A Parodic Tale in “Sovy” (Soviet Texts) by D. Prigov

The article aims to study D. Prigovs series of prose texts Sovy (Soviet texts) artistic subtleties as a conceptualist work. The author of the article analyzes genre and style modifications owing to use of parodic stylization. The research exemplifies how a fairy tale, epic, legend, anecdote, hagiography are modified by the Soviet myth content, whereas creating a quasi-history. Historical characters, politicians, poets and writers, mythologized by ideology and commonplace consciousness in the Sovy, are presented as cultural and progenitor heroes. Life journey of characters, cultivated by the Soviet myth, is often depicted according to the hagiographic canon. The mask of a storyteller/propagandist is the starting point of folklore stylizations and parody imitations of the Soviet art in the Sovy series. Parodic tale was crafted by mimicking folklore and journalistic styles, their hybridization at the lexical-grammatical and rhythmic-syntactic levels. Styles, genres and masks mocking in D. Prigovs Sovy series is examined at the methodological perspective of text narratological analysis for the first time, thus emphasizing the studys novelty and relevance. The author of the article concludes that D. Prigov deconstructs Soviet mythologems, showcasing transformations of a myth to an anecdote, a famous name into an empty sign, a story into a simulacrum.

Collage as the basis of creative methodology of Sergey Paradzhanov

In this article we have analyzed the artistic features of S. Paradzhanov’s art. We have investigated the interaction of Paradzhanov’s cinematic works with his collages. Analysis of creative work of S. Paradzhanov suggests that the master deliberately abandons a number of opportunities provided by the director of traditional cinematic language, manifesting such an “screen painting”. Analysis of films, artworks and screenplays by S. Paradzhanov allowed us to identify three main features of his collage tools: 1) work with color and visionary elements; 2) features of visual representation of texts; 3) textures and volumes of images in the frame. Collage techniques have a number of purely visual properties, which are reproduced in different ways in cinematic artistic background. It is likely that S. Paradzhanov, fully aware of this peculiarity, emphasized certain qualitative features of the collage technique, achieving the desired effect in the frame. That is why, in our opinion, Paradzhanov’s collage could exist only within the framework of author’s cinema in the aesthetics of Soviet art. Postmodernist thinking came to Soviet art through author’s cinema, where S. Paradzhanov was one of the key figures.

FEATURES OF INDUSTRIAL PROSE IN UKRAINIAN SOVIET LITERATURE: THE SHORT STORY “BLAST FURNACES” BY DMYTRO BUZKO

The paper highlights the features of ‘industrial’ prose in the Ukrainian Soviet literature of the 1930s clarifying the main formal and semantic characteristics of “industrial” genres, their reception in criticism, and such characteristics of this genre as style, plot, figurative and thematic principles. Based on D. Buzko’s text “Blast Furnaces”, the paper shows the transitional period between the free avant-garde artistic movement in Ukraine of the 1920s and the implementation of socialist realism as the only official style in Soviet art in the 1930s. As a representative of the futurist movement, deeply engaged in the elaboration of early cinema theories, Dmytro Byzko wrote a novel “Holiandiia”, which deconstructed official narratives and topics of the late 1920s. The comparison of the “Blast furnaces” with this novel helps not only to see the mentioned transition but also to notice the divergence of the “Blast furnaces” and more canonical pieces of this genre. Dmytro Buzko’s “Blast furnaces” extremely accurately reflects the expectations from literature at that time: the heroes explain the main stages of work at the metallurgical plant, and by their example, in words and deeds, agitate readers to become conscious builders of socialism. Although a large number of similar techniques, ideas, and even views of the author can be found in “Holiandiia” and “Blast furnaces”, the first novel is a sharp critique of the contemporary reality, while “Blast furnaces” is a text complementary to reality. The analysis of “Blast furnaces” shows the process of the search for an ideal and canonical protagonist as well as an antagonist for the Soviet literature. The last one in this text is represented by the typical for the whole Ukrainian literature covetous farmer who, in a new political reality, plays a role of a small evil ready to harm ordinary workers and socialistic future.

Arno Babajanian: “Radicalisms” of the 1960s

Пришедшие в отечественную музыку в 1960-е годы западные новации были встречены бурной критикой со стороны хранителей «чистоты» советского искусства. Композиторы и их сочинения, созданные с применением новых техник, рассматривались как идеологически опасные. Однако творческие эксперименты некоторых авторов получили официальное одобрение. Среди них был А. Бабаджанян, который в равной степени уловил модные тенденции времени как в сфере академической музыки (додекафония в «Шести картинах»), так и в сфере массовой эстрадной песни (твисты «Королева красоты» и «Лучший город земли»). В статье анализируются его новации в обеих областях. Western innovations that came to Soviet music in 1960s were met with harsh criticism from the guardians of the “purity” of Soviet art. Composers and their works, which were created using avant-garde techniques, were considered as dangerous for soviet ideoLogy. However, creative experiments of some authors have received approval Among them was A. Babajanian, who picked up the modern tendencies both in the academic music (dodecaphony in “Six Pictures”) and mass pop song (twists “KoroLeva krasoty” and “Luchshiy gorod zemLi”). His innovations in these two areas are anaLyzed in the articLe.

Gennady Gorbaty's painting: crypto-realism as overcoming imitation of reality

The purpose of this article: analysis of Gennady Gorbaty's painting, in the work of which the transition from a realistic reflection of the world to the art of postmodernism, characteristic of Ukrainian art of the late 20th century, was reflected in a peculiar way. The methodology is the application of art analysis, methods of comparison and generalization, biographical and historical approach. The scientific novelty lies in the discovery of the peculiarities of the transformation of the traditional for Soviet art reflection of reality into visual practices of the late 20th – early 21st centuries on the example of the work of a particular artist. Conclusions. Gennady Gorbaty studied at the Kyiv State Art Institute (1981–1987), so his formation was significantly influenced by the traditional school of painting with a mostly realistic reproduction of the world around it and a purely academic hierarchy of genres. The socio-political situation in Ukraine in the late 1980s and early 1990s not only contributed to the liberation from such a view of art, but also intensified attention to the development of both contemporary world art and modernist manifestations that existed in the culture of the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, many artists became interested in the history of Ukraine, especially in its tragic or dramatic pages, which led to the emergence of numerous compositions with a complex system of symbols and associations, elements borrowed from the paintings of past eras. In the work of Gennady Gorbaty can be consistently traced a variety of influences, which demonstrate his search for his own plastic language, the gradual departure from the conditionally realistic art of the Soviet era and the formation of a peculiar manner of performance. This was facilitated by an acquaintance with Western European art of the late 20th century, as the artist has been working in Germany since the early 1990s. It was one of the German art critics G. Beck who defined the stylistics of G. Gorbaty's works as crypto-realism, in which the emotional beginning, reflected in the color scheme and expression of picturesque textures, is combined with supposedly hidden motives of visible reality. In the works of this author, the blurring of genres, the synthesis in one picture of elements of different artistic epochs – from the Middle Ages to postmodernism – is also noticeable.

Philosophy and the Drama of Life: A Theater Experience of Understanding F.M. Dostoevsky

The article aims at a multidimensional discussion of the little-explored topic of the dramatic content of the philosophical problems in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky (1821—1881). There is proved that it was this feature of creativity that made the writer, with his philosophy of life and sharp, dramatically effective plot and psychological collisions, the most desirable and very productive author for the Russian theater art.Polyphony, dialogism, combined with the features of the tragic genre, are the basis for numerous theatrical embodiments of novels and novellas by F.M. Dostoevsky. The intensity of the action in his works gave rise to the expressions “novel-drama” or “drama in a novel”, “novel-tragedy”, and in theatrical practice it created the ground for the transformation of moral and philosophical problems into active stage action.The article reveals the context of F.M. Dostoevsky’s works — the time and conditions for the emergence of novels and novellas, the problem field that united and separated him from the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, which is done on the basis of a brief description of several aspects of the philosophical-aesthetic and socio-moral systems. In this context, according to our concept, a special place is occupied by the idea that life in Russia is absurd and ridiculous, and the reflection of the absurd is the most important artistic paradigm.The article proves that the analyzed philosophy of F.M. Dostoevsky’s life received polar genre embodiments in the theater. Thus, the dramatic and melodramatic beginning was characteristic of the performances that had in their center the so-called little man. The article presents an understanding of the most remarkable performances of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century: “The Idiot” by G. Tovstonogov, with a new trend of searching for a “positively beautiful” person, which had a significant impact on many theatrical experiences in Russia; “The Petersburg Dreams” by Yu. Zavadsky, as a unique experience for Soviet art of creating a tragic work in full accordance with the aesthetic characteristics of this genre; “And I Will Go, and I Will Go” by V. Fokin, as the last emotional outburst of the young generation of Soviet creators who thought in the moral and psychological parameters of F.M. Dostoevsky’s characters; “The Karamazovs” by K. Bogomolov — a postmodern experience of an absurdist reading of the multifaceted text of the classic.In the works of the writer and their theatrical embodiment, the article notes the signs of a carnival worldview, a combination of grotesque and subtle psychologism in the stage versions of F.M. Dostoevsky (in particular, when working with ironic and satirical texts, “Uncle’s Dream” and especially “The Village of Stepanchikovo”, where sympathy and negative connotations are integrated into a single artistic space). The article correlates the writer’s works existential interpretations by theatrical creators of the 20th and early 21st centuries with socially significant problems, life choices, and dramatic conflicts that characterize Dostoevsky’s philosophy.

The Stalinist Past in Contemporary Russian TV Serials: Reconfigurations of Memory

The two main issues that continue to be in the focus of hot public discussions in Russian society are the Great Patriotic War (the German–Soviet war of 1941–1945, as part of World War II) and the tragedy of Stalinism. While the Great Patriotic War was widely reflected in Soviet literature and cinema, the Stalinist issue was seldom represented in Soviet art. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a period when Soviet and post-Soviet art contributed much to the debates on the Soviet past, and several significant anti-Stalinist films and literary works were created. Since the early 2000s, the cultural situation in Russian society has changed and nostalgia of the Soviet past has spread in the mass consciousness. The purpose of this research is to analyze how the Stalinist past is reconstructed in public memory in contemporary cinema narratives. We arrive at the conclusion that since the 2000s, public interest has drifted from images of war heroism to ordinary people’ lives under Stalin; the contemporary public interest is not the war heroes and famous victims of repressions, but the everydayness of ordinary Soviet citizens who tried to build their private lives, careers, friendships, and family relations under the conditions of pressure from the authorities, spreading fear in the society, shortage of goods, and loss of loved ones. We concentrate on several representative Russian TV serials, such as “Liquidation” (2007), “Maryina Roscha” (2012), and “Leningrad, 46” (2014–2015), because all of them are devoted to the first year of the Soviet peaceful life in different Soviet cities, such as Odessa, Moscow, and Leningrad.

ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT BY THE CAST OF LENINGRAD OPERA AND BALLET THEATER NAMED AFTER S.M. KIROV IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1941

The relevance of the research topic is due to the fact that 80 years ago – on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people began. In the second half of 1941, millions of Soviet people unexpectedly became defenders of the Fatherland: commanders and political workers of the Red Army, ordinary Red Army soldiers and Red Navy men, partisans and members of the underground, some of them were captured and turned into prisoners of nazi concentration camps. The author focuses on the most interesting episodes from the creative and social life of the world-famous Leningrad State AcademicOpera and Ballet Theater named after S.M. Kirov (GATOB) and its artists. How did they meet the beginning of the war? What happened in the theater in the pre-war months of 1941, as well as in the first hours and days of the war? What was the theater’s repertoire in 1941? In his work, the author primarily uses the materials of a number of issues of the theater newspaper «For the Soviet Art», published in January – September 1941 in Leningrad and stored in our time in the funds of St. Petersburg State Theater Library, for the first time introducing them into scientific circulation. He tells about the details of the theater’s creative activity, which today are of undoubted interest to all amateurs of the Russian culture. It is concluded that the outbreak of the war made significant adjustments to the repertoire of the on-stage performance group, radically changed the entire life of Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater. It is particularly emphasized that the last pre-war opera premiere of the great theater on the stage in Leningrad was the performance to the music of the German composer R. Wagner «Lohengrin». In those years, Wagner was considered in Germany one of the symbols of the «Aryan culture» of the Third Reich. Today, the author believes, it can be supposed that staging of the German «Lohengrin» in Soviet Leningrad in June 1941 had a political nature, and the decision to work on the performance was made at the highest state level.