Stalin: SOviet Propaganda Machine
I soon had an understanding of the rules, for a poem to go through their had to be a few lines dedicated to Stalin. This even began to seem perfectly natural to me."- Yevgeni Yevtushenko [a poet] on how before he could publish a poem in a magazine, he first had to add a couple of lines praising Stalin.1
From 1930 onward, Stalin’s regime had mobilized all forms of mass propaganda towards the “beatification” of Stalin in Soviet culture.1 In all forms of art and culture, Stalin was presented as an infallible genius, avuncular patron, a Soviet saint, and a living god.2 Increasingly, odes, paintings, posters, scripts, articles, songs, and speeches praising Stalin were produced and published en masse. 3 As Yevgeni Yevtushenko's quote illustrates, Stalin's cult of personality had become completely pervasive within Soviet society. According to a poster reviewer from the Thirties, all artists had to "define and disclose the enormous revolutionary strength which characterize[d] comrade Stalin as the greatest strategist and theoretician of Bolshevism, the genius, the pupil, and the continuer of Lenin's cause."4 Artists who refused to comply were personally targeted (some were later subjected to Stalin's Purges), while others were refused of the right to have their art displayed.5 Censorship reinforced rigid guidelines about the do's and don'ts of how Stalin could be portrayed within the arts.
Iconography
Paternalism in Paintings
"A revolution does not deserve its name if it does not take the greatest care possible of the children; the future race for whose benefit the revolution has been made," -Leon Trotsky (May 1923)
Footnotes:
Quote:
1.Tobia Frankel, The Russian Artist:The Creative Person in Russian Culture, ed. Jules Koslow (New York:The MacMillan Company, 1972) 122.
Intro paragraph:
1.Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin, ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999),156.
2. Catriona Kelly, “Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the Stalin Era,” Slavic and Eastern European Journal 49 no.2 (2005), 210.
3. Ibid, 210-215.4.
4. Bonnell, Iconography of Power, 159.
5. Tobia Frankel, The Russian Artist:The Creative Person in Russian Culture, ed. Jules Koslow (New York:The MacMillan Company, 1972) 121-123.
Quote:
1.Tobia Frankel, The Russian Artist:The Creative Person in Russian Culture, ed. Jules Koslow (New York:The MacMillan Company, 1972) 122.
Intro paragraph:
1.Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin, ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999),156.
2. Catriona Kelly, “Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the Stalin Era,” Slavic and Eastern European Journal 49 no.2 (2005), 210.
3. Ibid, 210-215.4.
4. Bonnell, Iconography of Power, 159.
5. Tobia Frankel, The Russian Artist:The Creative Person in Russian Culture, ed. Jules Koslow (New York:The MacMillan Company, 1972) 121-123.