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How did the Stalin Prize function in the Soviet ne art establishment of
the 1940s and 1950s and how were the awards interpreted by members of
the artistic community and the public? This examination of the discussions of the Stalin Prize Committee and responses to the awards reveals an
institution that operated at the intersection of political and expert-artistic
standards within which the parameters of postwar socialist realism were
negotiated and to some extent dened. The Stalin Prize was the highest honor that could be bestowed by the Soviet state in recognition of a
single piece of work in science or culture, but in the case of the ne arts
its symbolic capital was often compromised by its role, perceived or actual,
in the consolidation of a generational and ideological hegemony within
the Soviet art world.
In common with other state prize institutions worldwide, the Stalin
Prize played a central role in the promotion of political and ideological agendas. In the ne arts, the establishment of the Stalin Prize was
closely connected to the revival of the Academy as the principle administrative organ. The 1947 establishment of an All-Union Academy of the
Arts was the culmination of an ongoing campaign to wrest power away
from the increasingly uncooperative local and regional unions and to
reengage with the traditional prerevolutionary artistic practices of the
imperial Academy.1 Just as the prestigious Prix de Rome, the highest accolade of the Acadmie Royale in Paris, contributed to the development
of an authoritarian and centralized approach to painting and sculpture in
Epigraph taken from the introductory comments of Aleksandr Fadeev, chairman of the
Stalin Prize Committee for the arts, to the opening meeting of the committee for the 1948
round of selections, 17 January 1949, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva
(RGALI), Komitet po Stalinskim premiiam pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR v oblasti literatury i
iskusstva, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 30, l. 8.
1. The connection between pre- and postrevolutionary incarnations of the Academy
was long established at the Leningrad Academy, which was reformed as an All-Russian
institution in 1933. In 1939 the Academy published an exhibition catalogue that traced
the history of the Academy from its founding under Catherine the Great to the present
day, and proudly declared, We are 175 years old! Vserossiiskaia Akademiia khudozhestv,
1764 1939 (Leningrad, 1939), 1. S. M. Chervonnaia has observed that such a position
cast doubt on the correctness and necessity of one of the rst acts of Soviet power, namely
the Resolution on the Liquidation of the Imperial Academy of the Arts. S. M. Chervonnaia, Akademiia khudozhestv i regiony Rossii (Moscow, 2004), 114.
Slavic Review 70, no. 4 (Winter 2011)
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Slavic Review
was rst presented in 1941, and by the time the practice was discontinued
in 1953, almost one thousand Stalin Prizes had been presented in the
elds of art and culture.9 A Stalin Prize First Class carried with it a signicant nancial bonus of 100,000 rubles, but it also held a less quantiable
degree of symbolic capital, which in many cases granted the new laureate
a rapid improvement in living and working conditions. The rst round of
awards in 1941 recognized all works completed over the past six to seven
yearsin other words all work completed since the 1934 inauguration
of socialist realismbut later awards were made in recognition of works
completed within the previous twelve-month period.10 First-, Second-,
and, from 1947 onwards, Third-Class Prizes were made in each eld of
artistic activity, as dened by the Stalin Prize Committee.11 The number of
awards available in each eld remained a bone of contention throughout
the 1940s and 1950s as members of the selection committee vied to secure
a greater number for their own special areas.
The Stalin Prize formed part of a complex system of civilian awards
and orders that closely mirrored the hierarchical system of Soviet military
decorations. Imperial-style ranks, decorations, titles, and even uniforms
had been abolished after the revolution as symbols of status and class
that were considered incompatible with the creation of a socialist society.
Sheila Fitzpatrick has written of the reinstatement of military ranks and
the establishment of new titles in the 1930s as part of a process whereby
Soviet citizens were encouraged to aspire toward the same (or similar)
marks of distinction that their forebears had held under the imperial system.12 This revival of tsarist-style ranks, orders, uniforms, and titles was
not intended to create a rigid class framework, as had been the case in
the prerevolutionary period, but to provide an open incentive system as
part of the wider practice of socialist competition.13 In theory at least, any
Soviet worker could be given the title Hero of Labor, and any aspiring artist could achieve the rank of Distinguished Artist.
Tomoff has demonstrated that this was far from the case in the eld
of Soviet music, where the honors system simultaneously created and reproduced hierarchies of authority and legitimized the material privilege
9. Postanovlenie Soveta narodnykh komissarov Soiuza SSR: Ob uchrezhdenii premii i stipendii imeni Stalina, Pravda, 21 December 1939, taken from V. F. Svinin and
K. A. Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii: Dve storony odnoi medali (Novosibirsk, 2007), 711. This
valuable book contains a compilation of published material and archival documents connected with the Stalin Prize awards in the eld of culture, as well as extensive statistical
and biographical information about the Stalin Prize Committee, the awards, and their
laureates.
10. Ob izmenenii poriadka prisuzhdeniia Stalinskikh premii po nauke, izobreteniiam, literature i iskusstvu, Pravda, 12 January 1941, taken from Svinin and Oseev, eds.,
Stalinskie premii, 43 44.
11. The number of elds expanded over the years to include previously unrecognized areas including graphics and documentary cinema. Ibid.
12. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet
Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999), 106 9.
13. For an analysis of socialist competition and its application in a agship construction project, see Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley,
1997), 204 5.
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atrical, and musical arts and away from the ne arts. Of the forty original
committee members (later expanded to fty-six) only two were painters
(Aleksandr Gerasimov and Igor Grabar) and two were sculptors (Vera
Mukhina and Sergei Merkurov). In contrast there were nine writers, poets,
and playwrights; ten theater directors and actors; and eleven composers
or musicians.22 This representational disproportion was not directly reected in the numbers of awards given in each eld. Over the twelve-year
period of the Stalin Prizes a total of 149 awards were made for ne art and
sculpture, 191 for music, and 199 for theater, ballet, and opera. Literature
was the most highly decorated eld with writers, poets, and playwrights receiving a total of 264 awards.23 Of course, categories were overlapping and
in principle all members of the committee were encouraged to participate
in all plenary meetings and viewings regardless of individual specialization. In practice, discussions tended to be dominated by specialists in a
particular eld and the small number of visual arts experts meant that the
decision-making power was concentrated in a very few hands. The accessible nature of ne art to the opinions of nonspecialists meant, however,
that debates about works of art were often interdisciplinary, with alliances
forming between cultural gures of a similar artistic or ideological leaning.
The committee was divided not only according to specialization but
according to status and authority, with a small number of well-connected
members exerting considerably more inuence than their individual vote
would suggest. Aleksandr Gerasimov, head of the Orgkom of the Union
of Soviet Artists and, from 1947 onwards, president of the USSR Academy
of the Arts, was an especially dominant gure who exercised a virtual monopoly over discussions relating to the ne arts.24 Grabar, on the other
hand, became an increasingly marginalized gure on the committee over
the course of the 1940s, as his professional reputation was brought into
disrepute by accusations of formalism in his position as an art historian.25
Thus could powerful members of the committee extend their reach over
its purportedly democratic basis.
The task of the Stalin Prize Committee was vast, as Fadeev emphasized
22. RGASPI, Upravlenie propagandy i agitatsii TsK VKP(b), f. 17, op. 125, d. 400.
After 1951, the artists Sergei Gerasimov, Vasilii Efanov, Boris Ioganson, and Dementii
Shmarinov and the cultural theorist Vladimir Kemenov were added to the newly formed
Art Section (Izo-sektsiia) of the committee. The structure of the committee comes under discussion in a 1952 investigation by Goskontrol. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 133, d. 345,
ll. 17578.
23. Svinin and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 852.
24. Tomoff has noted that the dominance of certain personalities within the committee was understood to be one of its major shortcomings. Fadeev expressed this very
concern in his 1952 report, in which he singled out Ivan Bolshakov as an offender in the
eld of cinema. Tomoff, Creative Union, 264.
25. Grabar and Mukhina came under attack on 27 May 1952 for their failure to
support the struggle for realist art. O rabote Komiteta po Stalinskim premiiam v oblasti
iskusstva i literatury, 438. Kruzhkovs conclusions are based on Fadeevs report to Stalin
on the activities of the committee, a report in which Fadeev complains about Grabars and
Mukhinas behavior. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 133, d. 345, l. 165. A wider smear campaign was
carried out against Grabar in the Institute of Art History in 1947, where he was denounced
for his proclivity toward western art. GARF, f. 5446, op. 54, d. 40, ll. 216 19.
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Slavic Review
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in his opening address to the committee in 1947. We must view and judge
such a huge quantity of works that the form of our own work will have to
change. In the elds of painting and sculpture the long list of nominated
works was pared down initially based on an examination of a photographic
portfolio by relevant specialists within the committee. Those works that
went on to be short-listed were then viewed at a private exhibition arranged
specially for the Stalin Prize Committee at the Tretiakov Gallery, or from
1949 onwards at the premises of the USSR Academy of the Arts. Time was
always short for assessment of the proposed works, which was usually carried out over a two- or three-month period between late December and
early March. For the 1947 round of awards, a total of 362 works had to be
assessed in this short time frame over a series of fourteen plenary meetings, sixteen section meetings, and fty-eight viewing sessions.26 Such a
clear overload of reading, watching, viewing, and assessing led Merkurov
to complain that all other work would have to be put on hold for a threemonth period. Likewise the composer Aleksandr Goldenveizer argued
that all of the assessing needed to be done in a great hurry and at the last
minute.27 The majority of participants on the selection committee were
members of the creative intelligentsia in their own right, who continued
to pursue an active career in their own elds of culture. Why then, did several of the nations most inuential and successful artists choose to devote
so much time to this monumental bureaucratic task?
The answer is a simple one: participation on the Stalin Prize Committee was perceived as a means of exercising considerable power and inuence within the Soviet art establishment. Committee members not only
assessed and voted for works of art, but they also overruled the proposals
of local artists unions, canvassed for the works of their friends and associates, and put themselves forward for awards with audacious regularity.
Mukhina won the Stalin Prize a total of ve times and Aleksandr Gerasimov four times while serving on the committee, and of the forty original
committee members thirty-two received the Stalin Prize at least once.28
A review of the committees work in 1952 highlighted the fact that members who had been nominated for the Stalin Prize not only continued to
work and vote on the committee but even promoted their own work at
its sessions. Likewise committee members were accused of putting forward works by their friends and students for consideration and of securing
votes from their colleagues as part of an unspoken reciprocal arrangement.29 The upshot of these procedures was that members of the Stalin
Prize Committee were able to exercise a signicant degree of control over
the formation of the Soviet cultural canon. The Stalin Prize Committee of
artist-specialists played an important role in the public legitimization of
the awards as a democratic process informed by expert opinion. Yet as we
shall see, the authority of the committee was strictly limited by the latter
stages of the selection process.
26.
27.
28.
29.
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overcoming repression that Konenkov had dealt with in his previous work
Samson, razryvaiushchii uzy (Samson Breaking His Bonds, 1930s). The immensely powerful gure in this new work, standing tall and raising his
once-shackled arms aloft, is a representation of the Soviet victory over
fascism and shows its authors clear stylistic development toward gurative
realism, although it retains a somewhat loose approach to anatomical scale
and proportion. Goldenveizer praised the physical and spiritual power
of Konenkovs sculpture and pointed out that it is impossible to ignore
this work of art. Fadeev expressed admiration for the physical strength
of Konenkovs gure but subjected it to the following criticism: When
you look at this sculpture you get the impression that it is not a person
but a beast; just look how it is standing. This is precisely what we object
to. This is not the creative line set out in our art; it is what we are ghting
against. 34 His sentiment was echoed by the architect Arkadii Mordvinov,
who argued that it is not made according to the socialist plan. Here is a
great talent, but at the same time he is following a different ideological
line. Konenkovs sculpture was not short-listed for the voting process by
the Stalin Prize Committee.
Both of these examples demonstrate that the Stalin Prize Committee
was divided over the relative importance of aesthetic and ideological measures of quality in their evaluations of works of art. While certain mem34. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 25, ll. 1517.
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change between Fadeev and Merkurov regarding Pavel Korins 1947 painting, Portret Konenkova (Portrait of Konenkov), demonstrates the dual role
played by the committee as both a peer-review panel and an interpreter
of the ofcial line:
Fadeev: Konenkov has only recently returned to our country and his work
displays a range of features that are not compatible with our understanding of Soviet art. Furthermore Korin has emphasized these very characteristics of Konenkov in his portrait. These three factors prevent me from
voting for this work.
Merkurov: In light of the Central Committee resolutions?
Fadeev: In light of those ideological-artistic principles for which we are
responsible in our art.37
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total of forty votes, thirty-three of which were for a First-Class award; and
Aleksandr Bubnov for the painting Utro na Kulikovom pole (Morning on
Kulikov Field, 1947) with a total of thirty-nine votes, twenty-six of which
were for a First-Class award.39 Following the editing process of the KPDI,
UPA, and the Politburo, the nal list of laureates demoted Bubnov to a
Second-Class and Melikhov to a Third-Class award. In their stead FirstClass awards were presented to Vladimir Serov for the painting V. I. Lenin
provozglashaet sovetskuiu vlast (V. I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power, 1947),
which had gained a total of eleven votes in the Stalin Prize Committee
of which only four were for a First-Class Award; Laktionov for the painting Pismo s fronta (A Letter from the Front, 1947); and Iraklii Toidze for
the painting Vystuplenie I. V. Stalina na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashchennom XXIV godovshchine Velikoi Oktiabrskoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Stalins
Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the October Revolution, 1947), neither
of whom had been under consideration by the Committee.40
Such interventions were common, came from a variety of sources, and
served a variety of interests. The fate of a candidate could swing wildly
from success to failure and back again based on the endorsement or rejection of the bureaucratic bodies that participated in the selection process. In 1947 the KPDI rejected a proposed Second-Class award for Viktor
Oreshnikovs painting V. I. Lenin na ekzamene v universitete (V. I. Lenin at a
University Exam, 1947) on the basis that it was not sufciently outstanding
(vydaiushchiisia) and proposed Toidze for an award based on his detailed
but awed ceremonial painting of Stalin. Meanwhile the UPA declared
Oreshnikovs canvas to be one of the most signicant works of 1947
and recommended it for a First-Class award. In contrast they considered
Toidzes work to be weak (slabym) and requested that it be dropped from
the list.41 Dmitrii Shepilov, deputy director of the UPA and Zhdanovs protg, was likely inuenced by the Russian nationalist agenda of his patron
in his rejection of a Georgian artists work. Meanwhile Politkarp Lebedev,
head of the KPDI, was a close associate of Aleksandr Gerasimov and his
inner circle, which included Toidze in its number.
In light of the often contradictory recommendations from which
the list of nominees was compiled, it is clear that the nal stage of the
decision-making processthe consideration of the Politburo and Stalin
himselfwas the point at which the buck stopped. Since Politburo members (with the exception of Zhdanov) were not in the habit of visiting the
annual All-Union Art Exhibitions, a special exhibit of works nominated
for the Stalin Prize was held in the Ekaterinskii Hall of the Kremlin. Shepilov has recounted Stalins extensive preparation for the nal discussion of
the Stalin Prize roll of honor, during which he was prone to put forward
works that were unfamiliar to his colleagues and that had not been dis39. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 28, l. 33.
40. For an examination of the convoluted process by which Laktionov became the
surprise recipient of a Stalin Prize in 1948, see Oliver Johnson, A Premonition of Victory:
A Letter from the Front, Russian Review 68, no. 3 ( July 2009): 408 28.
41. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 587, ll. 25, 64 66.
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Table 1
Stalin Prize Committee Recommendations versus
Stalin Prize Laureates, 1947.
1947
Votes
I Class
III Class
1947
Votes
I Class
11 (I: 4, II: 7)
II Class
II Class
III Class
(n/a)
(n/a)
(n/a)
39 (I: 26, II: 13)
(n/a)
(n/a)
(n/a)
38 (I: 16, II: 22)
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Slavic Review
leader cult works for the Stalin Prize Committee: If we are being terribly
strict then we should reject [Efanovs work]. But we are not always very
strict; the theme is necessary and important, and we need to put this work
forward for a First-Class [award]. 45 Where works of the leader cult were
concerned, considerations other than artistic skill or technical accomplishment often took precedence. In particular the signicance of the
theme and the expenditure of time and labor were understood to represent the main criteria of merit. In keeping with traditional academic hierarchy of genre, large-scale leader portraits and group portraits including
the leader were granted a privileged status in the evaluation process, an
approach mirrored by the pricing policies of the state order mechanism.46
Judging by the language used by the Stalin Prize Committee in its discussions, however, works of the leader cult were often deemed to be less
than successful in terms of execution but were put forward nonetheless
on the strength of their theme.47 In this sense, the Stalin Prize Committee functioned as part of the formula of what Jan Plamper has described
as Stalins immodest modesty, whereby the vainglorious mechanisms of
cult management were attributed to an independent panel of specialists,
casting the leader himself as a passive or even reluctant beneciary of
spontaneous artistic celebration.48
In spite of the convoluted behind-the-scenes machinations with which
the awards were decided, the Stalin Prize Committee was represented in
the Soviet press as the dominant body behind the awards process. For instance in 1951 Pravda published a regular series of short articles entitled
Inside the Stalin Prize Committee that kept the public updated on the
selection process and were presumably intended to build interest in the
run up to the announcement of the awards. The purpose of the Stalin
Prize Committee was to legitimize the awards process in public and professional eyes as a peer-review system informed by expert opinion. It was a
face of authority in the Soviet art world that was frequently abused in the
service of personal loyalties, but it was a hollow authority that extended
only to the initial stages of the selection process, beyond which the nal
roll of honor was vetted, edited, and nalized by the Central Committee. The Stalin Prize awards were symptomatic of what Leonid Heller has
compared to Werner Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle in relation to
the erratic functioning of the Soviet state in its development of cultural
policy.49 The unpredictability of the Stalin Prize roll of honor, even to the
panel of state-selected experts on the Stalin Prize Committee, suggests
45. Ibid.
46. Yankovskaya, The Economic Dimensions of Art, 790.
47. For a further examination of the responses of the Stalin Prize Committee to works
of the leader cult, see ibid., 785 86.
48. Jan Plamper has analyzed the oxymoronic nature of a Bolshevik personality cult
and demonstrated that a meticulous process of orchestration was carried out by Stalin and
other leaders in order to conceal the articial nature of cult promotion and development.
Plamper, Alkhimiia vlasti: Kult Stalina v izobrazitelnom iskusstve (Moscow, 2010), 190 208.
49. Leonid Heller, A World of Prettiness: Socialist Realism and Its Aesthetic Categories, in Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Socialist Realism without Shores
(Durham, 1997), 58.
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Figure 3. Vasilii Efanov, Stepan Dudnik, Iurii Kugach, Konstantin Maksimov, and
Viktor Tsiplakov, Peredovye liudi Moskvy v Kremle (Leading the People of Moscow
in the Kremlin, 1949). Current whereabouts unknown. Mir nagrad: sait rossiskikh
kollektsionerov, at www.mirnagrad.ru/cgi-bin/exinform.cgi?page=27&ppage=4
(last accessed 1 September 2011).
that there was a serious rupture between the elds of political power and
creative authority in the postwar Soviet art world. Yet it also hints at a more
fundamental crisis at the heart of the postwar cultural establishment: in
lieu of a reliable and effective model for the development of socialist realist art, the Stalin Prize evaluation process was subject to the competing
and often contradictory agendas of interested parties at all levels of state
bureaucracy. In short, for all the expertise and authority of the selection
committee, the prevailing measures for the success or failure of a Stalin
Prize candidate appear to have been the allegiances, personal tastes, and
whims of nonspecialist members of the Politburo.
Responses to the Awards
The annual announcement of the Stalin Prizes was met with a great fanfare
in the Soviet media. The rst round of awards in 1941 was celebrated with
a radio concert and a lavish ceremony at the Maksim Gorkii Art Theater
at which certicates and medals were presented to the new laureates.50 As
though it were a Soviet Oscars ceremony, recipients were invited to give a
short speech, but they thanked, not their friends, family, and nanciers,
50. Radiokontsert posviashchennyi laureatom Stalinskogo premii, Pravda, 17 March
1941, and Vruchenie diplomov deiateliam iskusstvalaureatom Stalinskikh premii,
Pravda, 22 April 1941, taken from Svinin and Oseev, Staliniskie premii, 66 68.
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Slavic Review
but the Bolshevik Party, the people, and of course their wise leader Stalin.51
In 1943, during the war, Pravda printed a series of telegrams from the new
Stalin Prize laureates to Stalin in which they pledged their winnings to the
Soviet war effort in the form of a donation to the Red Army.52 This was a
practice that the quadruple-laureate Aleksandr Gerasimov continued in
peacetime, although it is important to note that as a close friend of Red
Army Chief Kliment Voroshilov, the artist stood to gain considerably more
than the nancial benet of his awards from the propagation of a close
relationship with this inuential patron of the arts.53 A number of new
laureates participated in public events such as Celebration Evenings or
meetings with fans and admirers.54 It was common practice for Stalin Prize
winners to attract a urry of attention in the press and to have their work
reproduced widely in newspapers, journals, and Ogonek. In short, a Stalin
Prize represented a signicant step up the ladder of fame and fortune in
the strictly hierarchical system of Soviet celebrity.
What did a Stalin Prizewinning work look like? Just as Boime detected uniformity and suspension of imagination in the work of the Prix
de Rome laureates, so too can a distinct homogeneity be observed in
the prize-winning canvases, sculptures, and graphic works of the Stalin
Prize laureates.55 The feature uniting the majority of painting winning
the Stalin Prize is Academicism; or rather, a simulation of traditional Academic painting allied with a number of features specic to Soviet socialist
realism: atness of nish, evenness of detail, and brightness of color. A
vast majority of First-Class works fall into the category of the thematic
kartinathat is a large-scale complex composition in oil on canvasand
most are based on multigural portraits of historical scenes. Second- and
Third-Class awards were most often given to portraits of Soviet notables,
to war painting (prior to 1947), and to agricultural scenes. Exceptions
to these broad categories were rare and carried particular signicance,
inevitably resulting in a rash of imitations. From 1947 onwards, the genre,
or everyday life painting (bytovaia zhivopis), rose to prominence following
awards to Laktionov in 1947 for A Letter from the Front, to Fedor Reshetnikov in 1948 for Pribyl na kanikuly (Home for the Holidays), and to Sergei
Grigorev in 1949 for Vratar (Goalkeeper). Likewise landscape painting
51. For a stenographic report from the ceremony for the 1948 awards held in March
1949, see RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 35, ll. 1729.
52. Svinin and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 174 86.
53. For an anecdotal account of Gerasimovs generous donation of his prize money to
the Red Army, see Matthew Cullerne Bown, Aleksandr Gerasimov, in Matthew Cullerne
Bown and Brandon Taylor, eds., Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in a
One-Party State, 19171992 (Manchester, Eng., 1993), 133 34.
54. In 1949 the recently distinguished laureate Aleksandr Laktionov took part in such
an event at the Tretiakov Gallery in which he recited a potted biography and elded a
selective series of questions from the audience. Gosudarstvennaia Tretiakovskaia galereia
(GTG), f. 18, d. 295. Laktionov was introduced by Vera Gertsenberg, who placed great
emphasis on the nurturing inuence of the Soviet art establishment as a contributory factor to Laktionovs success.
55. Frolova-Walker has written of a similar phenomenon in her study of Soviet music
production, in which she argues that tedium, it would appear, was not an unfortunate
by-product of Socialist Realism, but a quality which was deliberately cultivated. FrolovaWalker, Stalin and the Art of Boredom, 103.
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of criticism or self-criticism. 65 Of Iogansons monumental brigade painting Nash mudryi vozhd, uchitel dorogoi (Our Wise Leader, Teacher of
the Path), a viewer remarked that it is reminiscent of a masquerade. 66
Of Toidzes new work an angry visitor wrote simply Shame on Toidze!
Shame! Shame! 67 The following rationalization of the problem written by
an anonymous teacher is indicative of the grassroots resentment some visitors to the exhibition experienced toward certain heavyweights of the art
establishment. It seems to me that the time has come when we dont have
to consider an artist as an authority and only include his works in an exhibition because of his past success. The last two works by NalbandianPortret
Mao Tzeduna [Portrait of Mao Tse-Tung] and Pered Batumskoi demonstratsiei
[Before the Batumi Demonstration] are abominable. Especially the latter. . . . Yet they exhibit it! And there are even friends of the artist who
comment on the painting in the press. 68 This selection of comments is by
no means a representative sample, and the wide variety of responses effusive, rehearsed, critical, abusive, illegiblepreclude attempts to draw
reliable statistical conclusions.69 Comment books taken as a whole, however, reveal a conict between two dominant groups of visitors: a passive majority who responded to the works on display according to and
often in the language of ofcial formulations; and a progressive minority
who were heavily critical of establishment works of art and considered
it their duty to correct the perceived ignorance of the former group. Yet
for all the criticism of former Stalin Prize laureates, both types of visitors
were inclined to speculate on the coming round of selections. One oftrepeated response written shortly after Stalins death in 1953 read, Who
should be awarded the Stalin Prize? Surely it can only be F. Reshetnikov:
he deserves it. 70
In March 1954, in lieu of a forthcoming announcement on the 1953
round of awards, an exhibition of works put forward for the Stalin Prize
was held at the State Tretiakov Gallery. In the context of a pre-award viewing of nominated works, visitors took the opportunity en masse to mention
their favorite candidate in the comment books.71 Popular works included
Sergei Gerasimovs landscape series Mozhaika and Grigorevs genre painting Vernulsia (He Has Returned), while a number of visitors objected to the
inclusion in the shortlist of Khmelkos large-scale historical kartina Naveki
s Moskvy (Forever Moscow): What sort of an art expert are you and what
do you know about art if you like trash like Khmelkos canvas? 72 Yet a signicant number of visitors took the opportunity to express a deep-rooted
65. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 7, l. 2.
66. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 8, l. 18.
67. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 9, l. 17.
68. Ibid, l. 35.
69. For a discussion of the problematic use of Soviet comment books as a historical
source and the difculty of drawing statistical conclusions from their contents, see Susan
Emily Reid, In the Name of the People: The Mange Affair Revisited, Kritika 6, no. 4
(Fall 2005): 675 84.
70. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 16, l. 30.
71. GTG, f. 8 II, op. 3, dd. 3 4.
72. GTG, f. 8 II, op. 3, d. 3, l. 8.
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been removed from the Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsoklopediia.78 Not until 1956
was a revised form of the award, the Lenin Prize, instituted as a replacement honor.
By the time of the leaders death, the Stalin Prize for the ne arts had
entered a state of crisis from which its credibility could not be salvaged.
Several prominent Stalin Prize laureates, including the head of the artists
section of the Stalin Prize Committee, Aleksandr Gerasimov, had suffered
very prominent falls from grace.79 The artistic output of the nations most
acclaimed and heavily decorated artists, which had for several years been
dominated by the representation of Stalin and other leaders, came to be
derided in increasingly outspoken liberal circles of the artistic intelligentsia as inartistic hack work or toadying.80 Following Khrushchevs so-called
Secret Speech of 1956, the concept of the leader cult gained widespread
currency as a condemnation of a certain branch of socialist realism that
privileged the gure of Stalin over and above considerations of artistic
quality. Making explicit reference to the Stalin Prize institution, Khrushchev objected that not even the Tsars created prizes which they named
after themselves. 81 In light of these revised criteria of merit, a signicant
proportion of Stalin Prizewinning works underwent a critical reappraisal
that saw them removed from the ofcial cultural canon.82
Although it was instituted as a positive incentive system designed to
bestow status and authority upon its laureates, the Stalin Prize for the ne
arts came to represent a mark of aesthetic conservatism associated with
political and bureaucratic, rather than artistic, accomplishment. Its Selection Committee was intended to act as an arbiter of artistic merit and as
an intermediary between policymakers and art world professionals, but
its inuence was undermined by the incompatibility of these two tasks.
The degree of incongruity between the ballot of the Stalin Prize Committee and the nal roll of honor reveals that the committees authority was
largely symbolic and that the committee was not always on message, in
particular when it came to the strategic promotion of ideologically signicant works of art. The Stalin Prize selection process became dominated
by Aleksandr Gerasimov and his circle, who attempted to mold the roll
78. Ibid., 618.
79. In November 1949 the Academy of the Arts came under investigation by Goskontrol. As a result of their inquiry, Aleksandr Gerasimov was indicted for his involvement in
a number of the organizations transgressions including the awarding of extra pay to its
presidium and the installation of his personal friends in prominent positions within the
Academy. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 245, ll. 142 48.
80. The most prominent published accounts of this phenomenon can be found in
Pomerantsev, On Sincerity in Literature, and Ilia Erenburg, The Thaw (1954), both of
which address the issue of cynical hack artists and their lack of creative individuality.
81. Nikita Khrushchev, Speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, delivered 24 25 February 1956. Full text available at www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/
1956/02/24.htm (last accessed 1 September 2011).
82. Reid has described the process by which the institutions and mechanisms of the
Stalin cult came to be criticized and dismantled by reformists within the art establishment
in the 1950s. See Reid, Destalinization and Taste, 177 87, and Susan E. Reid, Masters
of the Earth: Gender and Destalinisation in Soviet Reformist Painting of the Khrushchev
Thaw, Gender and History 11, no. 2 ( July 1999): 276 312.
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of honor for ne art according to a narrow Academic agenda, contributing to the growing hegemony of the newly formed All-Union Academy in
the Soviet art world. The consequence of this institutional bias was that
the Stalin Prize for the ne arts garnered a reputation among a younger
generation of artists within MOSSKh as a closed system of internal reward
and self-aggrandizement, less a form of meritocracy than a form of statesanctioned nepotism. The Stalin Prize for the ne arts lost its luster as a
symbol of artistic achievement and became tarnished by its association
with a restrictive and outdated aesthetic agenda, which remained poorly
dened and frequently misinterpreted even by those specialists responsible for its implementation. The institution of the Stalin Prize for the
ne arts was both a victim of, and a contributory factor to, the process
of de-Stalinization in this period. The problematic debates of the Stalin
Prize Committee and unrehearsed responses to the awards and their laureates are indicative of the often tenuous degree of control exerted over
the Soviet ne art establishment even at the height of state intervention
in the late 1940s.
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