Russia at war 1941-1945

Recently views have been expressed in various quarters to the effect that, after the war, art and literature will follow the "easy road", and will, in the first place, be calculated to entertain. The supporters of this view talk of the development of light comedy and other thoughtless forms of entertainment, and object to big and serioussubjects being included in art and literature. Such views receive support from partof our audiences. Such tendencies must be fought. They are reactionary, and in flatcontradiction with the Lenin-Stalin view that art is a powerful weapon of agitationand education among the masses.

He not only fumed against "frivolous" art, but also against "refined" art which was calculated only for "the bloated upper ten thousand".

On the whole, however, he spoke highly of Soviet literary and artistic production during the war—and was particularly enthusiastic about the music produced by Shostakovich,

Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, Khachaturian and Shebalin.

[All these were to be fiercely denounced as "formalists" in 1948.

(see the author's Musical Uproar in Moscow, London, 1949).]

He also warned Russian artists against aping "Western, especially German"[This was a polite way of avoiding any mention of Britain and the

USA.] models and deplored the wartime tendency to wax enthusiastic over ikons and

religious music, merely on the ground that they formed part of the Russian "national heritage", a marked departure from the 1941-2 line.

The rapid succession of events in 1944 raised a number of other new problems in the eyes of the Party. Deep below the surface, there was a fundamental rivalry between the Party and the Army. During the first three years of the war, the Party was usually only too glad to identify itself with the Army. But with the end of the war in sight, it decided that it was time to regain something of its former identity. During the first two years of the war, the emphasis in nearly all official propaganda had been on "Holy Russia", and it now seemed important to revive a greater Soviet-consciousness. The Party also had to take account of the fact that many people in the occupied areas had been demoralised by Nazi

propaganda and by the re-introduction of private enterprise (only small-scale, but still private enterprise), that the Red Army was now fighting in "bourgeois" countries, which created a number of new psychological problems.

For the first two or three years of the war (whatever was said later to the contrary) there had been a tendency for the Party to get lost in the crowd. Especially in the Army, the Party had become diluted by the easy admission of new members, whose numbers had

grown between 1941 and 1944 from about two to six million.

In 1944 there came a change. Pravda of June 24, 1944 still placed the Communist's practical wartime value above all other qualities.

Personal qualities are, at the present time, tested, above all, by the party candidate's contribution to the struggle with the enemy. Every candidate or member of the

Party must be in the front rank of those carrying out the required military,

economic or political tasks. The Communist at the front must be brave and

spontaneously willing to do the most dangerous jobs. That is why the Communist's

authority is so high in the Red Army, and why hundreds of thousands of soldiers,

before going into battle, now apply for membership.

But, by September 1944, bravery was no longer enough. As Red Star wrote on September 27:

The ideological training of members is now more necessary than ever. The Party

organisations in the Army have done much in this respect—but not enough. The