No sociālistiskā līdz “iekšējam” reālismam: Hruščova “atkušņa” un tā beigu faktors rakstos par mākslu Latvijā (1953-1964)

• Authors: Pelše Stella

Title variants

EN

From Socialist to “Intrinsic” Realism: Khrushchev’s Thaw and Its End as a Factor in Latvian Art Writing (1953-1964)

• Languages of publication: LV

Abstracts

EN

The doctrine of Socialist Realism affected different levels of Latvian art writing during the Soviet occupation. Latvian historians referred to anthropologist Alexei Yurchak’s thesis that Iosif Stalin was the main arbiter deciding what conforms to the Socialist Realist canon. After his death, interpretations multiplied; they had to comply with the idea of building communism, but this compliance turned out to be equally subjective. The aim of this article is to tackle the Thaw period in the evolutionary context of Socialist Realism. Materials were drawn from local newspapers, the magazine “Māksla” (Art) and collections of articles “Latviešu tēlotāja māksla” (Latvian fine art). The beginnings of liberalisation in the understanding of Socialist Realism date back to the early 1950s. The core of arguments, stressing the essence of things instead of “outer” traits, is close to the early 20th century art-theoretical ideas. They rejected academic and realist attitudes in favour of individual visions of nature, allowing to speak about the Neo-Romanticist phase of Socialist Realism. However, this episode was short-lived. By the late 1950s, conservatives in the USSR were scared by the rising interest in Western art. The so-called Manege exhibition (1962), involving Nikita Khrushchev’s confrontation with modernists, launched a crusade against formalism. However, there was no return to the classical model of Socialist Realism, as its criteria slipped into subjective assessments (“inner activity”, “spiritual depth”, “freshness of perception” and the like). The 1970s saw the doctrine’s last, “open” version, integrating the modernised understanding of art into official discourse that ended along with the end of the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1991.

Keywords

EN

socialist realism; Khrushchev’s Thaw; Latvian art; art criticism; aesthetics; modernism; formalism

• Publisher: Institute of Art History of the Latvian Academy of Art and Art History Research Support Foundation
• Journal: Makslas Vesture un Teorija
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 29
• Pages: 73-88

Contributors

author

Pelše Stella

• Art Academy of Latvia Institute of Art History, Kronvalda Blvd 4-325, Riga LV-1010, Latvia