Discussions on Realism at the End of 1960s in the Shorthand Reports of the Artists’ Union Moscow Branch of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The article studies some transcripts of the dis cussions concerning the concept of “realism”, which were held in the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union in the late 1960s. Soon after the death of Stalin, some alternative in terpretations of the concept “socialist realism” - the only of fi cial method of the Soviet art, accepted by the government in the 1930s, - appeared and provoked public debates. In the middle of 1960s, when the state cultural policy took a conservative turn, such discussions became rare. The al ienation of Europe and America put an end to the series of large-scale exhibitions of the Western art of the 20th cen tury and, consequently, limited information. Even though the methods of Stalin’s art continued to be criticized by of ficial regulations and by most of the artists, it is possible to notice the recurrence of the discourses of the late 1960s and the 1930s. Both of them rejected the Modernist aesthetics, considered art as a part of ideology, and pushed forward the “great national idea”. The article is based on the archives of the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union of the Russian So viet Federative Socialist Republic. It examines a range of is sues most commonly mentioned in the conversations about realism, such as admissibility of formal experiment in real ism, correlation between form and content in a piece of art, new ways to improve the “thematic paintings”, and necessi ty to reinterpret such traditional concepts as “partisanship” and “civic consciousness”.

«реализм без берегов», the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Socialist Realism, “Realism without Shores”, Modernism, thematic painting, partisanship of art

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