#sovietrealism

The popularity of Socialist Realism began in East Germany around 1930. German leader Walter Ulbricht named it the official style of Soviet painting and this title was eventually accepted by Stalin in 193412. As it was told in Stalin’s 5-Year Plan, any art that seemed to defy Communist values would be prohibited in the nation13. Unfortunately, there were many modernist painters in Russia during the time that this rule was implemented. Some of the more lucky ones emigrated to other European countries such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall, while others like Gerhard Richter conformed to the new style in order to stay in the country. Richter later left Russia to pursue different art styles. Those who defied the law and remained were sentenced to the Gulag, Russian prison camp, or even to death14. Although the government became more lenient in 1953 after Stalin’s death, allowing artists to display Post-impressionist art in the Soviet Union, seven years later, things went back to the way they were and modernist artists were deported to the United States.

  Bread15, painted by Tatiana Yablonskaya, an artist who, in her lifetime, was awarded more that three prizes from Stalin for her contribution to Soviet art, was crafted in 1949. It depicts various Soviet female proletariates happily bagging corn. While there is a great deal of drudgery involved in harvesting crops, each farmer seems ecstatic to be contributing to society. In the background, Yablonskaya places very technologically advanced machinery-- machinery that most farms in Russia did not even have access to in the late forties16! While the painting depicts a very falsely idealized image of what life was like on the farm in the Soviet Union during the early Cold War, Yablonskaya’s technique, the only style permitted in the country at the time, is extremely realistic, almost photorealistic. The viewer is transported into the painting because of it realism, and could easily believe the scene to be drawn from reality.

This was the goal of Joseph Stalin when he prohibited all abstract art styles and only allowed depictions of a perfect Russian Communist society. Bread very blatantly depicts the values of the USSR. The subjects are in the working class rather than the bourgeois, which expresses the Communist belief in social and economic equality. All the women are dressed very similarly, which also shows equality and is interesting in contrast to the American ideals of individuality. The falsely depicted machinery connects to Russia’s constant need to show off their technical superiority in the Arms Race and Space Race. While this painting is deceiving, perhaps it was meant to instill hope in the Soviet people for the future when the country would potentially be fully Communist. By only seeing these paintings that depicted a bright future ahead, Russian citizens could push themselves to work harder in order to achieve this utopia.