The Stalin Cult

by Jan Plamper

  78. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 17. Likewise the director of The Fall of Berlin, Mikhail Chiaureli, asked Aleksandr Nikolaevich [Poskryobyshev?] to be allowed to look at Stalin’s office “for its correct depiction in the film.” He was granted his request. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 825, l. 19.

  79. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 11.

  80. Katsman states that Stalin visited the exhibition together with other Politburo members on 30 June 1933, though he is not entirely sure ofthat date. See RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 11. The other exhibition he visited was the tenth AKhR exhibition in 1928. See Gromov, Stalin: Vlast’ i iskusstvo, 59–60.

  81. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 12–13.

  82. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 6. The context here was the July 1933 meeting of Brodsky, Gerasimov, and Katsman with Stalin and Voroshilov at Stalin’s dacha.

  83. Interestingly, Politburo sessions were off-limits to artists, photographers, or anyone else interested in recording the session. Brodsky apparently had permission to paint the Politburo in session until his patrons at the Politburo reneged (through the editor of Komosmol’skaia Pravda): “Yesterday I talked to Comrade Yenukidze. He asked me to tell you precisely the following: tell him that, in spite of L. M. [Kaganovich’s] comment on the letter ‘I do not object’ and in spite of Voroshilov’s personal intervention, it is absolutely prohibited to admit anyone to the Politburo—not artists, photo journalists, or cameramen. He must not get offended at us. We very much wanted to do this for Brodsky ourselves, but this is the rule.” RGALI, f. 2020, op. 2, d. 6, l. 1. Letter dated 25 January 1934. Does this support the thesis of several scholars that the Bolsheviks carried their self-understanding of a conspirational group across the revolutionary divide? See Gabor Rittersporn, “The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Imagery of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s,” in Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath: Essays in Honour of Moshe Lewin, ed. Nick Lampert and Gabor Rittersporn (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 101–120; Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 351, 353.

  84. Katsman took “32 sessions, in the course of approximately two months” for a full-size painting of Voroshilov, commissioned for the 1933 exhibition “Fifteen Years of the Red Army.” See his 25 April 1933 postcard to Brodskii in RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 181, 1. 15. Elsewhere Katsman wrote about this 1933 painting: “He [Voroshilov] posed 32 days for me at the Revolutionary War Soviet” (RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 34, l. 9.) Perhaps it was only natural that Voroshilov, as main patron of the arts, actually took the time to pose for artists—unlike other high Party members. There are letters from Katsman in which he asked that Voroshilov visit him in his Kremlin studio, for “it would be very good to finish at least your eyes in the commenced portrait!” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 67.

  85. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 28ob.

  86. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 423, ll. 71–72. Letter by Sergei Lobanov from Moscow, dated 11 October 1931 (or 1934?).

  87. One of these was the medical profession. As one of Stalin’s physicians remembered, “During my final visit in 1930, Stalin asked me how he could thank me for healing him. I asked him to help me change my apartment, which was a former merchant’s horse stable. He smiled after this conversation.” I. B. Chernomaz, “Vrach i ego patsient: Vospominaniia I. A. Valedinskogo o I. V. Staline,” in Golosa istorii: Muzei revoliutsii. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, no. 23, book 2 (Moscow: n.p., 1992), 123.

  88. This did not only apply to artists as well. Consider the sculptor I. V. Tomsky’s description of the 1939 Party congress: “I remember that Comrade Grizodubova was supposed to give the opening speech, to do a short welcome address. How nervous she was. She said that her legs were shaking out of nervousness, that she would much more easily do an incredible flight than say a few words at this moment. But as soon as Comrade Stalin appeared, as soon as she saw his gentle face, her entire false fear completely went away.” RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 20. Dated 1949. When photographing Stalin in April 1932, the American photographer James Abbe repeated many of the same tropes as the painters. See James E. Abbe, I Photograph Russia (London: George G. Harrap, 1935), 57–75; and Pasha Angelina, the tractor-driving Stakhanovite, during a 1935 Kremlin congress with Stalin present “walked to the podium feeling totally numb. There was a lump in my throat, and I could not utter a sound. I just stood there silently, looking at Stalin. He understood my nervousness and said softly, so that only I could hear: ‘Be brave, Pasha, be brave . . .’ Those words became the guiding light of my whole life.” Quoted from Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, eds., In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 316.

  89. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 6. This is a stenogram of “an evening, dedicated to the theme: ‘The Image of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin in Works of Art’” at the Central House of Art Workers (TsDRI), 23 December 1949.

  90. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 20–21.

  91. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 5.

  92. See introduction by I. S. Rabinovich to Stalin i liudy sovetskoi strany v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve, 4. The drawing was also mentioned in the 1947 pamphlet for guides in the Tretyakov Gallery. See “Metodicheskaia razrabotka ekskursii po GTG na temu: ‘Obrazy Lenina i Stalina v sovetskom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve,’” 1947, by V. V. Sadoven, in OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, l. 3, where the portrait is listed as “N. Andreev—Portret I. V. Stalina 1922g. /pastel’/.” Indeed, the visitors were to stop at this drawing and the guide was to say: “One of the few portraits of Comrade Stalin of the time, drawn from life. The portrait conveys the features of Comrade Stalin with great directness and precision. Executed in pastels, softly yet firmly, the portrait is an artistic document of great value. The autograph of Comrade Stalin on the portrait shows that Comrade Stalin likes this portrait.” OR GTG, f. 8.Ill, d. 926,1. 24.

  93. Hitler also censored his physical imperfections. For Hitler banning photographs showing him with spectacles or a reading glass see Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend (London: Burke, 1955), verso of pictorial insert between 176 and 177.

  94. The following is based on B. A. Bessonov, “‘Menia vstretil chelovek srednego rosta . . .’: Iz vospominanii skul’ptora M. D. Ryndziunskoi o rabote nad biustom I. V. Stalina v 1926g.” in Golosa istorii, no. 23, book 2, 111–118. For the Rykov detail, see 112. Ryndziunskaia’s memoirs were published, at least partially, in 1939 on Stalin’s sixtieth birthday: “Interv’iu s M. Ryndziunskoi,” Dekada moskovskikh zrelishch, no. 36 (21 December 1939): 16–17. Quoted in Gromov, Stalin: Vlast’ i iskusstvo, 61–62 (459 nn. 37–40).

  95. Bessonov, “‘Menia vstretil chelovek srednego rosta . . .,’” 113.

  96. Ibid., 115.

  97. Ibid., 116.

  98. Ibid.

  99. Ibid., 117.

  100. Ibid.

  101. Ibid., 113. Ryndziunskaia was asked to report any artwork on Stalin for the 1939 anniversary exhibition “J. V. Stalin and the People of the Soviet Land in the Fine Arts.” She spoke of a “ 1933 portrait in wood” and “an unfinished work, still in clay (portrait), without any contract and not earmarked for any organization.” She finished: “I would also very much like to do a portrait of Comrade Stalin in 1902.” OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 992, l. 5. Letter dated 12 April 1939. However, the exhibition catalogue only lists a plaster sculpture by People’s Artist V. I. Kachalov and one by Mamlakat, no Stalin portrait by Ryndziunskaia. See Stalin i liudy sovetskoi strany v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve, 40.

  102. Author’s interview with Vladilen Aleksandrovich Shabelnikov, A. M. Gerasimov’s son-in-law, Moscow, 28 April 2000. However, Brodsky’s son Evgeny claimed that his father never did a life portrait of Stalin: “Voroshilov tried to convince Stalin to pose for my father. He ordered my father to Moscow twice because it looked like Stalin agreed to pose. Both times my father returned with nothing.” He concluded, “Neither my father nor any other artist ma
naged to paint Stalin in person.” M Br, “Vospominaniia syna I. I. Brodskogo, E. I. Brodskogo,” typescript, 1982, 47.

  103. Matthew Cullerne Bown, Art under Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 61. The source for this (235 n. 38) is Roi Medvedev, “O Staline i stalinizme,” Znamia, no. 3 (1989): 156. Bown also claims that Stalin during the 1930s ended up unhappy with his portrayal “by the sculptor, Boris Iakovlev” (116). But there was no sculptor by the name of Boris Yakovlev, only a painter Boris Yakovlev, and the more famous painter, Vasily Yakovlev. (Even in Bown’s own Socialist Realist Painting [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998], 118, Boris Yakovlev is called a painter, and several of his landscape paintings are reproduced. Bown’s A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Russian and Soviet Painters, 1900–1980s [London: Izomar, 1998] lists the painter brothers Boris Nikolaevich Yakovlev [1890–1972] and Vasilii Nikolaevich Yakovlev [1893–1953], 352–353).

  104. Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 234. For variations of the Mukhina story see Bown, Art under Stalin, 222–223. Nowhere does Bown cite the source for this story.

  105. Interview with Shabelnikov, Moscow, 28 April 2000. Likewise Isaak Brodsky’s son Evgeny claims to have posed as Voroshilov for the painting The People’s Commisar for Defense K. E. Voroshilov Out Skiing, 1937. See M Br, “Vospominaniia syna I. I. Brodskogo, E. I. Brodskogo,” 52.

  106. In 1941 the Central Committee discussed sanctions in the case of a lawyer by the name of I. A. Slavkin and several other sitters who had modeled as Lenin. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 70, ll. 17–41 (for photographs of Slavkin); Sergei Konstantinov, “Nesostoiavshiisia uchastnik Leniniany: Kak iurist Slavkin rabotal vozhdem mirovogo proletariata,” Neza-visimaia gazeta, 30 September 2000, 10 (thanks to Uta Gerlant for this newspaper article).

  107. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 11. Katsman further mentioned painting Ordzhonikidze at a political meeting: “I saw Comrade Ordzhonikidze for the last time at the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets at the Kremlin. In the course of ten days I saw him every day. I sat in the fifth row and clearly saw and carefully studied the dear faces of our leaders, among them Comrade Ordzhonikidze. For some reason he always sat with Comrade L. M. Kaganovich at the edge. For the most part, he worked, wrote something and signed the papers that his secretary kept bringing. And when he did not work, he tilted his head, rested it on the palm of his hand, and looked into the room, at us. I drew him in this position.” RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 34, l. 2.

  108. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 14. Katsman also recounted painting Stalin at the 1936 Congress of Kolkhoz Farmers at the Bolshoi: “In 1936 I made a pencil drawing of Comrade Stalin, giving a speech at the Bolshoi Theater at the Congress of Kolkhoz Farmers. The Tretyakov Gallery acquired this drawing.” RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36,l. 10.

  109. “[Fedor] Modorov and [Vasily] Svarog were supposed to come with us, but the former was gone, the latter ill.” RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 20.

  110. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 181, ll. 16–16ob.

  111. Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 184.

  112. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 1, d. 50, l. 4ob.

  113. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 181, l. 30ob.

  114. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 181, l. 31.

  115. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 701, l. 22.

  116. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 181, l. 52ob.

  117. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 48, ll. 1–1ob. Date not further specified.

  118. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 48, l. 4. Date not further specified.

  119. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 11.

  120. Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 1, 131, 317.

  121. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 48, ll. 7–8. Katsman’s letter to Voroshilov is dated 7 November 1953. He was probably referring to the July 1933 meeting of Isaak Brodsky, Aleksandr Gerasimov, and himself with Voroshilov and Stalin at Stalin’s dacha.

  122. This and the following biographical information are from A. D. Chernev, 229 Kremlevskikh vozhdei: Politbiuro, Orgbiuro, Sekretariat TsK Kommunisticheskoi partii v litsakh i tsifrakh. Spravochnik (Moscow: Redaktsiia zhurnala “Rodina,” Nauchnyi tsentr “Russika,” 1996), 119; Michael T. Florinsky, McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); V. I. Ivkin, Gosudarstvennaia vlast’ SSSR: Vysshie organy vlasti i upravleniia i ikh rukovoditeli, 1923–1991gg: Istoriko-bibliograficheskii spravochnik (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 258–259; Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., vol. 9 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe nauchnoe izdatel’stvo “Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia,” 1951), 128–130; Joseph L. Wieczynski, The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, vol. 43 (Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press, 1986), 67–70. For a detailed chronology of Voroshilov’s professional life see V. Akshinskii, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov: Biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974), 261–283.

  123. Lugansk was a frequent topos in correspondence with the artists. Quite typically, once a Bolshevik reached the highest ranks of the Party, requests for patronage came from his hometown or birthplace. They could also, however, come from places named after the Party leader. Thus Lazar Kaganovich in July 1945 wrote to Nikita Khrushchev, asking that the Ukrainian leader expedite the rebuilding of a school destroyed during the war in the village Kaganovich of Kaganovich Raion in Kiev oblast after his “fellow villagers had appealed to [him] with a letter.” RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 426, l. 10.

  124. Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, vol. 9, 129.

  125. Typically, a Voroshilov biography first enumerated the sectors of the arts the Sovmin Bureau of Culture was responsible for, which did not include the visual arts. In the following paragraph the biography recounted his “personal portfolio”—and the visual arts figured prominently: “Kliment Yefremovich was personal friends with many writers, artists, composers, actors, movie people, as well as publishing, radio, and television workers. And not only from our country, but also of other states.” See Akshinskii, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, 235.

  126. “We happily learned that the USSR put you in charge of culture and art. We, the old guard of artists have been working under your leadership for more than a quarter century. . . .” RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 48, l. 5. Dated 1946.

  127. Kliment E. Voroshilov, Rasskazy o zhizni (Vospominaniia), vol. 1 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1968), 53. In Russian a slide projector was called a svetoskop.

  128. See ibid., 75–80. For the Grabar and Grekov pictures see Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov: Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ v fotografiiakh i dokumentakh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Plakat,” 1978), 45.

  129. See Akshinskii, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, 252. In 1931 Isaak Brodsky and another Leningrad artist, in honor of Voroshilov’s fiftieth birthday, even proposed the creation of a “Voroshilov Art Gallery,” “where all the pictures and works of art connected with the heroic feats, the life, and work of the Red Army should be concentrated.” RGALI, f. 2020, op. 1, d. 14, l. 16.

  130. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 429, l. 18. Voroshilova recorded 26 February 1947 as her first working day at the Lenin Museum.

  131. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 429, ll. 28–30. This is a 16 January 1949 letter from Voroshilova to her grandson that she entered into this file.

  132. See e.g. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, ll. 75–76. Entry of 17 November 1955.

  133. See, for example, the 1966 photograph of Voroshilov and Strobl and the accompanying caption: “K. E. Voroshilov and his friend, the famous Hungarian sculptor Zhigmond Kishfaludi Shtrobl.” Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, 91; Akshinskii, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, 235.

  134. Sheila Fitzpatrick was first to note this. See her Everyday Stalinism, 110–114. Also see M. N. Afanas’ev, Klientilizm i rossiiskaia gosudarstvennost’: Issledovanie klientarnykh otnoshenii, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Tsentr konstitutsionnykh issledovanii Moskovskogo obshchestvennogo nauchnogo fonda, 2000); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Patronage and the Intelligentsia in Stalin’s Russia,” in Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History, ed. Stephen G. Wheatcro
ft (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 92–111; and the following articles in Contemporary European History 11, no. 1 (2002): Maruška Svašek, “Contacts: Social Dynamics in the Czechoslovak State-Socialist Art World,” 67–86; Kiril Tomoff, “‘Most Respected Comrade . . . ‘: Patrons, Clients, Brokers and Unofficial Networks in the Stalinist Music World,” 3 3–65; Barbara Walker, “Kruzhok Culture and the Meaning of Patronage in the Early Soviet Literary World,” 107–123; Vera Tolz, “‘Cultural Bosses’ as Patrons and Clients: The Functioning of the Soviet Creative Unions in the Postwar Period,” 87–105.

  135. Gerald Easter has argued that many personal networks extended back to the prerevolutionary Russian Marxist underground. The Civil War, then, was a time when old networks were fortified and new ones forged. A whole elite of provincial komitetchiki thus emerged, who, according to Easter, maintained their local networks (the Transcaucasian Party officials were particularly adept at this) and ultimately acted as a constraint on central power until the Great Terror. See Gerald Easter, Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  136. On the commission’s judging of art see Benno Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults in der Sowjetunion (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997), 268–290.

  137. In the fall of 1924, for example, Voroshilov received two posters from TsIK (Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet) with the request to approve them. Voroshilov returned them with a note that read: “I have nothing against the printing of the posters, even though the depiction of V. I. [Lenin] is not quite successful.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 94, l. 5.