1. Iurii Borev, Staliniada: Memuary po chuzhim vospominaniiam s istoricheskimi prichtami i razmyshleniiami avtora (Moscow: Kniga, 1991), 226. For another version see Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (New York: New York Review Books, 2006), 765–766. On Kavtaradze’s Gulag sentence see Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 68.
2. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), 4. For another version see Evgeny Dobrenko, “Mezhdu istoriei i proshlym: Pisatel’ Stalin i literaturnye istoki sovetskogo istoricheskogo diskursa,” in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Hans Günther (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo ‘Akademicheskii proekt,’ 2000), 651.
3. The story about the Moscow students is recounted by Zdenĕk Mlynář, a major player in the Prague Spring: Zdenek Mlynarzh, Moroz udaril iz Kremlia (Moscow: “Republika,” 1992), 18–19 (I am grateful to Elena Zubkova for reminding me of this source); on Kahlo see Patrick Marnham, Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Knopf, 1998), 310; on Pasternak see diarist Kornei Chukovsky quoted in Irina Paperno, “Intimacy with Power: Soviet Memoirists Remember Stalin,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism—Personenkulte im Stalinismus, ed. Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 332; Bukovsky’s nightmare is in Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (New York: Viking, 1978), 81–83; for heart attacks: a week after Stalin’s death a group of women from Kuibyshev oblast wrote to Molotov, “The day that I. V. Stalin was buried, there was such grief that many of us were brought to emergency rooms with heart attacks.” RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1465, l. 82. Dated 13 March 1953. Eugenia Ginzhurg recounted heart attacks even among Gulag internees. See Eugenia Ginzhurg, Within the Whirlwind, trans. Ian Boland (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 358.
4. Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Local Knowledge (New York: Basic, 1983), 124.
5. Several authors share a similar practice-oriented approach to Soviet culture— grounded in archival work and exhibiting a range of theoretical influences, among them Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeological sociology, New Historicist literary criticism, historiography in the vein of Michel de Certeau, and social history of art à la Michael Baxandall. See especially Thomas Lahusen, How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin’s Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), but also Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Galina Iankovskaia, Iskusstvo, den’gi i politika: Khudozhnik v gody pozdnego stalinizma (Perm: Perm’skii gosudarstvennyi universitet 2007); Oliver Johnson, “Aleksandr Laktionov: A Soviet Artist” (D.Phil. diss., University of Sheffield, 2008); Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd, eds., Russian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Valerie A. Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Susan E. Reid, “All Stalin’s Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s,” Slavic Review 57, no. 1 (1998): 133–173; and Kirill Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). For a landmark study of the sociology of art see Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
6. See Benno Ennker, “Politische Herrschaft und Stalinkult 1929–1939,” in Stalinismus: Neue Forschungen und Konzepte, ed. Stefan Plaggenborg (Berlin: Arno Spitz, 1998), 166; Ennker, “‘Struggling for Stalin’s Soul’: The Leader Cult and the Balance of Power in Stalin’s Inner Circle,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 165–166; James L. Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1977), 80, 99, 138. For the thesis that intra-Party opposition to Stalin’s single leadership first had to be quelled and that “After the Central Committee plenum in January 1933, there was an extraordinary intensification of Stalin worship,” see Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, ed. and trans. George Shriver (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 315.
7. On the aftermath and dismantling of the Stalin cult see the work of Polly Jones, e.g., “Strategies of De-Mythologisation in Post-Stalinism and Post-Communism: A Comparison of De-Stalinisation and De-Leninisation” (D.Phil. diss., University of Oxford, 2002).
8. Understanding how the visual Stalin cult worked in other parts of the multiethnic Soviet Union will depend on the completion of local studies. In particular, one hopes that future research will flesh out the specifics of Stalin’s depiction in the Muslim parts of the Soviet empire where the Islamic prohibition on the depiction of human beings held sway.
9. Males and females above the age of seven years. See The Soviet Union: Facts, Descriptions, Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Soviet Union Information Bureau, 1929), 208.
10. I owe this point to a conversation with Hans Günther in Berkeley, 1998. Also see Rolf Hellebust, “Reflections of an Absence: Novelistic Portraits of Stalin before 1953,” in Socialist Realism Revisited: Selected Papers from the McMaster Conference, ed. Nina Kolesnikoff and Walter Smyrniw (Hamilton, Ont.: McMaster University, 1994), 111–120. On the socialist realist novel as bildungsroman see Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 16–17, 57.
11. There are exceptions. Kazimir Lisovskii, V Turukhanskoi ssylke (Novosibirsk: Novosibgiz, 1947), deals with Stalin’s escape from his Siberian place of exile. Many Stalinist novels include the hero’s trip from the periphery to the center, i.e. to Stalin in Moscow. See Rosalind Marsh, Images of Dictatorship: Portraits of Stalin in Literature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1989), 39.
12. On Marianne see Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au combat: L’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (Paris: Flammarion, 1979); Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: L’imagerie et la symbolique républicaines de 1880 à 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989). On German Hermann see Andreas Dörner, Politischer Mythos und symbolische Politik: Sinnstiftung durch symbolische Formen am Beispiel des Hermannsmythos (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995); on German Michel see Tomasz Szarota, Der deutsche Michel: Die Geschichte eines nationalen Symbols und Autostereotyps (Osnabrück: fibre, 1998).
13. Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 3. Shils goes on to specify the universality of “the sacred” by claiming that “every society has an ‘official’ religion, even when that society or its exponents and interpreters, conceive of it, more or less correctly, as a secular, pluralistic, and tolerant society.”
14. Ibid., 5. Clifford Geertz reiterates the axiom of “the inherent sacredness of central authority” and adds his own, “the ingenerate tendency of men to anthropomorphize power.” Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma,” 146, 124.
15. Philippe Burrin has also criticized the axiomatic approach to sacrality and convincingly argued that it is “important to avoid speaking of a ‘transfer’ or ‘displacement’ of the sacred, as if the sacred were a fixed substance that attaches itself to different objects in different epochs.” See Philippe Burrin, “Political Religion: The Relevance of a Concept,” History and Memory 9, nos. 1–2 (1997): 345 n. 16.
16. On “charisma” and “charismatic authority” see Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, vol. 3 (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 1111–1156. On further problems of Weber’s “charisma” concept see Jan Plamper, “Introduction: Modern Personality Cults,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 34–37. For an application of the charisma concept to Soviet leader cults, see Carsten Goehrke, “Lenin, Stalin, Gorbatschow—Charisma und Sowjetherrschaft,” in Charisma: Revolutionäre Macht im individuellen und kollektiven Erleben, ed. Walter Jacob (Zurich: Chronos, 1999), 117–137.
17. For a deployment of Turner’s “communitas” that describes an antistructure sociability that can turn into structure, see Barbara Walker’s Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle: Culture and Survival in Revolutionary Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). For an exploration of the similarities and differences between Weber’s “charisma” and Turner’s “communitas” see Winfried Gebhardt, Charisma als Lebensform: Zur Soziologie des alternativen Lebens (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1994), 182–187.
18. This approach has recently been most dominant and is represented by Michael Burleigh, Emilio Gentile, Philippe Burrin, and Klaus Vondung, who are indebted not only to Durkheim and Voegelin, but also to Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, and Jacob Talmon. Its main forum is the journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, founded in 2000. For an overview of this literature, see David D. Roberts, “‘Political Religion’ and the Totalitarian Departures of Inter-war Europe: On the Uses and Disadvantages of an Analytical Category,” Contemporary European History 18, no. 4 (2009): 381–414.
19. For a like-minded plea to situate the Soviet Union in a wider modern context while not losing sight of its particularities, see Michael David-Fox, “Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism: On Recent Debates in Russian and Soviet History,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 55, no. 4 (2006): 535–555.
20. There is a considerable historiography on the ripple effects of the Enlightenment’s and the French Revolution’s attack on monarchic sacrality. Those who have argued for the rationalization and secularization of society and the desacralization of monarchy go back to Michael Walzer, Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Those who have posited the “transfer” or rechanneling of sacral aura to alternative spheres favor an approach to modern ideologies of “political religion” or “political theology” (see above, note 15).
21. See Claude Lefort, “The Image of the Body and Totalitarianism,” in Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), 292–306. George Mosse has also noted that from approximately the beginning of the nineteenth century, national myths and symbols coalesced into a secular religion that “attempted to draw the people into active participation in the national mystique through rites and festivals, myths and symbols which gave a concrete expression to the general will. . . . The new politics provided an objectification of the general will; it transformed political action into a drama supposedly shared by the people themselves.” See George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York: H. Fertig, 1975), 1–2.
22. See the classical study by Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). More generally see David G. Hale, “Analogy of the Body Politic,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener, vol. 1 (New York: Scribner, 1973), 67–70. For an application of Kantorowicz to the Lenin and Stalin cults see Victoria Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), chap. 4.
23. I borrow “patricentric” from John Borneman, “Introduction: Theorizing Regime Ends,” in Death of the Father: An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority, ed. John Borneman (New York: Berghahn, 2004), 3.
24. The cult of Argentina’s Evita Perón, which comes closest to qualifying, was mostly posthumous and surrounded someone who did not come to power as a politician but as a politician’s spouse.
25. For the first archivally based study of this commission, see Benno Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults in der Sowjetunion (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997).
1. L. Trotskii, “Stalinskaia biurokratiia i ubiistvo Kirova: Otvet amerikanskim druz’iam,” Biulleten’ Oppozitsii (bol’shevikov-lenintsev) 7, no. 41 (January 1935): 7 (reprinted as Biulleten’ Oppozitsii, vol. 3 [New York: Monad Press, 1973]).
2. For exceptions see, for example, David Brandenberger, “Stalin as Symbol: A Case Study of the Personality Cult and Its Construction,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 249–270.
3. As Moshe Lewin, one of the foremost “revisionist” historians of Soviet Russia, wrote: “Not much effort is needed to relate the ‘Stalin cult’ to this broader strategy of ‘sanctifying’ the state. The Stalin cult became a linchpin in this revamped secular orthodoxy. Sermons, vows, adulation, and panegyrics contributed a peculiar ‘Byzantine’ flavor to the neo-autocracy.” Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 306. Also consider Richard Stites: “Stalin’s utopia of the 1930s, with all its military and industrial achievement, its welfare infrastructure, and its mass education, was in part an archaic throwback to pre-modern forms of myth. And at the center of this archaic myth system was the cult of Stalin.” Richard Stites, “Stalin: utopian or Antiutopian? An Indirect Look at the Cult of Personality,” in The Cult of Power: Dictators in the Twentieth Century, ed. Joseph Held (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1983), 86; Eric Hobsbawm: “In turning himself into something like a secular Tsar, defender of the secular Orthodox faith, the body of whose founder, transformed into a secular saint, awaited the pilgrims outside the Kremlin, Stalin showed a sound sense of public relations. For a collection of peasant and animal-herding peoples mentally living in the Western equivalent of the eleventh century, this was almost certainly the most effective way of establishing the legitimacy of the new regime.” Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (New York: Penguin, 1994), 390; Tony Judt after quoting a 1951 Latvian Stalin poem: “This obsequious neo-Byzantine anointing of the despot, the attribution to him of near-magical powers . . .” Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 175.
4. See, for example, Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), chap. 7. “Extreme self-idealizing such as that seen in Stalin inescapably leads to conflict—within the person and with others. Being at best humanly limited and fallible, such an individual is bound in practice, in his actual self and his performance, to fall short of the ideal self’s standards of perfection and supremely ambitious goals of achievement and glory. He will make mistakes, very likely all the greater because of his need to score only spectacular triumphs. For all this he will unconsciously accuse, berate, condemn, and despise himself—unconsciously because he can admit into awareness only those aspects of himself and his life that are, or appear to be, in keeping with his ideal self or that can be rationalized comfortably with its dictates” (p. 162). “So it was that the inner needs of a self-glorifying and vengeful leader were being institutionalized in public life and the workings of the governmental system” (p. 171).
5. See, for example, Benno Ennker, “The Stalin Cult, Bolshevik Rule, and Kremlin Interaction in the 1930s,” in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 83–101.
6. See, for example, Graeme Gill, “The Soviet Leader Cult: Reflections on the Structure of Leadership in the Soviet Union,” British Journal of Political Science 10, no. 2 (1980): 167–186; Gill, “Personality Cult, Political Culture and Party Structure,” Studies in Comparative Communism 17, no. 2 (1984): 111–121; Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. 204–221, 277–278; Jeremy T. Paltiel, “The Cult of Personality: Some Comparative Reflections on Political Culture in Leninist Regimes,” Studies in Comparative Communism 16, nos. 1–2 (1983): 49–64. For contemporary public relations or branding approaches, see Lorraine E. Gayer, “Power, Purchase and Persuasion. Stalin: The Creation of an Image” (M.A. thesis, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2004); Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State (London: Phaidon, 2008), esp. 152–169.
7. See, for example, Reinhard Löhmann, Der Stalinmythos: Studien zur Geschichte des Personenkultes in der Sowjetunion (1929–1935) (Münster: Lit, 1990). On the vydvizhentsy and upward mobility more generally see Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). The “social integration” explanation ultimately goes back to Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association (London: Routledge and Paul, 1955), originally published in German in 1926, and Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1976). It is also at the root of defining socialist realism as kitsch or the aesthetic manifestation of middlebrow, petty bourgeois taste, as in Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, enlarged and updated edition (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), which is usually traced back to Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 5, no. 5 (1939): 34–49. Greenberg later disavowed this essay as “too simplistic.” Saul Ostrow, “‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch,’ Fifty Years Later: A Conversation with Clement Greenberg on the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Seminal Essay,” Arts Magazine 64 (December 1989): 56.
8. Carl Friedrich and Zhigniew Brzezinski called the cult of the leader one of the six characteristics of a totalitarian state. See Carl J. Friedrich and Zhigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956). Consider also Hannah Arendt’s well-known formulation: “In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it into motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his ‘intangible preponderance.’ His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucraticorganizational qualities. . . . The totalitarian movements have been called ‘secret societies established in broad daylight.’. . . Perhaps the most striking similarity between the secret societies and the totalitarian movements lies in the role of the ritual. The marches around Red Square in Moscow are in this respect no less characteristic than the pompous formalities of the Nuremberg party days. . . . These similarities are not, of course, accidental; they cannot simply be explained by the fact that both Hitler and Stalin had been members of modern secret societies before they became totalitarian leaders—Hitler in the secret service of the Reichswehr and Stalin in the conspiratorial section of the Bolshevik party. They are to some extent the natural outcome of the conspiracy fiction of totalitarianism whose organizations supposedly have been founded to counteract secret societies—the secret society of the Jews or the conspiratory society of the Trotskyites.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951), 361–365.
9. See especially Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 238–243, 360, 364, 372–394, 424–425; Vladimir Papernyi, Kul’tura “Dva” (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1996), 119–121, 134–135, 156, 185–186.
10. For examples see the classic by Nikolai Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism, trans. R. M. French (London: Centenary Press, 1937) and the work of Klaus-Georg Riegel, e.g. “Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6, no. 1 (2005): 97–126.
11. See also Benno Ennker and Heidi Hein-Kircher, eds., Der Führer im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2010), which comprises articles on Fascist (Mussolini, Franco, Dollfuß), Nazi (Hitler, Koch, Pavelić), Soviet (Stalin, Iaroslavsky, Brezhnev), but also Baltic (Smetona), East-Central European (Tiso, Ceauşescu) and Balkan (Tito, Hoxha) leader cults. The volume was published after I finished working on this book.
12. On the influence of Napoleon III’s image on the presentation of Alexander II see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 24–25.
13. Matthew Truesdell, Spectacular Politics: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Impériale, 1849–1870 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), vii.
14. Ibid., 164.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 27, chap. 6, 59.
17. Ibid., 53, 58.
18. Ibid., 67, 79–80.
19. Ibid., 35. Truesdell explains the downfall of the Republic partly as the result of symbolic dilemma, for the republicans had not managed “to create republican forms of festivity that were viable alternatives to the monarchical forms that gave central symbolic place to one man.” And unlike the monarchists, the republicans were deeply divided among themselves, giving Louis-Napoleon ample opportunity to present himself as being above political divisions altogether. See ibid., 33.
20. Ibid., 75–76.
21. Ibid., 96, 152, 166.
22. Ibid., 78.
23. Ibid., 36–37.
24. Ibid., 10, 22, 51–52. Chap. 9 documents “rituals of opposition” to Napoleon III’s symbolic politics, consisting either of the subversion of Imperial spectacles or of the staging of alternative spectacles.
25. On this see Pierre Bourdieu, “The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language,” in Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 43–65; Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 14; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979).
26. See Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
27. A study on the resilience of premodern monarchic ritual in the German states well into the nineteenth century lends support to this chronology and definition of the modern personality cult. See Hubertus Büschel, Untertanenliebe: Der Kult um deutsche Monarchen 1770–1830 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006).
28. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 2, 211.
29. The familial image was, however, different from Nicholas I’s domestic scenario in that Alexander III’s family members functioned not as independent subjects in monarchic representations, but as objects of the tsar’s affection. Not the tsar’s family, but the tsar’s family life, apart from public ceremonies, assumed a sacred character. Thus Alexander III was the first tsar to adhere to the Western middle-class ideal of separate private vs. public lives. See ibid., 278–279.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 183, 214, 221, 230–231.
32. Ibid., 383.
33. Ibid., 344. At the coronation, the national element of monarchic representations had also been expanded, with the tsar and his wife changing—as the first royal couple since Peter I—from Western dress to Russian dress at the ball. See ibid., 378.
34. Ibid., 366.
35. Ibid., 421 (emphasis in original).
36. The numbers of printed verbal and visual depictions of the tsar increased tremendously and spread throughout the countryside through the network of outlets of Ivan Sytin’s publishing house. See ibid., 488.
37. Ibid., 501.
38. For another study of the rupture of the bond between the tsar and his subjects between 1861 and 1917, much of it based on an analysis of petitions to the special Chancellery of His Imperial Highness for the Receipt of Petitions, see G. V. Lobacheva, Samoderzhets i Rossiia: Obraz tsaria v massovom soznanii rossiian (konets XIX–nachalo XX vekov) (Saratov: Saratovskii Tekhnicheskii Universitet, 1999).
39. The phrase “royal carryover” is in Truesdell, Spectacular Politics, 18.
40. Quoted in D. L. Brandenberger and A. M. Dubrovsky, “‘The People Need a Tsar’: The Emergence of National Bolshevism as Stalinist Ideology, 1931–1941,” Europe-Asia Studies 50, no. 5 (1998): 873 (and for a careful attribution of the source 884 n. 4). Brandenberger and Dubrovsky interpret the quote as testifying to Stalin’s étatism rather than his tolerance of Bolshevik personality cult inspired by a tsar cult.
41. Thanks to John G. Ackerman for coining the phrase “the revenge of Muscovy” in a 13 November 2004 letter. Boris Souvarine spoke of the Stalin cult as “historic atavism of ancient Muscovy.” Boris Souvarine, Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, trans. C. L. R. James (New York: Alliance, 1939), 510.
42. See Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 1–26.
43. On Russia and mass society in the wake of the Great War see Stephen Kotkin, “Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjuncture,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, no. 1 (2001): 111–164, esp. 127–127 and David L. Hoffmann, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, [1914–1939] (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).
44. Warren Susman’s argument about the rise of individual personality as a value in mass society is elaborated in Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, “The ‘Culture’ of Personality: Mussolini and the Cinematic Imagination,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 83–107.
45. Quoted in Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (London: PIMLICO, 1997), 350.
46. Ibid., 351.
47. On the Kerensky cult see ibid., 338, 437–438, 448–449. Further see A. G. Golikov, “Fenomen Kerenskogo,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 5 (1992): 60–73; Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), chap. 3; Boris Kolonitskii, Simvoly vlasti i bor’ba za vlast’: K izucheniiu politicheskoi kul’tury rossiiskoi revoliutsii 1917 goda (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001); Kolonitskii, “‘Democracy’ in the Political Consciousness of the February Revolution,” Slavic Review 57, no. 1 (1998): 95–106, esp. 105; Kolonitskii, “K izucheniiu mekhanizma desakralizatsii monarkhii (Slukhi i ‘politicheskaia pornografiia’ v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny),” in Istorik i revoliutsiia: Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Olega Nikolaevicha Znamenskogo, ed. N. N. Smirnov, B. I. Kolonitskii, and V. Iu. Cherniaev (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), 72–86; Kolonitskii, “‘We’ and ‘I’: Alexander Kerensky in His Speeches,” in Autobiographical Practices in Russia—Autobiographische Praktiken in Russland, ed. Jochen Hellbeck and Klaus Heller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 179–196.
48. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 442–443.
49. Kolonitskii also emphasizes the interrelatedness of all Bolshevik cults—of Trotsky, Lenin, and those of Red Civil War field commanders. Boris Kolonitskii, 8 September 2009 and 16 August 2010 email communications.
50. Mussolini’s cult rule was preceded by Gabriele D’Annunzio’s rule in Fiume during 1919–1920, in which the poet tried to overcome the specter of parliamentary democratic politics with harmonizing, unifying aesthetics, spectacle, symbols, oratory, and crowd hypnosis. On D’Annunzio’s cult see Michael A. Ledeen, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 114–134.
51. Mussolini quoted in Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 33. On Mussolini’s cult also see R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Edward Arnold, 1998); “Charisma and the Cult of Personality in Modern Italy,” special issue, Modern Italy 3, no. 2 (1998). On public spectacles, including those involving the Mussolini cult, see Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). For a review of literature on Italian Fascist culture, symbols, myths, rituals, and cults see Roger Griffin, “The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies,” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 1 (2002): 21–43.
52. There was also a strong tradition of Russian Le Bonism, and it may have helped lay the intellectual foundation for the Stalin cult. See, for example, N. A. Ukhach-Ogovorich, Psikhologiia tolpy i armiia (Kiev: Tipografiia S. V. Kul’zhenko, 1911), 18–24.
53. See Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). Falasca-Zamponi has argued that the “political religion” approach of Gentile cannot capture the cultural specificity of the Mussolini cult. See her Fascist Spectacle, 7–8, 187–188.
54. On this rivalry see Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, and Maria Goloubeva, The Glorification of Emperor Leopold I in Image, Spectacle and Text (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000).
55. See Ludolf Herbst, “Der Fall Hitler—Inszenierungskunst und Charismapolitik,” in Virtuosen der Macht: Herrschaft und Charisma von Perikles bis Mao, ed. Wilfried Nippel (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000), 183; Herbst, Hitlers Charisma: Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 2010).
56. See David-Fox, “Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism”; Michael David-Fox, “The Intelligentsia, the Masses, and the West: Particularities of Russian-Soviet Modernity,” in David-Fox, Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Soviet Russia (Pitts-burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming). For a similar emphasis on “comparisons,” “affinities,” and “areas of convergence,” while stressing that “to compare is not to equate,” see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany,1933–1939 (New York: Metropolitan, 2006), 10–11, 13, 15.
57. See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten, vol. 4 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003), 551–563. Despite countless books on Hitler there is no study of the Hitler cult (Ian Kershaw’s The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich [New York: Oxford University Press, 1987] is on popular reactions to Hitler and his politics as recorded in surveillance reports). For the first overview of the literature on symbolic politics in the Third Reich see Henning Bühmann, “Der Hitlerkult: Ein Forschungsbericht,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 109–157.
58. On the Pilsudski cult see Heidi Hein, Der Pilsudski-Kult und seine Bedeutung für den polnischen Staat: 1926–1939 (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2002).
59. This account is based on Ulrich Keller, “Franklin D. Roosevelts Bildpropaganda im historischen und systematischen Vergleich,” in Führerbilder: Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Stalin in Fotografie und Film, ed. Martin Loiperdinger et al. (Munich: Piper, 1995), 135–165; David Culbert, “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Das Image des ‘demokratischen’ Führers in Wochenschau und Radio,” ibid., 166–188. Also see Patrick J. Maney, The Roosevelt Presence: A Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: Macmillan International, 1992).
60. Keller, “Franklin D. Roosevelts Bildpropaganda,” 144–145.
61. Goebbels quoted in Sabine Behrenbeck, “‘Der Führer’: Die Einführung eines politischen Markenartikels,” in Propaganda in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte der politischen Massenbeeinflussung im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gerald Diesener and Rainer Gries (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 51.
62. The canonization thesis is in Culbert, “Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 170.
63. Term from Keller, “Franklin D. Roosevelts Bildpropaganda,” 148.
64. Ibid., 149.
65. Ibid., 152. In the Soviet Union, by contrast, “agitation and propaganda” were positive terms connoting enlightenment rather than manipulation. See Matthew Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 7, 249.
66. Timothy Garton Ash quoted in Truesdell, Spectacular Politics, 10.
67. Keller, “Franklin D. Roosevelts Bildpropaganda,” 161.
68. On Kleinbort see Mark Steinberg: “Indeed, in the view of one astute contemporary observer of working-class attitudes in Russia [Kleinbort], a fully developed kul’t lichnosti . . . or kul’t cheloveka . . . existed in the discourse of activist Russian workers,” and “A comparable expression had been used earlier by Emile Durkheim. . . . Although Kleinbort employs ‘kul’t cheloveka’ in quotation marks, he mentions no source.” Mark Steinberg, “The Injured and Insurgent Self: The Moral Imagination of Russia’s Lower-Class Writers,” in Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections, ed. Reginald E. Zelnik (Berkeley: International and Area Studies, 1999), 310, 325 n. 2. For Plekhanov see George Plekhanov, “On the Role of the Individual in History,” in Russian Philosophy, ed. James M. Edie et al., vol. 3 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965), 368–370.
69. The voluntarist Nietzschean element in Lenin’s personality, for instance, was perceived as un-Russian and very effective at the same time. See Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 392. Also see Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed., Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Hans Günther, Der sozialistische Übermensch: M. Gor’kij und der sowjetische Heldenmythos (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1993).
70. As Figes has written, “Much of Lenin’s success in 1917 was no doubt explained by his towering domination over the party. No other political party had ever been so closely tied to the personality of a single man. Lenin was the first modern party leader to achieve the status of a god: Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao Zedong were all his successors in this sense. Being a Bolshevik had come to imply an oath of allegiance to Lenin as both the ‘leader’ and ‘teacher’ of the party. It was this, above all, which distinguished the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks (who had no clear leader of their own).” Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 391.
71. See Walker, Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle; Walker, “Kruzhkovaia kul’tura i stanovlenie sovetskoi intelligentsii: Na primere Maksimiliana Voloshina i Maksima Gor’kogo,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 40, no. 6 (1999): 210–222; Walker, “On Reading Soviet Memoirs: A History of the ‘Contemporaries’ Genre as an Institution of Russian Intelligentsia Culture from the 1790s to the 1970s,” Russian Review 59, no. 3 (2000): 327–352; Walker, “Kruzhok Culture and the Meaning of Patronage in the Early Soviet Literary World,” Contemporary European History 11, no. 1 (2002): 107–123. Formal university education introduced circle-like seminars in the late nineteenth century. Often these seminars were taught at home, and often university teachers were held in esteem by their students in ways reminiscent of the reverence accorded to circle leaders. See Andy Byford, “Initiation to Scholarship: The University Seminar in Late Imperial Russia,” Russian Review 64, no. 2 (2005): 299–323.
72. Quoted from Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 144.
73. Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva quoted in Walker, Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle, 182. On the cult-building around Voloshin after his death in 1932, especially during Khrushchev’s Thaw, see ibid., 189–190, 193–196.
74. On the relationship between ruler and poet as manifest, for example, in odes to the three eighteenth-century empresses, see Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), esp. chap. 2.
75. Andrei Turgenev and his Friendly Literary Society of 1801 likely was the first, Nikolai Stankevich and his circle of Russian Hegelians of the 1830s was the most famous.
76. For a historical sketch of Russian circles from the late eighteenth century onward see Walker, Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle, 8–9, 13–15.
77. See, for example, Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 126–127.
78. Alexander Zholkovsky, “The Obverse of Stalinism: Akhmatova’s Self-Serving Charisma of Selflessness,” in Self and Story in Russian History, ed. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 68.
79. Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2000), 71. John Markovic found that at least 190 revolutionaries were socialized in kruzhki. His findings are based on a working sample of 1,144 biographies of revolutionaries in the first and third editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, with data on circle activity missing for 954 individuals. See John Markovic, “Socialization and Radicalization in Russia, 1861–1917: An Analysis of the Personal Backgrounds of Russian Revolutionaries” (Ph.D. diss., Bowling Green State University, 1990), 104–105.
80. Amy Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 16; Sergo Beriia, Moi otets Beriia: V koridorakh stalinskoi vlasti, trans. from French by N. M. Stambulian (Moscow: OLMA-PRESS, 2002), 16.
81. Stepan A. Mikoian, Vospominaniia voennogo letchika-ispytatelia (Moscow: Izdatel’skii Dom “Tekhnika—Molodezhi,” 2002), 8.
82. Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., vol. 31 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatel’stvo “Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia,” 1955), 171; Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze, trans. David J. Nordlander, ed. Donald Raleigh (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 10.
83. See Sandra Dahlke, Individuum und Herrschaft im Stalinismus: Emel’jan Jaroslavskij (1878–1943) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), 38.
84. Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., vol. 28 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Nauchnoe Izdatel’stvo “Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia,” 1954), 152.
85. Kliment E. Voroshilov, Rasskazy o zhizni (Vospominaniia), vol. 1 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1968), 69, 90.
86. Ibid., 139–141.
87. Quoted from Robert McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 9.
88. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 85. As always with Stalin’s early years, the source for this is the only extant account of Stalin’s youth by his former friend and later émigré: Joseph Iremaschwili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens: Erinnerungen (Berlin: n.p., 1932). For a review of the first Stalin biographies see Christoph Mick, “Frühe Stalin-Biographien 1928–1932,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 36, no. 3 (1988): 403–423.
89. See James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 82–84; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 65, 88–93.
90. For the argument of Fedorovian continuity see Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). For the ad hoc thesis see Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults in der Sowjetunion. For the Lenin cult as political religion see L. A. Andreeva, Religiia i vlast’ v Rossii: Religioznye i kvazireligioznye doktriny kak sposob legitimizatsii politicheskoi vlasti v Rossii (Moscow: Ladomir, 2001). For the public reception of Lenin as related in surveillance reports see Olga Velikanova, The Public Perception of the Cult of Lenin Based on Archival Materials (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001); Velikanova, Making of an Idol: On Uses of Lenin (Göttingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1996). On the Lenin museums as part of the Lenin cult see Velikanova, “Der Lenin-Kult in sowjetischen Museen,” Osteuropa 43, no. 10 (1993): 929–938. Further see Claudio Sergio Ingerflom and Tamara Kondratieva, “Pourquoi la Russie s’agite-t-elle autour de Lénine?” in La Mort du Roi: Autour de François Miterrand. Essai d’ethnographie politique comparée, ed. Jacques Julliard (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 261–292; François-Xavier Coquin, “L’image de Lénine dans l’iconographie révolutionnaire et postrévolutionnaire,” Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 44, no. 2 (1989): 223–249.
91. See Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults in der Sowjetunion, 120–228.
92. See ibid., 267–270.
93. Both quoted ibid., 268.
94. Walter Benjamin, “Moskau,” in Denkbilder (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 48.
95. Both Robert Tucker and Nina Tumarkin supported the thesis that Stalin orchestrated the Lenin cult. Ultimately this thesis goes back to Nikolai Valentinov and has been convincingly proven baseless by Ennker, Die Anfänge des Leninkults in der Sowjetunion, 315–319.
96. Mikhail Yampolsky stressed this point in an interview in Oksana Bulgakowa, Frieda Grabe, and Enno Patalas, Stalin—Eine Mosfilmproduktion (Westdeutscher Rundfunk documentary film in color, 90 minutes, 1993).
1. The same held true for Izvestia where a drawing by Evgeny Katsman, the newspaper’s preferred artist, was on the front page. See Izvestia, 21 December 1929, 1. Later there even appeared a theoretical justification of the leader cult by K. Popov, “Partiia i rol’ vozhdia,” Partiinoe stroitel’stvo 1, no. 3 (1930): 5–9.
2. James Heizer was first to infer “that the information for all papers was being provided by one office, perhaps in the Kremlin.” Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1977), 62. After the opening of the archives Benno Ennker was able to actually demonstrate the Politburo’s concerted preparation of these celebrations. See “‘Struggling for Stalin’s Soul’: The Leader Cult and the Balance of Power in Stalin’s Inner Circle,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism—Personenkulte im Stalinismus, ed. Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 163–165.
3. As Heizer has aptly summarized, “It would have been possible for him to have had his name in Pravda daily if he had wished. This low profile was obviously by his own choice. No one could have appeared more modest.” Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939,” 55.
4. The exceptions, totaling twenty-one missing issues between 1 January 1929 and 31 December 1953, are as follows. 1940: 8 November; 1943: 2 March, 9 March, 16 March, 23 March, 30 March, 6 April, 13 April, 20 April, 27 April, 4 May, 11 May, 16 May, 18 May, 25 May, 1 June, 8 June, 15 June, 23 June, 29 June, 14 September. On these days either the paper did not appear for war-related reasons or I was unable to obtain a copy at the libraries I accessed—the library of the Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte und Landeskunde, Tübingen (which holds a nearly complete run of original hard copies); the library of RGASPI, Moscow (hard copy originals); the Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen (microfilms); German interlibrary loan (microfilms); Doe Library, University of California, Berkeley (microfilms).
5. For a first attempt at a quantitative analysis of references to Stalin in Pravda, see G. Alekseev, “Kolichestvennye parametry kul’ta lichnosti,” SSSR v protivorechiiakh 6 (1982): 5–11.
6. This was the 28 January 1938 publication of the “Muddle Instead of Music” article in Pravda. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, d. 42, l. 6.
7. See Rosalinde Sartorti, Pressefotografie und Industrialisierung in der Sowjetunion: Die Pravda 1925–1933 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981); Julie Kay Mueller, “Staffing Newspapers and Training Journalists in Early Soviet Russia,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 4 (1998): 851–873; Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958); Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
8. Matthew Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 17.
9. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 19–20.
10. A 1924 protocol of a Politburo meeting bemoaned that “1. Recently in the local press (in journals and newspapers) information was published that gave away the itineraries from the center, the stops, events (congresses, conferences, demonstrations), place of medical treatment, and the return itineraries of the members of the USSR and RSFSR government as well as the Central Committee of the RKP(b). 2. Some editors sent without the knowledge of the OGPU not only reporters but also photographers who made entire photo shootings of the places which the comrades mentioned in 1. came to. 3. The appearance of this information in the press facilitated the work of all kinds of spies and impeded the protection of the government members.” Therefore it suggested concealing the travel plans outside Moscow of the Party and state leadership and stipulated that all journalists carry OGPU licenses. Note in this document: the still prominent role of the OGPU; the lack of control over the use of leaders’ photos in the provinces; and the degree to which in 1924 the Politburo still considered it necessary to explain why it was tightening control. See “Proekt tsirkuliara OGPU organam pechati o svedeniiakh, davaemykh v pechati o chlenakh pravitel’stva” as part of Politburo protocol no. 5, 1924, published in Kommersant” Vlast’, 21 June 2004, 62.
11. See Lenoe, Closer to the Masses, 20.
12. Ibid., 19. To be sure, censorship constituted another filter. The day before Stalin’s fiftieth birthday, central Glavlit issued a circular exhorting local censorship boards “to watch out that Stalin’s photograph be printed exclusively from templates supplied by the ROSTA” press agency. A. V. Blium, Za kulisami “ministerstva pravdy”: Tainaia istoriia sovetskoi tsenzury, 1917–1929 (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo ‘Akademicheskii proekt,’ 1994), 128 (emphasis in original). For more on Stalin’s image and censorship during High Stalinism see Blium, Sovetskaia tsenzura v epokhu total’nogo terrora, 1929–1953 (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo ‘Akademicheskii proekt,’ 2000), esp. 237–242.
13. On the informal power of Stalin’s secretariat see Oleg Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 30-e gody (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), 65–69, 117–118; Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, Knowledge and Power: The Role of Stalin’s Secret Chancellery in the Soviet System of Government (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, 1978); Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 123–125.
14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1499, ll. 2–2ob.
15. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1499, l. 39.
16. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 3 (the original photograph of Stalin’s head is on 1. 4, the letter from the journal informing Poskryobyshev that it is now enclosing the retouched version on l. 5, and the retouched photo finally on l. 6). The postwar continuation, ending in 1952, of this kind of correspondence is in RGASPI, f. 558, op. ll, d. 1476.
17. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, ll. 35–36.
18. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 40 (5 January 1945 letter by V. Boitekhov, editor in chief of the journal Smena).
19. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 7 (the photograph of Ordzhonikidze and Stalin is on l. 8).
20. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1475, l. 13.
21. See the 270-page post-birthday collection Stalin: Sbornik statei k piatidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia, which contained 495 greetings. Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin,” 65–68.
22. Pravda, 4 January 1930, 4.
23. Ibid., 2 January 1930, 2; 6 January 1930, 1. Also see the ad for Stalin’s “Dizzy with Success” speech ibid., 3 March 1930, 6. Note that these examples of ads are spread throughout the entire newspaper, from the front page to the back page.
24. Ibid., 10 May 1930, 5.
25. See Heizer, “The Cult of Stalin,” 61, 80.
26. Pravda, 6 March 1931, 5.
27. For the Avilov picture see ibid., 13 August 1933, 3, 24 October 1934, 2, and 19 November 1934, 2; for the Gerasimov picture: 10 April 1934, 1.
28. Ibid., 24 January 1934, 3. Later aviators were termed “Stalin falcons” (stalinskie sokoly) and outstanding students at Moscow State University “Stalin fellows” (stalinskie stipendiaty). See ibid., 30 June 1938, 1; 3 July 1940, 4.
29. Ibid., 19 August 1933, 1.
30. Ibid., 13 June 1933, 1. For the first airplane formation spelling out the word “S-T-A-L-I-N” see ibid., 1 July 1935, 1.
31. Ibid., 20 January 1934, 4.
32. See ibid., 9 August 1930, 4, and 17 November 1930, 5.
33. See ibid., 4 January 1935, 1. Furthermore, in a photograph of a memorial meeting for Lenin, Stalin was shown as very much standing out, even though he was in the second row of attendants. See ibid., 22 January 1935, 1. The deliberate centering of Stalin is also seen in pencil drawings in 1931 and 1935 by Gustav Klutsis, which served as the basis for his posters. See Plate 22 and Fig. 138 in Margarita Tupitsyn, The Soviet Photograph, 1924–1937 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
34. See Pravda, 8 February 1934, 1. Also see 7 February 1934, 1; 21 March 1939, 2.
35. See ibid., 13 July 1937, 1.
36. See ibid., 22 July 1940, 1.
37. See ibid., 24 February 1935, 1; 12 February 1934, 1. Stalin was for the first time shown with his hand holding a headphone to his ear and hence touching his face in Pravda on 16 February 1936, 1.
38. On the gaze and eyes in sixteenth and seventeenth-century art see Alfred Neumeyer, Der Blick aus dem Bilde (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1964). Also see Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), esp. chap. 5. Curiously, nineteenth-century ruler portraits rarely employ this visual strategy. See Rainer Schoch, Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel, 1975). Thanks to Sergiusz Michalski for directing me to Neumeyer and Schoch.
39. For a reproduction of this 1915 photograph see Pravda, 5 January 1940, 3.
40. On 22 January 1930, for example, Pravda’s second page carried a picture of Stalin sitting second from the right among a total of six high Party bosses, yet in the caption he was mentioned first. On 4 May 1933 the caption underneath a photograph of the presidium on a tribune mentioned Stalin first, even though he was in the second row and in order of standing neither first from the right nor from the left; on 19 May 1933 a photograph depicted, from left to right, Kaganovich, Stalin, and Molotov, while the caption placed Stalin ahead of Molotov and Kaganovich; on 15 May 1935 Pravda again listed Stalin ahead of Kaganovich, Molotov, Voroshilov, and others, even though he was not seated first from left or right.
41. See e.g. ibid., 15 January 1938, 1, and 19 March 1938, 1.
42. See e.g. Stalin’s full-page article “O rabote v derevne: Rech’ tov. Stalina,” Pravda, 17 January 1933, 1.
43. See the speech by Kalinin, ibid., 18 May 1933, 2.
44. See e.g. the article “Proizvedeniia I. V. Stalina na 75 iazykakh,” ibid., 5 November 1935, 6.
45. On this see John MacCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
46. See the entire issue of Pravda, 6 June 1934.
47. For the ticker tape parade see ibid., 11 August 1936, 6; for Stalin kissing Chkalov and Baidukov respectively see ibid., 11 August 1936, 1, 4; for the article, “Eto Stalin vospital takikh khrabretsov,” see ibid., 24 July 1936, 3. For a first picture of Chkalov and Stalin see ibid., 22 July 1936, 1.
48. See ibid., 14 September 1936, 1.
49. See ibid., 25 May 1937, 1.
50. See ibid., 4 May 1935, 3.
51. See ibid., 3 March 1936, 1.
52. Joan Neuberger has called this “the double whammy cult of Pushkin and the cult of Stalin.” Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 282 n. 12. For the cult of Taras Shevchenko in Pravda see 1 April 1935, 6; for the Lomonosov cult see the article, “Genial’nyi syn russkogo naroda,” ibid., 18 November 1936, 1. For linkages between the cults of Lenin and Pushkin see Rainer Grübel, “Gabe, Aufgabe, Selbstaufgabe: Dichter-Tod als Opferhabitus. Zur Genese des sowjetischen Personenkultes aus Dichtertod, Lenin- und Puškingedenken,” in Welt hinter dem Spiegel: Zum Status des Autors in der russischen Literatur der 1920er bis 1950er Jahre, ed. Klaus Städtke (Berlin: Akademie, 1998), 139–204. On the celebration of the centenary of Pushkin’s death in 1937, particularly the politics and iconography of the Pushkin memorials, see Iurii Molok, Pushkin v 1937 godu: Materialy i issledovaniia po ikonografii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2000). On the 1937 Pushkin centennial in literature, especially as it related to Russian Nietzscheanism, see Irina Paperno, “Nietzscheanism and the Return of Pushkin in Twentieth-Century Russian culture (1899–1937),” in Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 211–232. On the mutual reinforcement of Dostoevsky’s and Pushkin’s symbolic power as writers see Marcus C. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). On the celebration surrounding the hundredth anniversary of Pushkin’s birth see Levitt, “Pushkin in 1899,” in Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age, ed. Boris Gasparov, Robert P. Hughes, and Irina Paperno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 183–203.
53. Pravda, 13 February 1937, 3. The transfer of specific markers of the iconography of the leaders to other cultural figures was generally widespread.
54. See Stephen Moeller-Sally, Gogol’s Afterlife: The Evolution of a Classic in Imperial and Soviet Russia (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 159.
55. Pravda, 4 December 1938, 4.
56. See e.g. ibid., 1 May 1941, 1.
57. See ibid., 14 July 1932, 1 (photograph); 8 July 1934, 1 (drawing).
58. Prior to the Kirov murder Stalin was shown in Pravda as a pallbearer at the funerals of Sen Katayama, 10 November 1933, 2; Clara Zetkin, 23 June 1933, 1–2; and Viacheslav Menzhinsky, 14 May 1934, 1; and dressed in white at the funeral of Valerian Dovgalevsky, 23 July 1934, 1. After the Kirov funeral Stalin appeared as a pallbearer at the funerals of Kuibyshev, 28 January 1935, 1; the geologist Aleksandr Karpinsky, 18 July 1936, 1; Ordzhonikidze, 21 February 1937, 3 (with Voroshilov); Maria Ulianova, 15 June 1937, 1; Marshal Shaposhnikov, who had died 26 March 1945 (with Molotov), 29 March 1945, 1; Aleksandr Shcherbakov, 13 May 1945, 1; Kalinin, 6 June 1946, 3; and Vasily Vakhrushev, 16 January 1947, 1. It seems that Stalin is mostly placed to the right of the coffin, probably because of his chronically stiff left elbow. In the postwar period other leaders—not so much Stalin—increasingly appeared walking alongside an open coffin carried by a car.
59. A high point was attained a year later when an Aleksandr Gerasimov painting of Stalin, Voroshilov, and other military figures occupied the entire width and one-third of the front page of Pravda, 17 April 1936, 1.
60. For the newborn see ibid., 7 November 1935, 7.
61. The “blossoming generation” and the Pioneer article are ibid., 1 July 1935, 2.
62. See Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 99, 105.
63. See Pravda, 10 November 1935, 1. For another example of the new Stalin, smiling and at ease, see ibid., 23 February 1936, 1.
64. “Zhit’ stalo trudnee i grustnee (Ot londonskogo korrespondenta ‘Pravdy’),” ibid., 27 December 1935, 7.
65. On this and the “friendship of peoples” see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1929–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 432–461.
66. Rogers Brubaker, “Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia,” Theory and Society 23, no. 1 (1994): 47–78. For more on the ethnic dimension of Stalin’s portrayal see David L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 157–158; Jan Plamper, “Georgian Koba or Soviet ‘Father of Peoples’? The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity,” in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balâzs Apor et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 123–140.
67. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, l. 164. Quoted from V. A. Nevezhin, ed., Zastol’nye rechi Stalina: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003), 158.
68. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 11, l. 18. By G. I. Fomin, typewritten copy dated 17 March 1938.
69. Several pages of an issue devoted to the “reception of the delegation from Soviet Georgia” showed no ethnic link whatsoever between Stalin and his personal co-nationals. See Pravda, 21 March 1936, 1–3. Also see the reproduction of Irakly Toidze’s painting “Tovarishch Stalin na Riongese” and the article “Opening of the Exhibition of Artists of Georgia,” ibid., 31 July 1936, 1.
70. For an Uzhekicized Stalin portrait in the background on the wall of the Stalin kolkhoz laboratory in Namanganskii raion, Uzhek SSR, see Pravda, 13 January 1940, 4.
71. On the “oriental despot” from Montesquieu to Wittfogel see Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 250 n. 39.
72. “Narod odobriaet stalinskuiu konstitutsiiu” was the title of an article published in Pravda, 13 July 1936, 1.
73. See ibid., 18 October 1936, 6: “J. V. Stalin Room at the Kharkov Palace of Pioneers. Kharkov, 17 Oct. (TASS). While familiarizing himself with the work of the P. P. Postyshev Palace of Pioneers and Young Octobrists, Kharkov obkom secretary Comrade S. A. Kudriavtsev suggested opening I. V. Stalin rooms at the palace. The idea of creating rooms that will showcase materials on the youth, life, and struggle of the wise leader and beloved friend of children, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, was enthusiastically greeted by thousands of Kharkov Pioneers and schoolchildren.” On a projected “Stalin Museum of the Defense of Tsaritsyn” in Stalingrad see ibid., 19 October 1936, 4.
74. “Berech’ i okhranit’ svoikh vozhdei, kak boevoe znamia,” ibid., 16 August 1936, 3; “Berech’ i okhranit’ tov. Stalina,” ibid., 17 August 1936, 5.
75. See e.g. the article “Schastlivye deti stalinskoi epokhi,” ibid., 23 September 1937, 1.
76. Ibid., 30 December 1937, 3.
77. See e.g. ibid., 24 August 1939, 1; 1 September 1939, 1; 29 September 1939, 1, where he was shown somewhat standoffishly in the background.
78. For a still of Gelovani starring as Stalin in The Vyborg Side see ibid., 28 November 1938,4.
79. See the respective images ibid., 22 January 1941, 1 (“old” Stalin), and 15 February 1941, 1 (“young” Stalin).
80. To be sure, Party comrades and others sent Stalin letters and telegrams on every birthday, not just the decennial ones. For examples see congratulatory telegrams and letters from individuals (e.g. Kaganovich) and organizations (e.g. school no. 72, Moscow) for Stalin’s sixty-third birthday in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1359; or Poskryobyshev’s letter to Stalin congratulating him on his sixty-eighth birthday in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 786, l. 130 (dated 21 December 1947).
81. See the 19 December 1934 Politburo decision to “honor Comrade Stalin’s request to forbid all festivities or celebrations or publications in the press or in meetings on the occasion of his fifty-fifth birthday on 21 December.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1353, l. 8. Also see Sarah Davies, “Stalin and the Making of the Leader Cult in the 1930s,” in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships, ed. Apor et al., 38–39, 45 n. 56.
82. See the entire issue of Pravda, 4 February 1941.
83. Ibid., 23 June 1941, 1.
84. See ibid., 15 February 1942, 2.
85. See ibid., 23 February 1942, 1.
86. See ibid., 28 March 1942, 2.
87. Caricatures of the Nazis had much in common with caricatures of Americans in times when relations with the United States were strained. On this see Kevin J. McKenna, All the Views Fit to Print: Changing Images of the U.S. in “Pravda” Political Cartoons, 1917–1991 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 10, 56, 76.
88. Pravda, 10 April 1942, 2.
89. Caption: “Zapadnyi front: Pervomaiskii miting v Nevskoi gvardeiskoi chasti. Vystupaet batal’onnyi kommisar G. A. Khanchevskii,” ibid., 3 May 1943, 1.
90. See e.g. ibid., 23 February 1944, 1.
91. For a Stalin portrait on a flag at a workers’ rally at Airplane Factory no. 292 see ibid., 13 June 1942, 2; for a photo of Stalin between Churchill and Harriman see ibid., 18 August 1942, 1.
92. Italo Calvino, “Il Duce’s Portraits: Living with Mussolini,” The New Yorker, 6 January 2003, 35. Thanks to Ilya Vinkovetsky for this source.
93. Pravda, 14 December 1942, 1.
94. Ibid., 12 March 1945, 2. Also see 8 April 1945, 2; 18 April 1945, 3.
95. I was unable to determine whether the original was a painting or drawing.
96. Here, too, I was unable to determine whether the original was a painting or drawing.
97. Pravda, 13 May 1945, 1.
98. Elena Zubkova quoted from David Hoffmann, ed., Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden/Oxford: Blackwell 2003), 292.
99. This does not mean his prewar image disappeared entirely. At a Komsomol meeting in the Dynamo Stadium a large Stalin portrait adorns the tribune. In this portrait his hair is jet black. See Pravda, 18 June 1945, 1.
100. See ibid., 1 August 1945, 1.
101. See ibid., 25 July 1945, 1; 3 August 1945, 1–2.
102. See ibid., 13 August 1945, 1.
103. See, for example, “VI sessiia Verkhovnogo Soveta RSFSR 1-go sozyva: Zasedanie 5 iunia 1945 goda,” ibid., 6 June 1945, 1; “Torzhestvenno-traurnoe zasedanie v Bol’shom zale Kremlevskogo dvortsa, posviashchennoe 22-i godovshchine so dnia smerti V. I. Lenina,” ibid., 22 January 1946, 1; “Na sovmestnom zasedanii Soveta Soiuza i Soveta Natsional’nostei 19 marta,” ibid., 20 March 1946, 1.
104. On the tribune were standing from left to right Merkulov, Vyshinsky, Gorkin, Shkiriatov, Mikoian, Molotov, Malenkov, Beria, Vasilevsky, Antonov, Bulganin, Budyonny, Kaganovich, Voznesensky, Andreev, Popov, Shvernik, and Kosygin. If anyone stood out, it was probably Molotov, who was in the center of the left half of the picture. See ibid., 8 November 1945, 1. True, Stalin perhaps compensated for his absence on 8 November with a front-page photo in the white generalissimo’s uniform, filling three-quarters of the right-hand page, on 7 November 1945. For Stalin’s last appearance on Revolution Day see Pravda, 8 November 1952, 1.
105. A series of smaller advertisements announced the film until on 8 August it received a full-page notice, featuring a still image of Stalin swearing his oath to Lenin, a long article by Chiaureli himself on the “Making of the Great Image,” reactions of moviegoers from around the country, and several statistics of attendance in selected towns. See ibid., 8 August 1946, 2. According to André Bazin’s famous interpretation of the scene, in which Stalin comes to a park bench directly from Lenin’s deathbed in Gorki, the dead leader’s power is transferred to Stalin by way of two metaphors: on the one hand Lenin’s empty place on the park bench alludes to a widely known photograph showing the two leaders seated together on this very bench. On the other, Stalin looks at the sky and “through the fir tree branches a sunbeam penetrates and illuminates the forehead of the new Moses.” See Andre Bazen [André Bazin], “Mif Stalina v sovetskom kino,” Kinovedcheskie zapiski, no. 1 (1991): 167 (original: “Le cinéma soviétique et le mythe de Staline,” Esprit, no. 8 [1950]: 210–235). On the park bench scene in Vertov’s Tri pesni o Lenine (1934) and Chiuareli’s Kliatva also see Hans Günther, “Mudryi otets Stalin i ego sem’ia (na materiale kartin D. Vertova i M. Chiaureli),” Russian Literature, no. 43 (1998): 205–220.
106. See Jan C. Behrends, Die erfundene Freundschaft: Propaganda für die Sowjetunion in Polen und der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), 249.
107. See Schoch, Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, 11–12.
108. A poem by Vas. Lebedev-Kumach, “Golos vozhdia,” appeared in Pravda, 11 February 1946, 4.
109. Ibid., 1 January 1947, 1.
110. On festivals structuring Soviet time see Malte Rolf, “Constructing a Soviet Time: Bolshevik Festivals and Their Rivals During the First Five-Year Plan. A Study of the Central Black Earth Region,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 3 (2000): 447–473; Rolf, Das sowjetische Massenfest (1917–1941) (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006). On Soviet festivals and holidays see also Matthias Braun, “Sowjetische und traditionelle Festkulturen im Vorkriegsstalinismus: Das Beispiel der zentrumsfernen Region Rjazan’, 1927–1941” (M.A. thesis, University of Leipzig, 2004); Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Joy Chatterjee, Celebrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture, and Bolshevik Ideology, 1910–1939 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002).
111. In 1947 there were four Stalin pictures before 21 January, all on the front page and involving one regularly recurring event, a workers’ gathering, and two of a kind that occurred only occasionally. On 4 January a Stalin poster with a reproduction of a painting of Stalin in his generalissimo’s uniform with medals was clearly montaged into a photograph of female textile workers, who had gathered on the shop floor for a meeting. On 11 January there was a large photo of Stalin and the British Field Marshal Montgomery on the occasion of their meeting, on 15 and 16 January there were pictures of Stalin at the funeral of the minister of the coal industry V. V. Vakhrushev.
112. Stalin’s pockmarks and a cigarette in his left hand were later retouched out. For the original picture see Edvard Radzinskii, Stalin (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), pictorial insert 160–161. For the retouched version see Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, pictorial insert 266–267.
113. In other Lenin-Stalin photographs, “Gender attributes reinforce the construction of Lenin as the feminized dreamer of the vita contemplativa, while Stalin embodies the vita activa as an aggressive, powerful man of action who is capable of realizing these visions.” Erika Maria Wolf, “USSR in Construction: From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realist Practice” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1999), 198. The photograph under discussion is a montage (“The Current is Switched On”) from a 1932 Dneprostroi cycle in USSR in Construction.
114. “To znamia, chto nad nami podnial Lenin, / Ne poshatnut ni gody, ni veka. / Kak dobryi kon’, stupaet tverdo vremia, / Idut goda, i my idem vpered. / Po tem putiam, chto zaveshchal nam Lenin, / Rodnoi tovarishch Stalin nas vedet.”
115. I. Riabov, “Velikoe sodruzhestvo,” Pravda, 21 January 1947, 2.
116. For such a “new,” previously unpublished Lenin letter to Stalin, dated 19 May 1922, about the “development of radio technology” see ibid., 21 January 1949, 1–2.
117. Between 22 January and 23 February Stalin was shown five times (twice on 10 February, once on 12 February, once on 16 February, and once on 21 February) in conjunction with the elections to the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and the union republics, once while dropping his ballot in the box. The Red Army was founded by a decree of 15 January 1918. The Day of the Red Army was first celebrated in 1918 on 10 February and from 1919 onward on 23 February. See Victor Topolyansky, “Three Riddles of an Old Holiday (observed as Red Army Day in the Past),” New Times (April 2001): 54–60. Thanks to Malte Rolf for this source.
118. Pravda, 23 February 1947, 1.
119. Ibid., 1 May 1947, 1.
120. On paratext in Stalinist publishing see Brian Kassof, “A Book of Socialism: Stalinist Culture and the First Edition of the Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 1 (2005): 55–95, esp. 59–60.
121. An airplane formation at the Tushino aerodrome in 1948 formed the words “SLAVA STALINU.” See Pravda, 26 July 1948, 2.
122. See ibid., 4 May 1940, 1.
123. 123. Victory Day was celebrated in Pravda every single year of the period under discussion, 1945–1952. In 1951 and 1952, however, the newspaper did not carry Stalin pictures. This finding contradicts the thesis that 9 May was discontinued as a holiday soon after the war because the regime deemed it too unruly; see Rolf, Das sowjetische Massenfest, 328. I am grateful to Malte Rolf for alerting me to these larger implications.
124. Stalin received the Gold Star medal on his sixtieth birthday in December 1939 after having been awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor earlier that year. See http://www.soviet-awards.com/titles1.htm (last consulted 1 June 2005).
125. For an in-depth analysis of the 1944 Physical Culture parade see Pat Simpson, “Parading Myths: Imaging the New Soviet Woman on Fizkul’turnik’s Day, July 1944,” Russian Review 63, no. 2 (2004): 187–211.
126. Characteristically, whenever a new standard work on postwar Stalinist politics touches on the question of succession, it centers on Stalin’s efforts to maintain an equilibrium among his lieutenants, not on grooming an heir. See Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 10, 72, 101–108, 148–151.
127. The catch phrase “Soviet patriotism” emerged in 1936. It is seen as Russocentric nationalism packaged as multiethnic identity by, among others, David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London: HarperCollins, 1991), 2.
128. Pravda, 27 July 1947, 1.
129. Ibid., 28 July 1947, 1.
130. Thus in 1946 the Day of the Soviet Air Force was celebrated on 18 August. See the photo of the Party elite in Tushino one day later in ibid., 19 August 1946, 1.
131. “Den’ Vozdushnogo flota v Moskve: Prazdnik na Tushinskom aerodrome,” ibid., 4 August 1947, 1.
132. Thus Stalin was both the metaphor and the synecdoche of Lenin. See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 31–38.
133. In 1946, for example, 24 November marked another second-tier military holiday, the Day of Soviet Artillery.
134. Pravda, 4 December 1949, 1.
135. E.g. ibid., 7 December 1949, 1.
136. Both ibid., 8 December 1949, 2–3.The exhibition opened on 22 December 1949 (see Evgenii Gromov, Stalin: Vlast’ i iskusstvo [Moscow: Respublika, 1998], 413).
137. On the exhibition see the text of a guided tour in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1434, ll. 1–114. For photographs of the gifts see RGASPI, f. 558, d. 1421–1423. On the exhibition more generally see Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov and Olga Sosnina, “The Faculty of Useless Things: Gifts to Soviet Leaders,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 277–300; Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, “Heterochronia of Modernity and Birthday Gifts to Stalin, 1949,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 2 (2006): 355–375; Olga Sosnina and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, eds., Dary vozhdiam—Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Moscow: Pinakoteka, 2006).
138. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1419, l. 141.
139. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1419, ll. 131–1310!).
140. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1419, l. 130.
141. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1419, l. 112.
142. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1419, l. 250b.
143. The “transmediality” or blurring of boundaries between various media, as in the visualization of text or the textualization of the visual, has been identified as a hallmark of socialist realist culture. See Jurij Murašov and Georg Witte, eds., Die Musen der Macht: Medien in der sowjetischen Kultur der 20er und 30er Jahre (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003), 24, 173–186.
144. Pravda, 17 December 1949, 1, 3.
145. The 7 November 1941 Stalin photo is ibid., 21 December 1949, 8.
146. See ibid., 22 December 1949, 4.
147. The last rubric appeared ibid., 9 October 1951, 2.
148. See ibid., 25 January 1950, 3.
149. See ibid., 13 March 1950, 1, 3.
150. See ibid., 15 March 1950, 1.
151. Ibid., 4 May 1950, 1. Likewise there was a Stalin portrait in the background of a photo of Ukrainian miners collecting signatures for the Stockholm appeal against nuclear weapons. See ibid., 4 July 1950, 1.
152. For the Baku photo see ibid., 25 December 1950, 1. Stalin also appeared in an article on the inauguration ceremony of the fifty-meter high Stalin sculpture in Erevan, dedicated to the Armenian Republic’s thirtieth anniversary. See ibid., 21 December 1950, 3.
153. P. Pavlenko, “Spasibo vozhdiu,” ibid., 24 September 1950, 2.
154. See ibid., 8 November 1950, 1–2.
155. See ibid., 22 January 1951, 1.
156. See ibid., 1 May 1951, 1; 2 May 1951, 1, 3.
157. Ibid., 3 May 1951, 1.
158. “Shestidesiatiletie Matiasa Rakoshi: Torzhestvennoe zasedanie v Budapeshte,” ibid., 9 March 1952, 5; “Shestidesiatiletie Prezidenta Pol’skoi Respubliki Boleslava Beruta,” ibid., 19 April 1952, 3.
159. Ibid., 3 May 1952, 1.
160. See ibid., 6 October 1952, 1.
161. See ibid., 15 October 1952, 1.
162. See ibid., 8 November 1952, 1; 10 November 1952, 1.
163. See ibid., 5 December 1952, 1; 21 January 1953, 2.
164. See ibid., 20 July 1953, 4; 27 July 1953, 1.
165. See ibid., 24 August 1953, 3.
166. See ibid., 9 November 1953, 2.
1. V. V. Sadoven’, “Metodicheskaia razrabotka ekskursii po GTG na temu: ‘Obrazy Lenina i Stalina v sovetskom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve’” (1947). See OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, ll. 1–2.
2. OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, ll. 14, 16.
3. OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, ll. 16–17.
4. Here I follow Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 3, 5.
5. Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 278. On Moscow as the sacral center of Soviet Russia in the 1930s see also Hans Günther, “Das Massenlied als Ausdruck des Mutterarchetypus in der sowjetischen Kultur,” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, no. 44 (1997): 348.
6. Istoriia vsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoi partii (bol’shevikov): Kratkii kurs (1945; reprint, Moscow: Pisatel’, 1997), 3.
7. Ibid., 17.
8. Ibid., 18.
9. Ibid., 31.
10. Rainer Schoch, Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Prestel, 1975).
11. Henri Barbusse, quoted in Stalin: K shestidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Moscow: Pravda, n.d. [1939 or 1940]), 75. The Barbusse quote on Stalin was disseminated widely and was reprinted in Pravda, 7 November 1935, 2.
12. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, ll. 92–92ob. Dated 15 July 1933.
13. Signed by “M. M. Gromov, A. B. Iumashev, S. A. Danilin, Negoreloe-Moskva, 23 August 1937.” Pravda, 24 August 1937, 2.
14. Mount Stalin (pik Stalina) was renamed Mount Communism (pik Kommunizma) in 1962 after the second wave of de-Stalinization and in 1998 Mount Ismail Samani in independent Tadzhikistan.
15. Pravda, 17 September 1937, 6. For the story on the ascent of Mount Lenin see ibid., 7 September 1937, 6.
16. Ibid., 5 October 1935, 6.
17. This flag was clearly retouched into the photograph. See ibid., 1 February 1940, 1.
18. In his collection of panegyric court poetry from the 1650s to 1670s Simeon Polotsky frequently compared tsars, such as Fedor Alekseevich, to the sun: “I dare to call Russia heaven / For I find planets in it. / You [O Tsar] are the sun; the moon is Tsaritsa Mariia; / and Tsarevich Aleksei is the bright morning star” (“Nebom Rossiiu nareshchi derzaiu / Ibo pla-nety v onei obretaiu. / Ty solntse; luna—Mariia tsaritsa; / Aleksei svetla tsarevich denitsa.”) See Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 35 (translation by Ram).
19. See Evgenii Gromov, Stalin: Vlast’ i iskusstvo (Moscow: Respublika, 1998), 44–45.
20. On Soviet folklore, sometimes called fakelore, see Frank Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore in the Stalin Era (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990); Felix Oinas, Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology (Columbus: Slavica, 1985). Alma Kunanbaeva and Izaly Zemtsovsky have insisted on the falsification of Soviet folklore and the often violent pressure exerted on such pre-Soviet folklore performers as Dzhambul to take on new Stalinist roles; this pressure is rarely documented and only transpires from oral sources. See their “Communism and Folklore” and the discussion surrounding it in Folklore and Traditional Music in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, ed. James Porter (Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA, 1997), 3–44. Also see Ursula Justus, “Vozvrashchenie v rai: Sotsrealizm i fol’klor,” in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, ed. Evgeny Do-brenko and Hans Günther (St. Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo Akademicheskii proekt,’ 2000), 70–86; Justus, “Vtoraia smert’ Lenina: Funktsiia placha v period perekhoda ot kul’ta Lenina k kul’tu Stalina,” ibid., 926–952.
21. See Levon A. Abramian, “Tainaia politsiia kak tainoe obshchestvo: Strakh i vera v SSSR,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 5 (1993): 38.
22. “Stalin, solntse moe, ia ponial v Moskve:/Serdtse mudrogo Lenina b’etsia v tebe. / V den’ siiaiushchii, kak biriuza, / Byl v Kremle ia v krugu druzei. / Uvidali moi glaza / Veli-chaishego iz liudei. / Ty, ch’e imia dostiglo zvezd/Slavoi pervogo mudretsa, / Byl vnimatelen, laskov prost / I rodnei rodnogo ottsa. / Za radushnyi, ottsovskii priem v Kremle, / Stalin, solntse moe, spasibo tebe.” Quoted in Abramian, “Tainaia politsiia,” 38.
23. “A esli u nashei liubimoi zastavy / Poiaviatsic polchishcha liutykh vragov, / My gria-nem desantom neslykhannoi slavy / Po cherepu vrazh’ikh fashistskikh polkov. // My tam pro-letim, gde do nas ne letali. / My vse sovershim, chto svershit’ my dolzhny. // Da zdravstvuet solntse! Da zdravstvuet Stalin! / Da zdravstvuet liudy sovetskoi strany! (2 raza) A. Bezymen-skii.” Pravda, 6 November 1935, 4.
24. “STALIN—SOLNTSE ZOLOTOE NASHE (Iz materialov dlia toma ‘Narodnoe tvorchestvo,’ prislannykh v redaktsiiu ‘Dvukh piatiletok’) / Stalin—solntse zolotoe nashe. / Dlia vragov smertel’no slovo— / ’Stalin.’ / Grozovye tuchi razognavshi, / Ty otkryl nam solnechnye dali. // . . . // Posredi boitsov, pered srazhen’em, / Bogatyrski velichav i stroen, / Boevym sverkaet snariarzhen’em / Voroshilov—znamenitsy voin. / Nikogda v boiakh ne pobezhdennyi,/On odet v broniu krepchaishei/stali, / Smelyi voin, solntsem/osveshchennyi . . . / Eto solntse zolotoe—Stalin. . . .” Frauda, 10 September 1936, 10. Also see an “uncredited poem by a child published soon after Stalin’s death [that] was marked as a child’s work by metrical irregularities that would not have been forgiven a mature poet”: “Little bird, take to the Kremlin / My warm greetings. / To the sun of the world, the capital, / To dear Moscow / To Stalin, my friend and my father!” “Ptitsa, v Kreml’ otnesi / Moi goriachii privet. / Solntsu mira, v stolitsu, / V rodnuiu Moskvu, / Stalinu—drugu—ottsu moemu!” Catriona Kelly, “Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the Stalin Era,” Slavic and East European Journal 49, no. 2 (2005): 199–224.
25. See “Shein is das Leb’n,” in G. von Poehl and M. Agthe, Das Judentum: Das wahre Gesicht der Sowjets (Berlin: Otto Stollberg, 1943), 83. The transliterated original stanza reads: “Er hat die groijße scheine Sunn / Op der Erd’ arofgebracht, / a bliehendik’n Garten / Fun unser Land gemacht.” This Soviet Yiddish Stalin folklore is from a Nazi propaganda publication, eager to prove the alleged “Judeo-Bolshevik” connection. For the Nazi volume, Yiddish ditties (chastushki) dedicated to Stalin were extracted from Dobruzhin, Jiddische Volkslieder weg’n Stalinen (Moscow: Der Emes, 1940). I am grateful to Frank Grüner for sharing this source with me.
26. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 717, l. 102. Letter by V. I. Vitkevich. N.d. but stamped “received 31 January 1945.”
27. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1377, l. 114.
28. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 16.
29. Hans Blumenberg and Martin Jay, among others, have identified as typical for modern discourse the privileging of the sense of vision and the frequency of luminary metaphors. See Hans Blumenberg, “Light as a Metaphor for Truth,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Levin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 30–62; Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
30. See Poehl and Agthe, Das Judentum, 85–86.
31. David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 62.
32. Katerina Clark is among the many scholars to have noted Stalin’s immobility; in her words, Stalin “was also of a different temporal order—of being, rather than becoming—and so was depicted in film and art as static and vertical or, if moving at all, doing so at an exaggeratedly slow and deliberate, monument-like pace.” Clark, Petersburg, 302.
33. For the vitality of “gender codes” in “naturalizing” power relations, see Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 48.
34. Ironically, in real life Stalin apparently used expensive British pipes. In 1948 Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, sent Stalin pipes as complimentary gifts from two British pipe-making companies. Earlier the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, had given Stalin a pipe, a fact that was publicized in the British press. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 775, l. no. Letter by Ivan Maisky from Moscow, dated 18 August 1948.
35. Consider postmodernist writer Viktor Pelevin’s novel Generation “P,” in which the main hero Tatarsky composes a new television ad spot: “He had a new idea. He picked up his pencil again and wrote under his first caption: advertisement/poster for ‘Sony Black Trinitron.’ A close-up of uniform cuffs. Fingers are breaking ‘Gertsegovina Flor’ and rummaging the table. A voice [with a Georgian accent]: ‘Did you see my pipe (trubka), Comrade Gorky?’ ‘I threw it away, Comrade Stalin.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because, Comrade Stalin, the leader of the world proletariat can only have a “Trinitron-Plus” television tube (trubka).’” Viktor Pelevin, Generation “P” (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 111. This quote is not in Andrew Bromfield’s English translation Homo Zapiens (New York: Penguin, 2003).
36. For the long history of the “female” disease of hysteria see e.g. the literature cited in Sander L. Gilman et al., Hysteria beyond Freud (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), xviii–xxiv. Trotsky, too, was portrayed as hysterical and effeminate. For example, in the screenplay of V. V. Vishnevsky’s Unforgettable 1919, Stalin’s calm but realistically sober evaluation of the situation of the Reds in the Russian Civil War is presented as the ideal golden mean between, on the one hand, overly optimistic reports (igra v spokoistvie) and, on the other hand, the “hysterical fits of Trotsky.” See “Rol’ I. V. Stalina iz p’esy V. V. Vishnevskogo ‘Nezabyvaemyi 1919-i,’ sygrannoi A. D. Dikim v Malom teatre: Mash, s pometkami A. D. Dikogo [1949],” RGALI, f. 2376, op. 1, d. 16, l. 1.
37. Henri Barbusse, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man, quoted in Philip Boobyer, The Stalin Era (New York: Routledge, 2000), 109. Stalin’s unpretentious rhetorical style was seen as a strength rather than a weakness and taken as a sign of his modesty. Galina Shtange, a professor’s wife and member of the intelligentsia, in 1937 noted in her diary about a radio address by Stalin: “Stalin speaks very slowly and distinctly—extremely simply, so simply that each word penetrates into your consciousness and I think the man cannot be found who would not be able to understand what he says. I really love that, I don’t like highfaluting, bombastic speeches that are aimed at creating an acoustic effect.” Véronique Garros, Natalia Korenevskaya, and Thomas Lahusen, eds., Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s (New York: New Press, 1995), 205.
38. Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend (London: Burke, 1955), 114.
39. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein, 1973), 709–710.
40. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 11. Gerasimov gave this speech on the occasion of Stalin’s seventieth birthday at the Central House of Art Workers during an evening devoted to “The Image of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin in Works of Art.”
41. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 11.
42. Katerina Clark noted that “The spatial hierarchy was articulated in a series of concentric circles, somewhat like a national matrioshka doll: the outer rim was the country at large (the periphery), the first inner circle was Moscow, and then came the Kremlin. There was also an innermost inner, Stalin’s study in the Kremlin, but it was generally considered too sacred to be actually represented; it could be seen only as ‘the light in the window.’ In its stead, commonly either St. George’s Hall, the place of public ceremonial and investiture, or a tower of the Kremlin functioned as that solid, innermost doll of the matrioshka. “ Katerina Clark, “Socialist Realism and the Sacralizing of Space,” in The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 11.
43. The painting was not only Stalinist Russia’s most famous. Ekaterina Voroshilova, Kliment Voroshilov’s wife, in 1955 noted in her diary: “A. M. [Gerasimov] at various times painted a number of paintings of K. E. [Voroshilov], of which I don’t like a single one, with the exception of the group portrait I. V. Stalin and K. E. Voroshilov in the Kremlin. “ RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 439, l. 76. Entry dated 17 November 1955.
44. At a 1938 meeting at the Central House of Art Workers, Gerasimov was asked, “The landscape for the portrait Stalin and Voroshilov is completely painted from life or changed?” He answered, “It is painted from life, but for the composition I had to move closer two characteristic houses (dlia kompozitsii mne prishlos’ dva kharakternykh domika priblizit’).” See RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 701, l. 33.
45. See Mikhail Yampolsky, “In the Shadow of Monuments: Notes on Iconoclasm and Time,” in Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, ed. Nancy Condee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 93. According to Yampolsky, one of the reasons that the Kremlin has had no anthropomorphic monuments “may be connected with the fact that its cathedrals have absorbed such a concentration of history that a monument, which denies history’s progression, could not withstand the powerful weight of historical evidence. By their historical gravity, the cathedrals would destroy the pathos of any anthropomorphic monument.” Ibid., 96.
46. True, the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square, right outside the Kremlin walls, can be regarded as an anthropomorphic monument. As Lenin’s successor, celebrated as “Lenin today” from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, Stalin drew legitimizing power from the presence of the dead leader in the mausoleum.
47. Interestingly, the Soviet star on Voroshilov’s belt can be seen as being linked through a diagonal axis with the red star on the Kremlin tower.
48. The leader, however, is always in the center, and the masses remain in the periphery; see Clark, Petersburg, 306.
49. See I. S. Rabinovich’s introductory article to Stalin i liudy sovetskoi strany v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve: Katalog vystavki (Moscow: Izdanie Gosudarstvennoi Tret’iakovskoi Gallerei, 1939), 7.
50. See Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 259–262, 331–334, 365–367; Sona Stephan Hoisington, “‘Ever Higher’: The Evolution of the Project for the Palace of Soviets,” Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (2003): 41–68; Dmitrii Khmel’nitskii, Zodchii Stalin (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007), 42–100.
51. Hoisington, “‘Ever Higher,’” 62.
52. Pravda, 20 February 1934, 2 (from the original “Postanovlenie Soveta Stroitel’stva Dvortsa Sovetov pri Prezidiume TsIK Soiuza SSR 19 Fevralia 1934 goda”).
53. On Soviet-style communism as eschatology see Igal Halfin, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).
54. Katharina Kucher, “Raum(ge)schichten: Der Gor’kij-Park im frühen Stalinismus,” Osteuropa 55, no. 3 (2005): 157. Also see Kucher, Der Gorki-Park: Freizeitkultur im Stalinismus 1928–1941 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007).
55. Kucher, “Raum(ge)schichten,” 160–161.
56. Begicheva closed by proposing two more projects, the implementation of a Stalin medal and the removal of Lenin from money bills, because Lenin “did not like money. He did not like gold with its dark power over people. Tsars and despots were shown on coins, but they acknowledged the omnipotence of money; I don’t want LENIN’S image, the purest of images, to be crumpled by (often dirty) hands.” RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 506, ll. 142–145. Dated 12 September 1945.
57. TsDRI was the result of a 1935 merger of the RABIS (Union of Art Workers)–initiated and Lunacharsky-supported Club of Theater Workers (founded on 25 February 1930) and the Club of Moscow Artists (founded on 16 July 1932) into a Club of Art Masters. On 26 December 1937 this Club of Art Masters was renamed Central House of Art Workers. See the CD-ROM by N. B. Volkova and Klaus Waschik, eds., Russian State Archive of Literature and Art: The Complete Archive Guide (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1996), synopsis of TsDRI. f. 2932. According to another source, the Club of Art Masters was located on Staropimenovskii pereulok until it moved to Pushechnaia ulitsa in 1939 and was renamed Central House of Art Workers. See Vigdariia Khazanova, Klubnaia zhizn’ i arkhitektura kluba 1917–1941 (Moscow: “Zhiraf,” 2000), 94–95 n. 74.
58. The meetings at TsDRI involved a question-and-answer period, at which criticism from the audience might be voiced. Following our meeting, someone asked: “Honestly, isn’t your painting Stalin at the Sixteenth Party Congress weak? Your last painting, Stalin and Voroshilov, is more interesting.” Gerasimov replied: “At the exhibition I received praise for this picture not because I am Gerasimov. Therefore it was not weak among the paintings exhibited there. In comparison to the picture Stalin and Voroshilov it is, of course, weaker.” RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 701, l. 31.
59. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 701, l. 25. The painting was first exhibited at the 1938 “Twenty Years of the Red Army” exhibition (see OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 59).
60. For a photograph of Gerasimov during the actual painting of Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin see V. S. Manin, Iskusstvo v rezervatsii: Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii 1917–1941gg. (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999), 217.
61. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 2, d. 6, l. 4. It appears that two rival publishing houses, IZOGIZ and Iskusstvo, conducted Stalin portrait competitions during the same year, 1937, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Both were closed competitions, in which only selected artists were invited to participate; open competitions were publicized widely and garnered more entries. The IZOGIZ competition was financially even more rewarding than that of Iskusstvo: a first prize received twenty thousand rubles, whereas Iskusstvo paid fifteen thousand. For Iskusstvo’s competition, see RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112.
62. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 8, d. 6, l. 3.
63. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 8, d. 6, l. 3. To be sure, the participants also had “the right to suggest their own theme to the publishing house, as long as it [did] not diverge from the purpose of the competition.” See RGALI, f. 2020, op. 8, d. 6, l. 4.
64. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 8, d. 6, l. 4.
65. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 701, ll. 26–27.
66. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 776, l. 5. An Iskusstvo article about Stalin Prize winners (“Prazdnik sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Iskusstvo, no. 2 [1941]: 6), published shortly before the German attack on the Soviet Union in World War II, claimed that the title Na strazhe mira was in fact not Gerasimov’s invention but of popular origin: “Not surprisingly, the viewer gave the group portrait I. V. Stalin and K. E. Voroshilov in the Kremlin a different name: Guarding Peace (Na strazhe mira).”
67. OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, ll. 16. Sadoven further echoed Gerasimov: “The picture was painted for the twentieth anniversary of the Red Army and had a different title—Guarding Peace (Na strazhe mira). It is a vivid example of the evolution from portrait subjects in Soviet art to historical subjects, executed in the monumental style. The painting conveys the spirit of the epoch of Stalin’s prewar Five-Year Plans, which pushed the country forward on the Leninist path. Our reception of this painting is particularly emotional in our days, when our Motherland, after the victorious Great Patriotic War, under the leadership of Stalin has resumed creative, constructive labor.” OR GTG, f. 8.III, d. 926, ll. 17–18.
68. Dva vozhdia posle dozhdia, a piece of oral lore, was told to me by Gábor Rittersporn, whom I wish to thank. It is confirmed by Mariia Chegodaeva, Dva lika vremeni (1939: Odin god stalinskoi epokhi) (Moscow: Agraf, 2001), 40.
69. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 9.
70. Also see V. I. Vikhtinskii et al., Vo imia mira (Podpisanie dogovora mezhdu Sovetskim Soiuzom i Kitaiskoi Narodnoi Respublikoi), illustration in Hubertus Gassner and Alisa Liubimova, eds., Agitatsiia za schast’e: Sovetskoe iskusstvo stalinskoi epokhi (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1994), 107; D. A. Nalbandian’s Dlia schast’ia naroda: Zasedanie Politbiuro TsK VKP(b), illustration ibid., 100.
71. Significantly, in Shegal’s picture of 1937, Lenin is still larger than life: he appears in the background as a statue about three times bigger than Stalin. In Nalbandian’s Dlia schast’ia naroda (see note 70), Lenin appears only in a small picture on a wall at back; Stalin himself had become so much the center that he no longer needed any sort of legitimacy from the older leader, Lenin.
72. See illustration 276 in Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 253.
73. See illustration ibid., 104. The same could be said of Gorky in Anatoly Iar-Kravchenko’s A. M. Gor’ky Reads to Stalin (A. M. Gor’kii chitaet Stalinu; see illustration ibid., 106). Gorky is reading to Stalin, Voroshilov, and Molotov, but here the axis Gorky-Stalin is so strong as to break through the circular spatial arrangement—the presence of the country’s sacral center, Stalin, is literally overpowering.
74. The competing metaphor here is that of Stalin the gardener. For Stalin’s applications of this metaphor to himself, see Jochen Hellbeck, “Laboratories of the Soviet Self: Diaries of the Stalin Era” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998), 64–66. On the change from machine to garden metaphors for Soviet society see Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), chap. 4. On the related metaphor of the gardening state see also Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 13, 71, 91–92; Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 27–31.
75. Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 7 (14 February 1947): 1.
76. See ibid., no. 6 (20 January 1951): 1.
77. Different folk arts, it should be noted, were gendered differently. Embroidery was considered a typically female art form.
78. Zamoshkin then turned to the process of production and stressed the time-consuming manual creation of the portrait, which Tselman worked on “over the course of one-and-a-half years.” Time-consuming manual labor, the paragon of conscious deceleration, is seen as possessing great value—against the backdrop of fast industrial production in the modern age. Unsurprisingly, in line with this evocation of the personalized nature of preindustrial artistic production, the embroideress personally delivered her portrait as a gift to Stalin: “Comrade Tselman gave her work as a gift to Comrade J. V. Stalin. The portrait, as a piece of artwork, is currently being shown in the State Tretyakov Gallery.” But in this reliquary of Stalin art it only ended up after both a number of painters, representing a high art as opposed to Tselman’s folk art, and an institution, the Institute of Art Industry, had given their approval: “Prominent Soviet artists examined her portrait: the USSR People’s Artist A. Gerasimov, the RSFSR People’s Artist V. Iakovlev, the Stalin Prize laureate V. Efanov, the artist P. Vasilev, creator of many works dedicated to V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin. They all unanimously noted the great artistic merit of this work. The Institute of Art Industry also gave a first-class appraisal of Comrade Tselman’s work, noting that her portrait has great artistic value and is executed with high technical mastery and great subtlety in color tones.” Pravda, 9 June 1946, 2.
79. Albert Boime, The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting c. 1830–1865 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 1.
80. Ibid., 21–22.
81. Ibid., 9–10. In his 1836 “Essay on American Scenery,” Thomas Cole wrote: “Where the wolf roams, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise temple and tower— mighty deeds shall be done in the now pathless wilderness” (quote Boime, The Magisterial Gaze, 53). Boime comments on this passage: “Here is the textual delineation of his graphic rendition of the idea of futurity and the overcoming of the human and material obstacles to this progress. It is this challenge to the Euro-Americans that makes the civilizing process so basic to their idea of advance—carried out with the sense of a God-ordained mission” (ibid.).
82. One could claim that Morning of Our Motherland cannot be compared with the American paintings since Cole, for example, belongs to the genre of landscape painting, and Shurpin to portraiture. Yet the dividing line between these genres is in fact quite blurred, and both paintings feature a mixture of portrait and landscape components. More importantly, Stalinist landscape painting from the 1930s onward, as Mark Bassin has observed, differed from American landscape painting in its attempted reconciliation of the innate elementalism (stikhiinost’) of nature and the Soviet people’s mastery over precisely this elementalism— witness the hydroelectric plants and the industrial construction sites. “The result,” writes Bassin, “was an entire category of artistic production, the individual examples of which were all united by the deliberate effort to demonstrate how Soviet reality was actually achieving the utopian goal of preserving the unique elemental splendour of the natural world at the very time that it was transforming this same world into something completely different and incalculably superior.” Mark Bassin, “‘I Object to Rain that Is Cheerless’: Landscape Art and the Stalinist Aesthetic Imagination,” Ecumene 7, no. 3 (2000): 334.
83. Boime, The Magisterial Gaze, 75–76.
84. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 11. Also see Samokhvalov’s 1940 Lenin picture, which at first sight suggests a spatial arrangement in circular motion, but actually is quite different; here, Lenin also moves forward, quite literally out of the picture, in the direction of the viewer (see illustration in Gassner and Liubimova, Agitatsiia za schast’e, 97).
85. RGALI, f. 2942, op. 1, d. 133, l. 430b. The occasion was a 4 March 1939 meeting of the Moscow Sculptors’ Union dedicated to the subject of “the image of V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin in sculpture.”
86. “PORTRET VOZHDIA / Znakomy mne vsekh morshinok cherty, / Vse iskorki v pristal’nom vzore; / V nem stol’ko prekrasnoi, rodnoi / Prostoty! / V nem volia naroda, v nem nashi mechty, / V nem myslei bezhrezhnoe more.//I kazhdaia tonkaia skladka na lbu / Rasska-zhet pro trudnye gody./Pro t’iur’my Sibiri, s vragami bor’bu, / Pro to, kak pobedno v ogne i dymu / Shagali rabochie vzvody. // Pro to, kak zavody v pustyniakh rosli,/ Kak v tundre tsvety rastsvetali,/Pro to, kak my golod i stuzhu proshli,/ Proshli i bogatymi stali. / Znakomaia vsem nam, rodnaia shinel’, / Dymok serebristyi ot trubki . . . / I vizhu ia khleb ukrainskikh stepei,/Kavkazskuiu neft’, zhar donbasskikh uglei,/Linkorov vysokie rubki./Ia vizhu, kak sotni geroev truda, / Tvoeiu zabotoi sogrety, / Vozvodiat zavody, dvortsy, goroda . . . / Tvoriat vdokhnovenno poety./Piloty—geroi vozdushnykh morei—/Tumany i mrak pobezhdaiut, / I tysiachi nashikh sovetskikh detei / Imia vozhdia proslavliaiut. ALEKSANDR KARACHUNSKII. 16 let. g. Aleksandriia, Kirovogradskaia obi.” Pravda, 1 May 1941, 5.
87. “Lunacharski,” writes Matthew Cullerne Bown, “in his book The Great Turning (Velikii Povorot, 1919), provided an extended, passionate description of his [Lenin’s] head.” Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 56.
88. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 12. This statement is by Evgeny Katsman.
89. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 16.
90. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, l. 21. The fixation on eyes had a long cultural heritage. Suffice it to recall Romanticism’s eyes as “windows of the soul” or the differing depiction of men’s and women’s eyes in French Impressionism (see Stephen Kern, The Gaze in English and French Paintings and Novels, 1840–1900 [London: Reaktion, 1996]). For Russia Richard Wortman describes the cultural significance of the tsar’s eyes as expressing his character more than any other part of his body. He cites a number of contemporary memoiristic impressions of Alexander II’s weak gaze, in comparison with the domineering eyes of his father, Nicholas I. See Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22–23.
91. RGALI, f. 2932, op. 1, d. 344, ll. 21–22.
92. On the heroes of socialist realist novels acquiring this ability see Clark, The Soviet Novel, 141–145; Abram Tertz [Andrei Siniavsky], The Trial Begins and On Socialist Realism, trans. Max Hayward and George Dennis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 149.
93. From the magazine of the Union of Soviet Writers of the Lithuanian SSR, Pergale, no. 4 (1950): 52, quoted in Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, trans. Jane Zielonko (New York: Knopf, 1953), 231. Thanks to Malte Rolf for this source.
94. For illustration see Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 21 (22 May 1948): 1.
95. For illustration see Gleb Prokhorov, Art under Socialist Realism: Soviet Painting 1930–1950 (Roeville East: Craftsman House, 1995), 101, 48.
96. Diana Leslie Cheren comes close to such an exegesis in her study of a painting of Deneika, occupying the border zone between avant-garde and socialist realism, “Recovering Uncertainty: An Interpretation of Aleksandr Deineka’s ‘The Defense of Petrograd,” (M.A. thesis, University of California Berkeley, 1995). So does Christina Kiaer in her own work on Aleksandr Deineka: see, for example, Christina Kiaer, “Was Socialist Realism Forced Labour? The Case of Aleksandr Deineka in the 1930s,” Oxford Art Journal 28, no. 3 (2005): 321–345. Typically, however, these studies are on a stylistically ambiguous painter, not on a full-fledged socialist realist like Aleksandr Gerasimov or Dmitry Nalbandian.
97. Boris Groys, “The Art of Totality,” in The Landscape of Stalinism, ed. Dobrenko and Naiman, 98–99.
98. On this see Schoch, Das Herrscherbild in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, 9, 25.
99. Quoted from A. Schmarsow and B. Klemm, eds., W. Bürgers Kunstkritik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1909), 317.
1. “Vdrug iz ‘PRAVDY’ rezko-zvonnaia / Treskotnia telefonnaia: / —’Dem’ian!’ / —Ta ne slyshu! Oglokh!’ / —’Bros’ shutit’!’ / —’Nu, ne budu!’ / —’V redaktsii perepolokh: / Tele-grammy—gruda na grudu! / . . . / Po sluchaiu polustoletiia Stalina! / Pust’ tam Stalin, kak khochet, / Serditsia, grokhochet, / No ‘PRAVDE’ nel’zia uzhe dal’she / Molchat’. / Pishi o Staline bezotlagatel’no. / Stalinskii nomer sdaetsia v pechat’ / Dvatsatogo dekabria obiazatel’no!’. . .” Pravda, 21 December 1929, 4. Thanks to Evgenii Bershtein for help with the translation.
2. See Claus Scharf, “Tradition—Usurpation—Legitimation: Das herrscherliche Selbstverständnis Katharinas II.,” in Rußland zur Zeit Katharinas II.: Absolutismus—Aufklärung—Pragmatismus, ed. Eckhard Hübner, Jan Kusber, and Peter Nitsche (Cologne: Böhlau, 1998), 98–99. On the continuity between Lomonosov’s panegyric odes and Stalin poetry see Joachim Klein, “18. Jahrhundert,” in Russische Literaturgeschichte, ed. Klaus Städtke (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2002), 84–85. Thanks to Ingrid Schierle for directing me to these publications.
3. True to sentimentalism, writers representing Nicholas I are overwhelmed by their feelings so that they cannot truly express what they intend to express. “This results in the frequent resort to aporia, the confession of the artist’s inability to express or describe what he wishes.” Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, 285.
4. Stalin: K shestidesiatiletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Moscow: Pravda, n.d. [1939 or 1940]), 58.
5. In the same book, Stalin was quoted as saying of Lenin: “the simplicity (prostota) and modesty (skromnost’) of Lenin, is his urge to remain unnoticed or, at least, not to stand out and emphasize his high position.” Ibid., 74.
6. Ibid., 159.
7. Vladimir F. Alliluev, Khronika odnoi sem’i: Alliluevy, Stalin (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1995), 201. Quoted in Evgenii Gromov, Stalin: Vlast’ i iskusstvo (Moscow: Respublika, 1998), 411.
8. Lion Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937: My Visit Described for My Friends (New York: Viking, 1937), 76–77. Quoted in Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 407.
9. Emil Ludwig, Stalin (Zurich: Carl Posen, 1945), 188, 190.
10. See Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 245–246 n. 3, quoting Ervin Sinkó, Egy Regény Regénye: Moszkvai Naplójegyzetek, 1935–1937, 3rd ed. (Újvidék, Serbia: Forum Könyvkiadó, 1988), 540.
11. For more reviews of the sources regarding Stalin’s “modesty” see Leonid Maksimenkov, “Kul’t: Zametki o slovakh-simvolakh v sovetskoi politicheskoi kul’ture,” Svobodnaia mysl’, no. 10 (1993): 26–31; Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 164–165. For a review of the sources including Stalin’s personal archive at RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, which became available in 2000, see Sarah Davies, “Stalin and the Making of the Leader Cult in the 1930s,” in Stalin and the Eastern Bloc: The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships:, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 29–46. Also see Aleksander M. Etkind, “Psychological Culture,” in Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness, ed. Dmitri N. Shalin (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 112–113: “Contrary to the ‘cult of personality’ thesis, Soviet power was not vested in a person; it derived from the state and the party, whose comrades had to exude modesty and reticence and act as conduits for its collective wisdom. Trotsky showed too much personal ambition, which violated the Bolsheviks’ personal beliefs. . . . Stalin, by comparison, was a paragon of modesty and collegiality. His demonstratively noncompetitive style in public suited the spirit of the time well.”
12. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5088, l. 1210b.
13. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, ll. 22–23. 20 April 1933 letter by I. Ionov, deputy director of publishing house Stary Bolshevik, with appended dedication by Bibineishvili.
14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 203, l. 21. Copy of Stalin’s reply letter to I. Ionov, 21 April 1933.
15. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1020, l. 12. Original: “TsK VKP(b) Politbiuro, Protokol No. 6, Punkt 6 ot 4. V. 1934g. Slushali: o stroitel’stve Instituta Stalina v Tiflise. (t.t. Stalin, Beria). Postanovili: (1) Priniat’ predlozhenie t. Stalina ob otmene resheniia Zakpromkoma o postroike v Tiflise Instituta Stalina. (b) Reorganizovat’ stroiushchegosia v Tiflise Institut v filial Instituta Marksa-Engel’sa-Lenina.”
16. Yaroslavsky’s 1 August 1935 letter indicated that only Stalin’s fiat would open to him the doors of the archive at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (IMEL): “C[omrade] Stalin! Sergo [Ordzhonikidze] called me today before his departure and told me that he talked to you about my planned book ‘Stalin.’ The exceptional obstacles in this affair that he told you about can only be removed by you: it is indispensable that you or Comrade Poskryobyshev order IMEL or AOR [Archive of the October Revolution] that they allow the use of all available materials and documents. Without this they will not give me a chance to use them.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 5089, l. 1. Stalin was also always the ultimate arbiter of what constituted sycophancy and what did not. In answer to a 1940 letter by Yaroslavsky, he wrote: “The painting ‘Stalin visits the sick Voroshilov’ by the artist Shapiro is the outgrowth of a misunderstanding, since there was no ‘Stalin visit to the sick Voroshilov’ either in 1907 or 1908. . . . False merits should be attributed neither to me nor to Comrade Voroshilov—we have enough true merits and real authority. But obviously some of the careerist authors of ‘memoirs’ and the authors of several suspect articles ‘about the leaders’ need this. They want to advance their careers through excessive and sickening praise of the leaders of Party and state. Do we have the right to cultivate in our people such feelings of servility and toadyism? Clearly we do not. More than that: it is our duty to eradicate these disgraceful and slavish feelings.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 842, ll. 45, 49–50 (original of 29 April 1940 letter by Stalin to Yaroslavsky in answer to Yaroslavsky’s questions).
17. Quoted in Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki: Stalinskaia kul’turnaia revoliutsiia 1936–1938 (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia kniga, 1997), 292–293.
18. See Vance Kepley, In the Service of the State: The Cinema of A. Dovzhenko (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 494, quoted in Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 148 (155 n. 23 for source). The original document is in RGASPI, f. 71, op. 10, d. 127, 11. 188–189. Published in Andrei Artizov and Oleg Naumov, eds., Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia: Dokumenty TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b), VChK-OGPU-NKVD o kul’turnoi politike. 1917–1953 gg. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond “Demokratiia,” 1999), 350–351. (Cited as first published in: Anatolii Latyshev, “Stalin i kino,” in Surovaia drama naroda: Uchenye i publitsisty o prirode stalinizma, ed. lu. P. Senokosov and lu. G. Burtin [Moscow: Politizdat, 1989], 494–495.)
19. Quoted from V. A. Nevezhin, ed., Zastol’nye rechi Stalina: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003), 154–155. Original file entitled, “Rechi Stalina I.V. za sentiabr’–noiabr’ 1938 goda, ne voshedshie v Sobranie Sochinenii,” in RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122, ll. 161–162. Table talk recorded by R. Khmelnitsky and incorrectly dated 7 November 1938 (rather than 1937).
20. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1121, l. 24. This particular file is entitled, “Doklady, rechi, stat’i, interv’iu Stalina I. V., ne voshedshie v Sobranie Sochinenii. Rechi, pis’ma Stalina I. V. na ianvar’–mart 1938 goda, ne voshedshie v Sobranie Sochinenii.” Later in 1938 Stalin wrote the comment “a sycophantic piece (podkhalimskaia shtuka)” across a Poem About a Flower by the Persian poet Lakhuti, translated from Farsi into Russian and dedicated to “The Leader. The Comrade. Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 760, l. 25. The poem is dated 31 December 1938.
21. The function as signal of the Stalin comments on Smirnova’s book can be gleaned from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism director M. A. Savelev’s 1938 letter to the journal Molodaia gvardiia. In the context of a ban on a new work on Lenin he alluded to Stalin’s comments: “I strongly recommend to the editorial board to familiarize yourselves with the comment Stalin wrote regarding the depiction of his childhood (you have this comment at your own publishing house Molodaia gvardiia).” In late 1953, Stalin’s comment was made famous when the leading Soviet history journal, Voprosy istorii, mustered it as support for its indictment of the cult of personality (though not yet of Stalin’s person). For the posthumous quoting of the comment see the publication (without archival attribution) in P. N. Pospelov, “Piat’desiat let kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza,” Voprosy istorii, no. 11 (1953): 21. Pospelov’s article was based on a 19 October 1953 talk given at the Academy of Sciences.
22. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 167, ll. 102–103. Stalin’s corrections are dated 23 May 1940.
23. On the transfer of the modesty ethos from sainthood—via the sons of priests—to the left intelligentsia see Laurie Manchester, “Harbingers of Modernity, Bearers of Tradition: Popovichi as a Model Intelligentsia Self in Revolutionary Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 50, no. 3 (2002): 343; Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 74.
24. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 255, l. 159, 11. 118–118ob. Tovstukha’s note bears a handwritten “7/VII” date without a year, except a “192” (with a blank space for the specific year in the 1920s) letterhead (of the Tsentral’nyi Komitet R.K.P [B-ov] Moskva).
25. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 801, l. 17. Letter to Stalin by M. Rafailov dated 21 August 1924.
26. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 801, l. 18. Letter to Mekhlis by M. Rafailov dated 21 August 1924.
27. This history of fond 558 is based on a 25 September 2005 email communication by Oleg Khlevniuk, to whom I am very grateful.
28. For many of Stalin’s most important decisions there is no documentation at all. His penchant for the telephone is legendary and goes back at least to his behind-the-scenes dealings against the opposition during the 1920s, when a special telephone system allowed him to eavesdrop on his opponents, if the Soviet defector Boris Bazhanov is to be believed. See Boris Bazhanov, Vospominaniia byvshego sekretaria Stalina (N.p.: SP ‘Sofinta’ Informatsionno-reklamnyi tsentr ‘Infodizain,’ 1990), 55–60.
29. Oleg Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 30-e gody (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), 15–16.
30. On this see Jan Plamper, “Archival Revolution or Illusion? Historicizing the Russian Archives and Our Work in Them,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 51, no. 1 (2003): esp. 62–69.
31. It also bears noting that the records of the Party’s Politburo and Central Committee give little indication that these highest institutions of Soviet power discussed issues pertaining to the Stalin cult: there are almost no decisions as to celebrations of his birthdays or anything else. A thorough reading of the Central Committee depository of Orgburo and Politburo agendas for the period of 1929–1952 (f. 17, op. 113) furnished such items as “2.0 About the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Comintern. Resolution of the Central Committee of 22 February 1929” (RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 705), but only two resolutions regarding the Stalin cult. The first was a resolution “about the placing of an AKhRR [Assotsiatsiia Khudozhnikov Revoliutsionnoi Rossii] popular print Stalin Among the Female Delegates in issue no. 1 of the journal Iskusstvo. “ This resolution, almost exactly six months before the first manifestation of the cult, Stalin’s fiftieth birthday celebration, is a sign that the cult was in planning from early 1929 onward and that the Party played a role in this planning that it did not want to hide at that point. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 113, d. 731. See protocol no. 121 of the Central Committee Orgbiuro meeting of 24 May 1929, item “84.0 O pomeshchenii v No. 1 zhurnala ‘Iskusstvo’ lubka AKhRR’a ‘Stalin sredi delegatok.’” The second resolution involving the Stalin cult was the already mentioned 19 December 1934 Politburo decision to “honor Comrade Stalin’s request to forbid all festivities or celebrations or publications in the press or in meetings on the occasion of his fifty-fifth birthday on 21 December.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1353, l. 8.
32. Tucker, Stalin in Power, 147. Also see Robert McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 107, 146–153, 234–235.
33. See Konstantin Simonov’s 1965 interview with Marshal Konev, quoted in Konstantin Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia: Razmyshleniia o I. V. Staline (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 358.
34. Dmitrii Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia: Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina, vol. 1 (Barnaul: Altaiskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1990), 315.
35. More generally, he was a legendary bureaucrat with a record of processing and controlling a phenomenal quantity of cultural products down to the smallest detail, as has become evident since the opening of the archives. Katerina Clark, among others, has remarked on the extent and breadth of Stalin’s filtering of cultural products in her “The Cult of Literature and Nikolai Ostrovskii’s ‘How the Steel was Tempered,’” in Personality Cults in Stalinism—Personenkulte im Stalinismus, ed. Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 415.
36. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 760, l. 163. Copy of Central Committee protocol no. 120, 17 May 1929.
37. 37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 760, l. 162. Letter by Lunacharsky to Central Committee, 18 May 1929.
38. 38. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 781, l. 126. Letter by Maria Osten dated 23 February 1935.
39. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 2, d. 41, l. 6. Not dated, but filed under correspondence, 14–21 April 1930.
40. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 135.The painting had a longer history. A year earlier, Modorov had first written to Voroshilov about this very picture. Modorov had expanded upon his intended message (“with this picture I wanted to express that the existing membership of the Politburo is the author of the First Five-Year Plan”) and then asked Voroshilov “to look at my work and give directions for complementing and correcting several places where I might not have succeeded. The critical place is the portrait of Comrade L. M. Kaganovich, who is standing next to you.” The picture showed the Politburo at a construction site in the Urals, “where thousands of workers and the entire Obkom, headed by Comrade Kabakov, looked at the picture. The reactions were fabulous. Comrade Kabakov devoted particular attention to the picture at hand and wishes to have a large canvas for his auditorium. His recommendations for changes were very minor: (a) make Kirov a little older, (b) take another look at Comrade Ordzhonikidze, and (c) at Comrade Andreev. They like everything else. Without exception they particularly like the portrait of Comrade Stalin, your portrait, as well as that of Comrades Kalinin and Molotov in the center of the picture. They did not say anything about Comrade Kaganovich, but I feel myself that he did not quite turn out well. That is why I am appealing for the help of you, the favorite comrade and friend of the artists, who understands art. . . .” Modorov closed by explaining where and when Voroshilov could inspect the painting. Voroshilov noted on Modorov’s letter: “Tomorrow we will have to stop by Comrade Modorov’s studio.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, ll. 18–19. Dated 22 March 1933.
41. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 281, l. 15.
42. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, l. 33. Poskryobyshev did not specify which portrait needed retouching. Likewise in 1933 IZOGIZ inquired of Voroshilov, in a fashion that had by then become routine, if he would release for mass printing a certain picture of him on a horse (attached as a photograph). Voroshilov returned the letter with the following comment: “I saw the picture and even though I do not quite like it, I do not object to its publication.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 13. Voroshilov’s reply is dated 13 January 1933. The original letter was by Osip Beskin and the picture in question was Comrade Voroshilov at the Cavalry Parade by the artist Denisovsky. For a further (undated) example with a picture of a Voroshilov portrait by A. Bystriakov attached see RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 15.
43. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 7 (l. 8 for Stalin portrait). Letter by D. Vadimov dated 18 March 1943.
44. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 17. Letter by the director of the N. Sundukov, “Direktor Izdatel’stva Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk RSFSR.” Neutolimov’s Lenin woodcut is on l. 18, the Stalin woodcut on l. 19.
45. Across the top of Sundukov’s letter there is a remark in handwriting: “to Comrade Shepilov.” See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 17.
46. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 20. Letter dated 30 October 1947.
47. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 21. Letter dated 14 November 1947.
48. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 28. Letter dated 12 December 1947 to the Central Committee Special Sector’s Fifth Section, which since World War II had been responsible for processing letters written to Stalin and delegating them to the responsible institutions, which would then act upon them.
49. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 22. Letter by Glavrepertkom chief M. Dobrynin dated 14 November 1947. Toidze’s Stalin portrait is on l. 23. Thus despite all the regularization and formalization of approval procedures of cult art, the leader’s fiat remained decisive.
50. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 24. Letter dated 17 November 1947.
51. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 25. Letter dated 17 November 1947 by Agitprop deputy chairman Lebedev to the Central Committee Special Sector.
52. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 26. Not dated.
53. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1478. The letter, from Iskusstvo director Kukharkov about artist A. Kruchin, is not dated.
54. For an outright rejection consider the following case. The journal Vokrug sveta asked Poskryobyshev whether it could publish an etching of Stalin by V. A. Favorsky. The editorial board must have had its own doubts about the etching, for it considered “it necessary to let you know that the artist is prepared to change the shoulder straps of the figure next to Comrade Stalin, likely Marshal Vasilevsky, in order to make him appear like a staff officer, or to completely drop this figure. The artist is also prepared to make in his etching whatever other changes he is ordered to make.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 30. Letter by I. Inozemtsev, editor of Vokrug sveta, dated 21 November 1947. The Favorsky etching is on l. 31. Poskryobyshev must have delegated the case to the Agitprop Department because the next piece of correspondence is a laconic letter by Agitprop deputy chairman Lebedev to the Central Committee Special Sector: “The etching of artist Favorsky incorrectly depicts Comrade Stalin’s looks (vneshnost’), which is why its publication in the journal would be inappropriate. The journal’s editorial board has been informed about this.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 29. Letter dated 12 December 1947 to the Central Committee Special Sector’s Fifth Section.
55. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1477, l. 16. Letter dated 2 August 1947. The Central Committee Agitprop Department between August 1939 and July 1948 was called Administration of Propaganda and Agitation, Upravlenie propagandy i agitatsii (UPA). See T. M. Goriaeva et al., eds., Instituty upravleniia kul’turoi v period stanovleniia: 1917–1930-e gg. Partiinoe rukovodstvo; Gosudarstventrye organy upravleniia; Skhemy (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004), 57.
56. However, it is unclear how representative this sample is. See RGALI, f. 2305, op. 1, d. 128, ll. 6, 10, 12, 14, 17–18, 21–22, 25–26, 28, 30, 32, 35–36, 39, 41, 47, 49.
57. Examples include Lavrenty Beria (RGALI, f. 2305, op. 1, d. 128, l. 24), Lazar Kaganovich (RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 126; RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 147, l. 75), Mikhail Kalinin (RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 33), Valéry Mezhlauk (RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, l. 7), Anastas Mikoian (RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 68), and Viacheslav Molotov (RGALI, f. 2305, op. 1, d. 128, l. 13).
58. Though offering no evidence, Volkogonov already noted the participation of Stalin’s secretaries and Stalin himself in the cult: “And therefore Tovstukha, Dvinsky, Kanner, Mekh-lis, and then Poskryobyshev on a daily basis inspected and approved (vizirovali) all more or less important materials about him [Stalin] and the photographs set aside for the press. They showed the most important ones to him, the General Secretary. Not infrequently his pencil added a word or two, which illuminated even more prominently the ‘extraordinariness,’ ‘acumen,’ ‘decisiveness,’ ‘care,’ ‘courage,’ and ‘wisdom’ of ‘Comrade Stalin.’” Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia, vol. 1, 321; also see 436.
59. See RGALI, f. 2305, op. 1, d. 135, l. 6.
60. See RGALI, f. 2305, op. 1, d. 128, l. 37.
61. The exact date when a secure telephone connection to the southern vacation spots was established is still unknown. It is, however, a fact that the ciphered telegrams stopped in 1936. See Khlevniuk, Politbiuro, 14–15. More recently, it has become clear that a “closed (high-frequency) telephone connection (‘VCh’) between Moscow and the government dachas in the south was established, it seems, in 1935. From that time on Stalin and his comrades-in-arms also began exchanging telephonograms. . . .” Oleg Khlevniuk et al., eds., Stalin i Kaganovich: Perepiska, 1931–1936gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001), 8. The other, slower communication channel was via NKVD couriers who took two to three days to carry letters between the southern spas and Moscow. See ibid., 6.
62. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 88, ll. 21–22. Original of ciphered telegram by Stalin to Kaganovich, Yezhov, and Molotov from Sochi, 17 August 1935.
63. For Stalin’s control of TASS texts see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 207 (“Soobshcheniia TASS: Soobshcheniia, biulleteni i vestniki TASS s rezoliutsiiami, pravkami i pometkami Stalina I. V. i zapiski ob opublikovanii ikh v pechati”). Some of the press releases in this file have such comments in Stalin’s hand as “not worth publishing.” For his ban on eulogistic newspaper articles see e.g. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 293, ll. 148–149.
64. Original: “Che-pu-kha St.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1494, l. 6. Lev Mekhlis, at the time editor of Pravda, had sent this article on 13 August 1934 to Stalin for permission to publish. Stalin then left his comment and on 1 September 1934 the following note was made on the article: “Mekhlis has been informed.”
65. The acting director of Gospolitizdat had first contacted Pospelov who allowed going ahead with the book. “Now it is ready as proofs,” in the words of P. Chagin, acting director of Gospolitizdat in his 24 September 1940 letter to Poskryobyshev. Nonetheless, Stalin simply wrote to Zhdanov and Pospelov: “I ask you to forbid the Russian-language publication of Gamsakhurdia’s book.” RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 730, l. 190.
66. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 699, l. 61. Letter dated 8 December 1932.
67. Stalin changed paragraphs, cut pages, changed words, and added sentences in the 1939 OGIZ version of his biography. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1281 (“O biografii Stalina I. V. Kratkaia biografiia ‘Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin,’ ispravlennaia i dopolnennaia Stalinym I. V.”) For the 1947 version see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1282 (“O biografii Stalina I. V. Maket knigi ‘Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin: Kratkaia biografiia.’ Vtoroe izdanie, ispravlennoe i dopolnennoe. Sostaviteli: Aleksandrov G. F., Galaktionov M. R., Kruzhkov V. S., Mitich M. B., Mochalov V. D., Pospelov R N.”) For more on Barbusse’s Stalin biography beginning in 1935 with comments by Stalin, including on a screenplay by Barbusse for a Stalin film, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 700. For background and details see David Brandenberger, “Sostavlenie i publikatsiia ofitsial’noi biografii vozhdia—katekhizisa stalinizma,” Voprosy istorii, no. 12 (1997): 141–150; Brandenberger, “Stalin as Symbol: A Case Study of the Personality Cult and Its Construction,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 249–270. Khrushchev, incidentally, in 1956 shrewdly manipulated the traces of Stalin’s editing of his biography and left out any evidence that contradicted his assertion of Stalin’s megalomania. On this see Maksimenkov, “Kul’t,” 31–33.
68. For Stalin’s comments on the screenplay of Dovzhenko’s Shchors and a Dovzhenko letter to Stalin see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 164.
69. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 166, l. 142. “Fil’m Pervaia Konnaia, Stsenarii Vs. Vish-nevskogo, variant dlia rezhiserskogo tsenariia, V. Vishnevskogo, E. Dzigan. 1939.” Title of file: “Kinostsenarii ‘Pervaia Konnaia.’ Stsenarii kinokartiny Vishnevskogo V ‘Pervaia Konnaia’ s pravkami Stalina I. V. (poslednii variant).”
70. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 163, ll. 1–2ob., 94. “Stsenarii kinokartiny Kaplera A. i T. ‘Lenin v 1918 godu’ (‘Pokushenie na Lenina’) s rezoliutsiei i zamechaniiami Stalina I. V.” According to a note on the screenplay, he watched the movie on 18 January (year?) between 3:00 and 5:15 A.M., testifying to his well-known habit of watching movies in the Kremlin late at night. His handwritten remarks were typed out.
71. Oleg V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze, trans. David J. Nordlander, ed. Donald Raleigh (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 110. The book was Mamia Orakhelashvili’s Sergo Ordzhonikidze: Biograficheskii ocherk.
72. For examples see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30–31, 113, 195–197.
73. RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 256, l. 48. Dated 7 December 1932.
74. See Zholkovsky, “The Obverse of Stalinism: Akhmatova’s Self-Serving Charisma of Selflessness,” in Self and Story in Russian History, ed. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, 46–68); Irene Masing-Delic, “Purges and Patronage: Gor’kii’s Promotion of Socialist Culture,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. Heller and Plamper, 443–468; on Gerasimov: Tat’iana Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo”: Vospominaniia, vol. 2: Za fasadom proletarskogo iskusstva (Moscow: Olimpiia Press, 2003), 12.
75. A description of Stalin’s visit is in RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 38, l. 37 (the 1928 date for this episode is from an autobiographical vignette in RGALI, f. 2368, op. 1, d. 4, l. 2). Katsman recounted the same visit at much greater length and more formulaically in 1949. See RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, ll. 6–8. For the founding documents and theoretical treatises of the various modernist and realist groups see I. Matsa et al., eds., Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let: Materialy i dokumentatsiia (Moscow: OGIZ-IZOGIZ, 1933); Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen, Zwischen Revolutionskunst und sozialistischem Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion zwischen 1917 und 1934 (Cologne: DuMont, 1979).
76. On the Peredvizhniki see Elizabeth Valkenier, Russian Realist Art: The State and Society. The Peredvizhniki and Their Tradition (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977); Valkenier, Ilya Repin and the World of Russian Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Valkenier, The Wanderers: Masters of 19th-century Painting: An Exhibition from the Soviet Union (Fort Worth: Dallas Museum of Art, 1990).
77. In his 1969 obituary for Voroshilov, Katsman recounted how he had come to share the Kremlin studio: “The daughter of the famous critic V. V. Stasov, who was responsible for the management of the Kremlin, got me a studio at the Kremlin with Voroshilov’s agreement, where I worked for fifteen years and produced many portraits of Lenin’s comrades-in-arms [In 1969, in the wake of de-Stalinization, Katsman could no longer mention Stalin and had to resort to the code word ‘Lenin’s comrades-in-arms’]. Voroshilov personally made a list of the comrades I portrayed. Together with me worked Unshlikht’s wife S. A. and Pavel Radimov. Voroshilov allowed Radimov and me to come to his office without ringing the bell.” RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 33, l. 8. I. S. Unshlikht’s wife was an artist (see Tat’iana Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo”: Vospominaniia, vol. 1: Zabytye imena [Moscow: Olimpiia Press, 2003], 32). In an earlier (1949) version, Katsman did not mention Unshlikht or his wife, likely because the former was repressed as a Pole in fall 1937 and therefore became persona non grata for the remainder of the Stalin era. See RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 36, l. 6. According to Tat’iana Khvostenko Unshlikht was shot in 1938 (see Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 2, 12). According to Robert Conquest he was arrested in late 1937 (see Conquest, The Great Terror, 244). Hard to believe, but the abstract painter David Shterenberg, founding chairman of the Society of Easel Painters (1924–1932), purportedly shared the same studio with Katsman and Radimov. See Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 1, 28.
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 managed 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. Wheatcroft (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.
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 difficulties 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.
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.
3. This and the following are based on G. A. Iankovskaia, Iskusstvo, den’gi i politika: Khudozhnik v gody pozdnego stalinizma (Perm’: Perm’skii gosudartvennyi universitet, 2007); Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Bown, Art under Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Bown, “Aleksandr Gerasimov,” in Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992, ed. Bown and Brandon Taylor (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 121–139; Mariia Chegodaeva, Dva lika vremeni (1939: Odin god stal-inskoi epokhi) (Moscow: Agraf, 2001); Brandon Taylor, “On AKhRR,” in Art of the Soviets, ed. Bown and Taylor, 51–72; V. S. Manin, Iskusstvo v rezervatsii: Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Rossii 1917-1941gg. (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999); T. M. Goriaeva et al., eds., Instituty upravleniia kul’turoi v period stanovleniia: 1917–1930-e gg. Partiinoe rukovodstvo; gosudarstvennye organy upravleniia; Skhemy (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004); Vern G. Swanson, Soviet Impressionism (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2001).
4. See Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 56–59.
5. These private collectors also bought artwork left in the studios of deceased artists, whose families were at a loss as to where to store this art since the studios reverted to the state. See M. P. Lazarev, “‘Garmoniia i algebra’” (unpublished typescript, commissioned by L. S. Shishkin, Moscow art gallerist), 10. The artist Fridrikh Lekht called the Old Bolshevik Sergei Mitskevich a “Soviet metsenat” of the 1920s. See Tat’iana Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo”: Vospominaniia, vol. 2: Za fasadom proletarskogo iskusstva (Moscow: Olimpiia Press, 2003), 61. To get an inkling of the astonishing dimensions private collecting assumed in post-Stalin Russia see the Museum of Private Collections (Muzei lichnykh kollektsii), a part of Moscow’s Pushkin Fine Arts Museum.
6. Diary entry (17 March 1925), quoted in Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 2, 71.
7. Grigoriev, like Radimov a graduate of the influential prerevolutionary Kazan art school, in the early 1920s had worked in the Soviet museum administration under Trotsky’s wife. He was purged during the Terror and mention of him disappeared from accounts of the trip to Repin. See Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 72, 82, 202.
8. Thus in 1919 Aleksandr Gerasimov contributed a Lenin portrait and Katsman a portrait of Marx to the 1 May celebrations on Moscow’s Red Square. See Katsman’s diary account, retold in Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 2, 66.
9. For examples of these late paintings see Ingrid Brugger and Joseph Kiblitsky, eds., Kasimir Malewitsch (Bad Breisig: Palace Editions, 2001). It should be mentioned that dating Malevich’s paintings is tricky, because he was notorious for backdating.
10. See Khvostenko, Vechera na Maslovke bliz “Dinamo,” vol. 2, 156–162.
11. To delve into a little more detail, the first phase of the First Five-Year Plan was characterized by a renewed revolutionary zealousness that engulfed the visual arts, too. A new modernist association named Oktiabr’ (October) was founded in 1928. Several events in art institution-building foreshadowed unification and centralization in 1932: the Federation of Organizations of Soviet Artists was founded on 18 June 1930 and in May 1931 came the creation of the Russian Association of Proletarian Artists, which drew on the leftist nucleus of Oktiabr’, AKhR, and others. In other words, unification in 1932 was the culmination of a process initiated some three to four years earlier. On this see also John Barber, “The Establishment of Intellectual Orthodoxy in the U.S.S.R., 1928–1934,” Past and Present, no. 83 (1979): 141–164.
12. Narkompros was subordinate to the Council of People’s Commissars, Sovnarkom, renamed Sovmin, Council of Ministers in March 1946.
13. GlavIskusstvo is not to be confused with the much smaller successor to Izo Narkompros, Glaviskusstvo, which was founded in early 1921 and which was subordinate to Glavnauka within Narkompros.
14. Apart from the various Narkompros organizations and their successor, the Committee for Arts Affairs, there was another disbursor of “soft benefits” such as vacations and other leisuretime outlets for tired artists: the Union of Art Workers (RABIS, Profsoiuz Rabotnikov Iskusstv). Besides vacation resorts, it ran the Central House of Art Workers.
15. For an Iskusstvo letter to Kaganovich’s secretariat, asking, on behalf of the painter Anatolii Iar-Kravchenko, for “at least temporary usage of the newest photographs in your possession and approved by Comrade Kaganovich,” see RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, l. 89. Dated 22 August 1937. For a letter by IZOGIZ’s deputy editor to “Boris Zakharovich” (Shumiatsky? Head of the Soviet film industry), asking that two editors get access to documentary film and be allowed to “watch the movies in which Comrade Stalin took part” from 1934 to 1936 for “a unique album, ‘Stalin,’” see RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 97, l. 46.
16. In June 1938 the publishing house Selkhozgiz, which had published Aleksandr Gerasimov’s portrait of the botanist Ivan Michurin, transferred its expired rights to the portrait to the publisher Iskusstvo. For his agreement to this transfer Iskusstvo wired money to Gerasimov’s bank account. For the correspondence, see RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, ll. 21–24.
17. See above, p. 30, and Chapter 2, note 6.
18. Sovetskoe iskusstvo was targeted at visual artists and theater people. Writers and cinema artists had their own newspapers. Sovetskoe iskusstvo succeeded the newspaper Rabochii i iskusstvo and was published from 1931 until June 1953, when it was followed by the newspaper Sovetskaia kul’tura. During World War II between January 1942 and 1944 Sovetskoe iskusstvo temporarily merged with Literaturnaia gazeta and was called Literatura i iskusstvo.
19. Iskusstvo did not appear between 1942 and 1946 while publication of Tvorchestvo was suspended between July 1941 and December 1945, and from 1948 to 1956.
20. On amateur painters see S. Iu. Rumiantsev and A. P. Shul’pin, eds., Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii, 1930–1950gg., vol. 1 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi institut iskusstvoznaniia, 1995).
21. “Of the AKhRR membership,” writes Bown, “Fedor Bogorodski was the best-known chekist, although how active he was in this field in the 1920s is hard to tell.” Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 76.
22. Witness, for example, the case of N. I. Mikhailov, whose sketch of Kirov’s funeral had a few stains that created the impression of a “ghost or skeleton, seemingly grabbing Comrade Stalin.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, ll. 123. Mikhailov’s letter to Voroshilov is dated 28 January 1935 and was not signed because of his arrest by the NKVD during the night of 25–26 January, as a note by his wife and parents explained.
23. “Nakanune iubileinoi vystavki ‘Khudozhniki RSFSR za piatnadtsat’ let,’” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 21 (8 May 1933): 1.
24. Ibid., no. 24 (27 May 1933): 4.
25. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, ll. 15–16, 67.
26. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, l. 50.
27. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, l. 72.
28. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, l. 25.
29. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, l. 1.
30. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 112, l. 2.
31. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 2, d. 6, 1. 3. Ekaterina Degot’ has argued that the original socialist painting was but a template for technical reproduction. Traditional realist painterly qualities—in fact, technical craftsmanship—were reduced to the capability of creating a perfect template. Consequently reproductions acquired greater aura than originals. See her “Sichtbarkeit des Unsichtbaren: Die transmediale Utopie der russischen Avantgarde und des sozialistischen Realismus,” in Musen der Macht: Medien in der sowjetischen Kultur der zoer und 30er Jahre, ed. Jurij Murašov and Georg Witte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003), 145–147. Yet at the same time official culture elaborately staged the authenticity of the original. Consider the following Pravda article: “The Narkompros USSR Museum Department bought in Kharkov from the widow of the artist Kozlov a drawing of Lenin, which had been unknown so far. The artist Kozlov made his pastel drawing at the Kremlin in Moscow on 29 May 1921. It shows Vladimir Ilyich listening to the Italian deputy Lazzari’s comments. Vladimir Ilyich’s autograph is on the drawing: ‘V. I. Ulianov (Lenin).’” Pravda, 19 December 1935, 6.
32. RGALI, f. 2020, op. 2, d. 6, l. 4.
33. “Industry of Socialism” has been dubbed “arguably the most important artistic event of the 1930s, both in defining the stylistic and iconographie parameters of socialist realism at a particular historical moment, and in implementing, on an unprecedented scale, the planned production of art under state patronage, in line with the centralized control of industry and agriculture.” Susan E. Reid, “Socialist Realism in the Stalinist Terror: The Industry of Socialism Art Exhibition, 1935–41,” Russian Review 60, no. 2 (April 2001): 153.
34. Nevertheless, as late as 1944 competitions for leader portraits still seem to have been an occasional part of the repertoire of Soviet art politics. Early that year the Moscow Artists’ Union was reprimanded for not following through on its decision to start a competition for a Stalin portrait (the decision “remained on paper only,” as the stenographic record critically noted). RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 427, l. 3.
35. A. Gushchin, “Lenin i Stalin v narodnom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve,” Iskusstvo 7, no. 3 (May–June 1939): 76.
36. Susan Reid writes that “MOSSKh announced a competition in November 1938 for commissions for work dedicated to the image of Lenin and Stalin (RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 227, l. 11).” See Reid, “Socialist Realism in the Stalinist Terror,” 168 n. 63. There is a slight chance that this competition was connected with the 1939 exhibition.
37. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 992, ll. 16, 21.
38. In fact, the deadline of Stalin’s birthday was so pressing that the organizers asked the trade union to which the scholarly personnel and the various workers who equipped the rooms belonged to agree to extend the eight-hour workday. See OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 88.
39. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 992, ll. 5, 29.
40. “It needs to be pointed out as a gratifying fact that different artistic institutions are competing for the right to run this exhibition.” OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 5ob.
41. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993,l. 7.
42. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 8.
43. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 21–21ob. Stenographic record of the “meeting for the preparation of the exhibition” of 7 October 1939.
44. It bears noting that artwork from the periphery was always judged in the center, if an exhibition took place in Moscow. In the exhibition “Achievements of Soviet Realist Art,” for example, the chairman of the Moscow jury, Boris Ioganson, explained that “in Leningrad, in Kiev, in Minsk, in Kharkov, in Tbilisi, in Baku, in Tashkent, in Erevan and other places assisting commissions have been formed, that is commissions that select the best artwork on location according to their judgment and send it to Moscow for final discussion and selection by our jury here.” The judging then proceeded by majority vote (with the painter, if present in the jury, abstaining from voting). Thus Vasily Efanov’s Girl with a Jug was accepted with twenty-two favorable votes and one negative vote. OR GTG, f. 18, d. 183, ll. 3, 8. Stenographic record dated 1 October 1940.
45. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 8. About Central Asia the same functionary, Veimark, said: “The art in the Central Asian Republics is more random. So far we do not see the kind of great activity as in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, where artists were mobilized for Stalin themes. . . . In Turkmenia we have the portrait carpet. . . . In Kazakhstan and Kirgiziia we also have something: Kazakh tapestries with portraits. . . . In Tadzhikistan we have murals. . . . In Buriat-Mongolia, I believe, there should also be something fitting. . . . I think that we could thus get a minimum of 100 pieces of artwork out of the national republics for this exhibition, even if we select rigorously.” OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, ll. 11–12.
46. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 3.
47. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 115.
48. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 22ob.
49. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 23.
50. See, for example, the Leningrad artist Vladimir Kuznetsov’s letter in OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 62.
51. See the protocols of the jury in OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, ll. 89–92, 94–99, 105–107, 142–152.
52. For telegrams of individual artists or local artist unions saying that their contributions were going to be late see OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, ll. 119–122.
53. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 59. Letter dated 4 November 1939. Voroshilov gave his agreement on 14 November.
54. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 25.
55. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 26.
56. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, ll. 28ob.–29.
57. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 26ob.
58. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, l. 28.
59. On the Georgian exhibition and Beria’s involvement see Judith Devlin, “Beria and the Development of the Stalin Cult,” in Stalin: His Time and Ours, ed. Geoffrey Roberts (N.p.: Irish Association for Russian and East European Studies, 2005), 25–46.
60. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 763. l. 3.
61. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 993, ll. 191–192.
62. In 1938–1939, for example, a “mobile exhibition Lenin-Stalin in the Fine Arts,” consisting mostly of reproductions and plaster casts of existing artwork, was prepared by the Tretyakov Gallery for travel through the Soviet Union. See OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 888. In 1949, the Irkutsk art museum organized an exhibition entitled “Stalin and the Stalin Era in Works of Art.” The exhibition showed artwork from the museum’s collection, especially paintings focusing on Stalin’s experience of Siberian exile, and several masterpieces acquired from Moscow painters; however, there were also painted copies of famous paintings. See the catalogue, Vystavka: Stalin i Stalinskaia epokha v proizvedeniiakh izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva (Irkutsk: Izdanie Irkutskogo oblastnogo khudozhestvennogo muzeia, 1949). In Kursk an exhibition of Stalin art from all over the Soviet Union (“Stalin and the Stalin Epoch in the Works of Soviet Graphic Artists”) opened shortly after Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. See Pravda, 22 January 1940, 6.
63. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, l. 203.
64. At a discussion in the organizing committee about how to increase the recently opened “Industry of Socialism”‘s attractiveness to visitors, one participant suggested that “Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin should find time to visit the exhibition. Will his judgment not be a stimulus for the toiling masses to visit this exhibition? The visit of Comrade Stalin and the Politburo members will be our greatest reward, this is what we ought to strive for and then there will be no more obstruction, the artwork will be evaluated properly, and we will occupy an appropriate place.” OR GTG, f. 18, d. 136, ll. 28–29. Stenographic record dated 14 April 1939.
65. OR GTG, f. 8.II, d. 994, ll. 211–214. Quote on l. 212.
66. See M. P. Lazarev, “Problemy tsenoobrazovaniia na proizvedeniia izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva v SSSR: Popytka analiza” (unpublished typescript, commissioned by L. S. Shishkin, Moscow art gallerist), 3.
67. Some commissions were produced directly for the Art Fund, which then could take paintings out of storage for sale or exhibition.
68. Lazarev, “Problemy tsenoobrazovaniia,” 14.
69. Lazarev, “‘Garmoniia i algebra,’” 22. Dugladze continued, “But I have to say that there were also honoraria of five thousand rubles, which they paid for a small landscape painting. This is how much prices differed!”
70. Lazarev, “Problemy tsenoobrazovaniia,” 16.
71. Lazarev, “‘Garmoniia i algebra,’” 31.
72. Lazarev, “Problemy tsenoobrazovaniia,” 18; Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art in the Stalinist Era,” 788.
73. For an example of a painter being paid directly by the publisher, consider S. V. Gerasimov, who received 5 percent of the rated value (nominal) of an album of wall paintings, in which his painting V. I. Lenin at the Second Congress of Soviets was included. See RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, l. 14. On the Bureau for the Protection of Authors’ Rights, see RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 11.
74. As the Leningrad artist G. Vereisky in October 1937 wrote to his Moscow publisher Iskusstvo from Sukhumi, the subtropical Black Sea port, “I am very interested to find out when I can get the money Iskusstvo owes me for prints of my portraits.” He continued, stressing the hope he placed in the personal influence of his addressee, one Tamara Mikhailovna, “I write to you with the earnest request that you push this matter; without this the publisher does not hurry to pay back its debts (I speak from experience).” RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, ll. 26–26ob.
75. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 3. Dated 15 July 1938.
76. See the akty and protokoly of the commissions in charge of retouched Stalin portraits by Gerasimov in 1938 in RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, ll. 14–15, 17.
77. It also reflects a more general ambivalence toward the photograph in Stalinist Russia, whose claim to authenticity was exploited while its power to produce less filtered representations was feared. On this, see Leah Dickerman, “Camera Obscura: Socialist Realism in the Shadow of Photography,” October, no. 93 (2000): 139–153.
78. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 97, l. 10. N.d., but file from 1940.
79. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 144, l. 103. Dated 9 March 1938.
80. RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 147, l. 28. Dated 13 May 1938.
81. See, for example, RGALI, f. 652, op. 8, d. 157, l. 47.
82. See Jan Plamper, “Abolishing Ambiguity: Soviet Censorship Practices in the 1930s,” Russian Review 60, no. 4 (2001): 531.
83. 1938 art soviet protocols of the “MOSSKh manufacturing bureau” (no place given) of the Art Fund “sculpture department” commented, for example, on a “composition Stalin with a Child by G. Lavrov, plaster, 2.5 meters in height, for reproduction”: “Suggest working on the portrait likeness of J. V. Stalin’s head. Find the right proportions of J. V. Stalin’s hands and head, of the girl’s head relative to J. V. Stalin’s head.” RGALI, f. 2942, op. 2, d. 2, l. 14 (dated 29 August 1938). In 1940 we learn of a sculpture factory in Mytishchi in Moscow oblast, which offered fifty-seven ready sculptures ranging in subject from Chernyshevsky to Henri Barbusse to Stalin to a Pioneer with a drum to a little bear, priced from ten rubles to three thousand rubles (the Stalin statue cost two thousand rubles). See RGALI, f. 2942, op. 2, d. 12, ll. 47–48.
84. Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 22 (11 May 1935): 4.
85. Ibid., no. 48 (17 October 1937): 6.
86. This was the Mytishchi sculpture factory. See RGALI, f. 2942, op. 2, d. 12, l. 87.
87. In the early 1980s, this factory merged with the Russian Visual Propaganda (Rosizopropaganda, located on Petrovka 28, Moscow) organization and was known as the Vuchetich All-Union Artistic-Manufacturing Association (Vsesoiuznoe Khudozhestvenno-Proizvodstvennoe Ob”edinenie im. Vucheticha). Today it is still on Profsoiuznaia 76, Moscow, and is still abbreviated VKhPO, even if it has turned into a corporate business and its acronym is now deciphered as All-Russian Artistic Manufacturing Association (Vserossiiskoe Khudozhestvenno-Proizvodstvennoe Ob”edinenie im. Vucheticha).
88. For one such case see RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, l. 63.
89. See a Glavizo Komitet letter in RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, l. 2.
90. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, ll. 46–46ob.
91. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, l. 7. The meeting was on 8 February 1949. Also consider a 22 February 1949 meeting, at which 302 sketches of paintings submitted for a competition (leading up to Stalin’s seventieth birthday exhibition?) were judged anonymously. Of these, 43 were accepted and 259 turned down. Of the 43 accepted, one got a first prize, two a second prize, three a third prize, and four a fourth prize. Thirty-three were ordered to be turned in as finished paintings. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, ll. 11–18ob. A typical interior visual factory inventory for the year of 1949 listed artists alphabetically, with number and date of contract, the sum paid according to contract, and, interestingly, a fee for “social insurance and production costs” (sotsstrakh, proizvodstvennye raskhody), which, in the case of artist F. V. Antonov amounted to 1,296.74 rubles of a total of 13,026.69 rubles (9.96 percent). RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 67, l. 32.
92. Author’s interview with Vladilen Aleksandrovich Shabelnikov, A. M. Gerasimov’s son-in-law, Moscow, 28 April 2000.
93. At least in the case of the Moscow Painting-Sculpture Factory’s art soviet and the Moscow Artists’ Association, the governing board of the association seems to have been superior to the art soviet. In one case the art soviet wrote to the governing board asking that it approve its stenographic protocol so that it could act upon the protocol and definitively draw up contracts for those paintings that had been approved and turn down those that had been rejected. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 18, l. 5.
94. The art soviet, however, declined to criticize the sketch in depth and demanded that the artist first produce more elaborate sketches. Apparently the larger issue was whether the art soviet would recommend funding by the association for a future painting. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 29–30.
95. If absent, the artist was expected to read the stenographic record of the discussion. When the art soviet discussed, for example, A. S. Stavrovsky’s painting Harvesting the Grain on 29 August 1949, the chairperson asked: “But how are we going to speak in the absence of the painter?” One art soviet member answered: “What do we need the painter for? If there are going to be suggestions for change, he will look at the stenogram.” RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 47. Likewise, in order to refresh their memory, artists could reread the stenogram. At least they were told to do so if their resubmissions failed to show the changes recommended at the relevant session of the art soviet. See, for example, RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 183: “The remarks at the last art soviet were correct and the painter should carefully read the stenogram.”
96. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 166.
97. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 63.
98. It is also possible that Yerushev’s painting was planned long before the 1946 release of the film, The Oath, and that he had the misfortune of now, after the appearance of the film, being held to the images canonized by the film. The art soviet in fact reproached Yerushev for failing to appreciate the canonical moment of The Oath: the transfer of legitimacy from one leader to another. A pivotal moment did not receive its proper treatment by the artist—perhaps quite simply (and unfortunately for Yerushev) because of bad timing.
99. It was precisely through implementation that socialist realism was actually fleshed out, as Erika Wolf has argued: “Socialist Realism took shape only through the development of a working practice and this required a period of adaptation and experimentation.” Wolf, “USSR in Construction: From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realist Practice” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1999), 271–272. Studies of socialist realism in the visual arts (in addition to those previously cited) include Antoine Baudin, Le réalisme socialiste soviétique de la période jdanovienne (1947–1953): Les arts plastiques et leurs institutions, vol. 1 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997); Baudin and Leonid Heller, Le réalisme socialiste soviétique de la période jdanovienne (1947–1953): Usages à l’intérieur, image à exporter, vol. 2 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998); Mariia Chegodaeva, Sotsrealizm: Mify i real’nost’ (Moscow: Zakharov, 2003); Thomas Christ, Der Sozialistische Realismus: Betrachtungen zum Sozialistischen Realismus in der Sowjetzeit (Basel: Wiese Verlag, 1999); Ekaterina Degot’, Terroristicheskii naturalizm (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1998); Degot’, Russkoe iskusstvo XX veka (Moscow: Trilistnik, 2000); Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People’s Republic of China (New York: IconEditions, 1990); Jørn Guldberg, “Socialist Realism as Institutional Practice: Observations on the Interpretation of the Works of Art of the Stalin Period,” in The Culture of the Stalin Period, ed. Hans Günther (London: St. Martin’s, 1990), 149–177; Aleksandr Morozov, Konets utopii: Iz istorii iskusstva v SSSR 1930-kh godov (Moscow: Galart, 1995); Morozov, Sotsrealizm i realizm (Moscow: Galart, 2007); Mif i real’nost’: Kul’tura i iskusstvo strany Sovetov (1920–1950-e gody): Nauchnaia konferentsiia. Materialy i issledovaniia (Kirov: Promizdat, 2002). For further titles see the review article by Oliver Johnson, “Alternative Histories of Soviet Visual Culture,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11, no. 3 (2010): 581–608.
100. Katerina Clark has characterized High Stalinist culture as neo-Platonist: empirical knowledge is no longer telling, inner truths count more than outward appearances. See her The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 141.
101. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 54ob.–57ob.
102. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, ll. 62–65.
103. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 57ob.–58.
104. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 20, l. 98.
105. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 20, ll. 125–126.
106. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 22, l. 84.
107. Interview with Shabelnikov, Moscow, 28 April 2000.
108. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 65.
109. The exigency here probably was the demand of the Kalinin Museum to single out four delegates and to display them prominently in the form of portraits en miniature. In other words, local heroes were to be emphasized, whereas the art soviet recommended a group portrait. See RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, ll. 65–66.
110. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, ll. 121–122.
111. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 22, l. 287.
112. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 22, l. 179.
113. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 123.
114. RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 6. In the same painting, the books on Lenin’s table were criticized by Fedor Shurpin, who “associated [them] with religious books.” RGALI, f. 2470, op. 2, d. 21, l. 7.
115. For an introduction to Western Marxist and Soviet art criticism see Margaret A. Rose, Marx’s Lost Aesthetic: Karl Marx and the Visual Arts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). On the beginnings of art criticism in Russia also see Andrei Makhrov, “The Pioneers of Russian Art Criticism: Between State and Public Opinion, 1804–1855,” Slavonic and East European Review 81, no. 4 (2003): 614–633.
116. For an alternative view that landscape painting constituted a central genre in Stalinist art, that “the depiction of nature was a major preoccupation of Socialist Realism,” see Mark Bassin, “‘I Object to Rain that Is Cheerless’: Landscape Art and the Stalinist Aesthetic Imagination,” Ecumene 7, no. 3 (2000): 313.
117. Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 101.
118. Ibid.
119. On the shift from Sergei Eisenstein ‘s and Dziga Vertov’s tipazhnost’ to lichnost’ and Liubov Orlova’s star cult, see Oksana Bulgakowa, “Der erste sowjetische Filmstar,” in Personality Cults in Stalinism—Personenkulte im Stalinismus, ed. Klaus Heller and Jan Plamper (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht unipress, 2004), 365–389.
120. RGALI, f. 2368, op. 2, d. 38, ll. 11–12.
121. See K. Sitnik, “O populiarnoi monografii,” Iskusstvo, no. 1 (1947), 78–80.
122. Pictures that did not fit into this taxonomy often ended up in the storage rooms of the Art Fund as nelikvidy. See Lazarev, “‘Garmoniia i algebra,’” 17.
123. Particularly after the postwar resurrection of the Academy of Arts, many painters and sculptors produced both a work of art and a written comment on their work—a “dissertation.” Together, these two elements bestowed upon the artist the Russian equivalent of a Ph.D. in art history, kandidat iskusstvovedeniia.
124. A. V. Protopopov, “I. V. Stalin (skul’ptura)” (avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata iskusstvovedeniia, Akademiia khudozhestv SSSR, Institut zhivopisi, skul’ptury i arkhitektury im. I. E. Repina, Leningrad, 1953), 6–7.
125. V. L. Rybalko, “I. V. Stalin v molodye gody (skul’ptura)” (avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata iskusstvovedeniia, Akademiia khudozhestv SSSR, Institut zhivopisi, skul’ptury i arkhitektury im. I. E. Repina, Leningrad, 1950), 6.
126. Unidentified author, Avtoreferat dissertatsii Instituta im. I. E. Repina, Akademii Khudozhestv SSSR, Leningrad, 1 June 1950, 5.
127. V. G. Val’tsev, “I. V. Stalin sredi rybakov Eniseia (zhivopis’)” (avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata iskusstvovedeniia, Akademiia khudozhestv SSSR, Institut zhivopisi, skul’ptury i arkhitektury im. I. E. Repina, Leningrad, 1953), 7.
128. “Prazdnik sotsialisticheskoi kul’tury,” Iskusstvo, no. 2 (1941): 6.
129. On the nineteenth-century roots of socialist realism see Irina Gutkin, The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic, 1890–1934 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999).
130. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 295, l. 23. The letter to Stetsky is dated 1 April 1933, the copy to Voroshilov used here has a date of 2 April 1933. Photography was a constant point of reference in this art criticism. Also in 1933, one critic wrote: “The photographic naturalism (naturalistichnost’) of some portraits at the exhibition probably does not need to be emphasized. It would be ridiculous to take away from artists an auxiliary tool as powerful as photography, which nowadays almost all of the Western European masters use. Photography undoubtedly has more advantages over quick, impressionistic sketches from life, but the artist must turn the photograph into a true work of art, not a poor copy of the photograph.” See Sergei Romov, “Krasnaia armiia v zhivopisi: Iubileinaia vystavka 15 let RKKA,’” Iskusstvo, no. 4 (1933): 27.
131. Romov, “Krasnaia armiia v zhivopisi,’” 25–26.
132. S. Razumovskaia, “Sergei Gerasimov,” Iskusstvo, no. 2 (1934): 65. A reproduction of Sergei Gerasimov’s 1932 oil painting Stalin among the Cadets is on p. 60.
133. Ibid., no. 53 (17 November 1935): 4.
134. L. Gutman, “O portretakh vozhdei,” Iskusstvo, no. 1 (1935): 5.
135. In Gutman’s words: “Through the generalization and synthesis of reality—extracting the content of depicted images from the real world—the artist creates portraits that are also convincing with regard to their form; and in the development of the portrait genre there already emerges a bounded, vital, and dialectical unity of form and content that cannot be reached in any other way.” Ibid., 10.
136. Ibid.
137. Ibid., 11.
138. See Mark Neiman, “Novye portrety tovarishcha Stalina,” Iskusstvo, no. 6 (1937): 61. As also manifest in this 1937 article, once narratives of Stalin’s life appeared in print after the mid-1930s, they became a second important source (apart from visual iconography) on which art criticism drew in analyzing a Stalin portrait’s “intertextuality.” At the Tretyakov’s Georgian exhibition (1937–1938), the pictorial representation of Stalin’s childhood and his later activities in the Caucasus was clearly based on such verbal accounts as Henri Barbusse’s Stalin biography (which had appeared in Russian in early 1936) and Lavrenty Beria’s memoirs. See the article on the exhibition by Evg. Kriger, “Istoriia, voploshchennaia v zhivopisi,” ibid., no. 1 (1938): 3–20.
139. OR GTG, f. 18, d. 173, ll. 86–87. “Rukopis’ F. S. Mal’tseva: Individual’nyi portret i tipicheskii obraz v sovetskom iskusstve” (1940).
140. B. Keller, “Skul’ptura na vystavke,” Iskusstvo, no. 2 (1941): 45–47.
141. Osip Beskin, “O kartine, naturalizme i realizme (v sviazi s rabotami Leningradskikh molodykh khudozhnikov),” ibid., no. 4 (1939): 12.
142. The term signified the established representations of a person (rarely an object). For a use of the term with respect to someone other than Stalin see e.g. I. S. Rabinovich, “Kist’iu druzei i vragov: Khudozhestvennaia ikonografiia Marksa,” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, no. 13 (14 March 1933): 1.
143. Consider the example of Brodsky, who refused to do a commissioned group portrait after the start of the Great Terror in 1937: “I will paint the painting and then one of the persons turns out to be an enemy of the people, and again they will prohibit the painting! I won’t do this painting.” M Br, “Vospominaniia syna I. I. Brodskogo, E. I. Brodskogo,” 25. Or consider the example of Gerasimov, who was painting a group portrait of political leaders in 1937. As this was the height of the Great Terror, he kept receiving calls from the Party’s Central Committee, announcing that “unfortunately, Comrade X also turned out to be an enemy of the people.” At first Gerasimov painted over individual figures, adding a palm leaf or a column here and there. When the number of “enemies of the people” became unmanageable Gerasimov simply covered the entire picture with lilacs, lest he be accused of making propaganda for the condemned enemies of the Soviet Union. Interviews with Shabelnikov, Moscow, 28 April and 10 May 2000.
144. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, ll. 181–181ob. Denisov’s letter is dated 11 May 1955.
145. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, l. 180. Lepeshinskaia’s letter is dated 3 June 1954.
146. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, l. 180. Dated 7 April 1955.
147. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, l. 181.
148. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, l. 181ob. The term trafaretchik (from trafaret, stencil) was taken from the reproduction of Soviet posters. Beginning in the early 1920s the press agency ROSTA sent stencils to provincial ROSTA outlets, which artists painted or airbrushed one after another onto paper stock until a “ROSTA Window”—a multicolored poster with a schematic touch—emerged. For an illustration of this process, see Klaus Waschik and Nina Baburina, Werben für die Utopie: Russische Plakatkunst des 20. Jahrhunderts (Bietigheim-Bissingen: edition tertium, 2003), 202. For an illustration of the related technique of copying and magnifying visual art using numbered squares, in this case a 1927 Lenin poster, see Svetlana Malysheva, Sovetskaia prazdnichnaia kul’tura v provintsii: Prostranstvo, simvoly, istoricheskie mify (1917–1927) (Kazan: Ruten, 2005), 322.
149. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, l. 178. In this Central Committee note Denisov is identified as a khudozhnik-kopiist, “born in 1890, Party member since 1907, without higher education, has been working at the Moscow division of the Khudozhestvennyi Fond since 1946.”
150. RGANI, f. 5, op. 33, d. 27, ll. 183–184. Letter dated 28 October 1957.
151. RGANI, f. 5, op. 17, d. 543, ll. 186–187ob).
152. Interview with Professor Yuri Romakov, program Namedni on NTV, 21 December 1999.
153. See Pravda, 14 November 1935, 2.
154. Her letter was dated 9 December 1934 and was inspired by Kirov’s murder on 1 December: “The death of Comrade Kirov has led me to a thought that I want to share with you. The problem is that Comrade Kirov’s death mask does not give a full impression of the living Comrade Kirov. Unfortunately, this problem cannot be rectified in the case of Comrade Kirov. But we have many other dear and beloved leaders, whose image we would like to preserve for posterity exactly the way it is.” RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 179. Pravda repeatedly showed plaster death masks of Party leaders, such as that of Ordzhonikidze (done by Merkurov). See Pravda, 21 February 1937, 2.
155. RGASPI, f. 74, op. 1, d. 292, l. 180. Voroshilov’s remark is dated 5 January 1935.