Soviet painting of the big style in the unofficial Russian poetry

Abstract

In independent Russian poetry, the description of the works of the “big style” of socialist realism was not reduced to mimicking in the mood of “sots”-art (socialist art). On the contrary, those works were taken seriously as a fact of social consciousness. But because of their being relevant to propaganda and not to the public (which by that time had opted for the private life values) an aesthetical conclusion was drawn that the descriptive poetry facilitates the paradigm change from “natural” one in favour of the social reflection. The article proves that the basis for such a change was a negative (apophatic) correlation between understanding the mission of the poet or artist and the actual functioning of things in Soviet everyday life. The failure of Soviet utopia was then understood as evidence of the impossibility of a positive correlation between the poet’s enthusiasm and the labor enthusiasm of his public. Attention to the details of works of a great style supplements the attention to the decorative and applied art, which were building the ideal of a meditating poet. Here, the poet finds himself sharing a common destiny, including the ability for tragic thoughts, with poets of the Soviet era. In the course of the study, it turned out possible to find a number of sources for the imagery of that poetry in actual paintings and works of the decorative and applied art, as well as in the statements of the Soviet artists and theorists themselves, due to which certain images were clarified.