POLITICS & ART

Hokitika Guardian, 8 September 1931, Page 2

POLITICS & ART

“’Everything and everybody in Russia is harnessed to the Five-Year Plan.” writes a friend from -Moscow to Lady Drummond -Hay : “This is what happened in the Art Exhibition in Aloscow the other day. The political censor was walking along and inspecting the pictures, when he shook his head. ‘Elergy’! Surely that word had no place in the present life of the Soviet Union. It was a beautiful landscape of a lonely lake, surrounded by dark pines, under a tired twilight sky. The sad stillness of Mature. There should be no ‘Elegies’ in Russia. All should be energy, action and Bolshevik tempo, illustrating how the Five-Year Plan is being put over. What right as a 'Russian artist of to-day to dream of forest stillness? This was nothing but stagnation, weariness, escape from reality. 'The political censor made a red mark in the catalogue. The picture disappeared from its place. The political censor walked on. He came to another picture entitled ‘A Family of Pigs.’ Most realistic. It left to the imagination nothing concerning the subject of pigs, They were very dirty Russian pigs. Mother sow lay nursing her litter of very small, wriggley piglets. They nestled in the mud of the pen. The political censor sniffed as if he could smell the horrible odour of that pig pen. Out came the red pencil. Out of the catalogue, and off the wall went those pigß, , “Mow what possible political significance could those pigs have? yon will ask me, Ah! But that shows how little you, know of Russia. A great campaign is being waged In the Soviet' Union to increase the cattip and the pigs, Tfie papprs often write abqut the ‘pig front.’ It }s even called the ‘main line of defence.’ The plan is to increase the supply of pork in the whole Soviet Union in record time. That, too, is part of the Five-Year Plan. In order to do this, pigs must be well fed, and pigs must be clean. After all, pigs are a political issue. ’Hie amount and standard of pork will be raised. There will be more meat for the workers. Meat means brawn, and it is the brawn and brains of millions of Russians who are building the Five-Year Plan. If there are bigger, bettejy and cleaner p:gs it will help to cblhplete the Five-Year Plan in 4 years. BIR what had tfie artist done to forward this work? The family of piss he portrayed were dirty, dreadfully dirty, scrubby Animals. They were none too fat. Thfeir food could not have been good. And the standard of sanitation displayed in this pig pen was almost •Czaristic. No} These pigs would not do at all. Can you wonder that I find it interesting in Russia, and consider it a privilege to be here and watch and study ibis gigantic experiment?”