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10Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2017 10) 491-502
УДК 304; 7.07
Traditionalism / Conservatism of Art of Thaw Period (middle 1950s - late 1960s) in the Context of Socio-Cultural Transformations
Tatiana А. Kruglova*
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin 51 Lenin Str., Ekaterinburg, 620000, Russia
Received 01.11.2016, received in revised form 13.03.2017, accepted 24.03.2017
The article analyzes the trends of the art culture of the "ottepel" (the "thaw") period (middle 1950s -late 1960s) through the prism of the relation between social traditions and traditionalism discourse. The subject of the analysis is the creative work of the liberal wing of the intelligentsia ("shestidesiatniki" / the sixtiers / the thaw writers) and their attitude towards the socialist project. The hypothesis of the research is the following: reproduction of the Soviet project in the situation of inactivity of the social tradition mechanism is based on the traditionalist discourse which was expressed in the "loyalty to fathers", "linkage of generations", "responsibility" rhetoric. The traditionalist discourse was supposed to hide the trauma that resulted from the inability to embody continuity at the level of social relay in the new socio-cultural conditions. At the artistic techniques level we can observe the attitude toward the search for the "zone of great senses", imitation of the socialist project reloading at a new level.
Keywords: the art of "ottepel" ("thaw"), creative work of the "shestidesiatniki" (the thaw writers), social tradition, traditionalist discourse, Soviet liberal intelligentsia.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0058.
Research area: philosophy.
Introduction
The artistic culture of the XX century has earned a place in textbooks and final works on the history and philosophy of art, most of which are written from the standpoint of classical or modernist aesthetics. As a rule, the logic of these works is subject to the search for innovations in the language, institutional being and a way
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail address: tkruglowa@mail.ru
of exhibiting works of art. The history of art in such optics appears as a series of continuous experiments. As for the phenomena and artifacts that do not meet these criteria, they are either marginalized or treated as temporary states of reaction or stagnation. As a criterion of works of art selection the innovative dominates the conservative and the traditionalist. Yet, there
are concepts, challenging the idea of a linear and ascending vector of art development, the example being the model by V. Papernyi, who proposed a two-phase scheme of the Russian culture dynamics: Culture 1 and Culture 2, each being responsible for different phases of development (Papernyi, 1996). Among numerous characteristics of these two phases there can be identified those ones that are associated with the focus on the future or the past, or, in other words, the revolutionary or the conservative type of culture. Following V. Papernyi's logic, the conservative phase of Stalinism with its outspoken anti-modernist fervor (Culture 2) is replaced with a new round of Culture 1 under Khrushchev, during the "thaw". The desire for the renewal, focus of the thaw writers ("shestidesiatniki") on the liberalism ideology, Western modernism and actualization of the art of the revolutionary 1920s would seem to speak for themselves. A judgment about the "socialist modernism" of the sixties emerged and formed in the art criticism literature.
Recognizing the productivity of this perspective on the history of Russian / Soviet art, we are unable to fully accept it. Contemporary sociological and cultural-and-anthropological studies of the post-Stalinist culture prove that the Soviet system in that period not only dismantled the previous type of social fabric but strengthened it, having created the opportunities of extending the historical life of the socialist project by means of new cultural practices and art on the same basis. This forces one to pay attention to the fact that the conservatism of the XX century is extremely heterogeneous and comprises opposite aesthetic platforms, including non-conformist ones.
To understand conservatism and modernism as two sides of one process is the pressing task of the philosophy of art. Our position is to regard the conservative, restorative, archaic, fundamentalist elements not as manifestations
of rejecting modernization but a reverse side of the modernist style project (Kruglova, 2013). In other words, it is to try to see the modernist art through its internal ambivalence, complex dialectics of the conservative and the non-conservative. In this case, conservatism will appear not as a separate type of artistic practice or a certain historic stage but as a hidden side of conflict with modernity. A. Rykov's idea that the conservatism of modernity is always a claim to a version of modernity as a more "authentic", "healthy" traditional character of neo-conservatism and that its rhetoric of "preserving the old" is deceptive seems extremely important (Rykov, 2007). The art as the most efficient and sensitive device of responding to hidden socio-cultural processes provides great opportunities for the research of the nature of conflict with modernity in the environment which is often classified as the liberal wing of the "thaw" generation.
Problem statement
The subject of the research in this article is the relation between current social traditions in Russian culture and the traditionalism discourse, the presupposition being that it is necessary to distinguish two types of information about the traditions obtained by the methods of different sciences: social sciences (ethnology, cultural anthropology, sociology) and humanities (art criticism, literary criticism). During the discussion of the problem of a specific character of artistic conservatism or traditionalism in Russia it is vital, firstly, to deal with the idea of current understanding of national traditions in public consciousness and science. Secondly, it is urgent to reveal the signs in the art world of the "thaw" period, the signs signaling the influence and authoritativeness of the traditionalism discourse in its specific "loyalty" to the Soviet cultural code.
All the diversity of opinions about the tradition can be reduced to two opposite positions: primordialism and constructivism. Primordialism, which is based on a naturalistic interpretation of the tradition, views it as a kind of a track, a fate that the nation is fatally doomed to. According to this conception, the traditions are viewed as programmes which were preassigned once, persistent and irrevocable entities. In a certain sense they are "curse" of the nation. Social constructivism is another extreme: traditions are formed or cancelled as a result of deliberate efforts. There is also the concept of "invented traditions" that arise to achieve the legitimacy of certain reforms. Invented traditions can then turn into usual traditions.
Besides, there is another difficulty in defining the root of the tradition: it is often confused with a similar phenomenon which is the repetition phenomenon. If the tradition in the broadest sense is a phenomenon of cultural inheritance, in other words, the self-reproduction mechanism is intrinsic to it in all circumstances of time and place, there are phenomena, the frequency of which can be registered, yet the origin of this repetition has an entirely different source. E. Pain regards the matter the following way: "A broad interpretation of cultural traditions has no benefits. For example, there are different types of persistent, recurring diseases, and it is important for medicine to understand whether a disease is genetic, inherited, or professional. In one case it is a human and his / her genotype who is a carrier of pathogenic phenomena; in other cases these are coal mines with their dust, open-hearth furnaces with their heat or compressor units with their noise. The matter of my interest is a similar separation of the phenomena but in the sphere of culture. Is a steady stereotype of disrespect for the law a tradition that is inherited (not via genes but through social events), or is it an attribute of certain social relations? I am
interested whether it is due to the properties of culture or to a greater extent to the characteristics of political institutions?" (Pain, 2008).
Ethnomethodology has clear criteria for distinguishing the work of traditional mechanisms. Sociologists and cultural anthropologists have developed the concept of "social relay", which is an essential mechanism for ensuring the work of the tradition. A social relay provides for not fictional, but real link between generations, direct transfer of experience; it consolidates the social norms of behavior. A social relay is a technology of the tradition and the system of its protection. It involves the direct transfer of samples through learning, institutions and social control (Ibid.). Thus, there is a tool that facilitates making a science-based differentiation between social traditions and something that is not considered as such. For example, the behavior of the bureaucrats around the world has a large number of similar characteristics which are displayed as if in addition to the people's intentions and desires, and this is peculiar for the societies that differ in their social and cultural codes. According to E. Pain, it is hardly productive to talk about the "traditions of bureaucracy" in this case. The phenomena which result from adaptation to changing conditions of the social environment ("social reflexes" in E. Pain's terminology) cannot be referred to as the tradition. The data of the researchers, applying ethno-methodological tools, prove that social communities with similar cultural and traditional base behave differently in different historic circumstances. Cultural traditions are not revoked and start working in a different mode to help in adaptation to new circumstances.
Basing on the methods of these sciences, it is possible to reveal traditions in any region or social environment as well as to measure the level of their manifestation intensity. In the end such researches have led to the conclusion that Russia suffers not from its national traditions,
hampering the modernization processes, as it is seen on the surface of public discussions, butfrom the destruction of traditions. In Russia the level of manifestation of traditional mechanisms is the lowest. Social relays fail to work. Old traditions collapsed and new cultural norms are poorly assimilated. Reproduction of the collectivity is disturbed. The degree of family ties ruptures in the Russian environment is very high. A completely different mechanism starts functioning in the society with destroyed traditions, the mechanism can be figuratively termed as traditionalism without traditions. Speaking about the role of discourse - the traditionalist one in this case, it is necessary to register the huge discrepancy between the values preached by the art and the values adopted in the society and objectifying themselves in everyday practices. Our hypothesis is that the traditionalism discourse internally veils a focus on compensation for loss of social relay, signaling that the culture has the methods of replacing social traditions with ideological rhetoric and artistic practices.
The problem of linkage of generations reproducibility in the "thaw" period
In order to prove the ad hoc hypothesis the "thaw" period should be analyzed. This will make the case of social traditions peculiar to this period clear.
It is well known that the "thaw" was a reaction to the previous Stalinist period of Soviet culture. It is worth while briefly characterizing the specificity of the traditionalism discourse of the Stalinist period. Stalin's conservative revolution was part of the process common for a number of European countries, the process being a modernization leap forward based on updating the archaic structures in social life (Trencsenyi, 2009), appropriation and recoding of national and world classics in artistic culture (Raku, 2014;
Kruglova, 2016). V. Shklovskii called this process "red restoration". If the Stalinist phase of the "great return" (N. Timashev's term) (Adamovich, 2004) is described in the scientific literature in some way or another (Vishnevskii, 1998), and its restoration nature is of no doubt, the advance of the thesis about a traditionalist component in Khrushchev's thaw looks quite controversial and needs an extensive proof. Only one thing can be stated with certainty at this stage of reasoning: Stalin's conservatism and the traditionalist discourse of the "thaw "period can be understood as different in their semantics and pragmatics but as variants of the Soviet traditionalism related by their continuity, the Soviet traditionalism being the "return to basics".
V. Mikhailin's version is worth being referred to. He was the first to trace the signs of the traditionalist mindset in the liberal stream of the 1960s. He sees the roots of the thaw traditionalism in the specifics of implementing the "Soviet man" creation project. V. Mikhailin formulates a set of qualities, required of the future Soviet man, according to the ideological program: "A basic focus on combining individual destiny with "big" stories and willingness to bring personal interests to sacrifice to "big" goals were assumed. <...> The Soviet man had to be an ideal mobilization unit, for which narrow private contexts have meaning only insofar as they are inscribed in the logic of total reorganization of being or have no meaning at all. He / She had to become an active participant in this reorganization while harmonizing his / her existence not with the sets of everyday, local details but with the prospects of truly global scales" (Mikhailin, 2016).
It is possible to check whether the project is carried out by applying the concept of the social relay which can be understood as a set of social traditions. If the social traditions, by means of which cultural norms and practices, values and motives of actions come back to the memory,
manifest themselves, then the Soviet man exists as a socio-historical type. In search of an answer to this question it is worth while referring to the researches of sociologists and cultural anthropologists who studied cultural practices of the Soviet man in the course of the whole Soviet period: from the start of the formation of a personality production social institutions at the turn of 1920-1930s, during the period of 1950 -1960s ("thaw"), and, finally, in later Soviet times ("stagnation"). The researches by N. Kozlova (Kozlova, 2005), O. Kharkhordin (Kharkhordin, 2002), A. Iurchak (Iurchak, 2014) are viewed as the most representative ones.
Below is a brief summary of all these sources, fitting in the "social traditions" frame we have set. It is found that the Soviet man was formed in the so-called "reforging" mode, forcing a person to adapt to constantly changing rules and circumstances, develop skills for living in collectives, invest himself/herself to the common cause, and be able to subordinate personal interests to public ones. However, the analysis of a long historic period of several generations showed that these new social habits melted surprisingly quickly if they were not supported by special normalizing or controlling institutions. In other words, they were predominantly adaptive in nature and were not set by the social relay mechanism. Their repetitive nature should not be misleading since the collectivism practices reproduction in subsequent periods became more and more ritualistic. O. Kharkhordin describes many practices that are parallel with the official standards of behaviour and give rise to the specific Soviet hypocrisy effect (O. Kharkhordin's term). Hypocrisy, "double consciousness" (Kormer, 1989), and the state of non-identification (Iurchak, 2014) point to the fact that the Soviet social traditions had never emerged, or even if they existed they were not a primary and efficient means of human reproduction. Yet, these parallel
adaptive types of behaviour neither ousted the officially adopted and government supported practices nor became a basis of independent traditions. Thus, the strength of the social fabric rested on some other basis that will be dwelt upon further.
According to V. Mikhailin, the basic focus on integrating one's own individual life with the "big" narrative was due to perspicacity. This concept of "perspicacity' implies the process of making the public space transparent. "The main goal of this process is to increase the level of social control, the process including the manipulative use of micro-group cultural codes that habitually appeal to the sustainable systems at the level of the individual and the small group. The metaphors like "motherland" in which one of the members implies a family code and the other is an abstract concept the real meaning of which radically exceeds the capabilities of our memory and attention can serve an example of this. As a result, the man is imposed with a further non-reflexed responsibility for a set of circumstances he does not control: it is an excellent ground for further manipulation" (Mikhailin, 2015).
This reasoning points out to the category of responsibility, which is important for our further research. It should be noted that, firstly, this responsibility is extremely widescale and incommensurable with an individual's limited abilities. Secondly, the above mentioned gap between expectations and resources determines somewhat phantom nature of responsibility. This inevitably leads to the predominance of irrational interpretations of responsibility, inability to measure it, and, accordingly, to have an idea of consequences of one's own actions and their connection with public events. A Soviet man turns out to be in a difficult existential situation: he is imposed with a huge, very heavy responsibility for the destiny of the country and even the world in general. He / She is overloaded
with responsibility and is constantly inclined to experience a sense of guilt for all the failures and misfortunes and setbacks, no matter how widescale they might be. "I am responsible for everything", which is a film title, is a key phrase that becomes a kind of spell. However, the Soviet man had to automatically feel pride for the achievements of the whole country. Compared to the traditions, this formed stronger ties of the individual to the society. Besides, bypassing the social relay mechanism, it provided continuity between generations: it was the responsibility that tied the generation of soldiers of World War II with that of the Revolution and the Civil War. Thus, the matter is not in following the traditions of collectivism, communist ideology and Soviet patriotism - all this constituting a set of the rhetoric of education. The matter is in the way of organizing life in the society supported by discourse (Prokhorov, 2007).
What happened to this way of the Soviet society preservation and reproduction during the "thaw" period? By the turn of the 1950s and 1960s the next generation, the generation of the children of war, emerged on the historic arena. The situation of perspicacity put them in the position that made them anxious and insecure in society. Previous generations did not only participate in the ritual of commitment and responsibility, feeling a strong emotional connection with a large family, but were also involved in large-scale processes: revolution, Civil war, industrialization, collectivization, the elimination of illiteracy campaign. They built, fought, restored, and, finally, suffered. They paid a huge price for the world inherited by the young people of the 1960s. They lived their life in a situation, when the ritual was interwoven into the social fabric sometimes to a complete indistinguishability of the heroic discourse and actual practices on the verge of self-misappropriation. By the end of the 1950s there were no large-scale projects left. They still
lay ahead of young people as in case of regular youth top-priority projects and virgin lands development. Inherently a space project could not become a mass one, and therefore it could not be considered as mobilization resource.
So, the thaw writers inherited the discourse of responsibility, which was developed in the context of the public sphere total ritualization at that time. This ritualization caused the protest. Thus, the sincerity was regarded as an alternative which was meant to return effectiveness to the linkage of generations discourse. Yet, there was another important fact that made exercise of the continuity either impossible or very difficult. In the days of Stalinism the responsibility was beyond an individual's experience and his / her limited ability to influence large-scale events of the country. Yet, it was undeveloped and almost invisible due to constant voluntary-compulsory mobilization. In the course of peaceful and relatively prosperous "vegetarian" sixties it was coming to the surface and, thus, revealed itself as a breach, a dangerous gap between generations. It is worth while recalling N.S. Khrushchev's reaction in the film "Zastava Il'icha" ("Lenin's Outpost"): the youth swear their memory of the fathers who died in the war to the ideals of the revolution, the Internationale, whereas the government does not believe them and intuitively feels that the youth live by some other rules, slipping away without any rebellion. This intuition was absolutely adequate: honoring the memory of the fathers and wishing no other life except the Soviet life, the liberal youth could no longer reproduce those social practices the previous two generations had. They were impossible just as a soldier's habits become undesirable in time of peace. A new generation had nothing to do but bear vague, but strong feelings of "involvement", "loyalty" which were demonstrated with the invariably extreme emotions and did not have to cause doubts in their sincerity. It is no coincidence that the
discourse of "loyalty to traditions", cultivation of "intergenerational ties" are expressed in a highly pedaled discourse of sincerity, even its apology since it directly corresponds with enthusiasm, dedication and other similar mobilization states.
The origins and peculiar features of the "thaw" traditionalism
Thus, the gaps between actual practices of the thaw writers and the discourse of responsibility had to be escaped. A way out of this situation was found in the rhetoric of return to Leninist norms, restoration of the revolution ideals, personality cult criticism. The matter was loyalty to absolutely certain traditions -socialist, revolutionary ones. The thaw restart of the Communist project was built on a new Soviet traditionalism. These were not "derevenshchiki" ("villagers"). These were the cohort of liberal-minded intellectuals who took up the mission to ensure the continuity of the socialist project. From this point on there appeared splits in the traditionalist discourse: the groups of cultural figures began looking for support in completely different mental and historic worlds. Yet, they all were united by a shaky ground under the feet (Z. Bauman believes that violation of the collectivity reproduction may lead to collapse) and the desire to acquire cues through the strategy of "returns". Traditionalism, as it was written above, is the result of a conflict with modernity, a conflict being hidden in this case, since the ideology and aesthetics of the liberal wing of the thaw writers stylistically looks emphatically modern on the surface. Moreover, we have reasons for strengthening this conclusion: the thaw writers' traditionalist discourse is a traumatic reaction to the intuitively felt impossibility to realize the socialist project in the context of the taboo on criticism (the taboo which they assumed themselves) and on the revision ofthe original plan for which their fathers and grandfathers paid with
their lives. They are also constrained by both the circumstances and obligations to bear the burden of responsibility for the victories and for the 1937 year. The concentrated expression of this position is represented in the final monologue of Sergey, the main character of the film "Zastava Il'icha" ("Lenin's Outpost"). The oath of allegiance prohibits analytical procedures, potentially fraught with the complete deconstruction of the Soviet system.
In some way or another, actualization of the rhetoric of the "return" makes it possible to discern the signs of the traditionalist discourse in its generic sense in the thaw progressivism, liberalism and orientation towards the West. It is worth while dwelling on the definition of traditionalism and conservatism as discourses, the internal differences of which can be, to some extent, abstracted from. In contrast to other parts of the socio-political spectrum, conservatism is always characterized by ambiguity and vagueness of its ideological elements. It seems to be slipping away from rationalization, from precise verbal formulas. The most famous interpretation of conservatism was proposed by K. Mannheim in his "Conservative Thought". K. Mannheim showed that, as a style of thinking, conservatism has a certain unity that is not so easy to discern though. Dwelling on Mannheim's conception, L. Ionin writes: "It is neither ideology nor methodology but rather a set of general principles of perception and comprehension of reality; <...> The main idea of the metaphysics of conservatism is that of irrationality, integrity and harmony of reality, which resists analytical decomposition at its core" (Ionin, 2010, p. 79). The society should solve its problems (to reform and recover) on its own grounds without trusting abstract and universal formulas. The myth of "eternal return", lying in the depths of modernity, programmes a reverse shuttle movement towards the zero point of genesis, antiquity or, more often, a chimerical
image of the by-gone harmony as a recovery from the crisis. It should be noted that the matter here is a lost connection with the generation of "ardent revolutionaries". To make the next leap into the future it is necessary to symbolically return to the revolution as a starting point.
V. Mikhailin's understanding of traditionalism is similar to that of conservatism: "The phrase "traditionalist mentality" rather implies a fairly non-coherent set of ideas about the existence of some primordial knowledge <...> in comparison with which the current state of humanity can be considered a period of decline" (Mikhailin, 2016). Basing on this premise, Mikhailin finds in the Khrushchev thaw the attempts to "revive the feeling of presence of some primary, the only correct entity behind all these words talked to death and practices that are thoroughly ritualized. In fact, the famous thaw sincerity is a familiar, repeatedly tested in human history cure for total ritualization that makes everything senseless. If you cannot understand then feel; if you do not believe words and gestures then see the meanings through a dull coarse heavy cloth of accidents, the meanings implied by these words and gestures regardless of their current emptiness as these meanings were originally inherent to them. In Lenin's times everything was real and had real sense" (Ibid.). This conclusion can be confirmed by a reference to the enormous popularity of A. Voznesensky's poem "Nostalgiia po nastoiashchemu" ("Nostalgia for the Present"), which became a kind of a prayer, manifesto, credo, call for the thaw writers' audience.
Representation of the thaw traditionalism in art
The thaw art in all variety of its forms and styles does the same thing: it "teaches the Soviet
man to feel and search for the meanings which are hidden from everyday sight blurred with commonness" (Ibid.). Yet, only a part of artists,
though a significant one and with high authority, searched for the meanings in a newly constructed memory of the revolution and the Civil war while translating the plots, motives and the characters' behavior into the language of modern poetics. The whole Soviet everyday life was subject to the procedures of attentive look and search for something much more significant (authentic, holistic, deep, existential, eternal, - real) behind its surface. This "real" could never be subordinated to utilitarian or analytic disintegration. V. Mikhailin suggests a sort of inventory of attitudes different artists based on in their search for the "hidden" and the "primordial". One of them was the following: "this explicit need for some comprehensive perspective, able to "assign meanings" to all the phenomena, sometimes very heterogeneous and multi-ordinal. The meanings elude analyzing: the fact of their presence behind the "surface of things" and the feeling that they constitute a single semantic field are important" (Ibid.).
Mikhailin's remark that "the meanings are not subject to the analysis" is worth our attention. Indeed, cinematograph clearly manifested the trend of significance, which is justified neither by the plot nor the characters but is important in itself. The ways of its representation are numerous: silent and smoking characters, infinite front- and backgrounds, slow rhythms, lots of music (M. Tariverdiev's manner of making music is especially important) creating a mood of elegy with the notes of sad-sweet nostalgia. Long travels around a big city, crowds of flaneurs strolling in a state of negligence are signs that pass from movie to movie. Urban scenes can be dynamicized and full of human and mechanical motion as in "Iiul'skii dozhd'" ("July rain"), "Vliublennye" ("The Lovers"), "Zhil pevchii drozd" ("There Lived a Songthrush"), or, on the contrary, most devoid of any dynamics, as in A. Tarkovsky's, R. Khamdamov's, S. Paradzhanov's films. Finally,
"they can be built on the foreground of an odd human face which the camera is focused on" (Ibid.). Conversations about the important take place on the spur of the moment, as one goes along. The dominance of the random, unnecessary should not be misleading: it is not quite neo-realism that opened the life off guard, beyond all schemes and set values to the world. In the Soviet neo-realism the viewer's eye is fixed on the immediate subject of observation just to emphasize that "the visible is what must be overcome if you intend to truly "understand"" (Ibid.). The flow of reality is periodically interrupted by a monologue of some of the characters, that are most often author's alter ego; and a precise gist that one should understand is rendered in a literary impeccable style. Literature-centrism keeps dominating in M. Kalatozov's, M. Khutsiev's, and A. Tarkovsky's works. This is a signal that the original neo-realistic poetics which is similar to the Italian one could not emerge in the Soviet cinema, as everyday life did not become an aesthetically and existentially inherently-worth matter.
Thus, retention of the sphere of meanings in the zone of uncertainty, within the boundaries that the intellect has no right to cross generated the effect of genre blur: the films of the thaw period did not fit into the framework of consistent social realism, J. Godard's French new wave, and M. Antonioni's existentialist dramas. Fear of intellectual effort, forcing to reveal the truth in its tragic mode, was caused, among other things, by a secret ban against doubt in the original harmony of being that does not require any evidences.
There is a great temptation to see the manifestations of the Russian national mental tradition in it. The limits of this tradition were astutely written about by the "vekhovtsy" (philosophic and socio-political trend in Russian intellectual environment in the early XX century that received its name after "Vekhi" ("The Milestones") collected works) who noted that
the Russian philosophical consciousness is not concerned with the reflection on the issues of metaphysics, it tends to turn a comprehension vector into a practical and moral plane. However, we think it is important to register the socio-cultural context of the sixties, precisely characterized as "unsupported spirituality " by L. Anninsky, in this aiming for an infinite but inviting area of uncertain shimmering transcendental meanings.
The list of poetic techniques can be continued, but in some way or another we already have a set of features similar to those that form the basis of the traditionalist attitude. We face the need for a special "zone of great senses" that cannot be translated into the language of everyday life. We face the longing for the large-scale narrative. The main thing that makes it possible to unite the liberal wing of the "thaw", the thaw writers proper, the cohort of "Lenin's outpost" (A. Voznesensky's, E. Evtushenko's poetry, V. Aksenov's confessional prose, A. Mitta's, M. Khutsiev's, M. Kalik's and many others' movies) and those who are traditionally referred to as the intellectual (author's) cinema (A. Tarkovsky, S. Paradzhanov, I. Averbakh), metaphysical prose and poetry is a search for broader explanatory structures, free from the previous traditionalist discourse models that brought discredit upon themselves. Another important attitude that unites them all is the following: the cultural and social tradition as a carrier of "initial meaning" is interpreted primordially, i.e. naturalistically, as some mystery, something invariable, non-created, and always abiding. It does not require analytically critical attitude towards itself but intuitive inclusion and immersion.
Conclusion
V. Mikhailin's conclusion can be stated as follows: "Late Soviet reality offered the average man a model of existence which is unique in its
characteristics, a model integrating complete (or tending to such) personal irresponsibility in the face of reality perceived as a system of accidents, with the exciting but little obliging knowledge of "great senses"" (Ibid.). From a logical point of view this conclusion is straightforward but different optics prevents from generally admitting it. Following A. Iurchak, "irresponsibility" can be interpreted as a form of manifestation of a kind of internal emigration, or "unengagement" (Iurchak, 2014). This position makes it possible for a significant number of Soviet people and artists to create over the top of the Soviet code, imitating loyalty to the Soviet social traditions in practice. In our view, a soft reformatting of the concept of social responsibility took place in the late Soviet time: it is based on loyalty not to the affair of the previous generations who carried out the socialist project but to rather a different affair. According to I. Plekhanova's astute observation, escape to the "zone of great senses" was the thaw generation's affair. Yet, we cannot but agree that the described creative strategy became an internal support of prolongation of
the Soviet way of life, in which the mechanism of social traditions (social relay) did not work, and it was reproduced largely because of the traditionalist discourse, especially in its liberal artistic version. Traumatic practice experienced by the "children of war" generation and associated with the impossibility to consistently link the responsibility to the "fathers" with the modern life practices was not subject to rationalization. Abandonment of the analysis of the situation of mismatches and gaps, attitude toward framing of the Soviet practice into the zone of "great senses" due to which this practice had to become justified and renewed made it possible to ignore the trauma. Nevertheless, as we know from the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the trauma, which is not subject to the comprehension procedures, will always make its presence known (Trauma:points, 2009).
Но, как мы знаем из теории и практики психоанализа, травма, не подвергнутая процедурам осмысления, всегда даст о себе знать (Travma: punkty, 2009).
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Традиционализм/консерватизм искусства «Оттепели» (середина 1950-х - конец 1960-х годов) в контексте социокультурных трансформаций
Т.А. Круглова
Уральский федеральный университет им. первого Президента России Б.Н. Ельцина Россия, 620000, Екатеринбург, пр. Ленина, 51
Статья посвящена анализу тенденций художественной культуры «оттепели» (середина 1950-х - конец 1960-х годов) сквозь призму связи социальных традиций и дискурса традиционализма. Предметом анализа стало творчество либерального крыла интеллигенции («шестидесятников»), их отношения к социалистическому проекту. Выдвинута гипотеза о том, что в ситуации отсутствия действия механизма социальной традиции воспроизводство советского проекта осуществляется с опорой на традиционалистский дискурс, который выражается в риторике «верности отцам», «связи поколений», «ответственности». Традиционалистский дискурс призван скрыть травму, возникшую вследствие невозможности осуществлять преемственность на уровне социальной эстафеты в новых социокультурных условиях. На уровне художественных приемов мы отмечаем установку на поиск «зоны больших смыслов», имитацию перезагрузки социалистического проекта на новом уровне.
Ключевые слова: искусство «оттепели», творчество «шестидесятников», социальная традиция, традиционалистский дискурс, советская либеральная интеллигенция.
Научная специальность: 09.00.00 - философские науки.
