The Arts
The Soviet record in the arts paralleled that in literature. Again, the twenties, linked closely to the "silver age" and to contemporary trends in the West, were an interesting and vital period. Notably, in architecture functionalism flourished, producing some remarkable buildings, while new and experimental approaches added vigor and excitement to other arts also. However, once "socialist realism" established its hold on Soviet culture, arts in the Soviet Union acquired a most conservative and indeed antiquated character. Impressive in quantity, Soviet
realistic painting and sculpture are essentially worthless in quality, being in general poor imitations of a bygone style. While Soviet architecture has on the whole had more to offer, it too traveled the sad road from inspired and novel creations in the earlier period of Communist rule to the utterly tasteless and contrived Moscow skyscrapers of Stalin's declining years, exemplified by the much-publicized new Moscow University building. Although certain stirrings were detected after the late dictator's death, and indeed although many modern utilitarian buildings were erected, there was no basic change of orientation in Soviet arts. Music, it is true, was somewhat more fortunate throughout the period, both because of its greater distance from Marxist and "realistic" injunctions - which nevertheless did not prevent the Party from attacking "formalism" and modernism in music and from tyrannizing in that field - and, perhaps, because of the accident of talent. In any case, the one-time figure of the "silver age" and emigre Serge Prokofiev, 1891-1953, the creator of such well-known pieces as the Classical Symphony and Peter and the Wolf, and Dmitrii Shostakovich, 1906-75, together with a few other composers, managed to produce works of lasting value in spite of ideological obstacles.
Short on creativity and development, certain Soviet arts were long on execution and performance. Again, the high standards were continuations from tsarist days, aided by increased state subsidies and by the fact that schooling and culture spread to more people. Soviet musicians performed brilliantly on many instruments, both at international competitions of the thirties, and again in more recent years when the best among them, such as the violinist David Oistrakh and the pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, were allowed to tour the world. The ballet, while in a sense stagnant - the clock having stopped for most purposes in 1917 - continued to do its dances beautifully, and was apparently backed by more funds and a better system of schools and selection than in any other country. The Moscow Art Theater is still one of the most remarkable centers of acting anywhere, although unfortunately its school of acting had for a long time a monopoly in the Soviet Union, all other approaches to acting and the theater having been proscribed. Good acting has also characterized many Soviet films. In fact the Soviet cinema continued to be creative longer than other Soviet arts - in part probably because it had no nineteenth-century tradition in the image of which it could be conveniently frozen. Soviet film directors included at least one great figure, Serge Eisenstein, 1898-1948, as well as other men of outstanding ability.
In the arts as in literature, the years of glasnost brought great promise as well as dislocation and worry.
Religion
Religion in the Soviet Union constituted an anomaly, a threat, and a challenge from the Communist point of view. Marxist theory considers it an "opiate of the masses" and finds its raison d'etre in the efforts of the exploiting classes to keep
the people obedient and docile. Russian practice seemed to add weight to the theory, for the Orthodox Church in Russia was closely linked to the imperial regime, and it naturally sided with the Whites in the Civil War. Clearly, its social basis gone, religion would cease to exist in a socialist society. But this did not occur. Therefore, the Soviet leadership had to compromise and allow religion a highly restricted position in the U.S.S.R., while looking forward to its eventual, much delayed, disappearance. Religion, it might be added, also proved to be one of the main obstacles to the Communist transformation of man and society in other eastern European countries.
Outright persecution lasted well into the thirties. In addition to executing and exiling many clerics, monks, and Orthodox laymen, confiscating church implements "for victims of famine," and closing churches and converting them into antireligious museums, the authorities tried to break up the Church from the inside by assisting a modernist "Living Church" group within it - fruitlessly, for the people would not follow that group. After the death in 1925 of Patriarch Tikhon - elected by a Church council in 1918 to resume the patriarchal form of ecclesiastical organization which had been discontinued by Peter the Great - the government prevented any patriarch being elected in his stead, and Church leadership fell to provisional appointees. Yet, according to an official report based on the never-published census of 1936, 55 per cent of Soviet citizens still identified themselves as religious - while many others presumably concealed their belief.
That stubborn fact in conjunction with the general social stabilization of the thirties made Stalin and the Politburo assume a more tolerant attitude toward religion. The war and the patriotic behavior of the Church in the war added to its acceptance and standing. In 1943 the Church was permitted to elect a patriarch, the statesmanlike Metropolitan Sergius obtaining that position. After his death in 1945, Sergius was succeeded by Alexis, who continued as "Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia" for a quarter of a century. In 1971, following Alexis's death, Pimen was elected patriarch to head the Church, followed in 1990 by Alexis II. The ecclesiastical authorities were also allowed to establish a few theological schools, required to prepare students for the priesthood, and to open a limited number of new churches. The activities of the Union of the Godless and anti-religious propaganda in general were curtailed. In return the patriarchal Church declared complete loyalty to the regime, and supported, for example, its international peace campaigns and its attempts to influence the Balkan Orthodox. More unfortunately, the two co-operated in bringing the two or three million Uniates of former eastern Poland into Orthodoxy. The Church in the U.S.S.R., however, remained restricted to strictly religious, rather than more general social and educational, functions - even the constitution proclaimed merely the freedom of religious confession, as against the freedom of anti-religious propaganda - and, while temporarily tolerated within limits, it remained a designated enemy of Marxist ideology and Communist society. In fact, Khrushchev especially, as well
as his successors, increased the pressures against religion even when "liberalizing" other aspects of Soviet life. A remarkably tenacious relic of the past, the Church has no future in the Communist view.
It should be added that other Soviet Christians, such as Baptists, and other religious groups, such as the numerous Moslems, shared their histories with the Orthodox. They, too, led a constricted and precarious existence within a fundamentally hostile system, profiting from relaxations when they occurred and entering a new life as a result of the policy of glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
XLII
THE GORBACHEV YEARS, 1985-91, AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION