Abstract
Between 1928–32, the State Tretyakov Gallery (STG) in Moscow rearranged most of its permanent display galleries to reflect a revised history of Russian art based on principles of Marxism-Leninism, transforming itself from a pre-revolutionary institution embodying the bourgeois values of the Moscow merchant class to a bastion of Marxist-Leninist ideals. Viewed in this new context, works of art were not experienced from a simple aesthetic standpoint but rather as fragments of an overall mosaic representing a history of class struggle.
‘Museums are not to be the result of simple administrative acts but rather the natural outcome of the Marxist-Leninist struggle’
Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, curator at the State Tretyakov Gallery, 1929–32
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Notes
A.P. Botkina, Pavel Mikhailovich Tret’yakov v zhizni i iskusstve (Moscow, 1995), p. 247.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, 1992), p. 20.
V.V. Gorbunov, V.I. Lenin i Proletkul’t (Moscow, 1974), pp. 109–10.
A.V. Lunacharsky, Zadachi prosveshcheniya v sisteme sovetskogo stroitel’stva (Moscow, 1925), pp. 4, 5.
A.V. Lunacharsky, Ocherki Marksistskoi teorii iskusstv (Moscow, 1926), p. 9.
I.K. Luppol, ‘Ochet Muzeinoi Deitel’nosti’, Sovetskii Muzei 2(1), (Moscow, 1932), p. 110.
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© 2006 Mary Hannah Byers
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Byers, M.H. (2006). From ‘State of the Art’ to ‘State Art’: The Rise of Socialist Realism at the Tretyakov Gallery. In: Thatcher, I.D. (eds) Reinterpreting Revolutionary Russia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230624924_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230624924_11
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