Leon Trotsky and literature

Oltsen Gripshi, Kurban MCMXCVII, 2015
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By MICHEL GOULART DA SILVA*

Trotsky stated that the policy of the first years after the revolution pointed to the need to grant artists “complete freedom of self-determination in the domain of art"

In July 1924, Leon Trotsky released one of his most read and well-known books, called Literature and revolution. Written during the last years of Vladimir Lenin's life and published shortly after his death, the work was part of the Trotskyist struggle against the growing dominance of Joseph Stalin and his allies over the party apparatus.

Among other discussions presented in the book, Leon Trotsky criticizes the party's interference in artistic issues and that it is up to the Soviet State to support any artistic manifestations that are not openly hostile to the power of the proletariat then under construction. On the other hand, Leon Trotsky fights against the idea of ​​“proletarian culture” and criticizes the still embryonic elements of what was later systematized as “socialist realism”.

From the revolution in art to “socialist realism”

Leon Trotsky stated that the policy of the first years after the revolution pointed to the need to grant artists “complete freedom of self-determination in the field of art, after placing them under the categorical sieve: for or against the revolution”.[I] In 1917, the Russian Revolution had overthrown the power of the tsars, defeated the country's weak bourgeoisie and brought workers and peasants to power, transforming the country's economic, social and political reality.

This process also caused major changes in the arts. In the visual arts, literature and cinema, varied and divergent aesthetic expressions flourished. In the early years, the power of the soviets guaranteed art material conditions and freedom to strengthen new artistic expressions. This was guaranteed by the People's Commissariat of Education (Narkomprost), which developed policies for education and culture, under the responsibility of Anatoli Lunatcharsky.

He stated about this body: “it must be impartial with regard to the particular orientations of artistic life. As regards forms, the taste of the people's commissar and all representatives of the regime should not be taken into account. We must facilitate the free development of all individuals and artistic groups. One artistic trend must not be allowed to eliminate another by taking advantage of either acquired traditional glory or fashion.”[ii]

This guaranteed freedom in the artistic field enabled the flourishing of several autonomous cultural organizations and a number of independent publishers, while Narkomprost's stance encouraged all forms of art that were not openly hostile to the revolution. The heat of the workers' and peasants' insurrection had infected artistic life, opening up new political and aesthetic perspectives. However, a significant portion of the intelligentsia received the Bolsheviks' rise to power with hostility, many of whom went into exile.

In this scenario, a significant number of intellectuals and artists supported the measures taken by the Soviet government, highlighting names such as Wassily Kandisky, Maximo Gorki, Kazimir Malevich, Alexandre Blok, Marc Shagall, Victor Serge, Vladimir Maiakovski and Serguei Iessienin. This presence of writers linked to the European avant-gardes shows the space for artistic freedom and the encouragement of aesthetic experimentations taking place in the first decades of the 20th century.

However, it is also in this scenario in which the embryo of what would become the so-called “socialist realism” gradually strengthened. In part, its history is linked to the Proletarian Culture Movement (Proletkult). This group's perspective was the formation of a new culture based on contact with the ideas and feelings of the proletariat. The idea of ​​“proletarian culture” was liked by Georgi Plekhanov and important Bolshevik and government leaders, such as Nikolai Bukharin and Lunacharsky himself. At its beginning, Proletkult included the participation of artists such as Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Eisenstein, under the theoretical direction of Aleksandr Bogdánov.

For Aleksandr Bogdánov, art should be a weapon of the working class against bourgeois culture, completely rejecting art produced under capitalism. These theses defended by Aleksandr Bogdánov made a gross simplification of the understanding of art as one of the pillars for the construction of socialism, transforming it into a hostage of narrower political and ideological interests.

Aleksandr Bogdánov stated that the proletariat needs “pure class poetry”.[iii] In this sense, for Aleksandr Bogdánov, the formation of a new art would not be the synthesis of clashes, discussions, convergences, in short, of the plural experiences of the different groups that existed at the time. Aleksandr Bogdánov understood that art produced under socialism would be the mechanical expression of a specific class culture. In contrast, Leon Trotsky stated: “It would be childish to think that each class by itself can create, completely and fully, its own art; in particular that the proletariat is capable of elaborating a new art through closed artistic circles.”[iv]

In the 1920s, gradually, state authoritarianism and the rise of a bureaucratic social layer to power led to the process of consolidating realism as an official aesthetic imposed by the State. This process has economic and political aspects. In 1928, in the economic sphere, the Stalinist government pushed for adventurous industrialization, placing the interests of the working classes and the concrete situation of the economy in the background. One of the reasons for Stalin's policy was the need to respond to the growing power of the kulaks (rich peasants), who occupied an important place in the country's economy and exerted influence in sectors of the party and state power. The government carried out “forced collectivization”, repressing kulaks, former allies of the bureaucracy. In political terms, the United Opposition, which included Leon Trotsky and other leaders of the 1917 revolution, was defeated.

This scenario of repression was also felt in the artistic field, as sectors linked to bureaucracy took advantage of the context to homogenize artistic life. One of the actions related to this was the dismissal of Lunatcharsky from Narkomprost, in 1929. Zdhanov, Stalin's trusted person, became the government's spokesman when it came to the arts.

On April 23, 1932, the Party Central Committee made a decision to dissolve all literary associations and found the Union of Soviet Writers. Shortly afterwards, in August 1934, at the Congress of Soviet Writers, Zdhanov, referring to writers as “engineers of souls”, stated: “To be an engineer of human souls means to have both feet planted in real life. And this in turn, indicates a break with the old type of romanticism, which portrayed a non-existent life and non-existent heroes, moving the reader away from the antagonisms and oppression of real life and taking him to a world of the impossible, to a world of utopian dreams.”[v]

This literature criticized by Zdhanov should be replaced by literature from the perspective of socialist realism: “We say that socialist realism is the basic method of belles letters Soviet and literary criticism, and this presupposes that revolutionary romanticism must enter into literary creation as a component part, of the whole life of our Party, of the whole life of the working class and its struggle consists of a combination of the most austere practical work and sober with the superior spirit of heroic deeds and magnificent future prospects.”[vi]

Therefore, literature, or even art in general, should expose the deeds of its “heroes”, serving as a tool directed by the actions of the State. Zdhanov stated: “Soviet literature must be able to portray our heroes; must be able to envision our tomorrow. This will not be any utopian dream, because our tomorrow is already being prepared today at the expense of consciously planned work.”[vii]

In the 1920s, the incentive for creative influxes provided in the first years of the Russian Revolution was gradually crushed by the Stalinist bureaucracy. If the first years after the revolution were marked by the policy of freedoms and material incentives for the most diverse artistic currents, under Stalinism art found itself hampered by the state imposition of socialist realist aesthetics and by art aimed at propagandizing and praising political leaders and women. actions of the governing bureaucracy. These ideas were fought by Leon Trotsky even at the time of strengthening the bureaucracy headed by Stalin.

Literature and the “art of revolution”

The book Literature and revolution by Leon Trotsky is a very rich work that presents the most diverse themes related to art and culture and their relationship with the revolution and the construction of socialism. In the first parts of the book, Leon Trotsky makes a long analysis of Russian literature and highlights in particular the “travelling friends”, understood as “transitional art, which is more or less organically linked to the Revolution, although it does not represent the art of Revolution".[viii] Leon Trotsky discusses different authors, such as Aleksandr Blok, Serguei Iessienin and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and groups, such as the formalists, to whom he dedicates a dense chapter discussing the Marxist view of art, and the futurists.

In its various editions, in different languages, you can find different texts, even though the main chapter structure is the same. For example, the Spanish edition, published in two volumes, contains texts such as “The intelligentsia and socialism” and “Radio, science, technique and society”, which are not in the Brazilian edition, for example. Another highlight is that it has become quite common for the different ones to include, in the chapter on futurism, as a complement, a letter from Antonio Gramsci where the Italian Marxist comments on the manifestation of this current in Italy.

The following chapters bring discussions about art and culture in the construction of socialism, the relationship with the party and the role of revolutionaries in relation to art. Leon Trotsky starts from the premise that art is not “[…] indifferent to the upheavals of the current era. Men prepare events, carry them out, suffer the effects and change under the impact of their reactions. Art, directly or indirectly, reflects the lives of the men who make or live the events. This is true of all arts, from the most monumental to the most intimate.”[ix]

Part of the discussion raised by Leon Trotsky is related to the belief that the proletariat should create its own culture. However, according to Leon Trotsky, “it is fundamentally false to oppose bourgeois culture and art to proletarian culture and art. The latter will never exist, because the proletarian regime is temporary and transitory.”[X] According to Leon Trotsky, “between the bourgeois art that agonizes in repetitions or in silence and the new art that has not yet been born, a transitional art was created, which is more or less organically linked to the Revolution, although it does not represent the art of the Revolution” .[xi]

From this perspective, Leon Trotsky seeks to define a concept of culture, as a phenomenon that “represents the organic sum of knowledge and information that characterizes every society or at least its ruling class. It embraces and penetrates all domains of human creation and unifies them into a system.”[xii]

Leon Trotsky also did not stop polemicizing with the segments that approached the perspective of the European avant-gardes, especially the formalist current. The center of his discussion with this current was the understanding of how Marxism should see art. According to Leon Trotsky, for Marxism, “[…] art, from the point of view of the objective historical process, is always a social, historically utilitarian servant. Finds the rhythm of words necessary to express obscure and vague moods, brings thought closer to feeling, or opposes one to the other, enriches the spiritual experience of the individual and the collective, refines the feeling, makes it flexible, more sensitive, gives it greater resonance, increases the volume of thought thanks to the accumulation of an experience that goes beyond the personal scale, educates the individual, the social group, the class and the nation”.[xiii]

Leon Trotsky points out that, even if one takes into account the conditioning of art within a concrete reality and a society, “it does not mean, when translated into political language, the desire to dominate art through decrees or prescriptions. It is false that we only consider art that speaks about the worker to be new and revolutionary. It is nothing but absurd to say that we demand from poets only works about factory chimneys or about an insurrection against capital.”[xiv]

Leon Trotsky, in this sense, defends the independence of the art form, considering that “the artist who creates it and the spectator who appreciates it are not hollow machines: one made to create it and the other to appreciate it. They are living beings whose crystallized psychology presents a certain unity, although not always harmonious. This psychology results from social conditions. The creation and perception of artistic forms constitute one of its functions”.[xv]

Although the idea of ​​socialist realism was not yet consolidated, Leon Trotsky already points out elements of criticism of this idea. Against the idea of ​​art as a copy of reality, he states that artistic creation is “[…] an alteration, a deformation, a transformation of reality according to the particular laws of art. Art, however fantastic it may be, has no other material than that provided by the three-dimensional world and the stricter world of class society. Even when the artist creates heaven or hell, he simply transforms the experience of his own life into phantasmagoria, up to and including his unpaid rent bill.”[xvi]

Leon Trótsky also points out the critic's and theorist's stance in relation to art, drawing attention to the fact that art is a phenomenon different from economic or political processes. He states: “One cannot always follow Marxist principles alone to judge, reject or accept a work of art. This must be judged, first of all, according to its own laws, that is, according to the laws of art. But only Marxism can explain why and how, in a given historical period, such an artistic tendency appears; in other words, who expressed the need for a certain artistic form and not another, and why.”[xvii]

Considering these elements, pointing to the defense of the self-determination of art and the freedom of the artist, Leon Trotsky concludes about the stance that revolutionaries should have: “Marxism offers several possibilities: it evaluates the development of new art, follows all its changes and variations through criticism, encourages progressive currents, but does no more than that. Art must pave its own path. The methods of Marxism are not the same as those of art.”[xviii]

These ideas allow us to reflect on some current aspects. First, about the Marxist perspective on art and the role of Marxist criticism in relation to these works. Second, as Leon Trotsky demonstrated even before the systematization of “socialist realism” the theoretical bankruptcy and mistakes of this type of perspective. And, third, the importance of freedom in art and the need to guarantee artists the possibility of expressing their subjectivity, whether by overturning the economic ties of capitalism or guaranteeing material conditions in a future socialist society.

*Michel Goulart da Silva He holds a PhD in history from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a technical-administrative degree from the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFC).

Notes


[I] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 37. [https://amzn.to/3A3yMmO]

[ii] Anatoli Lunatcharky. A little antidote. In: The visual arts and politics in the USSR. Lisbon: Estampa, 1975, p. 39-40.

[iii] Alexander Bogdanov. Art and proletarian culture. Madrid: Alberto Corazón Editor, 1979, p. 30.

[iv] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 144.

[v] Andrei Zhdanov, Soviet Literature: the richest in ideas, the most advanced literature. In: Writings. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Nova Cultura, 2020, p. 102.

[vi] Andrei Zhdanov, Soviet Literature: the richest in ideas, the most advanced literature. In: Writings. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Nova Cultura, 2020, p. 102.

[vii] Andrei Zhdanov, Soviet Literature: the richest in ideas, the most advanced literature. In: Writings. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Nova Cultura, 2020, p. 103.

[viii] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 63.

[ix] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 35.

[X] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 37.

[xi] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 83.

[xii] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 159.

[xiii] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 137.

[xiv] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 138.

[xv] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 139.

[xvi] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 142.

[xvii] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 143-4.

[xviii] Leon Trotsky. Literature and revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 173.


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