arts and culture under khrushchev and brezhnev

• khrushchev and art

  • wanted a better relationship between party officials and creatives
  • believed artists would understand the benefits of communism and willingly work with the government
  • believed that communism should liberate artists
  • believed regular soviet workers were not ready for complete freedom
• the 'thaws'

  • 1953 - 54 party officials allowed novels acknowledging generational differences
  • 1961 - 62 novels critical of stalin's rule allowed to be published
  • world youth festival 1957 : jazz was played
  • 1956 - 57 period of liberalisation after khrushchev's secret speech
  • classical music back on curriculum in 1957
  • doctor zhivago banned
  • freeze at the end of each period - final freeze led to arrest and imprisonment of several artists
• propaganda and popular oversight

  • depicted non conformists as bald , fat and lazy
  • citizens expected to keep other citizens under surveillance
  • recognised inefficiencies of soviet farms and factories
  • artwork similar to US cartoons
• disciplining style hunters

  • style hunters were soviet women who wore western makeup and fashion
  • world youth festival - police went around and shaved the heads of women found sleeping with foreign men
  • double standard - men were not prosecuted for sleeping with foreign women
  • magazines encouraged traditional soviet fashion
  • welfare policies directed soviet women towards marriage and childbearing
• style hunters pt.2

  • planned production of consumer goods was used to constrain women's choices
  • government posters compared soviet women wearing knee length skirts to women in capri pants
  • 1964 - 70 consumer spending on clothes tripled
  • people employed western tailors to obtain western clothing
• deviant artists

  • did not allow all artists to publish their work through government approved publishing houses
  • dissident artists were sent to psychiatric hospitals and given 'treatment'
  • some artists forcibly medicated
• arts and culture under brezhnev

  • far less concerned with arts than khrushchev
  • art became nostalgic - ww2 and civil war
  • critical of Khrushchev's thaws
  • soviet ballet was in demand around the world ( eg bolshoi ballet)
• sinyavsky - daniel trial

  • only their own work used against them in the trial
  • accused of ' anti soviet ' expression
  • after the trial , citizens lost all hope of a further thaw under brezhnev
  • both found guilty and sentenced to 5 and 7 years in the gulag