Abstract

The article examines contradictory aspects of artistic life and cultural policy in the 1920s, especially those which are related to L.D. Trotsky and his role in the development of Soviet art from the “transitional period” to the era of the “Great breakthrough”. The author turned to this topic thanks to the exhibition “The Fight for the Banner. Soviet Art between Trotsky and Stalin. 1926-1936”, which was held in Moscow in 2008. The analysis of the art in the 1920s is based on the unpublished archival material of the Communist Academy, the 1920s periodicals, A.V. Lunacharsky’s essays and Yu.P. Annenkov’s memoirs, as well as Trotsky’s view on culture in general, literature and art. The art of that period, unlike the subsequent one, was still largely open to formal experiments. The diferent views of party members on culture to a large extent determined the main content of debates regarding the art of the postrevolutionary time, which somthow boiled to the issue of proletarian art. The principle of the “class character” of culture (“art belongs to a class”) was opposed by calling “to forever put an end to class culture and pave the way for human culture”. The use of vague terminology led to a confusion of the concepts that determined the relationship of art to the revolution and its phenomena: proletarian art, art of the revolution, Soviet art, etc. Trotsky put forward the idea that the art of the revolution should prepare the basis for socialist art. The art of the revolution he understood as the art of a breakthrough era. He himself never saw any socialist art. One of the paradoxes of the discourse is his categorical rejection of the formal method in literary criticism and, at the same time, his support for formal experiments in literature and visual arts. This article attempts at fnding connections between the theory of “permanent revolution”, “lefism” in the party, as well as in art and art criticism of the revolutionary decade.