advice on how the writers wanted Diky to change his portrayal of Stalin: “I love you very much as an actor and would like you very much to do a lot more as a revolutionary and stormy petrel (burevestnik) in the role of Stalin. Think about this. I think this is a shortcoming.”59 Finally, one person complained about Diky’s insincerity: “By not answering the questions about meeting Comrade Stalin you are being evasive, like Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov.”60