Discussion in the Meeting with the Creative Intellectuals (1946)
Question: How dangerous ideologically are the avantgarde tendencies in music and the abstract school in art and sculpture.
Stalin: Today under the guise of innovation formalism is being induced in Soviet music and abstraction in painting. Once in a while a question can be heard ‘is it necessary for such great people as Bolsheviks and Leninists to be engaged in such petty things and spend time criticizing abstract painting and formalism. Let the psychiatrists deal with it’.
In these types of questions misunderstanding of the role of ideological sabotage against our country and especially against our youth is clearly discernible. It is with their help that attempts are being made against socialist realism in art and literature. It is impossible to do so openly. In these so-called abstract painting there is no real face of those people, whom people would have liked to imitate in the fight for their peoples’ happiness, for communism and for the path on which they want progress. This portrayal is substituted by the abstract mysticism clouding the issue of socialist class struggle against capitalism. During the war how many people came to the statue of Minin and Pozharsky in Red Square to instill in us the feelings of victory? To what can a bust of twisted iron representing ‘innovation’ as an art inspire us? To what can an abstract painting inspire?
This is the reason why modern American financial magnates are propagating modernism, paying for this type of work huge royalties which the great masters of realism may not ever see.
There is an underlying idea of class struggle in the so-called western popular music, in the so-called formalist tendencies. This music, if one can call it such, is created from the sect of ‘shakers’ – dance that induces people to ecstasy, trance and makes them into wild animals ready for any wild action. This type of music is created with the help of psychiatrists so as to influence the brain and psychology of the people. This is one type of musical narcotics under whose influence a person cannot think of fresh ideas and are turned into a herd. It is useless to invite such people for revolution, for building communism. As you see music can also fight.
In 1944, I had an opportunity to read the instruction written by an officer of British intelligence, with the title: how to use formalist music for corrupting the enemy army.
Related:
Shaping Society: The Intersection of Art, Ideology, and Power
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 