Soviet Culture

VOICES OF OCTOBER--Art and Literature in Soviet Russia--Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, Louis Lozowick--Vanguard ($4). A glance at the bibliography of 67 books appended to this volume will indicate how much was needed a presentation of Russia's esthetic program since the tumultuous October days of 1917. Only five there listed are exclusively concerned with post-revolution art and literature. Admirably organized, edited and articulated, Voices of October offers a graphic panorama of that part of the Soviet plan. With broad strokes is drawn background of each general division of art in Russia. Follows a statement of the health of that art in 1917; then the slow turning of chaos into the art-propaganda which today dominates Russian esthetics. The time is obviously not yet ripe for piercing criticism. Art in Soviet Russia is still strictly utilitarian, avowedly a tool for spreading Communism, educating the proletariat: ". . . every novel, poem and play can justify itself in the eyes of the Russian workers only if its author can demonstrate that it fits into the general cultural aims of the Soviet Union." These aims are fairly well known. Generally, they are: "... to raise the cultural level of the entire population and to create the foundations of a Communist culture, as opposed to Capitalist culture." U. S. readers who think vaguely of Tolstoi and Dostoievski as timelessly typical of Russian literature will be disillusioned by this book. When Tolstoi died in 1910. Lenin wrote that "prerevolutionary Russia, with its lack of energy and strength, expressed in the philosophy of a genuine artist, has receded into the past." Roughly, Dostoievski and Tolstoi are as representative of contemporary Russia as are Nathaniel Parker Willis and James Fenimore Cooper of the U. S. Strange names loom on the Soviet art-frontier. To know Russian esthetics one must be familiar with the work of Theatre Producers Meyerhold, Tairov; Cinema Directors Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Room. Preobrazhenskaya; Poets Yessenin, Maiakovski, Asejev, Blok; Authors Ogniev. Bogdanov, Malashkin; Artists Gabo, Vinogradov, Radimov; and understand the meaning of the Russian symbols, MGSPS. VAPP, NEP, GOSIZDAT (or simply. GIZ), AKHRR, OSA, all of which is clearly set forth in Voices of October. The Authors. No pop-eyed casual visitors to the Soviet Union, Authors Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, Louis Lozowick, stayed in Russia longer than the fortnight customary to most U. S. commentators. Author Freeman, professional journalist, co-author with Scott Nearing of Dollar Diplomacy, was there a year, planning, gathering material; Author Kunitz, instructor of Russian Literature in the College of the City of New York, author of The Jew in Russian Literature, lived there in 1928-29; Author Lozowick, artist- artcritic, writer of many a treatise on Russian art, spends all his time between the U. S. and the U. S. R. R.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.