The Soviet state and the avant-garde

Professor Christina Lodder and writer and curator Konstantin Akinsha explore the complex relationship between the Soviet leadership and the avant-garde art movement in Russia between 1917-32, in a discussion chaired by art historian Theodora Clarke.

Avant-garde artists were some of the first to embrace the Bolshevik cause, with a common interest in “a new art for a new society”. As Anatoly Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, declared in 1918 to composer Sergey Prokofiev, “You are revolutionary in music as we are revolutionary in life”.

Members of the avant-garde took key posts in the new regime and benefited from state resources. However within a few years, the state began to withdraw its support, feeling that abstract art could not advance the communist cause if the masses could not understand it. A more persuasive and recognisable art best suited the party’s requirements. By 1932, the politicised figurative art of Socialist Realism became the dominant style and independent artistic movements vanished.