Olivia Foss

CSP 63
Prof. Sushytska
5/3/20
Censorship and Art in Soviet Russia

The Russian revolutions of 1917, specifically the Bolshevik revolution, paved the way for

the rise of Communism and the construction of the Soviet Union. After the fall of Tsarist

imperial rule and the Romanov dynasty in 1918, the Russian empire fell into a violent civil war,

ultimately finding its conclusions in 1923 through the victory of Vladimir Lenin’s red army and

the establishment of the Soviet union. The Soviet Union became the first Communist

government to adopt the Marxist ​Manifesto,​ with Lenin at the head until his death in 1924.

Shortly after Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin proclaimed himself dictator and instated a totalitarian

rule in the Soviet Union for roughly thirty years, until his death in 1953. It is under Stalin's

Communist dictatorship that the Soviet Union rose to prominence as a military industrial power,

a rise encompassing Stalin’s infamous Great Purge -- a politically repressive and massively

violent crusade through which Stalin eliminated all opposition to his regime, amounting to at

least 750,000 deaths. While political censorship and propaganda were not alien to the experience

of Russian citizens, the Soviet reign of Communism prompted unprecedented censorship of

anything viewed as antagonistic towards the Communist Party in power. The pervasive and strict

expurgation, particularly that of Stalin’s Great Purge, extended Communist control over every

aspect of societal expression. Philosophers such as Petr Chaadaev and Merab Mamardashvilli,

assert the major role that censorship played in regulating and inhibiting the natural cultural and

historical development of the nations it occupied. The violent, profoundly oppressive censorship
and erasure of collective historical memory, largely resulted in a widespread cynicism and

fractured personal identity that has long permeated Russian society. This phenomenon is

especially prevalent in case studies of writers and poets such as Anna Ahkamatova and Boris

Pasternak. No matter a writer's style- whether it be poetic or technical, writers function as the

primary documentarians of individual and collective experience in a society. In examining cases

of individual writers, one can see how Communist censorship systematically erased collective

memory, history and the individual and shared understanding of what it meant to be alive in

Soviet Russia.

Stalin’s Great Purge, prompted by his determination to maintain authority and preserve

the Russian Communist party, implemented various tactics to eradicate anyone seen as a threat to

his regime. These tactics included the Moscow Trials and Gulag labor camps in which millions

of Russians were falsely convicted, tortured, enslaved, imprisoned and executed. While the purge

began with eliminations of anticipated political and military opponents, it quickly extended its

control over large numbers of the intelligentsia, including artists, scientists, writers as well as

lower class or ethnic minorities -- essentially anyone who dared to speak out against Stalin.

Within the context of such extreme censorship, Amei Wallach- in her report “Censorship in the

Soviet Bloc,” discusses the fragility of artists and writers within the Soviet regime stating,

“Both images and words-and particularly images and words deifying Lenin and

Stalin-were weapons in an altogether sophisticated campaign to adorn atrocities with

uplifting sentiments. Either the artist aided in this subversion of signs, or else the artist

was an enemy of the state and had to be annihilated. Art had one function: to encourage

blind Stalin-worship…” (Wallach,78)

In other words, the artist was faced with a life threatening choice between blind support or

honest individual expression. This extreme, forced repression of individual expression inhibited

cultural and historical development of Russian Society. This is a notion asserted by prominent

Russian philosophers such as Petr Chaadaev and Merab Mamardashvilli.

Although Chaadaev’s proclamations of thwarted historical and cultural development date

to pre-Stalinist Russia, they still hold significance in delineating connections between history, the

evolution of national culture, as well as individual and collective memory and identity. In

Chaadaev’s First Letter of 1829, on the philosophy of Russian history, he primarily focuses on

the correspondence between individual identity and a nation's historical past. He asserts that,

“Nations live only through the strong impressions left by ages past and through relations with

other peoples. In this way, every individual is conscious of being in contact with all mankind.”

(Chaadaev, 164) Chaadaev continues to expand his concept, specifically observing Russia’s

place within these theories. He writes,

“Our memories go back no further than yesterday; we are, so to say, strangers to

ourselves. We move so oddly in time that, as we advance, the immediate past is

irretrievably lost to us… It is natural for a man to feel lost when he is unable to establish

a connection with what preceded him and with what follows. Not being guided by a sense

of unbroken continuity, he feels that he has gone astray in the world. There are such lost

creatures in all countries; but with us this is a general characteristic” (Chaadaev, 164-165)

With these lines, Chaadaev establishes the key intrinsic connection between personal identity

and a nation's historical past, justifying the pervasive cynicism which so often accompanies

censorship. Chaadaev’s proclamations prompted an explosion of discussion within the Russian

intelligentsia in the years after its publication. While censorship was not as prevalent then as it

was in Stalin’s era, the journal in which these letters were published was nevertheless prohibited

by the government and Chaadaev was deemed by the state as insane and unfit to publish further.

Chaadaev, after identifying the very components involved in the destruction of coherent cultural

and historical development- specifically, the lack of individual and collective memory, ​himself

became included in the censorship and erasure of this very same memory and history-- a painful

irony which only further proved his thesis. More recently, Russian Philosopher Merab

Mamardashvili, draws on Chaadaev’s theories as he asserts his own ideas several decades later in

his text “The ‘Third’ State”, published in 1989. Having lived through Stalin’s violent abuse of

power, Mamardashvili writes of the collective suffering and shortage of civic literacy inflicted by

Communist censorship, stating:

“...we cannot once and for all derive meaning from what has happened to us, from what

we experienced ourselves… Even in this era… Russian people are ready to suffer

infinitely, thinking that Russia is good because one suffers more here. But...if somebody

really suffers, they do it one time, as one exemplar. Only in following this path can we

derive any meaning from lived experience; derive it once and for all so that whatever was

once experienced enters historical existence.” (Mamardashvili, 2)

In his philosophical, yet politically charged discussions, Mamardashvili accounts for Russian

citizens’ inability to affirm their personal experiences within permanent historical existence. This

inability, reinforced by Stalin’s acts of terror and torture in his efforts to censor and erase anyone

or anything he saw as a threat, created a metastatic cynicism and fracturing of individual and
collective identities. This concept became especially prevelant one in Stalin’s vicious repression

and murder of intellectuals and artists.

The obliteration of individual and collective memory which resulted from the extreme

censorship implemented by Stalin’s communist regime is evident upon reviewing a case study of

the late Russian-Soviet Poet, Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known as Anna Akhmatova.

Anna Akhmatova, 1889-1966, became known as one of the most influential Russian poets of the

20th century. Akhmatova began writing prior to the Marxist revolution and rise of communism,

so when Stalin’s regime came to power and implemented mass censorship, Akhmatova had

already established herself as a writer. In 1922 however, Akhmatova was condemned as a threat

and her books and poetry were banned from publication. Having never made a living any other

way than as a writer, Akhmatova felt completely lost and at odds with the state in which she had

once felt at home. During this period of repression, Akhmatova became a symbol of protest

against the suppression of Russian poets. Even after the execution and imprisonment of her

husband and son in the Gulag Camps, Akhmatova managed to keep herself and her poetry alive

with the help of her friends. Most notably, her friend Lydia Chukovskaya, kept a private diary of

her conversations with the poet, which she eventually published as a book in 1980. In ​The

Akhmatova Journals​, Chukovskaya recounts the strenuous and anxiety ridden life in the Soviet

Union during the Great Purge. Chukovskaya writes,

“In those days, Anna Andreevna lived under the spell of the torture chamber, demanding

from herself and others constant memory of it, despising those who behaved as though it

didn’t exist. To write down our conversations - wouldn’t that mean risking her life? ...The

torture chamber, which had swallowed up, physically, whole quarters of the city, and
 spiritually all our conscious and unconscious thoughts, the torture chamber, crying out its

own clumsily crafted lies from every newspaper column, from every radio set, at the

same time demanded of us that we should not take its name in vain…We were

disobedient, we mentioned it continually, vaguely, suspecting that while doing so that,

even when we were alone, we were not alone, that someone never took his eyes off us, or

rather his ears. Surrounded by muteness, the torture chamber wished to remain at once

all-powerful and nonexistant; it would not let anyones word call it out of its almighty

nonexistance…” (Chukovskaya, 5-6)

This excerpt from Chukovskaya’s journals is a powerful description of the horror

of Stalin’s Purge. Through this report, the difficulty of living under such close inspection,

constantly unsure of one's own safety, is palpable. The duality of Stalin's regime, its

‘all-powerful’ yet nonexistent nature, seems to be its most troubling aspect. The ‘torture

chamber’, as Chukovskaya calls it, even censored its own existence, further exacerbating

collective confusion and fear. This intensively intrusive yet elusive authority combined with

fierce censorship, reveals the extent to which the record of experience - both personal and

national - had been completely upended and obscured. Chukovskaya’s report of the methods

both she and the renowned poet employed in order to preserve their experiences as historically

valid, further attests to the shortage of memory transfer which existed at the time. Chukovskaya

writes,

“...Anna Andreevna, when visiting me, recited parts of ‘Requiem’ also in a whisper, but

at home...did not even dare to whisper it; suddenly, in mid- conversation, she would fall

silent and, signaling to me with her eyes at the ceiling and walls, she would get a scrap of
 paper and a pencil; then she would loudly say something very mundane: ‘Would you like

some tea?’ or ‘You’re very tanned’, then she would cover the scrap in hurried

handwriting and pass it to me. I would read the poems and, having memorized them,

would hand them back to her in silence. ‘How early autumn came this year,’ Anna

Andreevna would say loudly and, striking a match, would burn the paper over an

ashtray.” (Chukovskaya, 6)

This detailed, extremely personal account of the way in which poetry was preserved in a time of

such extreme expurgation, offers a prime example of the heroic effort required to maintain

memory and bring individual expression and experience into historical existence. The strain of

preserving individual expression and memory, a strain imposed by the Communist state through

banning a copious amount of artists, authors and publications, has largely contributed to a slow

erosion, if not utter lack, in the cultural and historical development of the Soviet Union at the

time- a realization to which both Chaadaev and Mamardashvilli have given voice.

Amid the struggle to survive as a writer during an epoch of strict censorship, and

consequently, corrosive cynicism that the Soviet regime gave birth to, Boris Pasternak serves as

an example of a writer who persevered in spite of persistent, violent expurgation. One of the

most talented writers in the public eye -- and therefore under intense scrutiny -- during the Stalin

era, the poet-novelist Pasternak was one of the few intellectual-artists to survive while still

upholding a refusal of communist restriction and censorship power. At a time when many of his

literary companions were imprisoned or murdered, Pasternak managed to survive his own

expulsion from and condemnation by the Soviet Writers Union. He succeeded in escaping

persecution, outliving Stalin’s reign of terror. Pasternak’s ability to retain his integrity and life,
despite the fracturing cynicism and fear which imbued his country, is astounding. Many in the

Soviet Union’s Cold War rival country, The United States, were aware of dissident writers such

as Pasternak - even widely publishing and celebrating his work. Pasternak died, allegedly of lung

cancer, in May, 1960. His last western visitor, the composer and conductor, Lukas Foss, had

travelled to the Soviet Union in order to conduct several cultural exchange concerts. At the

request of Pasternak’s American friends who had not heard from him in months, Foss paid a visit

to Pasternak in order to check on his health. Although Foss assumed his visit was not political,

he recounts Pasternak’s cynical commentary on the inescapability of Soviet censorship. In an

interview for ​The Los Angeles Times ​with Albert Goldberg, Foss reports, “Pasternak received me

charmingly. Thinking to put him at ease I said, ‘No one knows I am here.’ His answer was:

‘What do you think the taxi driver is doing now? He is on the phone reporting that he brought an

American here.’... I was the last Western visitor to see him.” (Goldberg, 75) In the early months

of 1960, the pre-eminent poet had not been heard from -- and westerners had become concerned.

Although Pasternak may have been an exemplar of writerly independence in the face of

Communist restrictions, he was nevertheless very aware of how dangerous any gesture perceived

by the Soviet Politburo as political, could be. He was pleased to see his western visitor,

welcoming him with open arms, but at the same time he was very aware that the Communist

authorities were watching. Imprisonment and/or death were always a possibility in response to an

even relatively small act that could be declared political and perceived as a threat towards the

Soviet Union.

Despite enforced communist restriction, Pasternak continued to put forth assertions of

identity -- an action considered heroic in these extremely repressive times. In Donald Leowen’s
book, “The Most Dangerous Art: Poetry, Politics and Autobiography After the Russian

Revolution,” Leowen describes Pasternak's actions remarking,

“...when Boris Pasternak turned to his autobiography in 1929, poetry was under

siege...For a true poet like Pasternak, the threat behind these campaigns was

unmistakable. Pasternack’s response to the attacks provides a powerful example of

artistic courage… [as he] demonstrates an extraordinary acuity to the escalating hostility

and, as if to confound the anti-poetry forces, he responds by raising the stakes himself

with an emphatic assertion of poetic identity.” (Leowen, 59)

Moreover, the assertion of one’s identity became a symbol of power, hostile towards the

oppressive Communist Stalinist regime. As another famous poet and literary companion of

Akhmatova and Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, once stated,

“Yes, there is after all one demand that a state can make of its poets, [Tsvetaeva]

reflects: ‘do not write against us, for you are a force.’ ‘But this command/ prohibition is

simultaneously a tribute and an acknowledgment of the poet’s power, since a demand for

silence is an implicit admission of weakness before the strength of the poet’s voice.’”

(Loewen, 146)

As art is often subversive and non-conformist in relation to the societal norms on which it often

comments, it is viewed as a threat to any authoritarian state. Tsvetaeva’s declaration of the

potency of individual expression in the face of a totalitarian regime represents the same logic that

inspired many artists and writers, Pasternak included, to persist in maintaining their human right

to freedom of expression-- even when this meant risking their lives.

 The unprecedented restrictions of cultural expression implemented by Stalin’s

Communist and authoritarian rule largely contributed to the systematic erasure of collective

memory, history and shared political understanding. The only art that was permitted at the time

was socialist realism, a propagandistic art-form, created solely to serve the purposes of state

leadership and encourage blind loyalty to Stalin. However, true art cannot be born of

propaganda, which, by definition, entails the warping of truth. The very heart of artistic

expression is the ability to express oneself freely, to critique and even disrupt accepted societal

norms. Art has the capacity to challenge structures of power, memorialize experience, and create

communal understanding of society's current state. Stalin anticipated self-expression as a

potential threat to his absolute power, forbidding it’s existence. The vicious, extreme censorship

instated under his rule created a pervasive cynicism and a rupturing of individual identity,

particularly within the Russian intelligentsia. However, as exemplified by Anna Ahkmatova and

Boris Pasternak, the determination and courage several writers demonstrated in documenting and

expressing their lives, in spite of the strict censorship and generalized repression which prevailed

in Soviet Russia, proved that although it was rare, free expression could succeed. Sadly, the

overarching effect of communist repression through censorship was the brutal erasure of

collective memory and history, thoroughly stunting the Soviet Union’s natural historical and

cultural development. The artists and writers who bravely resisted this pernicious oppression,

who continued to find ways to publish their work outside their country, serve as an important

marker of resistance. It is because of them that a glimpse of the authentic Soviet experience and

history within the ruthless, artificial frame set by Stalin, is possible.

 Annotated Bibliography
1. Chaadaev, Petr Iakovlevich. “Letters on the Philosophy of History: First Letter.” Russian
Intellectual History: an Anthology, translated by Valentine Snow, Humanities Press, pp.
158–173.
Chaadaev’s first letter is an excellent source of his opinion on the philosophy of history. As one
of the primary sources I use, Chaadaev’s letter is an imperative report on the nature of Russia’s
position within the worldly advancement of human development. This source will be useful in
helping me prove the effects censorship and a totalitarian regime can have on the nations it
inhabits, specifically in relation to their lack of national identity and history.

2. Chukovskaya, Lydia. “The Akhmatova Journals.” Translated by Milena Michalski et al.,

vol. 1, 1938, pp. 3–49.
The Akhmatova Journals serve as an intimate, primary account of the relationship between
author, Lydia Chukovskaya and subject, Anna Akhmatova, a renowned Russian poet. Through
Chukovskaya’s account of their correspondence, the state of fear in which these women lived
under the harsh and strict rule of communist Russia is revealed. As a primary source, I will use
this personal account of an infamous Russian Poet to present a case for the way Communist
Censorship infected the cultural development of the nations it consumed.

3. Goldberg, Albert. “Foss Conducts in Russia as U.S Exchange Composer.” ​The Los Angeles
Times​, 31 July 1960, p. 75.
This interview details the exchange between Boris Pasternak and Lukas Foss, my grandfather and
the last American to see Pasternak in person. I will use this interview as a primary account of the
cynicism inflicted by Stalin’s extreme censorship. I also use this interview in order to provide
more authentic details on the case study of Boris Pasternak.

4. Loewen, Donald. ​The Most Dangerous Art: Poetry, Politics, and Autobiography after the
Russian Revolution​. Lexington Books, 2010.
The book, The Most Dangerous Art, is a detailed account of individuals throughout history who
have been censored by the government. This source will be extremely helpful not only in
providing context for soviet censorship, but also in providing specific details of three individuals I
will employ as examples in my paper: Anna Ahkmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak.

5. Mamardashvili, Merab. “The ‘Third’ State.” Filosofskii Nauki, vol. 11, 1989, pp 75-81.
Translated by Julia Sushytska and Alisa Slaughter, 2020.
In Merab Mamardashvili “The ‘Third’ State” he establishes the intrinsically important connection
between human consciousness and the historical and cultural development of a society. I will use
this source in connection to Chaadaev’s letters to assert the importance of collective memory
within the conception and development of a nation's history.

6. Wallach, Amei. “Censorship in the Soviet Bloc.” ​Art Journal​, vol. 50, no. 3, 1991, pp. 75–83.
Amei Wallach’s essay describing censorship in the Soviet bloc, recounts the variety of ways in
which the Soviet Union controlled the development and nature of their society. I will use this
secondary source to help define and describe the methods of censorship that took place within the
Soviet bloc specifically in relation to art and artists.