The Stalin Cult by Jan Plamper

Author:Jan Plamper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

EVERYDAY STALIN PORTRAIT PRODUCTION

While the Stalin portrait was the most lucrative kind of painting an artist could create, not all artists produced Stalin portraits. And of those who did, not all were paid as well as Gerasimov and Nalbandian. As members of the artists’ union, the mass of artists received salaries comparable to those of an engineer with average qualifications. Average writers are believed to have lived better than average artists.66 On top of their regular salaries, artists earned money through the kontraktatsiia system. The majority of Stalin painters got their commissions from the Art Fund (from VseKoKhudozhnik until the mid-1930s). Most commissions were issued on the basis of a sketch (eskiz—famous artists were exempt from having to submit one) in the context of the many thematic semiannual exhibitions organized by artists’ unions, all of which were modeled on the monumental exhibitions of the 1930s (the 1933 exhibition “Artists of the RSFSR over the Past Fifteen Years” serving as the ur-model).67 It was also possible to offer to the Art Fund a finished Stalin portrait, but this was less common.

And, as we have seen, some of these exhibitions originated in either open or closed competitions. The thematic organization of the exhibition—in such rooms as “Stalin as Military Commander,” “Stalin as Marxist Theoretician,” and “Stalin Among Kolkhoz Farmers”—structured Stalin portrait production in advance. This thematic taxonomy, closely tied to the obrazy, the stock images of Stalin (which we examine below), had solidified by the late 1930s. Once a contract for a commission had been concluded between a painter and the institution organizing the exhibition, the painter received a portion of the honorarium as an advance payment, and once the painting was more than half finished, another advance was paid. Letters asking for the postponement of deadlines for paintings were often met with positive replies, unless the deadline was truly pressing (such as that of an important exhibition). After submitting the completed painting, the artist received the remainder of the honorarium.68 The amount of the honorarium varied greatly. As the Georgian artist V. V. Dugladze recounted, “I worked exclusively on the image of ‘the young Stalin’ and got paid a lot. For example, for the picture The Young Stalin in the Gori Citadel I received forty-five thousand rubles. This was at a time when a bottle of vodka cost twenty rubles!”69

The economics of Stalin portrait production pivoted around planning. There were supply-demand aspects to planning, but these were structured very specifically. On one hand there was of course “true” demand for Stalin portraits, as when a Red Director of a factory desired (or deemed it appropriate) to hang one behind his desk, as was customary for Soviet officials. On the other hand, a theoretical physics institute in Ukraine, a reindeer kolkhoz in northeastern Siberia, and a rubber boot factory in Leningrad all had a small allowance in their budgets for “cultural-everyday expenses” (kulturno-bytovye raskhody, abbreviated kultbytraskhody).70 Toward the end of the financial year, they were especially interested in spending this part of the budget because unspent money would be omitted from the next plan.

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