KUL-TU-ROCH-KA! or Snegurochka as the cultural code of the post-Soviet space (New Year's reflections)
It seems that she has always been - a blonde with wide eyes in a flirty blue caftan with a white fur trim and fashionable boots with heels, beloved from childhood, the beautiful Snegurochka.
It seems that she has always been - a blonde with wide eyes in a flirty blue caftan with a white fur trim and fashionable boots with heels, beloved from childhood, the beautiful Snegurochka.
Whether Vasnetsov's bewildered stranger, the enchantress with the eyes of the artist's wife Vrubel, the Eurasian beauty of Roerich's steppe, the Snow Maiden has no analogues in Western culture. More recently, her bright image was joyfully embodied by beauties of all colors and shades from Moscow to the most national suburbs. Now the nationalists, maddened by idleness and anarchy, are lifting up the stuffed animals of Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden, taking out their own ill-being on the past of their country and crossing out its future. To understand why this is happening, consider the events of recent history systematically.
Snegurochka and Santa Claus first met at a New Year tree in the House of Unions in 1937. Having finished the reprisals against political deviators, JV Stalin stated: life has become better, life has become more fun. For greater clarity of how "Oh, it's good to live in the Soviet Country", it was decided to revive the previously forbidden bourgeois holiday with a Christmas tree and Santa Claus. So that the children were not afraid of the terrible grandfather, the beautiful Snegurochka was paired with him. She communicated with the kids on behalf of Santa Claus, it was not so scary and very beautiful. Children with more or less joy completed the tasks of the red-nosed, and he gave themts.
Santa Claus Red Nose and the beautiful Snegurochka have become New Year's symbols of the country for many years. Since not a single symbol of the bygone era of political leadership of the country was incorporated into the collective psychic by chance, this New Year's pair also had a deep meaning.
Collecting the political will of the party into a single fist, Stalin did not for a moment forget about the culture, which was still diverse and contradictory due to the "metastases" of formalism and the avant-garde of the 1920s. Political authorities communicated with the masses through cultural figures. The main task of the new Soviet culture was to keep collective hostility within a framework that would not allow "bourgeois-nationalist confusion and vacillation." This alone guaranteed the integrity of the unique country and its ability to withstand the "pernicious influence" of the rest of the world, affected by "zoological individualism."
Using Russian culture as a tool to unite a multinational country, the political power ensured 90% literacy by 1937 (against 29 books per 100 people in tsarist Russia), introduced compulsory study of the Russian language in all republics, 40 languages of the peoples of the USSR acquired writing. The events dedicated to the centenary of the death of Alexander Pushkin were of great political and cultural significance. In the summer of 1937, the International Pushkin Festival was held in Moscow and Leningrad. On the eve of the war, Soviet culture received in its arsenal everything it needed to preserve the best properties of the Russian mentality.
For the most effective work for the general whole, the intelligentsia (the conductors of culture to the masses) had to be strictly ranked: to reject the "clever", whose tricky thought forms were incomprehensible yesterday to illiterate "cogs", and therefore harmful, and to encourage those whose works contribute to the integration into the collective mental the necessary sound-visual clusters. For this, the doctrine of "socialist realism, requiring the artist to provide a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development" was developed.
Finally, the doctrine of socialist realism was formed precisely in 1937, when the cruel ranking of the creative intelligentsia in accordance with the new dogma reached its climax. B. Pasternak, M. Bulgakov, M. Sholokhov, and many other writers were in a painful dialogue with the authorities. The music was also evaluated in the spirit of socialist realism.
When Dmitry Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" was declared depraved, the stunned composer forced out a ballet on a collective farm theme. He was rejected again. Only Symphony No. 5 in D minor, which premiered in November 1937, finally sounded in tune with the vibrations of the collective psychic that was preparing for a great confrontation. The symphony was praised as “a business-like creative response of a Soviet artist to fair criticism,” and the composer Shostakovich received a high rank among the fighters for the country's unity. Subsequently, he repeatedly amazed listeners with works of extraordinary power, among them the famous Seventh Symphony, whose ominous marching theme will forever be in the memory of everyone who heard it. The genius D. D. Shostakovich won the Stalin Prize five times,and his works helped the people to forge victory in the Great Patriotic War. There are many such examples.
While contemporary art critics and historians are painfully trying to assess the cultural layer of the Stalin era, lost in conjecture whether to attribute undoubtedly genius works to socialist realism, and Stalinist creators to the world art culture, Yuri Burlan's training "System-Vector Psychology" tireless and miraculous work of the iron will of Joseph Stalin. " The secret becomes apparent.
Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden also reveal their meanings - symbols of a punishing and encouraging political power with its constant assistant - elite mass culture.
What does elite mass culture mean? This means that the best samples of sound-visual creativity were chosen for broadcasting to the masses. What do you mean the best? After all, there are a lot of opinions like "like it or not like it", who was this universal judge, who selected? The olfactory political power was selected according to the only possible principle for it: the necessary sound idea is embodied in a work of art or not. If the idea worked to preserve the integrity of the state, then it was possible to replicate the work to the masses. If not, then no.
The same is with visual images: are they available to the mass of the population in order to want to live with these images in a single whole community "Soviet people" or not? The creators of the socialist era realism were in a difficult dialogue with the authorities, "System-Vector Psychology" calls this a tension between sound and smell, in which, in fact, human existence takes place. Not everyone succeeded in proving that you, a sound engineer, by definition living by your uniqueness, can “lose your temper” and benefit the flock. That is, speaking systematically, you can include the desires of the pack in your desires, feel them as your own. Otherwise, i.e. against one's will, the act of any bestowal, including creativity, is impossible. But those who survived were the real elite - sound and visual. Elite in the sense of the ability to go beyond your selfishness,sound egocentrism and visual snobbery for the common good.
This elite, under the conditions of the most severe selection, often from under the whip, created mass culture, therefore we are talking about an elite mass culture, whose task was only one - to create a people of like-minded people. This became a decisive factor in the victory over fascism. Moral superiority. Because there was no technical one.
Embodying the doctrine of socialist realism, the Stalinist Snow Maiden is even, sweet, but, for all her external attractiveness, she is completely asexual. On early postcards, she was portrayed as a little girl, then, along with the young Soviet culture, she grew, became stronger and prettier, remaining still the same immaculate. Soviet culture-Snow Maiden vigilantly watched the preservation of the integrity of the family, the political party vertical strictly punished the deserters of the family front, working them out at party meetings.
The mouth-watering knees of Grandfather Frost's granddaughter were exposed only in the thaw sixties, when it became possible and then fashionable to pay tribute to “zoological individualism”. The traditional New Year performances of The Snow Maiden on the stage were supplemented by the TV Irony of Fate, where Barbara Brylska, who had no analogues on the Soviet stage, was invited to play the main role. The image of the Snow Maiden has received a new trait - sexuality.
Despite the global geopolitical turmoil, our Snow Maiden is still with us. In vain attempts to imitate the best examples of Soviet elite mass culture, more or less incompetent sequels and new songs about the main thing are created. No pity. If only the original was visible, if only the main thing was understood again and again: everything that works for separation is historically doomed, to move contrary to the law of development of society, to contradict the law of nature is pointless.
In the new year, I would like to wish our culture-Snegurochka creative success in reflecting the collective values so necessary to all of us, you look, and take out the sleigh with Santa Claus who has played around …
