Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2019, no. 15

SOCIALIST REALISM AND ETHNOGRAPHY: THE STUDY AND REPRESENTATION OF SOVIET CONTEMPORANEITY IN ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS IN THE 1930S

Stanislav Petriashin
The Russian Museum of Ethnography
4/1 Inzhenernaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
s-petryashin()yandex.ru

Abstract: The paper addresses the influence of socialist realism on the research and representation of Soviet contemporaneity in ethnographic museums in the 1930s on the basis of a case study of The State Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad. A comparison of museum ethnography at the time of ‘cultural revolution’ and mature Stalinism reveals an array of features pointing to the impact of socialist realism. The Soviet historical narrative was embedded into museum displays, in some cases transformed into fictionalised biography. ‘Leading’ and ‘distinguished’ districts, collective farms, plants and people replaced ‘average’ ones in their roles of typical objects of fieldwork study and exhibition representation. Avant-garde design was replaced by socialist realist designs; life groups with picturesque backdrops became the constructive and conceptual dominants of exhibitions. Socialist construction was displayed not only by flat paper materials (photographs, diagrams, slogans, etc.) and collections of industrial objects, etc., but also by paintings, graphics, sculptures, and folk decorative arts. The making of politically appropriate displays presupposed a powerful interweaving of science and ideologically inspired art throughout all phases of preparation: from fieldwork to the mounting of the exhibition in the museum. As a result, in the second half of 1930s ethnographers were no longer able to study contemporaneity as such; rather, they were expected to investigate ‘the green shoots of the future in the present’.

Keywords: socialist realism, cultural revolution, ethnographic museum, history of ethnography, ethnography of contemporaneity.

To cite: Petriashin S., ‘Socialist Realism and Ethnography: The Study and Representation of Soviet Contemporaneity in Ethnographic Museums in the 1930s’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2019, no. 15, pp. 155–182.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8927-2019-15-15-155-182

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/eng015/petriashin.pdf