In the U.S.S.R. art may not be long but it is extra tough. Last week the Soviet creative artist got marching orders from Kultura i Zhizn (Culture and Life), a new fortnightly which Moscow's Department of Agitation and Propaganda has founded to guide him onward & upward.
High-minded as the masthead of the New York Post* was Kultura i Zhizn's program: "to develop Bolshevist criticism of defects in different branches of the economy and cultural life and to carry on an unyielding struggle with the remnants of the old ideology and with undiscipline, laziness, lack of culture, bureaucracy and carelessness. . . . Producers and writers who suppose that the Soviet people want only entertainment and amusement . . . are hopelessly wrong. Soviet literature and art must produce works full of passion and deep thought, shot through with ideas of Soviet patriotism." Warned the leading article solemnly: "Workers of Soviet culture have complicated and responsible problems to solve."
The magazine started right in by denouncing historical movies, because their "unmeasured enthusiasm for 'historism' " ignores "the spiritual riches of Soviet man." Chief target was Russia's foremost film director, Sergei Eisenstein, whose Ivan the Terrible, Part I got critical raves when released in Paris last March. Ivan, Part II, said Kultura i Zhizn, would not be released because it was "antihistorical and anti-artistic," actually dared to show Ivan "not as a progressive statesman, but as a maniacal villain raging in a circle of a gang of young madcaps."
Before he can hope to make another film, Eisenstein may have to eat humble pie, like the magazine Sovietskoe Iskusstvo (Soviet Art), recently denounced by Pravda because its critics were too polite to Soviet artists. Last week Iskusstvo crawled for three whole columns: "To our sorrow, very often an objective critical analysis of a work was replaced by out-of-place praise. In articles about some plays, Carmen for instance ... we wrote in delightful tones. But it was a quite ordinary performance."
*"The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct information on all interesting subjects to inculcate just principles in religion, morals and politics, and to cultivate a taste for sound literature."