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Golomstock’s article, “Totalitarian Art”, focused on how Hitler and Stalin’s regimes incorporated the role and function of architecture into their respective totalitarian systems. After reading and discussing this article in class, it became clear that each dictator incorporated architecture into each of their societies very similarly, but that Hitler drew upon some lessons learned from Stalin. Another concept that stood out for me was that each regime had a very centralized control on the development, implementation, and functionality of architecture. It was also apparent the effect that the post-war environment had on the development of architecture, for example the Soviet Union had grandiose plans to rebuild the several thousand buildings destroyed during the war, in order to “reflect the sense of pride of the Soviet people in their Socialist State” (275). I found it interesting that at the center of each rebuilt town was intended to be the tallest building in the city, and the height of this building would reflect the importance that Moscow thought the city held (277). Personally, I didn’t understand how these regimes put this enormous amount of time, effort, money, and sacrifice into the aesthetics of their totalitarian architecture, and then having indifferent feelings about them being destroyed. For example, Hitler said in 1941 that it would be to no great loss if English bombs destroyed the German capital (280). Perhaps this indifferent mindset towards the architecture points towards his psychological decline and ultimate demise of Nazi Germany, for how could all this focus on returning to the Greek roots be all for waste?

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In Mark Edele’s article, “Paper Soldiers”, he argues that “wartime iconography was characterized by strongly polyvalent symbols which were open to many different “readings.” After initial failures to make posters relevant to frontline soldiers, artists soon learned to employ powerful and adaptable symbols. Their ability to learn was greater than before the war, because a consider- able decentralization had brought them closer to their public. The growing polyphony helped to forge the necessary solidarity – possibly without real consensus: A soldier was free to choose from various possible interpretations of what was at stake in the war, and he (or she) could imagine to be part of a particular community of values – one out of many constructed by the posters” (Edele, 90). From Edele’s thesis, it is clear that Soviet wartime posters had a significant influence on effecting the persuasion of the Soviet public on emotion, nationalism, and patriotism, in term of the war effort.

From these war posters, the Soviet regime was able to effectively portray its wartime aspirations as victorious and noble in three main dimensions: the front, the homefront, and behind the front (98). Soviet wartime posters often times tried to portray its images in a way that showed women and children being raped or murdered if Soviet men did not step up and join the Red Army. By drawing on this nationalism to protect Mother Russia, Soviet wartime posters effectively got men to join the ranks. As we talked about it class, another way that Soviet wartime posters capitalized on nationalism was through the use of socialist realism, in that the posters portrayed the Soviet military as regimented, organized, well equipped, and powerful.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, as actual conditions on the front line of the war were horrid and unevenly matched in terms of military capabilities. Thus, this form of socialist realism wasn’t necessarily as effective in getting the Soviet men to join the Red Army, as many citizens saw through the idealism and knew the real truth; the Red Army was ill-equipped, under-manned, and poorly led into the war. Perhaps the most effective usage of the Soviet wartime posters was through the utilization of religious connotations within the posters, as the author emphasizes in his conclusion, “The many religious connotations in posters were surely not accidental. Two-thirds of the men in the Red Army were called up from the still deeply religious and anti-Soviet countryside” (104). Thus, it is clear that Soviet state used commissioned artists to create posters that capitalized on the religious background of the people.

In conclusion, Soviet wartime posters were useful means of mass propaganda, as production was cheap and the posters had the ability to appeal to multiple dimensions of the “consumers” through the trifecta of sensory application: most importantly the visual application of the poster, second the large slogan on the poster, and thirdly the background text/description of the poster. Through this trifecta, multiple classes of the people were addressed from the illiterate to the scholars, in order to mobilize the entire country to help out the war effort.

Deineka’s The Conversation of the Collective Farm Brigade is a very interesting piece of art because it exlimpifies Alexander Deineka’s transitional career from modernism to Socialist realism. In Christina Kair’s article “Was Socialist Realism Forced Labor”, she explains that “Deineka was actively attempting to find a way to work within the famously opaque proclamation of Socialist Realism as ‘the depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. Deineka’s retreat from the pictorial instability of the earlier, modernist work would, in the dominant narrative of the demise of the avant-garde under the pressure of Socialist Realism, signal a transition from a – good – dialectical socialist body to a – bad – stabilized, Stalinist one” (327).

Deineka began to participate in Soviet contract system called kontraktatsiia, “in which
branches of the central state commissioning agency, VseKoKhudozhnik, entered into contracts with artists, stipulating that a certain number of works be produced within a certain period of time – often works on
a certain theme, or works to be produced on the basis of a paid field trip or kommandirovka, undertaken individually or in organized groups, to agricultural or industrial destinations” (334). However, despite this contract system and its stipulations that artists create art to a certain theme, Deineka’s “Construction of the Collective Farm Brigade” work is full of defiance. The art piece is full of confusion and it appears that the figures are asking questions about the collective farm rather than being full of confidence. Kiaer writes “The very pictorial form of this highprofile commissioned work, in other words, inserts a moment of doubt about how the collective farm will achieve the wished-for socialist community, and thus shares the reticence of Deineka’s other pictures of
Soviet bodies” (335).

Thus, although Deineka was restricted in many senses by the Soviet contracting system, he still was able to protest in an artistic way through “The Construction”. The reason behind this was because he didn’t agree with the lack of artistic freedom that existed within the Soviet Union at the time.