For this blog post I have decided to write about two pieces concerning Soviet Socialist Realism. “The Spatial Poetics of Personality Cult Circles Around Stalin,” by Jan Plamper and “Stalin as Isis and Ra: The Socialist Realism and the Art of Design,” by John E. Bowlt juxtapose each other very cohesively. There are many contrasts in the foci of their writings but the overlapping themes are very interesting and the way in which each author discusses these themes and thesis is what I would like to focus on for my discussion. Plamper and Bowlt were explicit in their explanation of Socialist Realism. They describe how the basis for such art revolved around the embodiment of Stalin and his impact, significance, and representation to the Soviet peoples. I believe Plamper was more useful in emphasizing how monumental Stalin intended the people to view him and what his objective was with Socialist Realism. At one point he quoted one of his biographers, Evgeny Katsman, who likened him to Nature, or more specifically the grandest and most towering structures in Nature such as mountains and oceans, or forests.[1] However Plamper was most concerned with how historically the space in which Russia has always structured itself, the circle, was used by Stalin metaphorically to represent his seat in ultimate authority. The Socialist Realist art evidently used the frame or background Stalin would occupy in a circular formation so as to put Stalin in the middle of it which represented his “sacredness.” Now when comparing Plamper to Bowlt, one can see the difference in approach to describing Socialist Realism. Bowlt really focuses on how Socialst Realism art contributed to Stalin as a machine for propaganda and a means of disseminating glorified portraits of Stalin or what Stalin aimed to represent. Bowlt also chronicles not just the 1930’s (late)-1940’s era which epitomized Socialist Realism but the journey in which it took to get their explaining the evolution of the complex artistic fervor of the 1920’s-1930’s(early) into Socialist Realism.

[1] Dobrenko, E A, and Eric Naiman. The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Print. Ch. 2, Pg. 25.