The Stalin Prize and the Soviet Artist

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The Stalin Prize and the Soviet Artist: Status Symbol or Stigma? Author(s): Oliver Johnson Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (WINTER 2011), pp. 819-843Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.4.0819Accessed: 14-08-2015 05:14 UTC

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The Stalin Prize and the Soviet Artist: Status Symbol or Stigma?

Oliver Johnson

The prize carries the name Stalin. This bears witness to the great signifi -cance our committee places on the awards as a means to educate the masses through the medium of art.

—Aleksandr Fadeev, 17 January 1949

How did the Stalin Prize function in the Soviet fi ne art establishment of the 1940s and 1950s and how were the awards interpreted by members of the artistic community and the public? This examination of the discus-sions of the Stalin Prize Committee and responses to the awards reveals an institution that operated at the intersection of political and expert-artistic standards within which the parameters of postwar socialist realism were negotiated and to some extent defi ned. The Stalin Prize was the high-est honor that could be bestowed by the Soviet state in recognition of a single piece of work in science or culture, but in the case of the fi ne arts its symbolic capital was often compromised by its role, perceived or actual, in the consolidation of a generational and ideological hegemony within the Soviet art world.

In common with other state prize institutions worldwide, the Stalin Prize played a central role in the promotion of political and ideologi-cal agendas. In the fi ne arts, the establishment of the Stalin Prize was closely connected to the revival of the Academy as the principle admin-istrative organ. The 1947 establishment of an All-Union Academy of the Arts was the culmination of an ongoing campaign to wrest power away from the increasingly uncooperative local and regional unions and to reengage with the traditional prerevolutionary artistic practices of the imperial Academy.1 Just as the prestigious Prix de Rome, the highest ac-colade of the Académie Royale in Paris, contributed to the development of an authoritarian and centralized approach to painting and sculpture in

Epigraph taken from the introductory comments of Aleksandr Fadeev, chairman of the Stalin Prize Committee for the arts, to the opening meeting of the committee for the 1948 round of selections, 17 January 1949, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), Komitet po Stalinskim premiiam pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR v oblasti literatury i iskusstva, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 30, l. 8.

1. The connection between pre- and postrevolutionary incarnations of the Academy was long established at the Leningrad Academy, which was reformed as an All-Russian institution in 1933. In 1939 the Academy published an exhibition catalogue that traced the history of the Academy from its founding under Catherine the Great to the present day, and proudly declared, “We are 175 years old!” Vserossiiskaia Akademiia khudozhestv, 1764 –1939 (Leningrad, 1939), 1. S. M. Chervonnaia has observed that such a position “cast doubt on the correctness and necessity of one of the fi rst acts of Soviet power, namely the Resolution on the Liquidation of the Imperial Academy of the Arts.” S. M. Chervon-naia, Akademiia khudozhestv i regiony Rossii (Moscow, 2004), 114.

Slavic Review 70, no. 4 (Winter 2011)



820 Slavic Review

seventeenth-century France, so too did the Stalin Prize seek to promote and sustain an approved artistic elite to serve as a model to be emulated and reproduced. Albert Boime, in his review of a 1983 exhibition of works from the Prix de Rome competition, documents the relationship between the selection process and developing notions of French nationalism to re-veal an award institution that was highly politicized and sought to recruit the most talented young artists in the service of the royal court.2 Boime is dazzled by the technical accomplishment of the works but comments on the “relentless uniformity of the product,” which required competitors to “yield their imaginative facilities and experience of the present.” 3 A similar criticism is often leveled at the outputs of highly decorated Soviet artists by detractors of the socialist realist method of art production. The Stalin Prize may have granted public acclaim, celebrity, and privilege to its laureates, but its symbolic capital was undermined in professional circles by its role in the aesthetic and ideological standardization of Soviet art.

Pierre Bourdieu has argued that arts prizes are essential institutions for the “consecration” and “canonization” of art and artists, as part of the process by which works of art are identifi ed as a form of high culture.4 The Stalin Prize played an important role in the development of the public face of the artist in the Soviet Union and contributed to the establishment of an enduring (and often misleading) semiotic connection between the terms Stalinist and socialist realism. However, James English has modifi ed Bourdieu’s theory to contend that it is not necessarily the award itself, but the contempt and controversy generated by the awards process, which result in this consecration. The very contention that committee selection processes are fl awed and often fail to pick the most worthy winner main-tains the illusion that the work of art is a sacred object, which cannot be reduced to a set of straightforward selection criteria.5 In this sense, the Stalin Prize played an important role in the polarization of conceptions of offi cial and unoffi cial culture in the postwar period and contributed to the development of a rift between the establishment—represented by the senior bureaucracy of the All-Union Academy of the Arts—and the grass roots—represented by the young rank-and-fi le membership of the local and regional artists’ unions.

The following analysis of the discussions of the Stalin Prize Commit-tee for the fi ne arts draws on the work of Kiril Tomoff and Maria Frolova-Walker, who have provided valuable accounts of the equivalent awards in the disciplines of music and opera, respectively.6 Their analyses reveal

2. Albert Boime, “The Prix de Rome: Images of Authority and Threshold of Offi cial Success,” Art Journal 44, no. 3 (Autumn 1984): 281– 89. Boime describes the Academie de France as “a kind of colonial headquarters for the extraction of aesthetic wealth” and com-ments on the strict aesthetic regime imposed upon its visiting students. Ibid., 283 – 84.

3. Ibid., 282.4. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans.

Susan Emanuel (Stanford, 1996), 225–26.5. James English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural

Value (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 187.6. Kiril Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–

1953 (Ithaca, 2006), and Tomoff, “‘Most Respected Comrade . . . ’: Patrons, Clients, Brokers



Stalin Prize and Soviet Artist: Status Symbol or Stigma? 821

that a number of features were common to Stalin Prize institutions across cultural fi elds. In particular, selection committees functioned as exten-sions of existing patronage networks, simultaneously creating and rein-forcing hierarchies of authority, and their debates played a signifi cant role in the negotiation of a delicate balance between political and artis-tic authority.7 Debates surrounding the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts were distinguished by a number of specifi c features, however, and interpreta-tions of the award itself were subject to considerable variation between fi elds. The relationship between the Stalin Prize and the practices of the leader cult on the one hand, and its close association with the ideologi-cal and aesthetic program of the All-Union Academy of the Arts on the other, ensured that the award became synonymous with the promotion of a conservative and demagogic line in painting and sculpture. Thanks to the developed infrastructure for the widespread exhibition and repro-duction of works of painting, sculpture, and graphics in the postwar Soviet Union, fi ne art was a fi eld in which the boundary between popular and critical— or elite— opinion was especially blurred. Likewise, while An-drei Zhdanov’s decrees of 1946 – 48 provided specifi c commentary on the tasks of Soviet composers, writers, theater producers, and fi lmmakers, the fi eld of fi ne art was not subjected to the same degree of focused interven-tion from the Central Committee leadership in this period. Against this backdrop, the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts became an important site of negotiation, rather than reinforcement, of cultural authority. As an in-dicator of prestige, it failed to live up to its ostensible status as a mark of individual artistic distinction, and its symbolic capital was compromised by its manipulation and appropriation according to bureaucratic and politi-cal, rather than aesthetic, measures of success.

What Was the Stalin Prize?

The Stalin Prize was conceived in 1939 to coincide with the sixtieth birth-day of its namesake as a Soviet alternative to the Nobel Prize.8 The award

and Unoffi cial Networks in the Stalinist Music World,” Contemporary European History 11, no. 1 (February 2002): 33 – 65; Frolova-Walker, “Elite Conversation on Art for the People: Music in the Stalin Prize Committee” (paper presented at American Museological Society Convention, Philadelphia, 12 November 2009), and Frolova-Walker, “Stalin and the Art of Boredom,” Twentieth-Century Music, no. 1 (2004): 101–24. For a discussion of the Sta-lin Prize for the sciences, see Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006), 1–14.

7. Tomoff, Creative Union, 248.8. A mid-1950s document relating to the development of the Lenin Prize (a post-

Stalin replacement for the previous awards scheme) includes an extensive report on the Nobel Prize including statistical data relating to the nationality of its laureates. In compari-son with Germany’s 38, England’s 22, and France and the United States’ 18, Russia’s single award to Ivan Bunin (in emigration) in 1936 ( just 0.8 percent of the awards presented) appears to have been an issue of some frustration for the Soviet Union. Rossiiskii gosu-darstvennyi arkhiv sotsial�no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), Lichnyi arkhiv Molotova, f. 82, op. 2, d. 467, ll. 9–20. James English attributes the rise of the modern prize institution to what he describes as “Nobel envy,” whereby “every fi eld, every subfi eld of culture would feel the need to have its own Nobel.” English, Economy of Prestige, 29.



822 Slavic Review

was fi rst presented in 1941, and by the time the practice was discontinued in 1953, almost one thousand Stalin Prizes had been presented in the fi elds of art and culture.9 A Stalin Prize First Class carried with it a signifi -cant fi nancial bonus of 100,000 rubles, but it also held a less quantifi able degree of symbolic capital, which in many cases granted the new laureate a rapid improvement in living and working conditions. The fi rst round of awards in 1941 recognized all works completed over the past six to seven years—in other words all work completed since the 1934 inauguration of socialist realism—but later awards were made in recognition of works completed within the previous twelve-month period.10 First-, Second-, and, from 1947 onwards, Third-Class Prizes were made in each fi eld of artistic activity, as defi ned by the Stalin Prize Committee.11 The number of awards available in each fi eld remained a bone of contention throughout the 1940s and 1950s as members of the selection committee vied to secure a greater number for their own special areas.

The Stalin Prize formed part of a complex system of civilian awards and orders that closely mirrored the hierarchical system of Soviet military decorations. Imperial-style ranks, decorations, titles, and even uniforms had been abolished after the revolution as symbols of status and class that were considered incompatible with the creation of a socialist society. Sheila Fitzpatrick has written of the reinstatement of military ranks and the establishment of new titles in the 1930s as part of a process whereby Soviet citizens were encouraged to aspire toward the same (or similar) marks of distinction that their forebears had held under the imperial sys-tem.12 This revival of tsarist-style ranks, orders, uniforms, and titles was not intended to create a rigid class framework, as had been the case in the prerevolutionary period, but to provide an open incentive system as part of the wider practice of socialist competition.13 In theory at least, any Soviet worker could be given the title Hero of Labor, and any aspiring art-ist could achieve the rank of Distinguished Artist.

Tomoff has demonstrated that this was far from the case in the fi eld of Soviet music, where the honors system “simultaneously created and re-produced hierarchies of authority and legitimized the material privilege

9. “Postanovlenie Soveta narodnykh komissarov Soiuza SSR: Ob uchrezhdenii pre-mii i stipendii imeni Stalina,” Pravda, 21 December 1939, taken from V. F. Svin�in and K. A. Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii: Dve storony odnoi medali (Novosibirsk, 2007), 711. This valuable book contains a compilation of published material and archival documents con-nected with the Stalin Prize awards in the fi eld of culture, as well as extensive statistical and biographical information about the Stalin Prize Committee, the awards, and their laureates.

10. “Ob izmenenii poriadka prisuzhdeniia Stalinskikh premii po nauke, izobreteni-iam, literature i iskusstvu,” Pravda, 12 January 1941, taken from Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 43 – 44.

11. The number of fi elds expanded over the years to include previously unrecog-nized areas including graphics and documentary cinema. Ibid.

12. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999), 106 –9.

13. For an analysis of socialist competition and its application in a fl agship construc-tion project, see Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley, 1997), 204 –5.




that accompanied them.” 14 Yet while the honors structure functioned as a kind of closed system that was related directly to seniority and professional status with associated rises in salary and pension, the Stalin Prize was pro-moted as an open competition with an independent selection committee in which anyone could compete for the award regardless of age or posi-tion.15 The Stalin Prize was unique in that it was awarded (in the majority of cases) in recognition of a single outstanding piece of work and new lau-reates were chosen by a selection committee made up of members of the artistic intelligentsia, in other words by a kind of peer-review panel. Their decisions hinged on a ballot of committee members, the results of which were used to prepare a list of recommendations. The composition of the Committee for the Arts included representatives from all fi elds of culture eligible for awards and was presided over initially by the theater director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was succeeded after his death in 1943 by the writer Aleksandr Fadeev. The structure, size, and procedural remit of the committee underwent a number of changes over the fourteen years of its existence, but its role as a panel of expert- specialists who par-ticipated in a secret ballot on a selection of nominated works remained fundamentally unchanged.16

The Stalin Prize Committee played an important role in the formula-tion of a legitimate model for offi cial culture and represented what Tomoff describes as an “interface” between political power and creative author-ity.17 Yet, where Tomoff argues that in the fi eld of music the Stalin Prize was “a powerful force that legitimized material privilege based on accom-plishments recognized by elite audiences,” evidence from the fi eld of fi ne art demonstrates that the Stalin Prize contributed to the delegitimization of that material privilege within the artistic community, based on its cir-culation among a closed group of establishment fi gures and its associated role in the suppression of criticism relating to those fi gures.18 In the case

14. Tomoff describes the four titles that were conferred upon members of the cre-ative intelligentsia: People’s Artist of the Soviet Union; People’s Artist of the Republic; Honored Figure of the Arts; and Honored Artist. The most prestigious of these awards was People’s Artist of the Soviet Union, which could be conferred only by the all-union government. Tomoff, Creative Union, 236 – 45.

15. Early Pravda articles about the Stalin Prize advertised the award as an open com-petition and provided the address of the Stalin Prize Committee for the submission of nominations. “V Komitetakh po Stalinskim premiiam,” Pravda, 16 December 1941 and 10 December 1943. Arguing for the importance of the selection committee following a re-view in 1952, Fadeev described its role as “a social path of preparation for granting prizes.” Cited in Tomoff, Creative Union, 263.

16. The composition of the committee was reviewed in February 1947 and again in 1952, after the committee had been threatened with liquidation following an investiga-tion into its activities by the Department of Literature and Art headed by V. Kruzhkov. “O rabote Komiteta po Stalinskim premiiam v oblasti iskusstva i literatury,” in Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 438– 44. See also Tomoff’s analysis of the 1952 investigation in Creative Union, 262– 65.

17. Tomoff, Creative Union, 246.18. Ibid., 265. Galina Yankovskaya, in her analysis of the economic structure of the

Soviet art establishment, has described the Stalin Prize for the arts as an institution that “decisively positioned hierarchy and status as the dominant qualities of Stalinist culture.”



824 Slavic Review

of painting and sculpture, the specialist committee proved to be a weak arbiter of offi cial tastes. The nomination and voting processes were often characterized by confusion over the relative signifi cance of political and artistic measures of quality, and the decisions of the committee were often adjusted or overruled by those whose infl uence extended further up the bureaucratic strata. The creative authority of the Stalin Prize Committee for the Arts was largely symbolic and its decisions were always subordinate to the fi nal ruling of the Arts Committee (KPDI), the Department of Pro-paganda and Agitation (UPA), the Politburo, and Stalin himself.

The Selection Process

How was a Stalin Prize awarded to a Soviet artist? First, it was the respon-sibility of the local, regional, and national artists’ unions, or other pro-fessional arts organizations such as Vsekokhudozhnik and the Moscow Comradeship of Artists, to submit works to the Stalin Prize Committee for consideration. Works were usually submitted in the form of photographs accompanied by a short biography of the artist concerned and in many cases supported by a brief description of the signifi cance of the work from the Arts Section of the Professional Union of Arts Workers.19 Even this preliminary stage was subject to political infi ghting. For instance, in 1949, Sergei Gerasimov, president of the Moscow Artists’ Union (MOSSKh) and a relatively liberal fi gure in the art establishment, was accused by a Central Committee investigation into his affairs of deliberately submitting works to the Stalin Prize Committee by artists of a formalist inclination and omitting the works of more traditional realists.20 Thus in 1947 works by Aleksandr Deineka and Petr Konchalovskii were put forward by MOSSKh, while work by Aleksandr Laktionov was denied a nomination.21 This posed little obstacle to a well-connected artist since the initial list of nominees could be supplemented by members of the Stalin Prize Committee, the bureaucratic review bodies, or individuals within the Politburo. The Stalin Prize selection process thus became a fi eld within which personal agendas and patronage relationships played an important role at all levels of the establishment hierarchy.

Although the composition of the committee included representatives from various fi elds of culture, there was a strong bias toward literary, the-

See Galina Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art in the Stalinist Era: Artists’ Cooperatives in the Grip of Ideology and the Plan,” Slavic Review 65, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 783. See also Galina Yankovskaia, Iskusstvo, den�gi i politika: Khudozhnik v godakh pozdnego Stalinizma (Perm�, 2007). On the suppression of criticism, see, for example, V. Sazhin, “Against Naturalism in Painting,” Komsomolskaia pravda, 6 July 1948, and a meeting called to discuss the article at the Moscow Artists’ Union, “Stenographic Report of a Meeting of the Secretariat of MOSSKh,” 16 July 1948, in RGALI, Moskovskaia organizatsiia soiuz khudozhnikov RSFSR, f. 2943, op. 1, d. 505.

19. For the 1949 list of recommendations, see Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Fed-eratsii (GARF), f. 5508, op. 2, d. 801.

20. RGASPI, Komitet po delam iskusstv pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR, f. 17, op. 132, d. 245, l. 20.

21. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 25.




atrical, and musical arts and away from the fi ne arts. Of the forty original committee members (later expanded to fi fty-six) only two were painters (Aleksandr Gerasimov and Igor� Grabar�) and two were sculptors (Vera Mukhina and Sergei Merkurov). In contrast there were nine writers, poets, and playwrights; ten theater directors and actors; and eleven composers or musicians.22 This representational disproportion was not directly re-fl ected in the numbers of awards given in each fi eld. Over the twelve-year period of the Stalin Prizes a total of 149 awards were made for fi ne art and sculpture, 191 for music, and 199 for theater, ballet, and opera. Literature was the most highly decorated fi eld with writers, poets, and playwrights re-ceiving a total of 264 awards.23 Of course, categories were overlapping and in principle all members of the committee were encouraged to participate in all plenary meetings and viewings regardless of individual specializa-tion. In practice, discussions tended to be dominated by specialists in a particular fi eld and the small number of visual arts experts meant that the decision-making power was concentrated in a very few hands. The acces-sible nature of fi ne art to the opinions of nonspecialists meant, however, that debates about works of art were often interdisciplinary, with alliances forming between cultural fi gures of a similar artistic or ideological leaning.

The committee was divided not only according to specialization but according to status and authority, with a small number of well-connected members exerting considerably more infl uence than their individual vote would suggest. Aleksandr Gerasimov, head of the Orgkom of the Union of Soviet Artists and, from 1947 onwards, president of the USSR Academy of the Arts, was an especially dominant fi gure who exercised a virtual mo-nopoly over discussions relating to the fi ne arts.24 Grabar�, on the other hand, became an increasingly marginalized fi gure on the committee over the course of the 1940s, as his professional reputation was brought into disrepute by accusations of formalism in his position as an art historian.25

Thus could powerful members of the committee extend their reach over its purportedly democratic basis.

The task of the Stalin Prize Committee was vast, as Fadeev emphasized

22. RGASPI, Upravlenie propagandy i agitatsii TsK VKP(b), f. 17, op. 125, d. 400. After 1951, the artists Sergei Gerasimov, Vasilii Efanov, Boris Ioganson, and Dementii Shmarinov and the cultural theorist Vladimir Kemenov were added to the newly formed Art Section (Izo-sektsiia) of the committee. The structure of the committee comes un-der discussion in a 1952 investigation by Goskontrol�. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 133, d. 345, ll. 175–78.

23. Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 852.24. Tomoff has noted that the dominance of certain personalities within the com-

mittee was understood to be one of its major shortcomings. Fadeev expressed this very concern in his 1952 report, in which he singled out Ivan Bol�shakov as an offender in the fi eld of cinema. Tomoff, Creative Union, 264.

25. Grabar� and Mukhina came under attack on 27 May 1952 for their failure to support the struggle for realist art. “O rabote Komiteta po Stalinskim premiiam v oblasti iskusstva i literatury,” 438. Kruzhkov’s conclusions are based on Fadeev’s report to Stalin on the activities of the committee, a report in which Fadeev complains about Grabar�’s and Mukhina’s behavior. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 133, d. 345, l. 165. A wider smear campaign was carried out against Grabar� in the Institute of Art History in 1947, where he was denounced for his proclivity toward western art. GARF, f. 5446, op. 54, d. 40, ll. 216 –19.



826 Slavic Review

in his opening address to the committee in 1947. “We must view and judge such a huge quantity of works that the form of our own work will have to change.” In the fi elds of painting and sculpture the long list of nominated works was pared down initially based on an examination of a photographic portfolio by relevant specialists within the committee. Those works that went on to be short-listed were then viewed at a private exhibition arranged specially for the Stalin Prize Committee at the Tretiakov Gallery, or from 1949 onwards at the premises of the USSR Academy of the Arts. Time was always short for assessment of the proposed works, which was usually car-ried out over a two- or three-month period between late December and early March. For the 1947 round of awards, a total of 362 works had to be assessed in this short time frame over a series of fourteen plenary meet-ings, sixteen section meetings, and fi fty-eight viewing sessions.26 Such a clear overload of reading, watching, viewing, and assessing led Merkurov to complain that all other work would have to be put on hold for a three-month period. Likewise the composer Aleksandr Gol�denveizer argued that all of the assessing needed to be done in a great hurry and at the last minute.27 The majority of participants on the selection committee were members of the creative intelligentsia in their own right, who continued to pursue an active career in their own fi elds of culture. Why then, did sev-eral of the nation’s most infl uential and successful artists choose to devote so much time to this monumental bureaucratic task?

The answer is a simple one: participation on the Stalin Prize Commit-tee was perceived as a means of exercising considerable power and infl u-ence within the Soviet art establishment. Committee members not only assessed and voted for works of art, but they also overruled the proposals of local artists’ unions, canvassed for the works of their friends and asso-ciates, and put themselves forward for awards with audacious regularity. Mukhina won the Stalin Prize a total of fi ve times and Aleksandr Gera-simov four times while serving on the committee, and of the forty original committee members thirty-two received the Stalin Prize at least once.28 A review of the committee’s work in 1952 highlighted the fact that mem-bers who had been nominated for the Stalin Prize not only continued to work and vote on the committee but even promoted their own work at its sessions. Likewise committee members were accused of putting for-ward works by their friends and students for consideration and of securing votes from their colleagues as part of an unspoken reciprocal arrange-ment.29 The upshot of these procedures was that members of the Stalin Prize Committee were able to exercise a signifi cant degree of control over the formation of the Soviet cultural canon. The Stalin Prize Committee of artist-specialists played an important role in the public legitimization of the awards as a democratic process informed by expert opinion. Yet as we shall see, the authority of the committee was strictly limited by the latter stages of the selection process.

26. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 587, l. 8.27. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 30, l. 391.28. Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 39– 43.29. Ibid., 438– 44.




Opinions within the committee tended to be most sharply divided when it came to works of art produced by artists with a formalist inclination. The veteran artist and founder of the renowned Bubnovyi valet ( Jack of Dia-monds) art movement, Petr Konchalovskii, had only partially adapted his postimpressionistic style of painting to the method of socialist realism and was committed to the production of still lives and landscapes, which were considered to be the lesser genres of Soviet art. His 1947 canvas Na poldni (Midday) depicts a bathing pond in the middle of an expansive summer landscape beside which a family enjoy a picnic in the shade of a lush copse (see fi gure 1). A group of children are playing in the water while a herd of cows cool themselves in the shallows. A bright and optimistic work, it shows little of the brushy paintwork and emphasis on color for which Kon-chalovskii had become somewhat notorious, and Gol�denveizer felt that it was an outstanding work of landscape painting that “is very attractive and represents a good, bright view of nature.” 30 Fadeev argued, however, that it was the task of the Stalin Prize Committee to select a work for its “clear socialist theme” and that rewarding Konchalovskii for a landscape paint-ing would send a misleading message to younger artists.31 Mukhina posed the following problem in response: “One question has worried me at all meetings of the Stalin Prize Committee: surely we are rewarding a work for its execution rather than for its theme? . . . A great theme also needs to be well executed. We undoubtedly need to turn our attention to the im-portant themes, but they must be better made. An indulgence [poblazhka] cannot be excused by its theme.” 32 Mukhina’s remark, part of an ongoing confl ict with Fadeev over Soviet aesthetics, demonstrates that the selection committee was split over the question of style versus content, or more pre-cisely over the question of artistic individuality versus offi cial formulations of socialist realism. Identifying a “hidden polemic” against his own work in Mukhina’s words, Fadeev urged the committee to stand behind important socialist-historical works in their decision-making process. Konchalovskii’s landscape won only fi fteen votes, of which just six were for a First-Class award, and it was not put forward by the committee.

A similarly politically charged argument broke out over Sergei Konen-kov’s monumental sculpture Osvobozhdennyi chelovek (Liberated Man, 1947) (see fi gure 2). Konenkov was an acclaimed sculptor and one of the few remaining members of a generation of Russian artists who began a successful career in the prerevolutionary period. His work was defi ned by an organic or direct approach to form derived from the medium itself, which he developed during a long period of emigration in America dur-ing the 1920s and 1930s.33 Following a much publicized return to Moscow after the war, Konenkov was awarded a large studio space and a number of major commissions but nonetheless found himself a marginalized fi gure in the Stalinist art establishment. Liberated Man continued the theme of

30. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 25, l. 66.31. Ibid., l. 68.32. Ibid., l. 70.33. Marie Turbow Lampard, “Sergei Konenkov: An Introduction,” in Marie Turbow

Lampard, John Bowlt, and Wendy R. Salmond, eds., The Uncommon Vision of Sergei Konen-kov, 1874 –1971: A Russian Sculptor and His Times (New Brunswick, N.J., 2001), 3 –53.



828 Slavic Review

overcoming repression that Konenkov had dealt with in his previous work Samson, razryvaiushchii uzy (Samson Breaking His Bonds, 1930s). The im-mensely powerful fi gure in this new work, standing tall and raising his once-shackled arms aloft, is a representation of the Soviet victory over fascism and shows its author’s clear stylistic development toward fi gurative realism, although it retains a somewhat loose approach to anatomical scale and proportion. Gol�denveizer praised the “physical and spiritual power” of Konenkov’s sculpture and pointed out that it is “impossible to ignore this work of art.” Fadeev expressed admiration for the physical strength of Konenkov’s fi gure but subjected it to the following criticism: “When you look at this sculpture you get the impression that it is not a person but a beast; just look how it is standing. This is precisely what we object to. This is not the creative line set out in our art; it is what we are fi ghting against.” 34 His sentiment was echoed by the architect Arkadii Mordvinov, who argued that “it is not made according to the socialist plan. Here is a great talent, but at the same time he is following a different ideological line.” Konenkov’s sculpture was not short-listed for the voting process by the Stalin Prize Committee.

Both of these examples demonstrate that the Stalin Prize Committee was divided over the relative importance of aesthetic and ideological mea-sures of quality in their evaluations of works of art. While certain mem-

34. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 25, ll. 15–17.

Figure 1. Petr Konchalovskii, Na poldni (Midday, 1947) held by the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Reproduced from an unan-notated postcard.




bers of the committee including Mukhina, Gol�denveizer, and Grabar� argued for artistic merit as the main criterion of success, they were often overruled by higher-ranking functionaries such as Aleksandr Gerasimov and Fadeev, who out of duty, responsibility, or what Galina Yankovskaya has described as “the virus of professional cynicism,” pushed for a close adherence to the offi cial line of the Zhdanov-era cultural apparatus.35 In particular, the policies of antiformalism and anticosmopolitanism were adopted as central considerations of the committee toward the end of the 1940s, and a failure to prioritize these factors in the consideration of works of art could jeopardize a committee member’s position. Grabar� in particular came under attack in a 1952 report by the Department of Lit-erature and Art on the functioning of the Stalin Prize Committee, which blamed the infl uence of “personal tastes and sympathies” for his failure to “further the struggle for a realist line in fi ne art.” 36 The following ex-

35. Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art,” 785. It is likely that as presi-dents of the Stalin Prize Committee and the Subcommittee on Art, respectively, Fadeev and Gerasimov carried a degree of answerability for the decisions of the group that other members were less constrained by.

36. “O rabote Komiteta po Stalinskim premiiam v oblasti iskusstva i literatury,” 438.

Figure 2. Sergei Konenkov, Osvo-bozhdennyi chelovek (Liberated Man, 1947) held by the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. From Iu. A. Bych-kov, L. A. Sharafutdinov et al., S. T .Konenkov: Vspominaniia, stat�i, pis�ma, vol. 1, Moi vek (Moscow, 1984), unnumbered plate.



830 Slavic Review

change between Fadeev and Merkurov regarding Pavel Korin’s 1947 paint-ing, Portret Konenkova (Portrait of Konenkov), demonstrates the dual role played by the committee as both a peer-review panel and an interpreter of the offi cial line:

Fadeev: Konenkov has only recently returned to our country and his work displays a range of features that are not compatible with our understand-ing of Soviet art. Furthermore Korin has emphasized these very charac-teristics of Konenkov in his portrait. These three factors prevent me from voting for this work.Merkurov: In light of the Central Committee resolutions?Fadeev: In light of those ideological-artistic principles for which we are responsible in our art.37

As Fadeev’s somewhat pompous response emphasizes, the committee was required to translate offi cial rhetoric into the language of artistic evalua-tion. Its members were aware of the relative importance of personal taste and political ideology and undertook a delicate process of negotiation between the two. Yet in spite of its ostensible adherence to offi cial pro-nouncements on art and culture, the Stalin Prize Committee was often far from the mark in its selection of works, and its sometimes passionate debates were often rendered insignifi cant by subsequent stages of the se-lection process.

Voting took place at the fi nal session of the committee in a hurried manner after a day of prolonged discussion. As E. Kuznetsov complained at the concluding meeting of the 1948 round of selections, “I doubt that comrades who arrived this morning and voted at fi ve o’clock this eve-ning can look objectively at the facts. I don’t want to offend anyone, but it is disrespectful to the responsibility which the government has placed upon us.” 38 Committee members could vote for as many or as few works as they liked until 1949, after which they were limited to four votes for each fi eld of production, thus encouraging a more considered approach by the more enthusiastic participants. After the voting process was complete, the Stalin Prize Committee prepared a list of recommendations to be sent to the KPDI and UPA. A revised list, together with annotations and amend-ments was then forwarded on to the Politburo, from which the fi nal roll of honor would be transmitted to the press.

It is important to emphasize that the authority of the Stalin Prize Com-mittee was largely a matter of perception, and the powers of selection that were at its disposal were always subject to the confi rmation or emendation of politicians and bureaucrats. To demonstrate just how ineffectual the voting process of the Stalin Prize Committee could be, it is worth looking at the 1947 round of awards for painting (see table 1). For a First-Class award, the Stalin Prize Committee recommended two works: Georgii Me-likhov for the painting Molodoi Taras Shevchenko v masterskoi u K. P. Briullova (The Young Taras Shevchenko in the Studio of Karl Briullov, 1947) with a

37. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 25, l. 340.38. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 30, l. 397.




total of forty votes, thirty-three of which were for a First-Class award; and Aleksandr Bubnov for the painting Utro na Kulikovom pole (Morning on Kulikov Field, 1947) with a total of thirty-nine votes, twenty-six of which were for a First-Class award.39 Following the editing process of the KPDI, UPA, and the Politburo, the fi nal list of laureates demoted Bubnov to a Second-Class and Melikhov to a Third-Class award. In their stead First-Class awards were presented to Vladimir Serov for the painting V. I. Lenin provozglashaet sovetskuiu vlast� (V. I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power, 1947), which had gained a total of eleven votes in the Stalin Prize Committee of which only four were for a First-Class Award; Laktionov for the paint-ing Pis�mo s fronta (A Letter from the Front, 1947); and Iraklii Toidze for the painting Vystuplenie I. V. Stalina na torzhestvennom sobranii, posviashchen-nom XXIV godovshchine Velikoi Oktiabr�skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Stalin’s Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the October Revolution, 1947), neither of whom had been under consideration by the Committee.40

Such interventions were common, came from a variety of sources, and served a variety of interests. The fate of a candidate could swing wildly from success to failure and back again based on the endorsement or re-jection of the bureaucratic bodies that participated in the selection pro-cess. In 1947 the KPDI rejected a proposed Second-Class award for Viktor Oreshnikov’s painting V. I. Lenin na ekzamene v universitete (V. I. Lenin at a University Exam, 1947) on the basis that it was not suffi ciently outstanding (vydaiushchiisia) and proposed Toidze for an award based on his detailed but fl awed ceremonial painting of Stalin. Meanwhile the UPA declared Oreshnikov’s canvas to be “one of the most signifi cant works of 1947” and recommended it for a First-Class award. In contrast they considered Toidze’s work to be “weak” (slabym) and requested that it be dropped from the list.41 Dmitrii Shepilov, deputy director of the UPA and Zhdanov’s pro-tégé, was likely infl uenced by the Russian nationalist agenda of his patron in his rejection of a Georgian artist’s work. Meanwhile Politkarp Lebedev, head of the KPDI, was a close associate of Aleksandr Gerasimov and his inner circle, which included Toidze in its number.

In light of the often contradictory recommendations from which the list of nominees was compiled, it is clear that the fi nal stage of the decision-making process—the consideration of the Politburo and Stalin himself—was the point at which the buck stopped. Since Politburo mem-bers (with the exception of Zhdanov) were not in the habit of visiting the annual All-Union Art Exhibitions, a special exhibit of works nominated for the Stalin Prize was held in the Ekaterinskii Hall of the Kremlin. Shepi-lov has recounted Stalin’s extensive preparation for the fi nal discussion of the Stalin Prize roll of honor, during which he was prone to put forward works that were unfamiliar to his colleagues and that had not been dis-

39. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 28, l. 33.40. For an examination of the convoluted process by which Laktionov became the

surprise recipient of a Stalin Prize in 1948, see Oliver Johnson, “‘A Premonition of Victory’: A Letter from the Front,” Russian Review 68, no. 3 ( July 2009): 408–28.

41. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 587, ll. 25, 64 – 66.



Table 1Stalin Prize Committee Recommendations versus

Stalin Prize Laureates, 1947.

1947 Stalin Prize Committee Recommendations Votes

I Class Melikhov, G. S., Molodoi Taras Shevchenko v masterskoi u K. P. Briullova (The Young Taras Shevchenko in the Studio of Karl Briullov)Bubnov, A. P., Utro na Kulikovom pole (Morning on Kulikov Field)

40 (I: 33, II: 7)

39 (I: 26, II: 13)

II Class Oreshnikov, V. M., V. I. Lenin na ekzamene v universitete (V. I. Lenin at a University Exam)Chuikov, S. A., Utro (Morning), Polden� (Midday) Fedorovskii, F. F., Boris GodunovSerebrianyi, I. A., Na piatom londonskom s�ezde RSDRP (At the Fifth London Congress of the RSDRP)

38 (I: 16, II: 22)

31 (I: 12, 2: 19)25 (I: 10, II: 15)25 (I: 5, II: 20)

III Class N/A

1947 Stalin Prize Laureates Votes

I Class Serov, V. A., V. I. Lenin provozglashaet sovetskuiu vlast� (V. I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power)Laktionov, A. I., Pis�mo s fronta (A Letter from the Front)Toidze, I. M., Vystuplenie I. V. Stalina na torzhestven-nom sobranii, posviashchennom XXIV godovshchine Velikoi Oktiabr�skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Stalin’s Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the October Revolution)

11 (I: 4, II: 7)

(n/a)(n/a)

II Class Khmel�ko, M. I., Za velikii russkii narod! (Toast to the Great Russian People)Bubnov, A. P., Utro na Kulikovom pole (Morning on Kulikov Field)Romas, Ia. D., Na plotu (On a Raft)Iar-Kravchenko, A. N., Gorkii chitaet t.t. Stalinu, Molotovu i Voroshilovu svoiu skazku “Devushka i smert�” (Gorkii Reads His Fairytale “A Girl and Death” to Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov)Kotov, P. I., Portret akademika Zelinskogo (Portrait of the Academic Zelinskii)

(n/a)

39 (I: 26, II: 13)

(n/a)(n/a)

23 (I: 5, II: 18)

III Class Puzyrkov, B. G., Chernomortsy (Black Sea Sailors)Melikhov, G. S., Molodoi Taras Shevchenko v masterskoi u K. P. Briullova (The Young Taras Shevchenko in the Studio of Karl Briullov)Efanov, V. P., Portret Stanislavskogo (Portrait of Stanislavskii)Oreshnikov, V. M., V. I. Lenin na ekzamene v universitete (V. I. Lenin at a University Exam)

(n/a)40 (I: 33, II: 7)

(n/a)

38 (I: 16, II: 22)




cussed by the Stalin Prize Committee. According to Shepilov, Stalin would sometimes attend these meetings with a copy of the popular lifestyle mag-azine Ogonek, in which he would point out a reproduction of a canvas that had been overlooked. “‘Here in Ogonek there is a portrait by the Stanislav artist Ul�ianov. Can we give him a prize?’ . . . It was really impossible to predict what new suggestions Stalin would make, or what corrections he would make to the UPA recommendations.” 42 After scrutiny, adjustment, and readjustment at so many levels of state bureaucracy, the concluding list of Stalin Prize laureates often bore little resemblance to the initial rec-ommendations put forward by the Stalin Prize Committee.43

Contributions to the leader cult enjoyed a privileged status in the an-nual Stalin Prize competition and were often granted an award in spite of signifi cant artistic shortcomings. Over their thirteen-year history, roughly half of the Stalin Prizes in the fi eld of painting were awarded to works celebrating the leader cult. Several such works, including Toidze’s 1947 ceremonial painting of Stalin, Dmitrii Nalbandian’s Portret Stalina (Portrait of Stalin, 1945) and Mikhail Khmel�ko’s Za velikii russkii narod! (Toast to the Great Russian People, 1947) were not considered by the Stalin Prize Committee and were instead put forward by either the KPDI or the Po-litburo, demonstrating that the portrayal of Stalin or other prominent party members in a work of art could be a means by which to circum-vent considerations of aesthetic quality. Works that did come under the scrutiny of the Stalin Prize Committee were often recommended in spite of their questionable artistic merit, as the discussion of Vasilii Efanov’s monumental brigade painting Peredovye liudi Moskvy v Kremle (Leading the People of Moscow in the Kremlin, 1949) demonstrates (see fi gure 3). The work of Efanov, Stepan Dudnik, Iurii Kugach, Konstantin Maksimov, and Viktor Tsiplakov depicts a 1947 ceremony in which the Order of Lenin was presented to the city of Moscow in commemoration of its 800-year anniversary. Although absent from the painting, Stalin is nonetheless present in the form of an enormous bust that towers over the gathered crowds and dominates the composition. This monumental and ambitious representation of an award ceremony is also self-consciously formal and somewhat workmanlike in its execution. Fadeev described the work as “too ceremonial [slishkom paradnaia], as if it was drawn especially for an award.” 44 Although he did not disagree with Fadeev’s judgment, Aleks-andr Gerasimov reminded his fellow committee members of Il�ia Repin’s renowned 1903 painting Torzhestvennoe zasedanie Gosudarstvennogo soveta (Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council) and emphasized that Efanov’s canvas represented “serious, good-quality labor.” Mukhina responded with a statement that is still more revealing of the problematic nature of

42. “Iz vospominanii D. T. Shepilova: Stalin i inzhenery chelovecheskikh dush,” Vo-prosy istorii, 1998, nos. 3 –7, taken from Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 603.

43. In 1947, just 50 percent of the Stalin Prize Committee’s recommendations re-ceived an award, none of them in the correct category, while in 1949, 62 percent received an award, three of them in the correct category. See RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 28, l. 33 for the 1947 round of voting, and RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 467, l. 71 for the 1949 round of voting.

44. RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 35, ll. 198–99.



834 Slavic Review

leader cult works for the Stalin Prize Committee: “If we are being terribly strict then we should reject [Efanov’s work]. But we are not always very strict; the theme is necessary and important, and we need to put this work forward for a First-Class [award].” 45 Where works of the leader cult were concerned, considerations other than artistic skill or technical accom-plishment often took precedence. In particular the signifi cance of the theme and the expenditure of time and labor were understood to repre-sent the main criteria of merit. In keeping with traditional academic hier-archy of genre, large-scale leader portraits and group portraits including the leader were granted a privileged status in the evaluation process, an approach mirrored by the pricing policies of the state order mechanism.46 Judging by the language used by the Stalin Prize Committee in its discus-sions, however, works of the leader cult were often deemed to be less than successful in terms of execution but were put forward nonetheless on the strength of their theme.47 In this sense, the Stalin Prize Commit-tee functioned as part of the formula of what Jan Plamper has described as “Stalin’s immodest modesty,” whereby the vainglorious mechanisms of cult management were attributed to an independent panel of specialists, casting the leader himself as a passive or even reluctant benefi ciary of spontaneous artistic celebration.48

In spite of the convoluted behind-the-scenes machinations with which the awards were decided, the Stalin Prize Committee was represented in the Soviet press as the dominant body behind the awards process. For in-stance in 1951 Pravda published a regular series of short articles entitled “Inside the Stalin Prize Committee” that kept the public updated on the selection process and were presumably intended to build interest in the run up to the announcement of the awards. The purpose of the Stalin Prize Committee was to legitimize the awards process in public and pro-fessional eyes as a peer-review system informed by expert opinion. It was a face of authority in the Soviet art world that was frequently abused in the service of personal loyalties, but it was a hollow authority that extended only to the initial stages of the selection process, beyond which the fi nal roll of honor was vetted, edited, and fi nalized by the Central Commit-tee. The Stalin Prize awards were symptomatic of what Leonid Heller has compared to Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in relation to the erratic functioning of the Soviet state in its development of cultural policy.49 The unpredictability of the Stalin Prize roll of honor, even to the panel of state-selected experts on the Stalin Prize Committee, suggests

45. Ibid.46. Yankovskaya, “The Economic Dimensions of Art,” 790.47. For a further examination of the responses of the Stalin Prize Committee to works

of the leader cult, see ibid., 785– 86.48. Jan Plamper has analyzed the oxymoronic nature of a Bolshevik personality cult

and demonstrated that a meticulous process of orchestration was carried out by Stalin and other leaders in order to conceal the artifi cial nature of cult promotion and development. Plamper, Alkhimiia vlasti: Kul�t Stalina v izobrazitel�nom iskusstve (Moscow, 2010), 190–208.

49. Leonid Heller, “A World of Prettiness: Socialist Realism and Its Aesthetic Cat-egories,” in Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Socialist Realism without Shores (Durham, 1997), 58.




that there was a serious rupture between the fi elds of political power and creative authority in the postwar Soviet art world. Yet it also hints at a more fundamental crisis at the heart of the postwar cultural establishment: in lieu of a reliable and effective model for the development of socialist re-alist art, the Stalin Prize evaluation process was subject to the competing and often contradictory agendas of interested parties at all levels of state bureaucracy. In short, for all the expertise and authority of the selection committee, the prevailing measures for the success or failure of a Stalin Prize candidate appear to have been the allegiances, personal tastes, and whims of nonspecialist members of the Politburo.

Responses to the Awards

The annual announcement of the Stalin Prizes was met with a great fanfare in the Soviet media. The fi rst round of awards in 1941 was celebrated with a radio concert and a lavish ceremony at the Maksim Gor�kii Art Theater at which certifi cates and medals were presented to the new laureates.50 As though it were a Soviet Oscars ceremony, recipients were invited to give a short speech, but they thanked, not their friends, family, and fi nanciers,

50. “Radiokontsert posviashchennyi laureatom Stalinskogo premii,” Pravda, 17 March 1941, and “Vruchenie diplomov deiateliam iskusstva—laureatom Stalinskikh premii,” Pravda, 22 April 1941, taken from Svin�in and Oseev, Staliniskie premii, 66 – 68.

Figure 3. Vasilii Efanov, Stepan Dudnik, Iurii Kugach, Konstantin Maksimov, and Viktor Tsiplakov, Peredovye liudi Moskvy v Kremle (Leading the People of Moscow in the Kremlin, 1949). Current whereabouts unknown. Mir nagrad: sait rossiskikh kollektsionerov, at www.mirnagrad.ru/cgi-bin/exinform.cgi?page=27&ppage=4 (last accessed 1 September 2011).



836 Slavic Review

but the Bolshevik Party, the people, and of course their wise leader Stalin.51 In 1943, during the war, Pravda printed a series of telegrams from the new Stalin Prize laureates to Stalin in which they pledged their winnings to the Soviet war effort in the form of a donation to the Red Army.52 This was a practice that the quadruple-laureate Aleksandr Gerasimov continued in peacetime, although it is important to note that as a close friend of Red Army Chief Kliment Voroshilov, the artist stood to gain considerably more than the fi nancial benefi t of his awards from the propagation of a close relationship with this infl uential patron of the arts.53 A number of new laureates participated in public events such as “Celebration Evenings” or meetings with fans and admirers.54 It was common practice for Stalin Prize winners to attract a fl urry of attention in the press and to have their work reproduced widely in newspapers, journals, and Ogonek. In short, a Stalin Prize represented a signifi cant step up the ladder of fame and fortune in the strictly hierarchical system of Soviet celebrity.

What did a Stalin Prize–winning work look like? Just as Boime de-tected uniformity and suspension of imagination in the work of the Prix de Rome laureates, so too can a distinct homogeneity be observed in the prize-winning canvases, sculptures, and graphic works of the Stalin Prize laureates.55 The feature uniting the majority of painting winning the Stalin Prize is Academicism; or rather, a simulation of traditional Aca-demic painting allied with a number of features specifi c to Soviet socialist realism: fl atness of fi nish, evenness of detail, and brightness of color. A vast majority of First-Class works fall into the category of the thematic kartina—that is a large-scale complex composition in oil on canvas—and most are based on multifi gural portraits of historical scenes. Second- and Third-Class awards were most often given to portraits of Soviet notables, to war painting (prior to 1947), and to agricultural scenes. Exceptions to these broad categories were rare and carried particular signifi cance, inevitably resulting in a rash of imitations. From 1947 onwards, the genre, or everyday life painting (bytovaia zhivopis�), rose to prominence following awards to Laktionov in 1947 for A Letter from the Front, to Fedor Reshet-nikov in 1948 for Pribyl na kanikuly (Home for the Holidays), and to Sergei Grigor�ev in 1949 for Vratar� (Goalkeeper). Likewise landscape painting

51. For a stenographic report from the ceremony for the 1948 awards held in March 1949, see RGALI, f. 2073, op. 1, d. 35, ll. 17–29.

52. Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 174 – 86.53. For an anecdotal account of Gerasimov’s generous donation of his prize money to

the Red Army, see Matthew Cullerne Bown, “Aleksandr Gerasimov,” in Matthew Cullerne Bown and Brandon Taylor, eds., Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992 (Manchester, Eng., 1993), 133 –34.

54. In 1949 the recently distinguished laureate Aleksandr Laktionov took part in such an event at the Tretiakov Gallery in which he recited a potted biography and fi elded a selective series of questions from the audience. Gosudarstvennaia Tret�iakovskaia galereia (GTG), f. 18, d. 295. Laktionov was introduced by Vera Gertsenberg, who placed great emphasis on the nurturing infl uence of the Soviet art establishment as a contributory fac-tor to Laktionov’s success.

55. Frolova-Walker has written of a similar phenomenon in her study of Soviet music production, in which she argues that “tedium, it would appear, was not an unfortunate by-product of Socialist Realism, but a quality which was deliberately cultivated.” Frolova-Walker, “Stalin and the Art of Boredom,” 103.




received a boost in 1950 following the awarding of Third-Class prizes to Vasilii Meshkov, Aleksei Gritsai, Gregorii Nisskii, and Semen Chuikov for their attempts to unite traditional landscape painting with specifi cally So-viet features relating to construction and agriculture. An extremely lim-ited number of awards were made to artists from the Soviet republics for works that represented a symbolic, Sovietized version of indigenous na-tional art, such as Chuikov’s 1948 Second-Class award for a series of Kyrgyz kolkhoz scenes, or to the Azerbaijani sculptor, Fuad Abdurakhmanov, in 1950 for his bronze statue Chaban (Shepherd).

The Stalin Prize awards were monitored by local artists’ unions as indi-cators of the prevailing currents of offi cial Soviet culture. As an important point of contact between the upper echelons of Soviet power and the art establishment, the Stalin Prizes provided a useful blueprint for the correct fulfi llment of state commissions and a model for the pursuit of offi cial rec-ognition. In the words of a 1948 Iskusstvo editorial describing this “joyous festival for all masters of Soviet art”: “This resolution [on the awarding of Stalin Prizes] demonstrates which directions and tendencies correspond to those directed by the party and the Soviet government and which to those demanded by the people. The great, principled signifi cance of this resolution correctly orients our creative workers and provides rich mate-rial for theoretical consideration and for the development of Soviet aes-thetics.” 56 The article included not only a brief description of the work of the new laureates and an affi rmation of their particular contributions to Soviet culture but also a polemic against those artists and critics who had been infl uenced by formalist tendencies, impressionist aesthetics, and “painterliness”—meaning an emphasis on color, light, and texture over the technique of fi ne drawing. It provides an example of the process by which the incentive system of the Stalin Prizes was transformed from a carrot into a stick. Rather than affi rming positive trends, it was often presented as a repudiation of alternative interpretations of the socialist realist aesthetic.57

It was precisely such an article that Vladimir Pomerantsev might have had in mind when he complained of the dampening effect of the Stalin Prizes on principled criticism in his landmark 1953 article “On Sincerity in Art and Literature”:

It’s bad when what comes from the critic are not sounds but echoes. It’s bad when he doesn’t suggest anything but himself awaits suggestion. It’s bad when he doesn’t discover names but only popularizes those given to him.

As a rule, among us, popularization occurs without a penetration into the essence of the works themselves. Articles appearing after the awarding of the Stalin Prizes usually turn out to be only enumerations, not reviews of literature.58

56. “Prazdnik sovetskogo iskusstvo,” Iskusstvo, 1948, no. 3:3 – 4.57. Plamper has argued that the “striving for ubiquity” and “totalizing ambitions,”

which characterized leader cult works in particular, as well as socialist realist art in general, implied the end of art criticism as a fi eld. Plamper, Alkhimiia vlasti, 179.

58. Vladimir Pomerantsev, “On Sincerity in Literature” (1953), trans. Eric Konkol, at www.sovlit.com/sincerity/ (last accessed 1 September 2011). First published in Novyi mir, December 1953, 218.



838 Slavic Review

The stifl ing nature of the awards on criticism was an important factor in strengthening existing hierarchies within the Soviet art establishment. It simultaneously granted a small number of senior establishment fi gures blanket coverage of their work in the Soviet press and placed them off limits for offi cial criticism. It also contributed to the strengthening of a generational divide; an issue of particular concern to the young cadres of MOSSKh, who voiced their frustration with the restrictive aesthetic program of the Academy, the Orgkom of the USSR Artists’ Union, and the Stalin Prize institution at a stormy discussion of the 1949 All-Union Exhibition. Having criticized a number of Stalin Prize laureates includ-ing Laktionov and Aleksandr Gerasimov, the young artist Poliakov de-clared: “Stand aside; you are preventing Soviet art from developing to a new stage. You have said your word, let us say ours, but don’t try to impose your authority upon us, because many of you have none.” Another young artist, Taezhnaia, concurred. “Your time is up. Full stop. Give the young and able their turn; ring in the changes.” 59

Especially revealing in this regard is a letter sent by an anonymous “group of young sculptors” to Zhdanov dated 20 June 1948.60 The authors of this letter expressed their commitment to the principles of socialist realism but complained that they were hamstrung in their efforts to play a more active role in artistic life by a “clique [kuchka] of old masters”—that is, senior establishment fi gures—who held a monopoly over the means of production, criticism, and reward. Among this clique the young sculp-tors identifi ed the sculptors Merkurov, Mukhina, Matvei Manizer, Evge-nii Vuchetich, and Nikolai Tomskii, and the artists Aleksandr Gerasimov, Sergei Gerasimov, Konstantin Iuon, Vasilii Iakovlev, and Efanov, all of whom were Stalin Prize laureates. The young sculptors claimed that this group looked out for the interests of its own circle and worked actively to obstruct the careers of others. As members of a younger generation of Soviet artists, the group of sculptors argued that they were limited in their development by an institutionalized conservatism that was both creatively stifl ing and hypocritical in its ideology. As the letter scathingly observed, this reactionary clique of establishment artists justifi ed their dominance through indiscriminate criticism of formalist tendencies regardless of the fact that “there are many [formalists] among the leading masters: Merku-rov, Manizer, Boris Ioganson, Iuon, and so on.” 61

In particular the young sculptors were critical of the way in which members of this clique placed bureaucratic duties before matters of artistic production. An anecdote from a recent discussion of MOSSKh

59. These events on the 24 and 25 November 1949 were reported to Mikhail Suslov in a letter from Lebedev and Aleksandr Gerasimov dated 2 December 1949. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 245, l. 37. The two young artists concerned subsequently wrote letters of apol-ogy to Georgii Makenkov in which they expressed regret at the manner of their dissent, but in both cases they also took the opportunity to reassert the existence of a damaging generational inequality in the art establishment. See Taezhnaia’s letter, dated 21 Decem-ber 1949, l. 35, and Poliakov’s letter, dated 15 December 1949, l. 40.

60. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 86, ll. 28–35.61. Ibid.




concerning Aleksandr Gerasimov was used to highlight the complacency with which these artists maintained their heavy burden of responsibili-ties. “Someone from the fl oor asked Gerasimov how he managed to cope with duties such as participating on the Stalin Prize Committee, and so on. Gerasimov’s answer was as follows: “You know it’s like riding a bicycle; while the wheels are spinning, while you’re moving it’s impossible to stop you, to knock you down.” That’s how they’re all riding, while solid barriers are placed in the path of us young cadres.” 62 Assuming the veracity of the anecdote, Gerasimov’s glib response not only demonstrates a somewhat fl ippant approach to his numerous infl uential roles and duties but also re-veals his attitude toward the mechanisms of the art establishment. To bor-row Gerasimov’s metaphor, the fulfi llment of bureaucratic responsibilities such as participation on the Stalin Prize Committee was seen as a wheel that needed to be kept in motion in order to propel the artist himself forward. The thrust provided by this and other of the artist’s institutional roles contributed to an unstoppable momentum that allowed Gerasimov and his fellow artist-bureaucrats to monopolize the fi eld regardless of the quality of their actual artistic outputs.

A further criticism was leveled at the sculptor Vuchetich, who the young sculptors accused of contriving to win a Stalin Prize for the pro-duction of a monument on which “he never laid a fi nger.” 63 According to the accusatory letter, both the preliminary sketches and the enlargement of the design were completed by young members of the senior sculptor’s studio. Regardless of whose work it was, the young letter writers specu-lated that Vuchetich had received the award, not as the fair outcome of a principled selection process, but as the result of the close personal friend-ship he had nurtured with Aleksandr Gerasimov and Petr Sysoev, director of the KPDI. These denunciations demonstrate that by the late 1940s the Stalin Prizes had earned a reputation within MOSSKh as a closed system of self-reward reserved for a small elite of establishment artists and sculp-tors. The declining symbolic capital of the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts was part of the process by which an emerging artistic intelligentsia began to defi ne itself in the early 1950s in opposition to the elitist agenda of the Academy and its privileged acolytes.64

A diminishing respect for the artistic credibility of Stalin Prize laure-ates was not limited to those who worked within the art establishment. Comments made by visitors to the 1952 All-Union Art Exhibition dem-onstrate that far from being the stars of the show, award winners were in many cases condemned by anonymous members of the public for their outdated methods and irrelevant subject matter. Of Aleksandr Gerasimov’s landscape work Zelenia (Greenery), a visitor commented that “such paint-ings only fi nd their way into an exhibition through a complete absence

62. Ibid., l. 28.63. Ibid., l. 31.64. For an examination of the confl ict between the incumbent arts bureaucracy and

an emergent intelligentsia in the 1950s, see Susan E. Reid, “Destalinization and Taste, 1953 – 63,” Journal of Design History 10, no. 2 (1997): 180– 82.



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of criticism or self-criticism.” 65 Of Ioganson’s monumental brigade paint-ing Nash mudryi vozhd�, uchitel� dorogoi (Our Wise Leader, Teacher of the Path), a viewer remarked that “it is reminiscent of a masquerade.” 66 Of Toidze’s new work an angry visitor wrote simply “Shame on Toidze! Shame! Shame!” 67 The following rationalization of the problem written by an anonymous teacher is indicative of the grassroots resentment some vis-itors to the exhibition experienced toward certain heavyweights of the art establishment. “It seems to me that the time has come when we don’t have to consider an artist as an authority and only include his works in an exhibi-tion because of his past success. The last two works by Nalbandian—Portret Mao Tzeduna [Portrait of Mao Tse-Tung] and Pered Batumskoi demonstratsiei [Before the Batumi Demonstration] are abominable. Especially the lat-ter. . . . Yet they exhibit it! And there are even ‘friends’ of the artist who comment on the painting in the press.” 68 This selection of comments is by no means a representative sample, and the wide variety of responses—ef-fusive, rehearsed, critical, abusive, illegible—preclude attempts to draw reliable statistical conclusions.69 Comment books taken as a whole, how-ever, reveal a confl ict between two dominant groups of visitors: a pas-sive majority who responded to the works on display according to and often in the language of offi cial formulations; and a progressive minority who were heavily critical of “establishment” works of art and considered it their duty to correct the perceived ignorance of the former group. Yet for all the criticism of former Stalin Prize laureates, both types of visitors were inclined to speculate on the coming round of selections. One oft-repeated response written shortly after Stalin’s death in 1953 read, “Who should be awarded the Stalin Prize? Surely it can only be F. Reshetnikov: he deserves it.” 70

In March 1954, in lieu of a forthcoming announcement on the 1953 round of awards, an exhibition of works put forward for the Stalin Prize was held at the State Tretiakov Gallery. In the context of a pre-award view-ing of nominated works, visitors took the opportunity en masse to mention their favorite candidate in the comment books.71 Popular works included Sergei Gerasimov’s landscape series Mozhaika and Grigor�ev’s genre paint-ing Vernulsia (He Has Returned), while a number of visitors objected to the inclusion in the shortlist of Khmel�ko’s large-scale historical kartina Naveki s Moskvy (Forever Moscow): “What sort of an art expert are you and what do you know about art if you like trash like Khmel�ko’s canvas?” 72 Yet a sig-nifi cant number of visitors took the opportunity to express a deep-rooted

65. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 7, l. 2.66. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 8, l. 18.67. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 9, l. 17.68. Ibid, l. 35.69. For a discussion of the problematic use of Soviet comment books as a historical

source and the diffi culty of drawing statistical conclusions from their contents, see Susan Emily Reid, “In the Name of the People: The Manège Affair Revisited,” Kritika 6, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 675– 84.

70. GTG, f. 8.II, op. 2, d. 16, l. 30.71. GTG, f. 8 II, op. 3, dd. 3 – 4.72. GTG, f. 8 II, op. 3, d. 3, l. 8.




disillusionment with the meager achievements of the cream of the Soviet art establishment: “It’s somehow sad when you consider that these two-and-a-half halls represent the sum total of two years of work.” 73 Or, “The exhibition is poor. Two years and that’s all? It’s shameful.” 74 It appears that this unique opportunity for the Soviet public to encounter the nominated works before the announcement of the awards highlighted for many the limited and unrepresentative nature of the awards process in relation to the diversity of the Soviet art world as a whole.

Visitors’ comments from both exhibitions offer insight into the ac-tive interest Soviet citizens took in the Stalin Prize awards. In spite of the closed nature of the Stalin Prize competition, a signifi cant number of visitors used the comment books as a means to record their preferences, to berate the selection committee, or to speculate on the coming round of selections. Such comments suggest that as late as 1953 the awards were not obsolete as an institution and that there remained a degree of pub-lic engagement in the annual announcements. Perhaps this popular en-gagement with the Stalin Prize was amplifi ed by English’s concept of the economy of contempt in relation to the selection process?75 Or perhaps a common misapprehension remained that the selection process could be infl uenced by public opinion? On this occasion those who eagerly awaited the annual presentation of the new Stalin Prize laureates would be disap-pointed; following the death of their namesake the award was discontin-ued. The 1952 round of prizes was never presented for the arts since Stalin did not succeed in reviewing the recommendations before his death on 5 March 1953.76

The Fate of the Stalin Prize

Stalin’s death alone did not put a comprehensive end to the Stalin Prize institution. The Stalin Prize committee continued to convene and in April of 1954 presented its recommendations for 1952–1953 to the Central Committee for the consideration of Nikita Khrushchev, who had by then assumed leadership of the party. Khrushchev approved the selection of prizewinners for the sciences but for an as yet undetermined reason failed to approve those selected for awards in the arts.77 The Stalin Prize was disbanded in 1954, although no offi cial explanation was forthcoming for the change of policy. It is likely that not only the name but also the impli-cations of the awards and their close association with the Stalinist person-ality cult were critical factors behind this development. By 1955 former recipients of the awards were no longer referred to as “Stalin Prize” laure-ates but as “State Prize” laureates and the entry for the Stalin Prize had

73. Ibid., l. 4.74. Ibid., l. 16.75. English, Economy of Prestige, 187–96.76. Svin�in and Oseev, eds., Stalinskie premii, 615. Stalin did, however, succeed in re-

viewing the recommendations for the Stalin Prizes in the sciences, and the 1952 round of awards was made shortly after his death.

77. Ibid., 617–18.



842 Slavic Review

been removed from the Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsoklopediia.78 Not until 1956 was a revised form of the award, the Lenin Prize, instituted as a replace-ment honor.

By the time of the leader’s death, the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts had entered a state of crisis from which its credibility could not be salvaged. Several prominent Stalin Prize laureates, including the head of the artists’ section of the Stalin Prize Committee, Aleksandr Gerasimov, had suffered very prominent falls from grace.79 The artistic output of the nation’s most acclaimed and heavily decorated artists, which had for several years been dominated by the representation of Stalin and other leaders, came to be derided in increasingly outspoken liberal circles of the artistic intelligen-tsia as inartistic hack work or toadying.80 Following Khrushchev’s so-called Secret Speech of 1956, the concept of the leader cult gained widespread currency as a condemnation of a certain branch of socialist realism that privileged the fi gure of Stalin over and above considerations of artistic quality. Making explicit reference to the Stalin Prize institution, Khru-shchev objected that “not even the Tsars created prizes which they named after themselves.” 81 In light of these revised criteria of merit, a signifi cant proportion of Stalin Prize–winning works underwent a critical reappraisal that saw them removed from the offi cial cultural canon.82

Although it was instituted as a positive incentive system designed to bestow status and authority upon its laureates, the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts came to represent a mark of aesthetic conservatism associated with political and bureaucratic, rather than artistic, accomplishment. Its Selec-tion Committee was intended to act as an arbiter of artistic merit and as an intermediary between policymakers and art world professionals, but its infl uence was undermined by the incompatibility of these two tasks. The degree of incongruity between the ballot of the Stalin Prize Commit-tee and the fi nal roll of honor reveals that the committee’s authority was largely symbolic and that the committee was not always on message, in particular when it came to the strategic promotion of ideologically signifi -cant works of art. The Stalin Prize selection process became dominated by Aleksandr Gerasimov and his circle, who attempted to mold the roll

78. Ibid., 618.79. In November 1949 the Academy of the Arts came under investigation by Goskon-

trol�. As a result of their inquiry, Aleksandr Gerasimov was indicted for his involvement in a number of the organization’s transgressions including the awarding of extra pay to its presidium and the installation of his personal friends in prominent positions within the Academy. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 132, d. 245, ll. 142– 48.

80. The most prominent published accounts of this phenomenon can be found in Pomerantsev, “On Sincerity in Literature,” and Il�ia Erenburg, The Thaw (1954), both of which address the issue of cynical hack artists and their lack of creative individuality.

81. Nikita Khrushchev, “Speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU,” deliv-ered 24 –25 February 1956. Full text available at www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm (last accessed 1 September 2011).

82. Reid has described the process by which the institutions and mechanisms of the Stalin cult came to be criticized and dismantled by reformists within the art establishment in the 1950s. See Reid, “Destalinization and Taste,” 177– 87, and Susan E. Reid, “Masters of the Earth: Gender and Destalinisation in Soviet Reformist Painting of the Khrushchev Thaw,” Gender and History 11, no. 2 ( July 1999): 276 –312.




of honor for fi ne art according to a narrow Academic agenda, contribut-ing to the growing hegemony of the newly formed All-Union Academy in the Soviet art world. The consequence of this institutional bias was that the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts garnered a reputation among a younger generation of artists within MOSSKh as a closed system of internal reward and self-aggrandizement, less a form of meritocracy than a form of state-sanctioned nepotism. The Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts lost its luster as a symbol of artistic achievement and became tarnished by its association with a restrictive and outdated aesthetic agenda, which remained poorly defi ned and frequently misinterpreted even by those specialists respon-sible for its implementation. The institution of the Stalin Prize for the fi ne arts was both a victim of, and a contributory factor to, the process of de-Stalinization in this period. The problematic debates of the Stalin Prize Committee and unrehearsed responses to the awards and their lau-reates are indicative of the often tenuous degree of control exerted over the Soviet fi ne art establishment even at the height of state intervention in the late 1940s.



The Stalin Prize and the Soviet Artist

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