INTRODUCTION TO “STENOGRAM
OF THE GENERAL MEETING
OF THE ARTISTS OF THE UNION
OF SOVIET ARTISTS OF MOLDAVIA
(15 MAY, 1951)”
octaVian es¸anu
The original version of the document presented below is found in the
Archives of Social and Political Organizations of the Republic of
Moldova (the former archives of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Moldavia).1 This archive, located in the govern-
mental central district of Chis¸ina˘u, stores historical records of local
social and political organizations. A considerable number of these doc-
uments are mounted in yellowed cardboard folders, many still bearing
on their covers the cursive words Delo No (in Russian, literally: “Case
Nr.”). All are records, transcripts, and other bureaucratic remnants of
former Soviet trade and creative unions, of the Communist Party and
Youth League (Komsomol), and of many other voluntary political and
cultural associations of a bygone epoch. The document is technically a
stenogram (from the Russian stenogramma)—that is, a precise tran-
scription produced on a stenotype machine. The technique—mainly
encountered in the West in tribunals and court reporting—was exten-
sively used in the former USSR to transcribe, in real time, speeches
and debates at party congresses and various committee, association,
and council meetings.
This stenogram casts some light on the early days of the Union of
1
The offi cial name is Arhiva Organizatiilor Social Politice a Republicii Moldova (hereafter
cited as AOSPRM).
102
© 2014 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
doi:10.1162/ARTM_a_00073
Soviet Artists of Moldavia. As in other Eastern European countries and
republics of the former USSR, this type of organization started to
appear soon after the advance of the Red Army westward, and as in the
case of other former socialist Unions of Artists in the region, the orga-
nization is still active, though under a different name: The Union of
Artists of Moldova.2 Although today its leadership would prefer to see
the Union as a direct successor to the pre-Soviet fine arts organizations
(such as, for instance, the Bessarabian Belle-Arte Society, which was
established in 1921 and dissolved after the Soviet annexation of
Bessarabia in 1940), its institutional structure and its very mode of
operation still resemble those of the Union of Soviet Artists.3 The docu-
ment reprinted in the following pages represents an opportunity to
step back for a better look at an era when a new type of art institution
began to emerge in the countries that had found themselves, after
1945, in the USSR, or even in the larger “socialist bloc.” In most of
these countries, the Union of Artists was a very new type of art institu-
tion created in the image of the Union of Soviet Artists.4
The document, translated from Russian—the lingua franca of all
Soviet bureaucracy and of most republic-level organizations, especially
in the early Stalinist days of the Moldavian SSR—transcribes excerpts
2
3
4
The history of the Union of Soviet Artists of Moldavia begins in 1936 when, on the left
bank of the Dniester River, in what was then called the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic, or MASSR, a special Organizational Committee of the Union of
Soviet Artists of MASSR was established. After the Red Army invaded Bessarabia in
1940 (following the infamous protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), a similar
Committee was formed on the right bank of the Dniester. In 1941, however, many of its
initial fifteen members had been enlisted in the Red Army and were sent to the front. It
was only at the end of World War II, in 1945, that the regional Union of Soviet Artists of
Moldavia was created. It operated under this name until 1957, when it was renamed the
Union of Artists of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), following the forma-
tion of the Union of Soviet Artists of the USSR. After 1989 the regional Union was
renamed again, and today it is known as the Union of Artists of Moldova (Uniunea
Artis¸tilor Plastici din Republica Moldova; plastici here has the same meaning as the
French plastique). Regarding the early formation of the Union of Soviet Artists of
Moldavia, see S. Vakarova, So’uz khudozhnikov Moldavii 1940–1956; Istoricheskaia
spravka, AOSPRM, F. 2906, I. 1, D. 53, ff. 1–37.
See, for instance, Tudor Braga, “Istoric, întroducere,” accessed July 21, 2013,
http://www.arta.md/uap/.
The Union of Soviet Artists traces its history to the infamous 1932 decree of the All-
Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) entitled “On the Reconstruction of the Literary
and Artistic Organizations” [O perestroike literaturno-khudozhestvenykh organizatsii]. The
decree instituted the Soviet creative unions by dissolving previous literary and artistic
associations and groups. For a concise historical account of the Union of Soviet Artists,
see Marilyn Rueschemeyer, Igor Golomshtok, and Janet Kennedy, Soviet Émigré Artists:
Life and Work in the United States and the USSR (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1984), 37–45.
”
g
n
i
t
e
e
m
l
a
r
e
n
e
g
e
h
t
f
o
m
a
r
g
o
n
e
t
s
“
o
t
n
o
i
t
c
u
d
o
r
t
n
i
|
u
n
a
s¸
e
103
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
Sample of a case folder in which documents of the Union of Artists in the Archives
of Social and Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova are stored.
Photo by the author with permission from the Arhiva Organizatiilor Social
Politice a Republicii Moldova (AOSPRM).
from an artist meeting that took place in Kishinev (as the Moldovan
capital was called in those days) on May 15, 1951. It was a meeting of the
pravlenie—that is, of the executive committee of the Union of Soviet
Artists of Moldavia.5 The committee was summoned to discuss an
urgent matter: the annual Republican Exhibition that had been sched-
uled at a plenum in Moscow to take place in the fall of the same year.
Even though, in 1951, the Union of Soviet Artists of Moldavia still
legally maintained regional autonomy, like the other Unions of Artists
operating throughout the USSR, and even though its Statute (ustav)
stipulated that its main governing body was the Republican Congress
of the Union of Artists, its main activities were, for the most part,
directed from Moscow.6 At the time of the meeting, the exhibition
deadline was approaching quickly, and the Moldavian artists did not
have their works ready. In fact, many of them were in a state of great
confusion and uncertainty. Pressure was building. The exhibition
might not be opened in time, or it might not rise to meet Moscow’s
expectations.
Like most texts from the immediate postwar Stalinist period, this
document says less than it would like to, or perhaps only what it is per-
mitted. The stenogram does not stress that the organization of the
exhibition of 1951 (like those of the two previous years) came as an
order from Moscow, and it does not directly state that the exhibition
was expected to attest to the successful transition of Moldavian artists
toward socialism. To organize an exhibition that would prove the social-
5
6
I choose to translate the Russian word pravlenie as “executive committee,” or simply
“committee.” I find that other possible translations, such as “board of directors,” “man-
agement,” “board,” and “administration,” do not properly express the bureaucratic tex-
ture of the Soviet political system in the early 1950s. I will render “committee” (pravlenie)
in lower case, in order to distinguish it from official Committees (which I capitalize), as
in “Committee for Artistic Affairs of the USSR.”
In the USSR, the Unions of Soviet Artists were initially established—at least formally—
as regional, municipal, and republican organizations that were not subordinate to a sin-
gle administrative center. It was only in 1957, with the creation of the Union of Soviet
Artists of the USSR, that they legally came under the single hierarchical authority of the
All-Union Administration of the Union of Soviet Artists. The 1948 Statute (ustav) of the
Union of Soviet Artists of Moldavia, for instance, stipulated that the Union of Artists was
a voluntary social organization that united the creative forces of Moldavian artists, art
historians, and critics. The governing body of this Union was the Republican Congress
of the Union of Artists, and its executive body was the pravlenie—the executive commit-
tee of the Union—which was elected at the congresses of the Union by secret ballot. The
governmental supervising organ was the Directorate for Artistic Affairs (Upravlenie po
delam iskusstv) of the Soviet of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR. See Ustav Soiuza
Sovetskikh khudozhnikov Moldavii 1948, AOSPRM, F. 2906, I. 1, D. 28, ff. 1–7.
”
g
n
i
t
e
e
m
l
a
r
e
n
e
g
e
h
t
f
o
m
a
r
g
o
n
e
t
s
“
o
t
n
o
i
t
c
u
d
o
r
t
n
i
|
u
n
a
s¸
e
105
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
ist transformation of local art, but without nearly enough socialist art-
ists, was not a simple task.7 The exhibition of 1951 had to prove that a
new generation of Moldavian artists, together with the previous genera-
tion, had been educated or re-educated to live and work in a nonbour-
geois society. This previous generation—some of whom had been
trained before the war in Europe, in the spirit of the École de Paris—
were to absolve themselves of the mortal sin of bourgeois aesthetics,
of formalism above all, and of many other -isms that distorted and per-
verted socialist reality. After the war, many artists and art critics were
sent, through the Soviet system of labor allocation, to help establish
new Soviet cultural infrastructure.8 However, these envoys were not yet
familiar with the local contexts, and for Socialist Realism to be truthful
to its own tenets, it had to be the way Stalin proclaimed it: national in
form and socialist in content.
The document published here hints at some of the challenges
encountered by the Moldavian artists of the 1950s in their coming to
terms with the Soviet model of cultural policy. Acceptance of the social-
ist mode of artistic production and of the aesthetics of Socialist
Realism was especially difficult for the generation of artists who had
come to prominence before the war. They had to rid themselves of
bourgeois prejudice, of formalism, leftism, expressionism, impression-
ism, aesthetism (estestvo), naturalism, and Cézannism, to name a few.
These -isms, or their traces, were seen to persist especially when the
painter devoted too much attention to formal concerns, when the
manipulation of paint on the surface of the canvas drew the viewer’s
attention away from the theme and subject matter, causing the depicted
socialist event or hero of labor to dissolve in and behind exuberant
brushstrokes.
When the document suggests that there was little time left before
the opening, we must take it at its word. We should keep in mind that
7
8
The short historical introduction found on the website of the Union of Artists of Moldova
asserts that after the annexation of Bessarabia in 1940 the Soviet authorities registered
154 active artists educated in different European centers, whereas the next registration,
carried out in 1944, revealed only four artists. Braga, “Istoric, întroducere.”
The art critic Matus Livshits (also featured in the stenogram) is a good example of such
an envoy. Livshits was directed (napravlen na rabotu) after graduation from Lomonosov
University in Moscow to take the position of research fellow at the Republican Museum
of Arts in Kishinev. See Ludmila Toma, “Doctor of History and Theory of Fine Arts
Matus Livshits (1920–2007),” accessed July 20, 2013, http://chisinaul.blogspot.com/
2013/01/doctor-of-history-and-theory-of-fine.html.
1
:
3
s
n
i
g
r
a
m
t
r
a
106
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
any attempt at submitting spontaneous and incomplete artworks,
which the bourgeois expressionist might have valued for their genuine
manifestations of individual freedom, would be condemned with the
utmost abhorrence and collectively denounced under such epithets as
“sketchiness and unfinishedness” (etiudnosti i nezavershonost’).9 By
turning a blind eye to completeness and totality, the artist risked pre-
senting a fragmentary and distorted picture of reality. Any preoccupa-
tion with external impressions, internal expressions, individualism,
and the subjective representations of incomplete, momentary, and tran-
sitory feelings were also regarded as remnants of the bourgeois era.
After all, the Union’s main task had been to prevent Moldavian artists
from slipping back into bourgeois idealism, to prevent their detach-
ment from reality. This was not a simple matter of aesthetics, but
related directly to political problems, as Socialist Realism does not sep-
arate or distinguish between the two. An impressionistic or expression-
istic artistic treatment or a fragmentary view of reality manifested
nothing less than a lack of moral fiber, selfishness and possessive indi-
vidualism, antisocial sentiment, and the pursuit of personal gain—all
qualities that, in 1951, were regarded as part of American business
culture.10
To help overcome and prevent these shortcomings, artists had to
educate themselves. They had to attend courses in Marxist-Leninist
aesthetics in the hope of developing a socialist consciousness; they met
frequently with art critics in order to analyze their aesthetic and politi-
cal shortcomings. At the time, the main role of the art critic was not to
“curate” or “manage” artists, but to help them overcome theoretical,
philosophical, and historical problems, to help them look at the “bright
side” of reality. The Union, on the whole, existed in order to support the
artists both ideologically and materially, to motivate them to work
within a radically new reality—one that relied on neither a capitalist art
market nor a bourgeois art world.
Today, in our anticollectivist, liberal ideological environment, this
1951 stenogram may provoke different reactions. Some may find it
naive, or even comical. In part this is due to the ridicule and vilification
that its brand of prose, which brings to mind the squealing hinges and
9
10
AOSPRM, F. 2906, I. 1, D. 53, f. 248.
In 1951, qualities associated with Anglo-American business ethics were regarded as the
antipode of a truly Marxist-Leninist consciousness. Ibid., f. 99.
”
g
n
i
t
e
e
m
l
a
r
e
n
e
g
e
h
t
f
o
m
a
r
g
o
n
e
t
s
“
o
t
n
o
i
t
c
u
d
o
r
t
n
i
|
u
n
a
s¸
e
107
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
dripping faucets of dilapidated communal buildings, has tended to pro-
voke during the neoliberal transition of the 1990s. The document reads
like fiction: it is now almost impossible to imagine that “grown-up” art-
ists could have once sat and discussed the organization of an exhibition
in such terms. And if it were a work of fiction, it would be one that
draws a curtain over the first-person pronoun I, playing up instead the
virtues of human solidarity and creative collective effort.
One should also recall the immediate historical context in which
this document was produced. Stenograms from the same archive, but
recorded at a later stage (the 1960s and 1970s), present quite a different
picture of artists’ meetings and congresses, with artists standing up for
their “formalist” tendencies or speaking openly about their quest for
the national spirit.11 The gradual drifting toward the right, toward the
“national in form” (at the expense of socialist content), which had
begun with some artists already in the 1960s, took a sharp turn after
1989. During the transition to capitalism and the art market of the
1990s, the renamed Union of Artists of Moldova made a radical right
turn, both politically and artistically. In political terms, and content-
wise, the Union ceased to depict socialist reality, or the bygone heroes
of socialist labor and party leaders, turning its attention instead to a
resurrected national culture, to the illustrious events and figures of the
national past. A discredited Socialist Realism was soon covered over by
a new brand of aesthetics, absorbing, at once, conservative religious-
nationalist and modernist liberal-humanist ideals and values. The
central concepts of collectivity and internationalist solidarity were super-
seded by those of nation and blood and soil. In artistic or formal terms,
the post-1989 Union of Moldovan Artists has remained on the conser-
vative side of the artistic scene. Today many of its members pass them-
selves off as defenders of artistic tradition and skill against a new
archenemy, “contemporary art,” which the most orthodox Union mem-
bers regard as an alien cultural form, a decoy brought in by the West in
order to conceal the true face of contemporary, predatory capitalism.
The stenogram of the 1951 exhibition is a very large document.
Due to space restrictions, I have translated only some excerpts.
11 A good example of such manifestations of national spirit is the work of Mihail Grecu
(1916–98), who is featured in this 1951 stenogram. For references to the national spirit
in the work of Valentina Rusu-Ciobanu, Mihail Grecu, Gleb Sainciuc, and Filimon
Hamuraru, see AOSPRM, F. 2906, I. 1, D. 291, f. 111.
1
:
3
s
n
i
g
r
a
m
t
r
a
108
l
D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d
f
r
o
m
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
d
i
r
e
c
t
.
m
i
t
.
e
d
u
a
r
t
/
/
m
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d
l
f
/
/
/
/
3
1
1
0
2
1
9
8
8
7
0
5
a
r
t
/
m
_
a
_
0
0
0
7
3
p
d
.
f
b
y
g
u
e
s
t
t
o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3
