MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

The American Russian Institute for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union, previously known as the American Society for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union was established in 1926 and was identified as a 'subversive' organisation by the US government in 1947. The foreword to this 1936 brochure was written by Christian Brinton, American art critic, curator and proponent of “national” modernisms. Rejecting pure experimentation with forms and medium in art that broke with previous tradition, he valued Russian art for its non-Western, “unspoiled aesthetic patrimony”. In the foreword, he describes Soviet art as Socialist Humanism. The main author of the brochure, Osip Beskin, was a Soviet art critic and a notorious opponent of “formalist” experiments in art. However, unlike his writings in Russian, this propaganda piece is idealistic in its tone rather than belligerent. Describing the art system in the USSR, he refers to the central idea of Soviet art – “Art belongs to the people. It must be understood and loved by them. It must be rooted in and grow with their feelings, thoughts, and desires. It must arouse and develop the artists in them” (Lenin). Thus, the dominant factor determining the quality of art is its integration with society. When it comes to the question of creative freedom, Beskin states that artists are always “subjectively free and objectively not free”. And since the objective non-freedom of the artist is related to the issue of class, the ultimate goal (in which artists should take active part) is the creation of a classless society, and “a new type of human being who will be free from economic pressure and from the distinction between mental and physical labour – the integrated human being of the future”.