Abstract

The article discusses the little-known and long forgotten novel Tvorchestvo (Creativity, 1952) by the Soviet writer A. Barten. It is not an attempt at literary interpretation of the text, but rather the art historian’s analysis of a literary work dedicated to the fine arts and artists. The novel Tvorchestvo chronicles the art life in the era of socialist realism in the 1930s as the novel takes place in 1935, and reflects the spirit of the time when it was written - the period of ideological campaigns in 1946-1953. The artistically weak work did not attract the attention of literary critics, since it is a typical product of that time, direct and “poster-like” embodiment of the nature of totalitarian culture. The article examines collisions of art in the 1930s-1950s revealed in the novel: the fight against “formalism” and “naturalism”, against “bezydeynost” (idealessness) and “apolitichnost” (apoliticality). It analyses the characters of artists and complexity of their relationships (an “advanced” artist, an art bureaucrat, the genius of socialist realism Vedenin, “not that” realist artist Simakhin, incompetent copyist and artisan Nikodim Nikodimovich, artist “from the machine tool” Semyon, “impressionist-cosmopolitan” Rakitin and, finally, “formalist, who comes to the consciousness of his absolute creative impotence”, Veksler), problems of creativity (“delight to be in ranks” or creative freedom) and craving for producing a “masterpiece” in the conditions of “socialist building”. A. Barten displays his inability to talk about visual means of art and lards the characters’ speech with newspaper words, clichéd phrases and propaganda clichés that migrate from magazines and newspapers to fiction. The novel by A. Barten, an agitational and administrative work rather than a fictional one, in combination with a critical article by T. Golovanova and Yu. Neprintsev “Without knowledge of life” is an obvious piece of ideological demagogy, far from the real problems of literature and art; it is a typical example of manipulating readers, implanting perverted artistic tastes.