The Art of Silence and Noncompliance in Soviet Russia in the 1960s-1970s

Instituted by the government and the Union of Artists, Socialist Realist art reigned as the monolithic canon of the Soviet state during the Zhdanov period (1946-1954). The state’s repertoire of clichéd norms and motifs justified the censorship (and self-censorship) of art by imparting systematic restrictions on form and content and controlling the education of artists. All exhibition and publication proposals were subjected to scrutiny in order to ensure stylistic uniformity. During The Thaw of Khrushchev, the monopoly of the canon subsided as exhibitions and publications began to illuminate new developments in European and American art, while private collections and representatives of Russian Modernism revived the memory of the historic Avant-Garde of the 1920s-1930s. An array of nonconformist practices coalesced on the periphery of Soviet culture, threatening the status quo of the regime and its inert bureaucracy. This paper outlines various stances of artistic noncompliance in the 1960s-1970s—from works created in secret and shown in private circles, apt (apartment) art, and art disguised as scientific illustration, to the open confrontation of denounced art exhibitions, quashed attempts to reach a broader public, and exile. A close examination of artists’ autobiographies, retrospection, and self-archival practices reveals that, despite its romanticized aura, the second Avant-Garde was not a monolithic heroic entity. Driven by fear, cunning, and daring gestures, the eclectic synergies of noncompliance fueled a relentless push and pull between a stagnant state bureaucracy and a tenacious desire for artistic freedom.