Before and after the defeat: how Khrushchev insulted artists at an exhibition in the Manege. Khrushchev at an exhibition of avant-gardists Avant-gardists and hippies in "Beekeeping"

ZIGZAGS OF KHRUSHCHEV'S CULTURAL POLICY

The party leadership took a number of steps aimed at canceling individual decisions taken in the second half of the 40s. and related to national culture. So, on May 28, 1958, the Central Committee of the CPSU approved a resolution "On Correcting Mistakes in Evaluating the Operas The Great Friendship", "Bogdan Khmelnitsky" and "From the Heart"". The document noted that the talented composers D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofiev, A. Khachaturian, V. Shebalin, G. Popov, N. Myaskovsky and others were indiscriminately called representatives of the "anti-people formalist trend." The assessment of the editorial articles of the Pravda newspaper, aimed at the time to criticize these composers, was recognized as incorrect.

Simultaneously with the correction of the mistakes of past years, a real campaign of persecution of the famous writer B. L. Pasternak unfolded at that time. In 1955 he finished the long novel Doctor Zhivago. A year later, the novel was submitted for publication in the journals "New World", "Znamya", in the almanac "Literary Moscow", and also in Goslitizdat. However, the publication of the work was postponed under pious pretexts. In 1956, Pasternak's novel ended up in Italy and was soon published there. This was followed by its publication in the Netherlands and a number of other countries. In 1958, the author of the novel "Doctor Zhi-vago" was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The situation in which Pasternak found himself was, in his words, "tragically difficult." He was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize. On October 31, 1958, Pasternak sent a letter addressed to Khrushchev, in which he spoke of his connection with Russia, emphasizing the impossibility for himself to stay outside the country. On November 2, the writer's note was published in Pravda. The TASS statement was also placed there. It stated that “in the event that B. L. Pasternak wishes to completely leave the Soviet Union, the social system and people of which he slandered in his anti-Soviet essay Doctor Zhivago, then official bodies will not put any obstacles in this. He will be given the opportunity to travel outside the Soviet Union and personally experience all the "charms of the capitalist paradise." By this time, the novel had already been published abroad in 18 languages. Pasternak preferred to stay in the country and not leave it even for a short time. A year and a half later, in May 1960, he died of lung cancer. The "Pasternak case" thus showed the limits of de-Stalinization. The intelligentsia was required to adapt to the existing order and serve them. Those who could not "rebuild" were eventually forced to leave the country. This fate did not bypass the future Nobel laureate poet I. Brodsky, who began writing poetry in 1958, but soon fell out of favor for his independent views on art and emigrated.

Despite the rigid framework in which the authors were allowed to create, in the early 60s. several brilliant works were published in the country, which already then caused a mixed assessment. Among them - the story of A. I. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". The work was conceived by the author in the winter of 1950/1951 while at work in the Ekibastuz Special Camp. The decision to publish a story about the life of prisoners was made at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU in October 1962 under personal pressure from Khrushchev. At the end of the same year, it was published in Novy Mir, and then in the Soviet Writer publishing house and in Roman-gazeta. Ten years later, all these publications will be destroyed in libraries under secret instructions.

At the end of the 50s. in the Soviet Union, the beginnings of a phenomenon appeared, which a few years later would turn into dissidence. In 1960, the poet A. Ginzburg founded the first "samizdat" magazine called "Syntax", in which he began to publish previously banned works by B. Okudzhava, V. Shalamov, B. Akhmadullina, V. Nekrasov. For agitation aimed at undermining the Soviet system, Ginzburg was sentenced to prison.

Thus, Khrushchev's "cultural revolution" had several facets: from the publication of the works of former prisoners and the appointment in 1960 of the seemingly very liberal E. A. Furtseva as Minister of Culture to the pogrom speeches of the very first secretary of the Central Committee. Indicative in this regard was the meeting of the leaders of the party and government with figures of literature and art, which took place on March 8, 1963. During the discussion of issues of artistic skill, Khrushchev allowed himself rude and unprofessional statements, many of which were simply offensive to creative workers. Thus, characterizing the self-portrait of the work of the artist B. Zhutovsky, the leader of the party and the head of government directly stated that his work is "abomination", "horror", "dirty daub", which is "disgusting to look at". The works of the sculptor E. Neizvestny were called by Khrushchev "nauseous cooking". The authors of the film "Ilyich's Outpost" (M. Khutsiev, G. Shpalikov) were accused of portraying "not fighters and not reformers of the world", but "loafers", "half-decomposed types", "parasites", "geeks" and " scum." With his ill-conceived statements, Khrushchev only alienated a significant part of society from himself and deprived himself of the credit of confidence that he received at the 20th Party Congress.

I.S. Ratkovsky, M.V. Khodyakov. History of Soviet Russia

“NEW REALITY”

On December 1, 1962, an exhibition dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR (MOSH) was to open in the Moscow Manege. Part of the exhibition's works was presented by the "New Reality" exposition, a movement of artists organized in the late 1940s by the painter Eliy Belyutin, who continues the traditions of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Belyutin studied under Aristarkh Lentulov, Pavel Kuznetsov and Lev Bruni.

The art of "New Reality" was based on the "theory of contact" - the desire of a person through art to restore a sense of inner balance, disturbed by the influence of the surrounding world with the help of the ability to generalize natural forms, keeping them in abstraction. In the early 1960s, the studio united about 600 Belyutins.

In November 1962, the first exhibition of the studio was organized on Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya Street. The exhibition was attended by 63 artists of the "New Reality" together with Ernst Neizvestny. The head of the Union of Polish Artists, Professor Raymond Zemsky, and a group of critics managed to specially come to its opening from Warsaw. The Ministry of Culture gave permission for the presence of foreign correspondents, and the next day for a press conference. The TV report about the opening day was held at Eurovision. At the end of the press conference, the artists, without explanation, were asked to take their work home.

On November 30, Dmitry Polikarpov, head of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee, addressed Professor Eliy Belyutin and, on behalf of the newly created Ideological Commission, asked to restore the Taganskaya exhibition in its entirety in a specially prepared room on the second floor of the Manege.

The exposition made during the night was approved by Furtseva along with the kindest parting words, the works were taken from the authors' apartments by the Manezh employees and delivered by transport of the Ministry of Culture.

On the morning of December 1, Khrushchev appeared on the threshold of the Manege. At first, Khrushchev began to consider the exposition rather calmly. Over the long years of being in power, he got used to attending exhibitions, got used to how works were arranged according to a once worked out scheme. This time the exposure was different. It was about the history of Moscow painting, and among the old paintings were the very ones that Khrushchev himself banned back in the 1930s. He might not have paid any attention to them if the secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists Vladimir Serov, known for his series of paintings about Lenin, did not start talking about the paintings of Robert Falk, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Drevin, calling them daubs, for which museums pay a lot of money workers. At the same time, Serov operated with astronomical prices at the old rate (a currency reform was recently passed).

Khrushchev began to lose control of himself. Mikhail Suslov, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU on ideological issues, who was present at the exhibition, immediately began to develop the theme of daub, "freaks that artists purposely draw", what the Soviet people need and do not need.

Khrushchev walked around the large hall three times, where the works of 60 artists of the New Reality group were presented. He then rapidly moved from one picture to another, then returned back. He lingered on the portrait of the girl Alexei Rossal: "What is this? Why is there no one eye? This is some kind of morphine drinker!"

Then Khrushchev quickly went to the large composition of Lucian Gribkov "1917". "What is this disgrace, what kind of freaks? Where is the author?" "How could you imagine a revolution like that? What kind of thing is this? Don't you know how to draw? My grandson draws even better." He swore at almost all the paintings, poking his finger and uttering the already familiar, endlessly repeated set of curses.

The next day, December 2, 1962, immediately after the release of the Pravda newspaper with a damning government communiqué, crowds of Muscovites rushed to the Manege to see the reason for the "highest fury", but did not find a trace of the exposition located on the second floor. The paintings by Falk, Drevin, Tatlin and others, cursed by Khrushchev, were removed from the exposition on the first floor.

Khrushchev himself was not pleased with his actions. The handshake of reconciliation took place in the Kremlin on December 31, 1963, where Eliy Belyutin was invited to celebrate the New Year. A short conversation took place between the artist and Khrushchev, who wished him and "his comrades" successful work for the future and "more understandable" painting.

In 1964, "New Reality" began to work in Abramtsevo, through which about 600 artists passed, including from the original artistic centers of Russia: Palekh, Kholuy, Gus-Khrustalny, Dulev, Dmitrov, Sergiev Posad, Yegorievsk.

The "ban on Belyutin" lasted almost 30 years - until December 1990, when, after the appropriate apologies from the government, a grandiose exhibition of "Belyutins" was opened in the party press, which occupied the entire Manege (400 participants, more than 1 thousand works). Until the end of 1990, Belyutin remained "restricted to travel abroad", although his solo exhibitions went on all the years abroad, replacing one another.

“WE” AND “THEY”

Khrushchev's visit with his entourage to the exhibition at the Manezh became a counterpoint to the "fugue" played by Soviet life. The four voices were skillfully combined in the climax by the Academy of Arts of the USSR. Here are the four voices. The first is the general atmosphere of Soviet life, the “thaw” process of political de-Stalinization, which began after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, intensifying the struggle for power and influence between the heirs and the young generation in all strata of Soviet society.

The second is the official artistic life, fully controlled by the USSR Ministry of Culture and the Academy of Arts, a stronghold of socialist realism and the main consumer of budget money allocated for fine arts. The third voice is the new trends among the young members of the Union of Artists and their growing influence in the struggle for power in the infrastructure of the Academy. The younger generation, under the influence of a changed moral climate, began to look for ways to depict the “truth of life” (later this trend was called “severe style”). Being inside the official structure of Soviet art and being built into its hierarchy, young artists already held positions in various commissions and exhibition committees, getting used to the state support system. It was in them, as in their successors, that the academicians saw a threat to their weakening power.

And, finally, the fourth voice of the "fugue" - independent and unbiased young artists who earned their living as best they could and made art that they could neither officially show nor officially sell. They could not even buy paints and materials for work, as they were sold only with membership cards of the Union of Artists. In essence, these artists were tacitly declared “outlaws” and were the most persecuted and disenfranchised part of the artistic environment. The apologists for the "severe style" were supercritical towards them (that is, towards us). Characteristically, the angry and indignant indignation of the “severe style” Pavel Nikonov, expressed by him in his speech at the Ideological Conference in the Central Committee of the CPSU at the end of December 1962 (after the exhibition in the Manege) in relation to “these dudes”: “I was not so much surprised by the fact that, for example, the works of Vasnetsov and Andronov were exhibited in the same room together with the “Belyutins”. I was surprised that my work is there as well. This is not why we went to Siberia. It was not for this that I went with the geologists in the detachment, it was not for this that I was hired there as a worker ... "

The trend, despite the illiteracy of style and complete mess in the head, is obvious: we (“severe style”) are good real Soviet artists, and they ... are bad, fake and anti-Soviet. And please, dear Ideological Commission, do not confuse us with them. It is necessary to beat "them", not "us".

Whom to beat and why? For example, I was 24 years old in 1962, I had just graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. I didn't have a workshop, I rented a room in a communal apartment. There was no money for materials either, and at night I stole packing boxes from a furniture store in the yard to make stretchers out of them. During the day he worked for himself, and at night he made book covers to earn some money.

Moscow, 2 Dec— RIA Novosti, Anna Kocharova. Fifty-five years ago, on December 5, 1962, an exhibition was held at the Manezh, which was visited by the head of state Nikita Khrushchev. The result was not only sounded insults, but also the fact that this whole story divided the artistic life in the USSR into "before" and "after".

"Before", one way or another, there was contemporary art. It wasn't official, but it wasn't banned either. But already "after" objectionable artists began to be persecuted. Some went to work in the field of design and book graphics - they just needed to earn at least somehow. Others became "parasites," as the official system then defined them: without being members of creative unions, these people could not engage in free creativity. The sword of Damocles hung over each - a very real judicial term.

The exhibition in the Manezh, or rather, that part of it where avant-garde artists were exhibited, was mounted in a hurry - right at night, on the eve of the opening on December 1. The offer to participate in the official exhibition, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists, was unexpectedly received by the artist Eliy Belyutin.

Shortly before the Manege, he exhibited the work of his students in the hall on Taganka. Under his leadership, a semi-official studio worked, which is now commonly called "Belyutinsky", and its members - "Belyutins". His students later wrote that Belyutin's studies and classes were "a window into the world of contemporary art."

The exhibition was held following the results of the summer plein-airs, Ernst Neizvestny also participated in it, who was not formally a member of this circle, but later became the main person involved in the scandal at the Manege. The unknown, as well as Vladimir Yankilevsky, Hulot Sooster and Yuri Sobolev, were invited by Belyutin to give the exhibition more weight.

This story with Khrushchev over time acquired legends, many participants had their own versions of what happened. This is understandable: everything happened so rapidly that there was simply no time to comprehend and remember the details.

It is believed that the exhibition at Taganka was visited by foreign journalists who were surprised to discover that the avant-garde exists and develops in the USSR. Allegedly, photographs and articles in the Western press immediately appeared, and even a short film was made. This seems to have reached Khrushchev - and now at the highest level it was decided to invite avant-garde artists to the Manege.

There is another version of this hasty invitation. Allegedly, the avant-garde artists in the Manege were needed by academicians in order to show the head of state and, as they say, stigmatize objectionable art. That is, the invitation to the Manege was a provocation that the artists simply did not recognize.

One way or another, Belyutin was called by the secretary of the Central Committee, Leonid Ilyichev. Being himself a passionate collector of art, and not always official, he persuaded him to show the work of his studio members. Belyutin seemed to refuse. But then, almost at night, employees of the Central Committee arrived at the studio, packed the works and took them to the exhibition hall. At night they did hanging - avant-gardists were assigned three small halls on the second floor of the Manege. They did everything quickly, some of the work did not have time to hang. And, which is significant, there is still no complete and accurate list of works that were exhibited at that time.

Artists waited impatiently for Khrushchev. Leonid Rabichev, a participant in the infamous exhibition, recalled that someone even suggested putting an armchair in the middle of one of the halls: they suggested that Nikita Sergeevich would be put in the center, and the artists would tell him about their work.

First, Khrushchev and his retinue were taken to the halls where paintings by recognized classics hung, including Grekov and Deineka. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the “scrapping” occurred at the works of Falk, which the Secretary General was incomprehensible, and therefore did not like. Then the situation began to grow like a snowball.

Ernst Neizvestny later said that while waiting for the General Secretary on the third floor, he and his colleagues had already heard "the cries of the head of state." Vladimir Yankilevsky later wrote that when Khrushchev began to climb the stairs, all the artists began "politely applauding, to which Khrushchev rudely interrupted us:" Stop clapping, go, show your daub!

Ernst Neizvestny fell under the hot hand. “Khrushchev attacked me with all his might,” the sculptor later recalled. “He was shouting like a cut man that I was eating away people's money.” The Secretary General did not like the work of the artist Boris Zhutovsky either, the painting by Leonid Rabichev caused irritation.

"Arrest them! Destroy them! Shoot them!" Rabichev quoted Khrushchev's words. “Things that cannot be described in words happened,” the artist summed up.

All those present, according to eyewitnesses, were in a state of shock. Even after leaving the Manezh, no one left - everyone stood and waited for immediate arrests. The following days also lived in a state of fear, but there were no arrests, formally no repressive measures were used. This, as many believe, was the main achievement and conquest of Khrushchev's rule.

A few years later, the artist Zhutovsky visited Khrushchev at his dacha - the former general secretary had already been removed from power and led a calm and measured lifestyle. Zhutovsky said that Khrushchev even seemed to apologize and said that "he was screwed up." And Ernst Neizvestny later made the famous black-and-white gravestone monument to Khrushchev. The sculptor himself called this fact the most incredible result of this scandal.

"Arrest them! Destroy them! Shoot them!" Rabichev quoted Khrushchev's words. “Things that cannot be described in words happened,” the artist summed up.

One of the leaders of Soviet unofficial art, the artist Eliy Belyutin, whose works were criticized by Nikita Khrushchev at the 1962 exhibition at the Manezh, died at the age of 87 in Moscow.

The art of the "New Reality" was based on the "contact theory" - the desire of a person through art to restore a sense of inner balance, disturbed by the influence of the surrounding world with the help of the ability to generalize natural forms, keeping them in abstraction. In the early 1960s, the studio united about 600 Belyutins.

On the morning of December 1, Khrushchev appeared on the threshold of the Manezh. At first, Khrushchev began to consider the exposition rather calmly. Over the long years of being in power, he got used to attending exhibitions, got used to how works were arranged according to a once worked out scheme. This time the exposure was different. It was about the history of Moscow painting, and among the old paintings were the very ones that Khrushchev himself banned back in the 1930s. He might not have paid any attention to them if the secretary of the Union of Soviet Artists Vladimir Serov, known for his series of paintings about Lenin, did not start talking about the paintings of Robert Falk, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Drevin, calling them daubs, for which museums pay a lot of money workers. At the same time, Serov operated with astronomical prices at the old rate (a currency reform was recently passed).

Then Khrushchev quickly went to the large composition of Lucian Gribkov "1917". "What is this disgrace, what kind of freaks? Where is the author?" "How could you imagine a revolution like that? What kind of thing is this? Don't you know how to draw? My grandson draws even better." He swore at almost all the pictures, poking his finger and uttering the already familiar, endlessly repeated set of curses.

On December 1, 1962, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR, an exhibition was held, which was visited by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev himself. The exhibition featured works by avant-garde artists. The first chairman of the Central Committee of the CPSU went around the hall three times, and then subjected the paintings to harsh criticism. After this exhibition, the Soviet Union forgot for a long time what abstract art is.

The exhibition was organized at the Moscow Manege. The artists of the New Reality studio also exhibited their works there. Avant-gardism was then an art recognized all over the world, but Khrushchev, brought up on socialist realism, not only did not understand the paintings, but burst into abusive speech: “What are these faces? What, you can't draw? My grandson can draw even better! … What it is? What are you - men or f ... damned, how can you write like that? Do you have a conscience?"

Nikita Khrushchev did not hesitate in expressions, stopping at each picture: “What is the Kremlin?! Put on your glasses, look! What do you! Pinch yourself! And he really believes that this is the Kremlin. Why are you saying what kind of Kremlin it is! Is a mockery. Where are the battlements on the walls - why are they not visible?

But most of all went to the organizer of the avant-garde exhibition, the artist and art theorist Eliy Mikhailovich Belyutin: “Very general and incomprehensible. Here's what, Belyutin, I'm telling you as Chairman of the Council of Ministers: the Soviet people do not need all this. You see, I'm telling you! … Deny! All to ban! Stop this mess! I order! I say! And follow everything! And on radio, and on television, and in the press, uproot all fans of this!

After such a resonant visit by Khrushchev to the exhibition, an article appeared in the Pravda newspaper that practically put an end to avant-garde art. The artists began to be persecuted, it got to the point that the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained them for interrogations with prejudice.

The position of avant-garde artists in the USSR improved only after 12 years. And even then, it was not without a struggle. On September 15, 1974, the artists, despite the official prohibition of the authorities, organized an exhibition of their works in a wasteland. Among the spectators were their friends, relatives and representatives of the domestic and foreign press.

As soon as the paintings were installed, workers immediately appeared with seedlings, which had to be planted on Sunday. The exhibition lasted no more than half an hour, when bulldozers, watering machines and police officers arrived at the wasteland. Jets of water were directed at people, paintings were broken, artists were beaten and taken to the polling stations.

The events, which were dubbed the "Bulldozer Exhibition", caused a public outcry. Foreign journalists wrote that people in the Soviet Union were imprisoned simply for wanting to express their ideas on canvas. And for harmless avant-garde paintings with artists, they do whatever they want.

After these articles, the Soviet government was forced to make concessions, and two weeks later the avant-garde artists organized an official exhibition of their paintings in Izmailovo.

The name of the French avant-garde artist Pierre Brasseau, who exhibited his work in 1964, was associated with a curiosity. His paintings were a great success, but, as it turned out later,