18
PARTISAN REVIEW
are of little avail; there are other ways that would be more fruitful in
results. For some time past, hundreds of cases have been brought to light
and passed upon in connection with the
tchistkas
(Party house-cleanings),
affording us a glimpse of Soviet man in action, one who is by no means
a codified being as yet. In place of seeking to formulate a theory of the
new man, it would be infinitely more to the purpose to bring together
and survey this vast and often deeply affecting body of documentation,
by way of seeing what conclusions are to be drawn from it.
Stress has frequently been laid upon the lack of confidence in man
which Russian society in process of construction, and often gravely men–
aced, has been obliged to show. But let us not confuse our terms here.
This lack of confidence has to do only with the individual; man, on the
contrary, has perhaps never known so great a confidence as that reposed
in him by the Soviets.
It
is by showing confidence in boys that they have
built up the Pioneers; taking woman such as she was under Tzarism, that
is to say, one whose condition was the lowest and most grievous of any,
they have made of her the Soviet Woman, one who today stands for the
highest development of feminine will and consciousness. With thieves
and asaassins, they built the White Sea canal. From abandoned children,
nearly all of them likewise thieves, they have built up the communes of
reeducation. At a certain festival, I saw coming into Red Square a delega–
tion of these former waifs, and' I heard the throng acclaim these wisps of
humanity which it had been instrumental in saving, with an enthusiasm
that was shown toward no other group.
And finally, we come to the hero. Thanks to the suppression of
that importance which was formerly conferred upon money, the USSR
is able to uncover the positive hero, the only true one always, the one
who risks his life for other men. The absence of money as an intervening
factor restores to the heroic deed all its primitive significance, such a sig–
nificance as it might possess in war, if the cannon-merchant did not exist,
and if no one drew any profit from war-a Promethean significance.
•
•
•
The basic feature of Soviet art is, accordingly, as I see it, the redis–
covery of objectivity. But what is to become, some one may ask, of the
personality of the artist? I do not believe that it is diminished, but I do
feel that its means are different. In place of proceeding by affirmation,
it functions through selection. The present method in Russian art is
socialist realism, a method which I regard as a valuable and as
potent one. But a point I would insist upon is, if the will to
realism is an effective one for the USSR, it is for the reason that It is
brought to bear upon a ·romantic reality. Civil war, wartime Communism,
the Five Year Plan, socialist construction, frontier-guards, autonomus
