Painted in 1937 as part of the centenary celebration of the death of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Ulyanov's A. S. Pushkin and his Wife, N. N. Pushkina at the Imperial Ball has been lauded as the quintessential example of Soviet history painting. Modern scholars have followed the lead of Soviet critics, who praised the painting for its insight into the psychology of the brilliant poet repressed by the tyrannical tsarist regime. According to this interpretation, Soviet viewers in the 1930s were to ponder on the tragedy of Pushkin's demise and rejoice that the victory of Socialism had freed them from such repression. However, this thesis suggests that Ulyanov embedded a secondary, subversive message in his masterpiece. Through careful manipulation of Pushkin's complex semiotic significance, Socialist Realist dialectics, and the Aesopian method, Ulyanov crafted an image that could be celebrated for its adherence to Soviet ideology, while simultaneously suggesting to those who detected his clues that artistic repression had not ended with the revolution. In this subversive reading, Ulyanov's masterwork becomes a psychological self-portrait of an artist living under Stalinist oppression during the Great Terror.

This dissertation is a study of the experimental artistic practice of the group called Dvizhenie (The Movement) that was active in Moscow between 1964 and 1976 and associated with the Kinetic movement. The period of the group’s activity coincided with a political transition in the USSR from later stages of The Khrushchev’s Thaw characterised by cultural liberation and political reforms into The Stagnation era already defined by Leonid Brezhnev’s rule and subsequently a more conservative and stricter governmental attitude towards artistic production. In this period of a little more than a decade, The Movement group was a single experimental union in the USSR that enjoyed public success and achieved a rapid transformation of their activities from small-scale exhibitions into public state commissions. In the course of this transition, the members of the group formed an entirely new artistic language that was neither similar to Socialist Realism nor to the tendencies of Abstract painting, which gained importance in the circles of experimental Soviet artists at the time. Instead, they turned to the aesthetics of Kinetic art, science- fiction and design and found inspiration in a dialogue with Russian Avant-garde tradition. The narrative of the dissertation follows the specificity of the experimental group’s development in the defined stages and analyses how the group met with the challenges of censorship and opportunities of ideological collaborations. On a broader scale, the dissertation offers an investigation into the functions of experimental thinking in the USSR in the 1960s and evaluates the role of futuristic planning and artists’ dialogue with the restored tradition of the 1920s Avant-garde projects.:Table of Contents List of illustrations...............................................................................................5 Acknowledgements...........................................................................................13 Introduction.....................................................................................................15 State of Research.............................................................................................21 Methodology....................................................................................................29 Chapter I. 1960s Alternative Culture: in the USSR and Abroad...................................53 1.1. Defence of individualism: The Thaw (1954–1968)...........................................53 1.2. Open work against individualism: 1960s movement of Kinetic art......................65 1.3. In transition to Kinetic art: the formation of The Movement group.......................71 Chapter II. Theory and Practice Of The Movement...................................................81 2.1.Theoretical principles of the group: synthesis, symmetry, and movement.............81 2.2.“Towards Synthesis In Arts”, 1964, Moscow...................................................90 2.3.Architects or artists, 1965, Leningrad..........................................................102 2.4. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, 1966, Moscow.....................................107 Chapter III. The Movement’s Performances and Theatre Productions........................115 3.1.Artistic strategies of performance in The Movement’s practice..........................115 3.2.Humans and machines............................................................................123 3.3. Manifestation of the synthesis principle in performances................................135 3.4.The symbolism of history in The Movement’s productions...............................139 3.5.Escapism of the nature performances.........................................................143 3.6.The strategy of an artefact in Infante’s work.................................................150 Chapter IV. Sciences, State, and Culture..............................................................154 4.1.Kinetic art in urban and exhibition designs...................................................154 4.2. Agitational art at the 1967 October Festival.................................................159 4.3. Value of creativity and designs for “Orlenok”, 1968.......................................170 4.4.Exhibition designs..................................................................................172 4.5.Art and the Stagnation period in the USSR..................................................182 Chapter V. Futurism In The Movement’s Projects..................................................187 5.1. Artificial environments of the next century....................................................187 5.2. The future is cybernetic...........................................................................192 5.3. The power of play..................................................................................195 5.4. Rationalising the unknown: transhumanism and space travel in The Movement’s futurism.........................................................................................................199 3 5.5. Why we need another utopia?..................................................................207 Chapter VI. The Movement: Separate and Abroad.................................................217 6.1. The Movement as a part of the global network.............................................217 6.2. The Movement as a part of dissident art and contemporary interpretations........222 6.3. Separate ways: Infante, Nussberg, Koleichuk..............................................231 Epilogue........................................................................................................243 Bibliography...................................................................................................252 Illustrations....................................................................................................265

This dissertation is a study of the experimental artistic practice of the group called Dvizhenie (The Movement) that was active in Moscow between 1964 and 1976 and associated with the Kinetic movement. The period of the group’s activity coincided with a political transition in the USSR from later stages of The Khrushchev’s Thaw characterised by cultural liberation and political reforms into The Stagnation era already defined by Leonid Brezhnev’s rule and subsequently a more conservative and stricter governmental attitude towards artistic production. In this period of a little more than a decade, The Movement group was a single experimental union in the USSR that enjoyed public success and achieved a rapid transformation of their activities from small-scale exhibitions into public state commissions. In the course of this transition, the members of the group formed an entirely new artistic language that was neither similar to Socialist Realism nor to the tendencies of Abstract painting, which gained importance in the circles of experimental Soviet artists at the time. Instead, they turned to the aesthetics of Kinetic art, science- fiction and design and found inspiration in a dialogue with Russian Avant-garde tradition. The narrative of the dissertation follows the specificity of the experimental group’s development in the defined stages and analyses how the group met with the challenges of censorship and opportunities of ideological collaborations. On a broader scale, the dissertation offers an investigation into the functions of experimental thinking in the USSR in the 1960s and evaluates the role of futuristic planning and artists’ dialogue with the restored tradition of the 1920s Avant-garde projects.:Table of Contents List of illustrations...............................................................................................5 Acknowledgements...........................................................................................13 Introduction.....................................................................................................15 State of Research.............................................................................................21 Methodology....................................................................................................29 Chapter I. 1960s Alternative Culture: in the USSR and Abroad...................................53 1.1. Defence of individualism: The Thaw (1954–1968)...........................................53 1.2. Open work against individualism: 1960s movement of Kinetic art......................65 1.3. In transition to Kinetic art: the formation of The Movement group.......................71 Chapter II. Theory and Practice Of The Movement...................................................81 2.1.Theoretical principles of the group: synthesis, symmetry, and movement.............81 2.2.“Towards Synthesis In Arts”, 1964, Moscow...................................................90 2.3.Architects or artists, 1965, Leningrad..........................................................102 2.4. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, 1966, Moscow.....................................107 Chapter III. The Movement’s Performances and Theatre Productions........................115 3.1.Artistic strategies of performance in The Movement’s practice..........................115 3.2.Humans and machines............................................................................123 3.3. Manifestation of the synthesis principle in performances................................135 3.4.The symbolism of history in The Movement’s productions...............................139 3.5.Escapism of the nature performances.........................................................143 3.6.The strategy of an artefact in Infante’s work.................................................150 Chapter IV. Sciences, State, and Culture..............................................................154 4.1.Kinetic art in urban and exhibition designs...................................................154 4.2. Agitational art at the 1967 October Festival.................................................159 4.3. Value of creativity and designs for “Orlenok”, 1968.......................................170 4.4.Exhibition designs..................................................................................172 4.5.Art and the Stagnation period in the USSR..................................................182 Chapter V. Futurism In The Movement’s Projects..................................................187 5.1. Artificial environments of the next century....................................................187 5.2. The future is cybernetic...........................................................................192 5.3. The power of play..................................................................................195 5.4. Rationalising the unknown: transhumanism and space travel in The Movement’s futurism.........................................................................................................199 3 5.5. Why we need another utopia?..................................................................207 Chapter VI. The Movement: Separate and Abroad.................................................217 6.1. The Movement as a part of the global network.............................................217 6.2. The Movement as a part of dissident art and contemporary interpretations........222 6.3. Separate ways: Infante, Nussberg, Koleichuk..............................................231 Epilogue........................................................................................................243 Bibliography...................................................................................................252 Illustrations....................................................................................................265

This thesis examines the interaction of Georgian painting and national politics in the first two decades of Soviet power in Georgia, 1921-1939, focussing in particular on the period following the consolidation of Stalin's power at the helm of the Communist Party in 1926-7. In the Stalin era, Georgians enjoyed special status among Soviet nations thanks to Georgia's prestige as the place of Stalin's birth. However, Georgians' advanced sense of their national sovereignty and initial hostility towards Bolshevik control following Georgia's Sovietisation in 1921 also resulted in Georgia's uniquely fraught relationship with Soviet power in Moscow in the decades that followed. In light of these circumstances, this thesis explores how and why the experience and activities of Georgian painters between 1926 and 1939 differed from those of other Soviet artists. One of its central arguments is that the experiences of Georgian artists and critics in this period not only differed significantly from those of artists and critics of other republics, but that the uniqueness of their experience was precipitated by a complex network of factors resulting from the interaction of various political imperatives and practical circumstances, including those relating to Soviet national politics. Chapter one of this thesis introduces the key institutions and individuals involved in producing, evaluating and setting the direction of Georgian painting in the 1920s and early 1930s. Chapters two and three show that artists and critics in Georgia as well as commentators in Moscow in the 1920s and 30s were actively engaged in efforts to interpret the Party's demand for 'national form' in Soviet culture and to suggest what that form might entail as regards Georgian painting. However, contradictions inherent in Soviet nationalities policy, which both demanded the active cultivation of cultural difference between Soviet nationalities and eagerly anticipated a time when national distinctions in all spheres would naturally disappear, made it impossible for an appropriate interpretation of 'national form' to be identified. Chapter three, moreover, demonstrates how frequent shifts in Soviet cultural and nationalities policies presented Moscow institutions with a range of practical challenges which ultimately prevented them from reflecting in their exhibitions and publications the contemporary artistic activity taking place in the republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. A key finding of chapters four and five concerns the uniquely significant role that Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's ruthless deputy and the head of the Georgian and Transcaucasian Party organisations, played in differentiating Georgian painters' experiences from those of Soviet artists of other nationalities. Beginning in 1934, Beria employed Georgian painters to produce an exhibition of monumental paintings, opening at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1937, depicting episodes from his own falsified history of Stalin's role in the revolutionary movement in Transcaucasia. As this thesis shows, the production of the exhibition introduced an unprecedented degree of direct Party supervision over Georgian painting as Beria personally critiqued works by Georgian painters produced on prescribed narrative subjects in a centralised collective studio. As well as representing a major contribution to Stalin's personality cult, the exhibition, which conferred on Georgian painters special responsibility for representing Stalin and his activities, was also a public statement of the special status that the Georgians were now to enjoy, second only to that of the Russians. However, this special status involved both special privileges and special responsibilities. Georgians would enjoy special access to opportunities in Moscow and a special degree of autonomy in local governance, but in return they were required to lead the way in declaring allegiance to the Stalin regime. Chapter six returns to the debate about 'national form' in Georgian painting by examining how the pre-Revolutionary self-taught Georgian painter, Niko Pirosmani, was discussed by cultural commentators in Georgia and Moscow in the 1920s and 30s as a source informing a Soviet or Soviet Georgian canon of painting. It shows that, in addition to presenting views on the suitability of Pirosmani's painting either in terms of its formal or class content, commentators perpetuated and developed a cult of Pirosmani steeped in stereotypes of a Georgian 'national character.' Further, the establishment of this cult during the late 1920s and early 1930s seems to have been a primary reason for the painter's subsequent canonisation in the second half of the 1930s as a 'Great Tradition' of Soviet Georgian culture. It helped to articulate a version of Georgian national identity that was at once familiar and gratifying for Georgians and useful for the Soviet regime. The combined impression of cultural sovereignty embodied in this and other 'Great Traditions' of Soviet Georgian culture and the special status articulated through the 1937 exhibition allowed Georgian nationalism to be aligned, for a time, with support for Stalin and the Soviet regime.

盧那察爾斯基(Anatoly Lunacharsky, 1875-1933)於1917-1929年間擔任蘇聯教育人民委員部(Narkompros)首任委員，在任期間發表了大量關於藝術的文章及報告，其在蘇聯藝術發展史中扮演極為重要的角色，然而他以藝術達到社會主義理想的主張與正統馬克思主義的經濟決定論十分不同，他相信群眾意識才是推動革命的必要條件。而他從在俄國十月革命之前就抱持這種想法，因此曾一度主張將宗教與社會主義結合，使革命意識成為一種宗教情感而深植人心，而這種想法受到被極度反對宗教的列寧的嚴厲批評，隨後這種想法才轉向以藝術來實現。 在盧那察爾斯基思想中可見到實證主義(Positivism)、費爾巴哈(Ludwig Feuerbach)宗教哲學、尼采(Friedrich Nietzsche)哲學與華格納(Richard Wagner)的色彩，這使盧那察爾斯基的藝術理論在眾多馬克思主義美學家中顯得獨樹一格，本論文主要透過盧那察爾斯基的著作，並加上中西學者對於盧那察爾斯基的研究，不以馬克思主義為中心來理解盧那察爾斯基的藝術思想，探討盧那察爾斯基對於藝術與革命的認知與實踐。 / Anatoly Lunacharsky(1875-1933) was the first Commissar of The People's Commissariat for Education(Narkompros) from 1917-1929. During his tenure, he published many articles and reports about the arts and played a very important role in the history of artistic development in the Soviet Union. However, his proposal to achieve the ideal of Socialism through the arts was very different from the orthodox economic determinism of Marxism. He believed that mass consciousness was a must to promote the revolution. He already held this idea long before the October Revolution in Russia. Thus, he once advocated combining religion and Socialism, making revolutionary consciousness into a religion deeply rooted in everyone’s mind. Nevertheless, this idea was severely criticized by Lenin, who was very opposed to religion. Afterward, Lunacharsky’s thoughts changed, turning instead to realize ideals through art. The influences of Positivism, Feuerbach’s philosophy of religion, Nietzsche’s philosophy and Wagner’s concept of art can be seen in Lunacharsky’s thought, making his views on art unique among Marxist aestheticians. In this paper, instead of understanding Lunacharsky’s theory of art in the context of Marxism, discussion will focus on Lunacharsky’s works and Chinese/Western scholars’ studies on Lunacharsky in order to learn more about Lunacharsky’s thoughts and practice of art and revolution.

My thesis examines visual and written culture of the interwar Soviet Union dealing with the body as an object of public observation, appreciation, and critique. It explores how the need to construct new Soviet subjectivities was realised through the figure of the body. I explore the representation of ‘physical culture’ (fizkul’tura), with reference to newspapers, specialist fizkul’tura and medical journals, and Party debates. This textual discourse is considered alongside visual primary sources – documentary and non-fiction film and photography, painting and sculpture, and feature films. In my analysis of these visual primary sources I identify three ‘categories of looking’ – surveillance, aesthetics, and spectatorship – that I claim structure representations of the embodied Soviet subject. My introduction incorporates a brief history of early Soviet social psychological conceptualisations of the body, outlining the coercive renovative project of Soviet subjectification and introducing the notion of surveillance. My first and second chapters explore bodily aesthetics. The first focuses on non-fiction media from the mid- to late-1920s that capture the sporting body in action; this chapter introduces the notion of spectatorship and begins to unpack the ideological function of how bodies are observed. The second further explores questions of bodily aesthetics, now in relation to fizkul’tura painting and Abram Room’s 1936 film, Strogii iunosha. My third chapter looks at fizkul’tura feature films from the mid- 1930s to explore how bodies were related to social questions of gender and sexuality, including marriage and pregnancy. My final chapter focuses on cinematic representations of football from the late 1930s and the relationship between bodies on display and onlooking crowds. These two chapters together indicate how the dynamic between the body and its spectator (whether individual or in a group) was reimagined in the late interwar years; the body’s aesthetic appeal is now of little importance compared to its ability to constitute a public subjectivity through the manipulation of emotion, trauma, and pathos.

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