Icon and Axe

THE UNCERTAIN COLOSSUS

The Twentieth Century

THE CULTURAL EXPLOSION amidst war and revolution during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Music as the dominant art form in an age of passionate liberation and liberated passion. The Prometheanism of the revolutionary “God-builders” and of the attempt by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) to transform the world by synthesizing the arts. The ascent into outer space through the rockets of Constantine Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) and the “suprematist” art of Casimir Malevich (1878-1934). The concurrent descent into sensualism and diabolism. Apocalypticism in art and life: the poetry of Alexander Blok (1880-1921); the prose of Eugene Zamiatin (1884-1937); the politics of Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).

The March and November revolutions of 1917, and the debt of Lenin (1870-1924) to the traditions of the Russian intelligentsia. A quarter century of catechistic totalitarianism under Stalin (1879-1953) from the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan in 1928 to his death in 1953. The complex roots of Stalinism in both the tsarist and the revolutionary traditions, in the Leninist conception of an authoritarian party, but, above all, in the need to provide an appealing mass culture for a primitive peasant people. The revenge of Muscovy on St. Petersburg, the site of the Revolution and the symbol of cosmopolitanism during the psychotic purges of the Stalin era. The Stakhanovites as “flagellants” and party apparatchiki as “Old Believers” of Muscovite Bolshevism. The metamorphosis of luminous icons, ringing bells, and consoling incense into lithographs of Lenin, humming machines, and cheap perfume.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) and Dr. Zhivago (1958) as both a last echo of the mystical, poetic culture of late Imperial Russia and a prophetic interpretation of the Russian revolution and the Russian future. Old and new themes in the cultural ferment of the Khrushchev era (1953-64). The restless new generation “of the sixties.” The recurring ironies and future possibilities of Russian culture.