The Stalin Cult

by Jan Plamper

  138. For a different interpretation witness Molotov, who claimed that Voroshilov’s close association with the painters was, in Stalin’s eyes, a liability rather than an asset. “Of course, I would say that Stalin never completely trusted [Voroshilov],” Molotov told Felix Chuev. He went on, “Voroshilov started to behave like gentry. He enjoyed mixing with artists and actors, he loved theater and especially painters. He would often entertain them at his place. . . . Voroshilov clung more to the painters, and they were nonparty people for the most part. . . . Voroshilov rather loved to pose as something of a patron of the arts. And the artists, for their part, tried to the utmost to reciprocate. Alexander Gerasimov, a very talented artist, painted Voroshilov on horseback, Voroshilov skiing. Their association appeared to be one of mutual back-scratching. Stalin was correct in his criticisms, for all artists are big-mouths. They are essentially harmless, of course, but they are constantly surrounded by ne’er-do-wells of every sort. And such connections were used to approach Voroshilov’s aides and his domestics.” Albert Resis, ed., Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Conversations with Felix Chuev (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 225.

  139. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Introduction,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York: Routledge, 2000), 11.

  140. See Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 62–66.

  141. For more on embodiment and impersonation in Stalinism, including its etymology in Russian, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Making a Self for the Times: Impersonation and Imposture in 20th-Century Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 3 (2001): 472 n. 9.

  142. Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 327.

  143. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 35–36.

  144. Thus the sculptor I. D. Shadr, in a typical petition letter to Voroshilov in 1937, at first enumerated all his finished sculptures, then described the project he was currently working on, and finally asked that Voroshilov improve his “exceptionally difficult conditions.” He had no studio of his own and his family was living in “two small rooms.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 33. The letter is dated 21 March 1937. Voroshilov then corresponded with his secretary who initiated a change in Shadr’s living space. This was a typical exertion of pressure from the top on the lowest levers of power, including the housing organizations. It is interesting to note how little this situation had changed a quarter of a century later. In 1961, the artist and graphic designer Nikolai Atabekov attached his original cover design for Voroshilov’s 1927 book, The Defense of the USSR, together with physical proof that Voroshilov had used it (the remark “a little lighter” written in Voroshilov’s hand) to a letter emphasizing how much this token of a connection to Voroshilov meant to him and then asking if Voroshilov could help him move into a more spacious apartment. The exact living conditions were always described in great detail, because the letter writers knew that their letters would serve as the basis for the patron’s correspondence with the relevant authorities at a lower level. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, 11. 6–7. The letter is dated 21 June 1961.

  145. For an example see the 28 January 1935 letter by the relatives of N. I. Mikhailov, who had made a drawing of Kirov’s funeral that was interpreted ambiguously: spots in the background created the impression of a ghost attacking Stalin. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, ll. 123–124.

  146. Gerasimov, for instance, in 1934 managed to add a trip to Turkey to a three-month stay in Paris and Rome by appealing to Voroshilov, whom he addressed, in this petition letter, as “kind, dear Kliment Efremovich.” See RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 5. And like so many others, the caricaturist Deni ended up being personally indebted to Stalin, to whom he thought it necessary to address his request for a three-month vacation because of chronic fatigue and illness. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, ll. 15–15ob. Letter by Deni to Stalin dated 23 April 1932.

  147. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 17.

  148. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 18.

  149. See M Br, “Vospominaniia syna I.I. Brodskogo, E. I. Brodskogo,” 37.

  150. Sheila Fitzpatrick has called these intermediaries “brokers.” See her Everyday Stalinism, 112.

  151. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 72. Letter dated 27 December 1934. In a 1931 letter, also transmitted by Katsman, Yakovlev wrote that he had heard that Voroshilov was unhappy with his work. Yakovlev then defended himself by listing numerous works in progress and citing the approval of colleagues closer to Voroshilov, such as Brodsky, as well as of political leaders like Yenukidze. He next asked Voroshilov to come and visit his studio and continued by describing his difficult housing and working situation, only to end with a petition for Voroshilov’s intervention in this regard. See RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, ll. 183–184.

  152. The contested issue was likely remuneration for a Brodsky painting or reproduction: “If, by chance, you see or call K. E. Voroshilov, mention the letter that Kirov wrote to him in this regard and say a couple of warm words for my rescue, I really need to be saved from those scoundrels that want to swallow me alive. Only Voroshilov can get me out of this mess. . . . Evgeny Aleksandrovich [Katsman], you and I are on good terms.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 294, ll. 10-ioob. Letter dated 16 November 1926. Later, in 1935, Brodsky apparently telegraphed Beria (at that time head of the Transcaucasian Party committee) to ask if he could do a painting of Stalin, likely connected with Stalin’s youth in Georgia. Beria signed a letter from the Moscow office of the Transcaucasian Party committee to Brodsky in Leningrad: “Comrade Stalin is against the painting of the picture you telegraphed me about.” RGALI, f. 2020, op. 2, d. 13, l. 1. Dated 27 November 1935.

  153. In another instance that took place in 1926, Kirov wrote to Voroshilov, saying that Brodsky had appealed to him for help. At issue was a bankrupt publishing house in the Urals that owed Brodsky money. Upon Kirov’s letter, Voroshilov contacted the secretary of the Perm Obkom in the Urals and asked him to help Brodsky recoup his losses. This case shows that the local Party boss who at the same time belonged to the central Party elite— Kirov, in Brodsky’s case—could act as a broker of patronage, too. See RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 42, ll. 76–77ob).; RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 4. A patron’s secretary usually also acted as a significant intermediary. Gerasimov, for example, was keenly aware of the secretary’s importance and asked Voroshilov’s secretary, whom he addressed with the familiar ty, to hand over a certain letter with a negative message separately from “congratulations and other pictures so as not to mix happy things with sad things. . . . I am entirely counting on your tactfulness.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, ll. 4–40b.

  154. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, ll. 14–14ob Dated 21 January 1930.

  155. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 726, ll. 17–17ob). Letter by Deni to Mekhlis dated 15 June 1933.

  156. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 466, l. 93. Dated 15 May 1946.

  157. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 466, ll. 94, 96.

  158. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 46. Dated 3 February 1937.

  159. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 48. Dated 27 June 1937. Similarly, an unknown artist in 1934 sent a photograph of a painting of Voroshilov on a horse and explained: “I painted [the portrait] from photographs and those impressions that stayed in my visual memory from the moments when I saw him. It is very important to me . . . to find out from people close to Comrade Voroshilov what they think of the portrait, what they like about it and what does not satisfy them; this is all the more important to me since this portrait is a preparatory one for a planned large portrait. . . .” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 15.

  160. See Fitzpatrick, “Patronage and the Intelligentsia,” 99. On the strengthening of personal ties, including patronage relations, along ethnic lines in the wartime and postwar Vinnitsia elite see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War:
The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 58–70.

  161. Interviews with Shabelnikov, Moscow, 28 April and 10 May 2000.

  162. Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 5 (26 January 1933): 4. The article “Nakanune XV-letiia Krasnoi Armii” celebrated the tenth anniversary of RABIS’s shefstvo over the Red Army.

  163. Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 9 (20 February 1933): 1. Voroshilov further credited RABIS with increasing amateur cultural activity (samodeiatel’nost’) among Red Army soldiers.

  164. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292,1. 165.

  165. Thus in 1955 Ekaterina Voroshilova in her diary summed up her husband’s friendship with Aleksandr Gerasimov, whose star had fallen under Khrushchev, “A. M. Gerasimov is a great friend of K. E. [Voroshilov’s]. He often visits us at home and sees K. E. much more often than any of the Soviet artists.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 439, l. 76. Entry dated 17 November 1955.

  166. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 19. Forty years after the formation of AKhR under Voroshilov’s protection, one of its co-founders, Pavel Radimov, still thought it necessary to apologize to Voroshilov for not visiting him on a certain day. “I sincerely repent, but I have an excuse,” wrote Radimov in 1961. His son had married unexpectedly, without ceremony, and he hoped that Voroshilov, whom Radimov had known since 1922 and who had held Radimov’s son on his lap when he was a child, would be able to attend the marriage festivities. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, ll. 146–147. 20 October 1961 letter by Radimov to Voroshilov. And in October 1956 Aleksandr Gerasimov, after his status had worsened in the wake of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, asked his patron of three decades to intervene on his behalf, even if only to increase press coverage of his exhibition: “Despite the fact that [the exhibition] is successful with the visitors, there is not a word about it in such newspapers as Pravda, Sovetskaia kul’tura, Literaturnaia gazeta, Vechernaia Moskva—I am giving up in despair. I wrote about this to Nikita Sergeevich [Khrushchev]. I have no hope that he, who is so busy with state affairs, will visit the exhibition. I am asking you, if there is an occasion, to relate to him your impression of my paintings.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 13. Dated 27 October 1956.

  167. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 294, l. 9. Letter dated 8 November 1926.

  168. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 11. Not dated.

  169. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 294, l. 12. Dated 22 July 1928.

  170. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 71. Dated 16 November 1934.

  171. The following was prompted by a conversation in 2001 with Jochen Hellbeck, whom I wish to thank.

  172. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 426, l. 58. Dated 19 February 1935.

  173. The language of female letter writers differed only slightly from that of men. In fact, only men could use terms like “I kiss you affectionately (krepko Vas tseluiu)” (Brodskii) and “I always love you” (Katsman). In women’s letters, the rhetoric of affection was more subdued, since it faced the danger of being interpreted as romance. Thus a certain Mata Vazhadze from Moscow wrote to Voroshilov: “Your photograph with your dedication reminds me of the brightest and most cheerful days of my life, when I had a chance to look so closely at the great Stalin and all of his closest comrades-in-arms.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 298, l. 21. Dated 13 March 1937.

  174. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 301, ll. 6–10ob. Dated 17 [December—because of the mention of the funeral, which was most likely Kirov’s] 1934. Note that almost all of Voroshilov’s correspondence was typed out by his secretary, whereas these letters are preserved in the original only. Probably Voroshilov thought they were too sensitive to entrust to a secretary for copying.

  175. See Jan Plamper, “Georgian Koba or Soviet ‘Father of Peoples’? The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity,” in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships, ed. Apor et al., 135.

  176. Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 1, 28, 245. Khvostenko’s two-volume memoirs are not based on a diary. They include numerous reproductions of paintings, facsimiles of letters, and previously unpublished photographs (collected by her husband, the photojournalist Viliam Mendeleev). See ibid., 93, 470. There is also a documentary film Dom na Maslovke that I have not been able to obtain.

  177. Ibid., 122, 391–396, 432.

  178. Ibid., 28, 32. An account of the initiative for the complex in a Sovetskoe Iskusstvo article differed in details, in failing to mention the participation of modernist painters in the mid-1920s, and in its narrative mode of bildungsroman-like overcoming of hurdles thanks to the heroic Party: “Everything began quite modestly. In 1928 the AKhR artists E. Katsman, V. Perelman, and P. Radimov had the idea of building the first House of Moscow Artists and appealed to Sovnarkom in this regard. The artists could not really imagine exactly how much the state would have to pay for the realization of such an idea and asked for only 200,000 rubles. At Sovnarkom Comrade Peterson spoke about this question. He declared: ‘It is pointless to spend 200,000 on the construction for a house of artists . . .’ The authors of the project exchanged disappointed looks. Comrade Peterson made a long pause . . . ‘for this enterprise we must release 800,000 to the artists.’” Samuil Margolin, “Dom na Maslovke,” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 51–52 (5 November 1934): 3. With a drawing by Karachentsov.

  179. Margolin, “Dom na Maslovke,” 3.

  180. Ibid.

  181. Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 1, 66.

  182. Ibid., 8, 58, 176, 253.

  183. Ibid., 8, 11, 49–52.

  184. Margolin, “Dom na Maslovke,” 3. A follow-up 1934 article, entitled “Sculpture Studios,” added: “The Mossovet transferred the buildings of two former churches, Trinity on Sretenka and Pokrovka on Bakunin Street, to the Moscow Oblast Union of Soviet Sculptors. The union is converting the churches into sculpture studios. About twenty Moscow sculptors are getting a chance to design in the new studios buildings, squares, and parks in Moscow and other towns.” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 46 (5 October 1934): 2.

  185. As Sheila Fitzpatrick aptly put it, “writers and artists were urged to cultivate a sense of‘socialist realism’—seeing life as it was becoming, rather than life as it was—rather than a literal or ‘naturalistic’ realism. But socialist realism was also a Stalinist mentalité, not just an artistic style. Ordinary citizens also developed the ability to see things as they were becoming and ought to be, rather than as they were. An empty ditch was a canal in the making; a vacant lot where old houses or a church had been torn down, littered with rubbish and weeds, was a future park.” Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 8–9.

  186. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, l. 63. “Protocol no. 22 of external session of the art soviet for painting in the Maslovka artist studios,” dated 22 September 1949. For more on the khudsovet, see pp. 184–192.

  187. Or at least to the closest provincial center, since the center-periphery dynamics played out in the provinces as well, as Galina Iankovskaia has shown using the example of Perm and Ekaterinburg (in Soviet times, Molotov and Sverdlovsk respectively). See G. A. Iankovskaia, Iskusstvo, den’gi i politika: Khudozhnik v gody pozdnego stalinizma (Perm: Perm’skii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2007), 192–193.

  188. Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 1, 253.

  189. See Susan E. Reid, “The Soviet Art World in the Early Thaw,” Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture 20, no. 2 (2006): 161.

  190. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 711, l. 188.

  191. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 711, l. 191. Letter to M. N. Blokhin dated 3 September 1924. Similarly but already foreshadowing the later immodest modesty paradigm, in 1925 Stalin countered an initiative by the Tsaritsyn Party Committee to rename their city on the Volga “Stalingrad” by disclaiming any involvement in the renaming initiative, saying, in his own words, that “I strive neither for glory nor esteem and do not want the contrary impression to be created,” yet conceding: “If you’ve already trumpeted too loudly about Stalingrad and now have difficul
ties giving up what you have started, do not drag me into this story. . . . “ From 1925 until 1961 Tsaritsyn bore the name of Stalingrad. Maksim Leushin, “‘Ia ne dobivalsia i ne dobivaius’ pereimenovaniia Tsaritsyna v Stalingrad’: Iz lichnogo arkhiva I. V. Stalina,” Istochnik, no. 3 (2003): 54–55. Stalin’s letter to the secretary of the Tsaritsyn Gubkom, B. P. Sheboldaev, is dated 25 January 1925. It is preserved in RGASPI, f. 558, op. II, d. 831, l. 44.

  192. In 1933, for instance, Katsman attempted to entice Kaganovich as a patron. As usual, he banked on his Kremlin studio—which granted physical proximity to the leaders—as a resource. “Dear Lazar Moiseevich!,” he wrote on 16 January 1933, “Did you receive my preliminary project of your idea of large pictures from the October Revolution?” leaving his address and telephone number. He added in a postscript: “I produced a small picture— Lenin, Marx, and Stalin. I would very much like to show it to you and get your advice—is it good and does it fit, can (and should) I circulate it to the masses (mozhno li puskat’ v massy [i nuzhno li?])? I would be very happy if you stopped by my studio (in the Kremlin).” RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 421, l. 82.

  193. Yenukidze held the post of secretary of the TsIK Presidium from 1922 to 1935,when he was demoted. He was finally arrested and shot in 1937. See Ivkin, Gosudarstvennaia vlast’ SSSR, 301–302. For Kaganovich’s role as patron of architecture, see his involvement in the construction of prestige objects like the Moscow metro and the planning of the Palace of Soviets. This involvement is reflected in correspondence in his personal archive (RGASPI, f. 81). For Molotov and the theater see RGASPI, f. 82.

  CHAPTER 5. HOW TO PAINT THE LEADER?

  1. The legal footing for MOSSKh’s founding was the summary abolition of all independent artist organizations in the 23 April Party Central Committee decree “On the Reorganization of Literary and Artistic Organizations.”

  2. Of the 24,000 self-defined artists 5,000 worked in Moscow (the figures are approximations). By comparison, in Nazi Germany in 1936 there were about 42,000 artists, in the United States in 1940 about 62,000. See Galina Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art in the Stalinist Era: Artists’ Cooperatives in the Grip of Ideology and the Plan,” Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (2006): 779, 783.