Soviet nonconformist artists become classics. Conformism in the art of nonconformism One against all

NEMUKHIN VLADIMIR NIKOLAEVICH

Born in Moscow on February 12, 1925 in the family of a native of the village who became a worker. He spent his childhood in the village of Priluki ( Kaluga region), on the banks of the Oka. In 1943-1946 he studied at the Moscow art studio of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions. He used the advice of the artist P.E. Sokolov, thanks to whom he discovered the art of post-impressionism and cubism. For some time (1952-1959) he made a living as a designer and poster artist. He actively participated in private and public exhibitions of avant-garde art, including the scandalous “bulldozer exhibition” on a Moscow wasteland in Belyaevo. Since the late 1960s, his paintings have found increasing recognition in the West. Lived in Moscow.

After his early Okie landscapes in the traditional manner, as well as experiments in the spirit of cubism and pictorial abstractionism, he found his style in the random motif of cards on the beach sand.

By the mid-1960s, this spontaneous motif took shape in semi-abstract “still lifes with maps”, which became an extremely original manifestation of “informel” - a special abstractionist movement based on combinations of pure pictorial expression with a dramatic and symbolic element. Then Nemukhin long years varied his find, sometimes turning the surface of the canvas into an object-like “counter-relief” plane, reminiscent of an old, time-worn wall or the surface of a playing table. He often wrote - in a mixed, as if pictorial-graphic technique - and on paper (Jack of Diamonds series, late 1960s - early 1970s).
The likening of a painting to an object brought his 1980s works closer to pop art. During this period, he more than once turned to sculptural three-dimensional abstractions, biomorphic or geometric, then more and more often, when exhibiting his works, he accompanied paintings and graphic sheets with large installations.
"Homage to Bach"

At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. lived mostly in Germany (Dusseldorf), constantly visiting Russia, where in 2000 his works took a prominent place in Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 1999, the book Nemukhin Monologues was published.
https://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/krugosvet/article/3/37/1008877.htm

Fri, 20/11/2009 - 16:58
Zebra

participant

SITNIKOV, VASILY YAKOVLEVICH

Born in the village of Novo-Rakitino (Lebedyansky district, Tambov province) on August 19 (September 1), 1915, into a peasant family that moved to Moscow in 1921. In 1933 he studied at the Moscow Marine Mechanical College, becoming addicted to making models of sailing ships. An attempt to enter Vkhutemas (1935) was unsuccessful. He worked on the construction of the metro, as a cartoonist and model maker for director A.L. Ptushko, and showed transparencies at lectures by professors Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov (hence the nickname “Vasya the Lamplighter”). Having become a victim of slander, in 1941 he was arrested, declared mentally ill and sent for compulsory treatment to Kazan. Returning to the capital (1944), he did odd jobs. During the "thaw" he joined the "unofficial" art movement.
The formal source of his work was the traditional system of academic teaching, based on working with the nude and careful graphic shading.

In Sitnikov, however, the academic nature turned into surreal eroticism, and the shading into an unsteady air element, enveloping forms in the form of snow haze, swamp fog or a haze of light.

Added to this character traits"Russian style" in the spirit of symbolism and modernity. This is how his painting and graphic series of the 1960s-1970s were born - nudes, sexual grotesques, genres with a “monastery with snowflakes”
,
steppe landscapes (often also with a central motif of a monastery).
His very way of life was a kind of work-happening, a continuous artistic foolishness, starting with the famous inscription “I’ll come right now” on the door of the apartment, where a valuable collection of church antiquities and oriental carpets was kept.
Since 1951, the artist actively taught, realizing his dream of a “home academy.”

His pedagogical system included quite a few shocking paradoxes (tips on how to learn tone by “shading” newspaper photos, or how to paint a landscape with a floor brush from a trough of colorful solution). He was connected with the “Sitnikov school” - both through direct apprenticeship and creative contacts - whole line prominent masters (V.G. Weisberg, Yu.A. Vedernikov, M.D. Sterligova, A.V. Kharitonov, etc.). However, in general, with some exceptions (such as those listed above), this school over the years has degenerated into the production of “underground souvenir” pictorial kitsch.

In 1975 the master emigrated through Austria to the USA. He gave the most valuable part of his collection of icons to the Museum ancient Russian art named after Andrei Rublev. His own belongings “dissipated” almost without a trace - not counting reproductions and individual works in museums. He had no success abroad.
Sitnikov died in New York on November 28, 1987.
He moved from early works in the spirit of academicism in the 1950s (primarily in the “wounded” cycle, expressing the painful memory of the war) to an original style that combines features of symbolism and cubism with violent expression.

His works are usually cast in bronze; in the largest compositions, the sculptor prefers concrete.
The works of Neizvestny, embodying the process of eternal formation, a kind of “flow form”, are composed into large cycles, both sculptural and graphic (and later painting): Gigantomachy (since 1958), Images of Dostoevsky (since 1963; in 1970 in the series "Literary Monuments" published the novel Crime and Punishment with its illustrations).

Since 1956, the artist has been working on his main, most ambitious plan - the Tree of Life
,
a project of a giant sculpture-environment, where motifs of a tree crown are intricately combined, human heart and the “Möbius strip”, symbolizing the creative union of art and science.

An unknown person received large official orders (a monument in honor of the friendship of peoples, the so-called Lotus Flower on the Aswan Dam in Egypt, 1971; decorative reliefs for the Institute of Electronics in Zelenograd, 1974, and the former building of the CPSU Central Committee in Ashgabat (now the House of the Government of Turkmenistan, 1975 ); and etc.). Having met N.S. Khrushchev - however, during a scandal at an exhibition in the Moscow Manege - he subsequently executed his tombstone (1974), emphasizing the inconsistency of Khrushchev's rule with symbolic contrasts of forms. In 1976 he emigrated, and since 1977 he settled in the USA, in the vicinity of New York.
TEFI

Since 1989, the master often came to Russia; here, according to his designs, a memorial to the victims of the Gulag in Magadan (1996) was built - with a giant concrete Face of Sorrow - as well as the composition Revival in Moscow (2000). In 1996 he received the State Prize.

Since 1962 (article Discovering New Things in the magazine "Art"), and especially during the decades of emigration, he gave theoretical articles and lectures on the topic of "symbiosis of Faith and Knowledge" in art, designed to combine artistic experience archaic and avant-garde. He published blank verses, figuratively commenting on his artistic work. In Uttersberg (Sweden) there is a museum "Tree of Life", dedicated to creativity Unknown.

https://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/krugosvet/article/0/0c/1007903.htm
Wow, he’s so talented, and I’ve only heard bad things about him before!!!

Nonconformism is denial generally accepted rules and foundations that have become entrenched in a particular group or community. But people who are adherents of this, one might say, lifestyle, not only simply do not agree with any provisions, they also offer their own vision of the situation. However, first things first.

One against all

More to the point in simple words, then nonconformism is choosing your own path, and not following the one put forward by society. Such people do not accept what the crowd dictates. And there are actually a lot of examples of such personalities - they can be cited from the spheres of science, art, politics, culture, and simply from public life. For example, the same Giordano Bruno, rejected by society, was a nonconformist. Why? Yes, because he, like Galileo Galilei, was ahead of his time in his discoveries. Society did not accept this; it rejected both one and the other scientist.

Philosophy of nonconformism

Nonconformism is a position with a certain point vision. And, accordingly, he has his own philosophy. What is it? So, the first thing to note is that there are two types of nonconformism. The first is normal, and the second is forced. So, simple nonconformism is rejection, as well as disagreement with certain values ​​and norms that are dominant in society. And the second, coercive, consists in the pressure exerted on the individual by one or another social group. In other words, the community of people, by its pressure, forces a person to deviate from their expectations.

In general, it is normal to disagree and protest against something. After all, it was these qualities that forced primitive man develop and progress. Times have changed, but the principle of nonconformism has not. At all times, adventurers, rebels and even outcasts were those behind whom stood the initiative for the revolution of all mankind.

Nonconformists are also often called oppositionists. This is because they do not follow generally accepted norms thoughtlessly - they, on the contrary, fight against them. This is their uniqueness. A nonconformist is a person who does not refuse certain norms, he simply expresses a different opinion in relation to them.

Two opposites

Conformism and non-conformism are two interrelated concepts. But completely opposite. So, conformism and nonconformism are often found in certain social groups. And predominantly people who are supporters of one point of view or another can be found in a community of rather mundane psychological and social development. Indeed, in fact, the more the less nonconformism or conformism is inherent in it. What is characteristic of him in this case? This is free self-determination. That is, these are the people who independently decide what to do and what not to do. Not taking into account anyone's opinion, trusting only your own feeling. These are individuals for whom it is important that the result satisfies their expectations, and does not refute or confirm established laws in society. One might say - the golden mean.

Outcasts or just special?

Nonconformism... In psychology, this also means a protest reaction to life. “So as not to be like everyone else” - this is how some supporters of this point of view often think. In fact, both conformists and nonconformists all think the same way. Why? Because some think like everyone else (the first), and the rest think inside out, on the contrary (the second).

What is behavioral negativism? Perhaps in the mind of a nonconformist. He becomes this way on purpose, with the goal of being and being considered different from others. It often happens that such people become outcasts from society. Which group would like the fact that they were joined by a person who denies everything they adhere to? But there are also those who do not behave this way on purpose. These are really their own independent conclusions. They really think differently. They have completely different values, and they sincerely do not share other, more common ones. You could say that such people have their own world.

Creation

It should be noted that nonconformism in art occurs quite often. And most aesthetes find this style very attractive. What's wrong with creators (most often nonconformism in painting) bringing something of their own into art? In this way, it is possible to dilute it, to prevent it from stagnating and becoming banal and uninteresting. This is really important. After all, on the other hand, nonconformism can be considered as eternal search something fresh, new. This way you can expand your scope and your own vision of certain things. For example, the same art house, which, due to stereotypes that have spread in society at the speed of light, can be quite attractive and interesting. But adherents of this style are also kind of nonconformists.

Conformists and non-conformists - is it possible to exist together?

We can say with confidence that it is possible. Although you will have to work hard for both. After all, both of these phenomena are associated with social contact. Even a person who does not agree with the opinion of the majority and does not receive approval and support from them can make friends with conformists. Often such individuals are useful to the team. Because it is nonconformists who are the generators of new ones, fresh ideas. The opposite opinion is always important. Firstly, for comparison. Secondly, to develop another solution to a particular issue or situation. One that would suit everyone. To put it simply, nonconformists help you look at things with different eyes and make you think.

And conformists, in turn, can teach such people to interact with others without infringing on their interests and the main thing - mutual desire.

Nonconformism or unofficial - a peculiar, largely paradoxical reflection in the fine arts of the spiritual, psychological and social situation in the Soviet Union of the 1960s - 1980s of the 20th century.

Unlike the official, the unofficial gave preference not to content, but to artistic form, in the creation of which the artists were completely free and independent. The separation of form from content led, according to the official doctrine, to the loss of content, therefore unofficial art - nonconformism- was defined as formalism and was persecuted.

The art of nonconformism, despite the fact that the artists classified in this direction were most often not conscious adherents of the main philosophical trend of the 20th century, can well be called existentialist, since it affirmed the absolute uniqueness of the individual. Idealist aesthetics nonconformism was based on the idea of ​​the soul (inner self) of the artist as the source of beauty. This idea contained a rebellious protest against the objectified world, bridging the gap between subjectivity and objectivity, which led to the expression of the problem of being in disturbing and unusual forms. The existential rebellion of nonconformism was in tune with the world art of the 20th century and, several decades late, included it in the world art space.

At the heart of the existentialist rebellion was the threat of loss of individuality, maximized by Soviet totalitarianism. The global anxiety of the 20th century about the fact that the world of objects created by man subjugates the one who created it and who, being inside this world, loses his subjectivity, was intensified under Soviet conditions by the dominance of collectivist ideology. This ideology, elevated to the rank of state policy, allowed the existence of exclusively conformists, unshakable in their desire to be not themselves, but part of the whole.

S. Kierkegaard understood existence (existence) as something extremely subjective. " Existence is constantly singular, the general (abstract) does not exist" Existentialism nonconformist artists(in most cases unconscious) was a manifestation of the creator’s courage to be himself, not to be afraid to face the universal human problem of the lack of meaning in life. The search for meaning and the emergence of despair in the 20th century are connected with the morning of God in the previous one, XIX century. « Together with Him, the entire system of values ​​and meanings within which man existed died. This turning point event is felt as both loss and liberation and leads to the courage to take on nothingness."(P. Tillich, 1952). Nonconformism as an artistic movement, it possessed to the highest degree the inherent contemporary art creative courage to face the despair of reality and, having expressed it in his works, show the courage to be himself.

The fury with which Soviet ideology fell upon nonconformism, testified to the feeling of a serious threat to the spirituality of society, coming from within, from part of it. Neurotic symptom of resistance to non-existence by reducing being, i.e. denial of any aspects of reality indicates neurotic defense mechanisms in the ant itself and the existentialist desire for traditional guarantees, for the idealized naturalism of socialist realism. Existentialist art of the 20th century is characterized by the courage of despair, generated by the lack of meaning of existence, and self-affirmation in spite of everything. In relation to the artist’s personality, anxiety about fate and death was the main problem contemporary art and nonconformism as part of it.

Nonconformism is characterized by a deepening into the soul (inner self) of the artist and unusual forms of expression of new psychological material. The artist’s “waking soul” comes into contact with any, even the smallest phenomenon of contemporary reality, illuminates new facets of the object when it comes into contact with spiritual life. “Sentient thought,” gravitating towards the meaningfulness of impressions, with the help of associations gives meaning to every image or hint of it in a picture.
Voltage mental strength capable of sharpening and directing the artist’s thought and soul into transcendental areas inaccessible to ordinary experience, but necessary for creativity. For the most varied and unexpected reasons, he can show attention to his surroundings with the involvement of Higher powers in his creativity.

Looking for new reality art of nonconformism boldly overcame the barriers of the canons of the past.
In Russian classical art, then in socialist realism narrative intonation dominated, the artists' attention was focused on feelings corresponding to direct names: love, anger, delight, despair. The presentation of the plot was often colored by ideological rhetoric. Violently interrupted in his existence beginning of the 20th century turned to more subtle and deep shades human feelings. The historical merit of nonconformism lies in the resurrection in Russian art of attention to all the infinite diversity of characteristics of the human psyche.
Nonconformism, as existentialist art, is based on the artist’s conversation with his soul, and a painting can arise not only from strong unambiguous feelings, but also from a combination of impressions, references, and the internal need to perpetuate the wordless beauty, as if crying for help - the beauty that arises from the artist's need to see it and feel it. Hidden meaning paintings are obtained by the effort of consciousness aimed at vague sensations and details of deep mental life.
The search for an elusive reality in the art of nonconformism is colored by an eschatological picture of the collapse of the traditional value system that has developed over the almost half-century of totalitarianism. All this created a variety of styles and movements within nonconformism as a single artistic direction.

Diversity creative techniques The axis was also generated by the human factor. In order to practice unofficial art during the years of nonconformism, a larger-than-life personality was needed more than ever before. Strong and deep souls (weak ones were rejected by the very history of nonconformism) gave rise to strong and deep feelings. A historically unprecedented repetition of the phenomenon has arisen Van Gogh, and in relation not to one master, but to a whole group of artists, when the lack of professionalism in the usual sense did not prevent the creation of something new in art. The artist worked under an immediate threat to the physical existence of both his work and himself. Added to this was the impossibility of escape (unlike Nazi Germany, from where emigration was possible), and the lack of contacts with outside world, "The Courage to Be Yourself" for nonconformist artists was courage not only creative, but also human. Perhaps this is why nonconformism turned out to be so interesting as an art direction, because a picture created under the threat of death carries an internal tension that is communicated to the viewer.

Unique in the history of art, a community of strong individuals showed the world an equally unique variety of styles and artistic manners that distinguish nonconformism
The overthrow of totalitarian oppression in Soviet society and art is comparable to the revolution that turned the life of the Russian empire and Russian art upside down at the beginning of the century. Soviet totalitarianism oppressed art historically for a short time - a little more than half a century, but the intensity of the oppression was such that this time must be counted as they count in war - in two or even three years.
The art of non-conformism is filled with a feeling of the shock of the world, reverberating in the vastness of the universe. It is complex and associative, metaphors of freedom express in it the inner essence of the human creator. In this, the nonconformists are similar to the avant-garde artists of the beginning of the last century, when “ The breath of time has especially shaped the point of view of new artists"(A. Kamensky, 1987).

The reality of those distant years was all in transition and fermentation, it meant something rather than constituted something, it served more as a sign than it satisfied. It was a whirlpool of conventions between unconditionality abandoned and not yet achieved. Half a century later the situation repeated itself. By the 1960s, Soviet totalitarianism had clearly outlived its usefulness and became an absolute abandonment, and freedom and democracy took the place of a dream, anticipated but not yet achieved.

From the worries of time nonconformists who worked underground literally (like Arefiev on the landing, others in the janitors' and stokers' rooms) and figuratively moved on to dreams and hopes. Like visions before them, along with excited, feverish, often hate-filled scenes real life, suddenly images of endless space and happiness arose, replaced by reflections of the tragic confusion of the soul. Many of them in their work proved that a person, even more so, can reject the social level of existence and live in the boundless Being, eating autotrophically, drawing true content in himself, in the sensualization of sensations, in the subtleties of inner life, in metaphysics and aesthetics. For others, art served as a sphere of social activity. After M.Vlaminck they satisfied the desire " disobey, create a world alive and liberated" The only starting point for nonconformism was the artist’s personality, “ knowing herself, and her limits, and her rights, and sins, and closeness to madness» ( P. Lillikh, 1952). The artist, plunging into the depths of his spirit, with the help of introspection, realized his possibilities in his work. There was a need to develop a new creative method, a complex of formalistic techniques, such as stylization - strengthening the features of reality by means of the same reality, or deformation - a method of abstraction from reality, a means of manifesting the irrational, and others.

With all the complexity and richness original techniques nonconformism was a single artistic movement, modernist in nature, based on idealistic philosophical theories and aesthetic systems of the XX claim.
In the very general view Within this artistic movement, one can distinguish groups of creatively close artists, similar to each other in their vision of the world and their soul, in the methods of transmitting this artistic vision to the viewer. At the same time, a certain consistency is revealed in the degree of emotional abstraction from reality, from the social level of the artist’s existence.

/ - The artists who are most connected with the surrounding reality and think critically in their work are conceptualists.
II- Reflecting reality, your impressions as new artistic means- neorealists and neo-impressionists.
III- Those who see the manifestations of higher powers in reality are neo-symbolists.
IV- Burning with feelings, refracting reality in the light of their strong and
of ambiguous emotions - expressionists.
V- Dreamers are surrealists.
VI- Passing on their emotional movements and moods by combining
colors and forms - abstractionists.

In the field of unofficial art Soviet Union the laws of state regulation of the artistic process were not in effect. The development of art was left to its own laws, in its purest form, in which, according to the fair remark of the famous specialist Yu.V.Novikova, art developed in the past among those who later came to be called the Itinerants, World of Art, and Impressionists. With one significant difference - the creation process nonconformism was weighed down by the “not yet melted glacier of the gravest social pressure.”

Strong Personalities who were engaged in unofficial art were individual and original in their artistic searches. The Peredvizhniki or Impressionists formed small communities consisting of several artists similar in style.

Nonconformism, as an artistic phenomenon of world art, is amazing big amount members (many hundreds) and the diversity of currents included in it. In the absence of information (“Iron Curtain”), the very spirit of the times, some insignificant scraps of information, rumors in literature and music brought to life art forms, coinciding with contemporary forms of world art. Sometimes finds nonconformism ahead of the innovations of the West.

Nonconformism in general, is considered by many as " a crazy mixture of Russophiles and Westerners, the salon and profundity of artists working in a wide variety of manners, united by being on the same side of the barricades"(A. Khlobystin, 2001). However, this military terminology should not obscure the main, deeper similarity of the existential basis that determined the community within diversity and united it into a single conglomerate—the mutual closeness of artists “in their aesthetics” (S. Kovalsky, 2001).

Plastic diversity and form-creative experiments have given rise to genre and style varieties of creativity nonconformists:, traditional and intellectual primitiveness, surrealism, (with a mixture Christian motives and orientalist), genre, genre portrait, etc.

In this work, only the main currents in nonconformism. They all got further development in the modern postmodern 21st century.

Recently, an exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the INAKI group of artists, which includes Viktor Bogorad, Sergei Kovalsky and Boris Mitavsky, opened at the Pushkinskaya-10 art center. Their works over the years are presented. What can you see here? Old good work, have probably already sold out, so for every ten new ones (created after 1991), there is only one old one (before 1991). Hence the problem.

There is a 1973 manifesto in which artists insisted that their work should not be classified as abstraction or surrealism. Unfortunately, this cannot be avoided, at least in relation to new works. To be precise, we are dealing with salon surrealism, easy to understand.

In cinema there is a term “exploitation cinema”, when a film exploits a certain banal theme in order to maximize earnings at minimum investment. We can see something similar in the example of current nonconformism, which is often engaged in the exploitation of itself, of those images that were invented back in the USSR. Of course, it happens that some topics do not lose relevance for a long time. But there are actually not so many of them as artists imagine.

One of the problems of that generation of artists was the oppression of official art by the competent authorities under the USSR. For this reason, being at the peak of creative activity, they could not find suitable conditions for development. As a result, art was created for internal consumption, fed only by its environment, and this continued for quite a long time. It was difficult not to get used to this. To this day, the game of nonconformism continues, which ends in the production similar friends on a friend of Sotsart subjects. There is one more problem that I don’t want to talk about, but you can’t ignore it. Alcohol. He ruined many artists...

Artist Sergei “Africa” Bugaev identifies another problem, a more global one. The isolation of the Russian, and above all the St. Petersburg, artistic community, the obsession with itself. It is no wonder that artists find themselves cut off from everything that is happening in world art.

“There is no circulation within artistic activity. There is a moment of stagnation, says Bugaev. “At the same time, we still have a division into official and unofficial art.” In this sense, the boundaries can now be completely erased, because the former nonconformism could have long ago become official glamor.

"Africa" ​​also suggests that in currently There is no good exhibition and museum infrastructure that gives artists the opportunity to show their work in other cities. Art objects stagnate. But really, the lifetime of the exhibition is less than a month. What then? Then the paintings will return back to the studios...

As for the issue of internal consumption of art, this is, in essence, a manifestation of snobbery towards those who “do not understand”. It turns out that owning objects of art is the prerogative of those who “understand” (but not everyone has the money for this “understanding”).

Folk art in modern society is often treated as something shameful and unreal. Despite the fact that the Russian Museum is filled with works of folk art.

But in Germany, for example, the purchase by an average person of a painting by a young, interesting, relevant artist, who in his works demonstrates opposition to the system, is considered a normal phenomenon.

Rector of the Academy of Arts. I.E. Repin Semyon Mikhailovsky calls not to reflect on Pushkinskaya-10, since neither it as such nor everything connected with it has existed for a long time. Of course, the artists of the old generation are worth remembering, but it’s time to stop perceiving their work as contemporary art. The concepts of nonconformist art are outdated, and if we somehow position ourselves in the context of a museum, then accordingly. It makes no sense to artificially marginalize ourselves, otherwise it will only be an attempt to create a contrived conflict. For the most part, such exhibitions are really done for oneself, and the art market is not interested in the authors themselves. Those people for whom Pushkinskaya-10 is a foreign phenomenon are simply not interested in such topics.

Do you want to act as a true nonconformist these days, to do something contrary to official ideology and unofficial art? Hang at home a painting in the genre of socialist realism, made in a classical manner, which depicts students raising virgin soil. Beautiful and against the system.

Spiritual situation at the end of the 20th century. poses an obvious problem of understanding the Soviet cultural heritage in all the diversity of its historical and artistic features. This problem is especially relevant in connection with the changes in the cultural life of modern civilization that are so characteristic of the end of the 20th century.

Domestic culture of the Soviet period undoubtedly belongs to the category of the most unique phenomena in world history. This concerns not only the past century, but also relates to a broader perspective. Analysis of the development of Soviet culture is fertile ground for understanding modern general cultural processes.

The most common “meanings” of the cultural space of the late 20th century. (both domestic and Western European) are associated with the concept of “postmodernism”, which is a kind of emblem of modern culture. Post-non-classical trends in modern natural science, “post-modernization” of the technical and economic sphere, shocking political technologies, “rhizomes” of cultural space constitute only individual outlines of this big problem.

The well-known undialecticalism and eclecticism of postmodernism grows out of the desire to overcome the stereotypes of classical rationalism, which is the main object of criticism from the adherents of the latter.

At the same time, it should be recognized that one of the features of Soviet culture is an amazing combination of eclecticism, modernism, revolutionism and strict rationalism. The Russian revolutions of 1917 only continue the trend of general radicalization and modernization of social and cultural life. As M. Epstein writes, “historically, socialist realism, like the entire communist era in Russia, is located between the periods of modernism (the beginning of the 20th century) and postmodernism (the end of the 20th century). This interimity of socialist realism - a period that has no visible analogue in the West - raises the question of its relationship with modernism and postmodernism and where it lies, in specific Russian conditions, the border between them." It is Russia that is the birthplace of the leading trends in modernist art of the 20th century. And it is here that the latest trends in the field are radically tested and adapted for the first time. social life and revolutionary practice. The “collective unconscious” of those interpreters of the Soviet period of Russian history who deliberately exclude from their analysis the initial phase - the phase of fratricidal wars and mutual political terror, ultimately reveals in Soviet history only positive traits. In this form of analysis, the boundaries of the end of the Soviet period are naturally erased. Soviet history as if it didn’t end at all (and will never end). She always is and will be “more alive than all the living.” Nostalgia for lost The Motherland replaces the objective realities of the ongoing (and naturally completed) process of the evolution of society, and the very concept of “Motherland” is identified exclusively with the Soviet period of the great history of Russia.

An amazing property of Soviet culture is that in it the official totalitarian space coexists with the highest manifestations of human spirit, clearly artisanal and ideologically biased elements of culture coexist with brilliant insights and highest creative achievements. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is soviet art pre-war period (and not just Russian beginnings century) in its most interesting variants expresses the dynamics of the formation of the world avant-garde and post-avant-garde. It can be hypothesized that Soviet culture in its developed forms represents a qualitative synthesis of directly opposite and, at first glance, incompatible elements. In other words, rationality, brought to its “incommensurable” (Feyerabend) limits, characterizes this uniqueness.

In this regard, the logical question is how countercultural (nonconformist) processes functioned in Soviet culture, what driving motives of these processes are priority and how, while externally maintaining rationalistic orientations, Soviet culture prepared the phenomena that occurred in it in the 90s years of the 20th century

Understanding the postmodern situation in Western philosophical thought has led to many intriguing conclusions. Western ideology constantly shows a desire for ahead of the curve cultural time and space The result of this is the birth of various models of the end of history (from Spengler and Toynbee to Baudrillard and Kojève). At the same time, this situation clarifies the mythology about conquest space and time “young masters of the Earth”, so characteristic of post-Soviet consciousness. Modernity on domestic soil appears as a truly unique phenomenon. It brings together into a single continuum political reconstructions, ideological myths, artistic practices and philosophical discourses. Therefore, one of the marks of modern intellectual life in Russia is, no less than in the West, a mixture of genres and styles of intellectual activity.

The above situation is a consequence of important features of national self-awareness. Soviet culture felt its fullness and completeness in a situation of constantly ongoing struggle between opposing tendencies. Thus, the movement of the sixties in the 20th century. was simultaneously both a cultural and a countercultural process. It was on this antithetical cross-section that such unique and initially seemingly internally incompatible cultural phenomena as the cinema of the 50-70s (Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Ioseliani, Parajanov, Chukhrai, Danelia), theater directing (Efros, Tovstonogov, Lyubimov), music (Shostakovich) became possible , Sviridov, Schnittke, Babajanyan, Khachaturyan, Gavrilin, Solovyov-Sedoy), a whole galaxy of amazing actors (Urbansky, Demidova, Smoktunovsky, Bondarchuk, Dal), literature and drama (Nekrasov, Vladimov, Vampilov, Volodin, Solzhenitsyn), art song ( Okudzhava, Vizbor, Vysotsky, Dolsky), philosophical creativity (Ilyenkov, Batishchev, Mamardashvili, Lotman) and many others.

In retrospect at the end of the 20th century. the initial internal incommensurability turns into a pattern. The famous lines of B. Okudzhava about “commissars in dusty helmets” or the non-classical “walks with Pushkin” of A. Sinyavsky, which have repeatedly been the subject of ideological speculation, precisely express this unique compatibility in the domestic cultural space contradictory tendencies, which, in fact, constitute its unique identity.

In the literature on Russian postmodernism today there is a very strong criticism of the sixties as people who did not fully fulfill their duty to transform the totalitarian ideology of the Soviet type. At the same time, the sixties are also criticized from other positions, namely for the collapse of Soviet ideology. However, both critical trends do not take into account the obvious fact that the domestic counterculture (including the phenomenon of the sixties) had other tasks. These tasks arose from the originality, sometimes quite tragic, of the evolution of both Russian culture in general and its Soviet stage in particular. It was about constructing a special model of post-totalitarian space, for which the path of revolutionary renovationism was unacceptable. In this regard, domestic nonconformism also rethought the goals of Western counterculture, in which the nonconformism and revolutionism of the 60s were almost imperceptibly replaced by reconciliation and the “new bourgeoisism.” One of the aphoristic expressions of this, perhaps utopian, model of Soviet counterculture are the poetic lines of Yu. Shevchuk: “ Revolution, you taught us / To believe in the injustice of good...».

Recent trends in Russian culture (music, theater, cinema, humanities) allow us to say that the legacy of the great Russian culture of the 19th-20th centuries. not lost. Just as the main antithetical features of its originality have not been lost. In this perspective, Soviet culture occupies a completely worthy place and fits into the situation of post-modernity in a paradoxical and harmonious way.

The totality of postmodernism has set the teeth on edge. Today it is much easier to be ironic at him than to puzzle yourself scientific criticism: the pain points of an almost defeated enemy are too obvious. This kind of pathos ignores (consciously or not) the potential non-aggressiveness of postmodernity as a possible ideology. Aggression and “secret intent” are included in it by critics who are accustomed to existing in the paradigm of violence (including intellectual violence). The easiest way is to systematically and logically-synergetically criticize what does not fit into Procrustean bed once and for all confirmed academicism. And it doesn’t matter that cultural gestures reminiscent of postmodernity most often in history filled and deepened the rhythm of the movement of civilization. It does not matter that the “imaginary worlds” of postmodernism are fragile and incapable of retaliatory violence. The critic himself chooses his complexes and attacks them. Fine known path: “Whoever hurts, talks about it.”

But the main problem That's not what it's all about. The global attack on the position of modern culture by post-communism against the backdrop of the general defeat of postmodernity seems not so dangerous, quite trivial. Why criticize post-communism for this? Somehow we will get along with such criticism. Or another option: communism will disappear by itself - why pay attention to the ideological performance it plays out.

We won't get along. And it won't disappear. Synthesis and assimilation, of course, can reconcile a lot for a while, but the situation of “challenge and response” will ultimately raise before each of us the question of global responsibility before post-modernity, in line with which today the communist idea is advancing, often insinuatingly and imperceptibly . At the same time, it is very important to understand that the end of communism in Russia will also mean the end of the era of postmodernism. What will replace one and the other, why these two processes can end almost simultaneously - this is another topic.