Culture, science, literature and art in the USSR

Posted on 11/10/2025 by Michael

Maxim Gorky

Culture, science, literature and art

Here is presented material that come under the very loose heading of ‘culture’ during the Socialist period of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Science

Dialectical Materialism and Historical Science, V. P. Volgin, Anglo-Soviet Journal, Winter 1949, 5 pages.

The origin of life on the Earth, A. I. Oparin, 3rd revised and enlarged edition in English translation, Academic Press, New York, 1957, 522 pages.

Soviet Marxism and Natural Science: 1917-1932, David Joravsky, Colombia University, New York, 1961, 446 pages. Includes a heavy focus on Marxist-Leninist philosophical topics.

Proletarian Science? The case of Lysenko, Dominique Lecourt, with an introduction by Louis Althusser, New Left Books, London, 1977, 165 pages.

Heredity and its variability, T.D. Lysenko, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 122 pages.

J.B. Lamarck, a materialist biologist, I.I. Prezent, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 56 pages.

Soviet biology, a report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Moscow, 1948, T.D. Lysenko, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 82 pages.

The revisionist theory of the ‘Liberation’ of science from ideology, M.D. Kammari, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2022, 51 pages.

Science for Peace and Socialism, J.D. Bernal and Maurice Cornforth, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa, 2023, (originally Birch Books, London, 1949), 144 pages.

Psychological warfare in the strategy of Imperialism, V.L. Artemov, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, Moscow 1983), 140 pages.

Poetry

Popular poetry in Soviet Russia, George Z. Patrick, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1929, 298 pages.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a poem, in both Russian and English, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, 208 pages.

Novels and short stories

Vasili Azhayev

Far From Moscow, Book 1, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 502 pages.

Far From Moscow, Book 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 462 pages.

Far From Moscow, Book 3, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 466 pages.

Konstantin Fedin

Early Joys, FLPH, Moscow, 1948, 503 pages.

No Ordinary Summer, Book 2, Progress, Moscow, 1950, 535 pages.

Dmitry Furmanov

Chapayev, FLPH, Moscow, 1955, 384 pages.

Alexei Fyodorov

The Underground R. C. carries on, Book 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 416 pages.

The Underground Committee carries on, Books 1 and 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 518 pages.

Maxim Gorki

Creatures that once were men, Modern Library Publishers, New York, 1918 (originally), digital version 1998, 180 pages.

Fragments from my diary, McBride, New York, 1924, 320 pages.

Days with Lenin, Martin Lawrence, London, n.d., early 1930s?, 64 pages.

Maxim Gorky: writer and revolutionist, Moissaye J. Olgin, International, New York, 1933, 69 pages.

My childhood, Appleton-Century, New York, 1936, 374 pages.

And the others – a play, Unity Theatre Workshop, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1941, 34 pages.

Lenin and Gorky, letters, reminiscences, articles, Progress, Moscow, 1973, 429 pages.

The city of the yellow devil, pamphlets, articles and letters about America (1906), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, 151 pages.

The Artamonovs, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 8, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 336 pages.

Literary Portraits, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 9, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 390 pages.

On Literature, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 10, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 455 pages.

The collected short stories of Maxim Gorky, edited by Avrham Yarmolinsky and Baroness Moura Budberg, Citadel Press, Secaucus, 1988, 403 pages.

Autobiography of Maxim Gorky (My Childhood, In the World, My Universities), n.p., n.d., 614 pages.

Maxim Gorky – a political biography, Tovah Yedlin, Praeger, Westport, 1999, 260 pages.

Culture and the people, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa, 2023, 229 pages.

Twenty six men and a girl, n.p., n.d., 11 pages.

Elmar Green

Wind from the South, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 292 pages.

Vassili Grossman

The Years of War, 1941-1945, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally FLPH, Moscow, 1946), 575 pages.

Nikolai Ostrovsky

How the steel was tempered – Part 1, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 312 pages.

How the steel was tempered – Part 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 351 pages.

How the steel was tempered, Communist Party of Australia, Sydney, 2002, 312 pages.

How the steel was tempered, Progress, Moscow, n.d., 321 pages.

How the steel was tempered, picture book, Novosti, Moscow, 1983, 52 pages.

Vera Panova

Looking ahead, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 294 pages.

Konstantin Paustovsky

The Golden Rose – thoughts on the making of literature, FLPH, Moscow, 1950?, 285 pages.

Boris Pelovoi

A story about a real man, Progress, Moscow, 1973, 344 pages.

Alexander Serafimovich

The Iron Flood, International, New York, 1935, 248 pages.

Mikhail Sholokhov

Virgin Soil Upturned, the third volume in the Don Trilogy, Putman, London, 1937, 488 pages.

Mikhailo Stelmakh

Let the blood of man not flow, Progress, Moscow, 1975, 271 pages.

Alexei Tolstoy

Road to Calvary, Stalin Prize Novel, Hutchinson, London, 1941, 680 pages.

Aelita, FLPH, Moscow, nd.,167 pages.

Andrejs Upits

Outside Paradise and other stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1955, 363 pages.

Nikolai Virta

Alone – a novel, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 452 pages.

Various authors

Soviet Short Stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1947, 471 pages.

30 short stories, 1917-1967, Soviet Literature, No. 4, 1967, 224 pages.

Theatre

And the others – a play, Maxim Gorky, Unity Theatre Workshop, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1941, 34 pages.

Art

VI Lenin badge picture gallery

Russian art of the avant-garde theory and criticism, 1902-1934, ed John E. Bowlt, Viking, New York, 1976, 360 pages. [A lot of scribblings throughout but the text, in the main, remains legible.]

Art of the Avant Garde in Russia, selections from the George Costakis Collection, Margit Rowell and Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1981, 320 pages.

The Russian avant-garde book 1910-1934, ed. Margit Rowell and Deborah Wye, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, 304 pages.

The Russian avant-garde and radical modernism, an introductory reader, ed. Dennis Ioffe and Frederick White, Boston, 2012, 486 pages.

Museums and Art Galleries

The Central Lenin Museum, Moscow – a guide. (Moscow, Raduga, 1986), 160 pages. A guide to the now destroyed Museum dedicated to the life and work of VI Lenin.

The Stalin Museum in his birthplace of Gori, in the centre of Georgia, is one of the few places in the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) where you will see any reference (let alone a positive reference) to the leader of the world’s first socialist state.

The SM Kirov museum is located in the famous ‘House of Three Benois’ on the second entrance of the house number 26/28 on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, on the 4th and 5th floors, in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg).

Probably the largest and most extensive art gallery in the world is that which spans the whole of the central area of Moscow. This art gallery doesn’t have just one entrance but dozens and although you have to pay it’s also one of the cheapest in Europe. This art gallery can be crowded, very crowded, at certain times of the day but the arrival of people comes in waves so not a total inconvenience. It’s also the world’s biggest gallery of Soviet Socialist Realist Art – the name of this gallery is the Moscow Metro.

The Park of the Fallen/Muzeon Art Park, in Moscow is the collection of monuments and statues of the Socialist period that used to be found throughout the city.

Park Pobeda – Victory Park – exhibition and museum, Moscow.

Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh) – Moscow. A huge park on the outskirts of the city which originally provided an opportunity for visitors to understand the successes of Socialism throughout the whole of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Socialist Realist Art in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Art galleries in the Central Asian former Soviet Republics.

Frunze Museum – Bishkek – Kyrgyzstan. The Frunze museum was originally opened in December 1925, centred on the small house where he was born. This house is now a feature on the ground floor of the modern building.

JV Stalin Museum – Mamayev Kurgan – Stalingrad. This is a very strange museum – not to what it is dedicated – but for its location and very existence. Mamyev Kurgan is probably the most revered war memorial in the whole of the Soviet Union/Russia – and that would include those Republics which broke away amidst the chaos of the early 1990s. And yet just a few hundred metres behind the mammoth statue is a private hotel and restaurant which just happens to have a small, three room museum to JV Stalin in the basement.

Tashkent Metro – Uzbekistan. The Tashkent Metro was a relatively late addition to the Soviet Union’s mass transit system being the seventh to be completed in 1977. The system followed many of the conventions established since 1935 in Moscow; the design of the station platforms; the style (if not the content) of the decoration; the use of light to give the impression of not being underground; the use of the finest materials; and the method in moving people through the system as fast as possible

Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR/Central Armed Forces Museum – Moscow. The main reason I wanted to go to the Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR/Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow was because I had learnt that it was there that the Nazi banners that had been thrown into the mud at the base of the Lenin Mausoleum (with Comrade Stalin accepting them on behalf of the Soviet people) on the first Victory Day on May 9th, 1945, were presently on display.

Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh. The principal pavilion in the VDNKh park has undergone a major renovation and it has been brought back (almost) to what it was like when it opened in 1954. Some of the original works have been ‘lost’ – perhaps only mislaid as a number of art works considered ‘lost’ have subsequently been found – but a number that had been distributed to other galleries have been returned.

VI Lenin Exhibition at the State History Museum, Moscow. At the moment there’s a special exhibition attached to State History Museum, one which documents some of the life and work of VI Lenin. However, there’s only a fraction on display here of what used to be on show in the now closed Central Lenin Museum (which used to be housed in what is now the War of 1812 Museum).

The Central Lenin Museum, Moscow – a guide. Raduga, Moscow, 1986, 160 pages. A guide to the now destroyed Museum dedicated to the life and work of VI Lenin.

Architecture

Moscow – Architecture and Monuments, M Ilyin, Progress, Moscow, 1968, 253 pages.

Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes – Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938, Danilo Udovicki-Selb, Bloomsbury, London, 2020, 360 pages.

Moscow Monumental – Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital, Katherine Zubovich, Princetown University Press, Princetown, 2021, 428 pages.

Art in everyday circumstances

Soviet Advertising Posters 1917-1932, Moscow, 1972, 127 pages.

The debate on Soviet Culture

VOKS Bulletin, No 63, USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Moscow, 1950, 96 pages.

A few of the articles:

Concerning Marxism in Linguistics, J. Stalin.

Increasing Stability of the Rouble – A Law of the Soviet Economy, I. Konnik

The Twelve Apostles, Sergei Eisenstein

British-Soviet Friendship, Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury

Soviet Russian Literature: 1917-1950, Gleb Struve, University of Oklahoma Press, 1951, 431 pages. Has some underlining. The author is harshly anti-Communist, but this book discusses the early literature of Soviet Russia quite thoroughly.

Literature under Communism: the literary policy of the CPSU from the end of World War II to the death of Stalin, Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Indiana University: Russian and East European Series, vol. XX, n.d. (c. 1957), 178 pages. Anti-Communist perspective.

Early Soviet writers, Vyacheslav Zavlishin, Research Program in USSR, Praeger, New York, 1958, 472 pages. Another anti-Communist book, but with some hard-to-find information about Soviet writers.

On literature, music and philosophy, AA Zhadanov, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1950, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2022, 112 pages.

‘Mass culture’ in the USA and the problem of the individual, E.N. Kartseva, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally Nauka Publishing House, Moscow 1974), 233 pages.

More on the USSR

VI Lenin and friends in Family Park – Almaty – Kazakhstan

Posted on 28/06/2025 by Michael

VI Lenin – with friends

VI Lenin and friends in Family Park – Almaty – Kazakhstan

When the capitalist authorities of Almaty decided to relegate the monuments of Socialism to the sidelines they didn’t do as they did in Moscow – where a part of a park by the river was set aside for the Muzeon Art Park – or in Sofia – where the Museum of Socialist Art was established. No, the Kazakhs decided to use the space behind a popular cinema in the city’s biggest public park.

VI Lenin

This is one of the bigger remaining examples of Lenin statues. It bears some similarity with that which is in the small, narrow park behind the Semey Hotel in Semiplatinsk, to the north east of Almaty. There’s a similarity in size and also in the manner in which Vladimir Ilyich is presented. He is standing and is obviously in the course of giving a speech out in the open, in the winter – VI Lenin was renown for going to the workers and making his arguments at factory gates – as he is wearing a large overcoat over his suit. What is significantly different between the two statues is that in Almaty he has carelessly thrown his overcoat off his right shoulder and the edge of it is brushing against the ground. Also, this statue has been subjected to the ‘golden treatment’ and it is now this unnatural colour, not, I’m sure, as it was originally intended.

Maxim Gorky

There’s a very informal of the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. He is depicted standing outside in the street; dressed in a suit and overcoat (which is open); with his right hand on his hip and his pork pie hat hanging down from his relaxed left arm. It’s as if he’s waiting to meet someone. Whilst waiting someone attacked him with silver paint.

Pavel Mikhailovich Vinogradov

Also in the group is someone of whom I had not heard before. Pavel Vinogradov was a Bolshevik before the outbreak of the First World War. He was eventually arrested for his revolutionary work and sent to the front but he survived that and after the revolution and civil war worked as a Commissar responsible for education in Tashkent. In March 1919 he was a delegate to the 8th Congress of the RCP(b). He later lived, and then died in Alma-Ata (the old name for Almaty) in 1932. His bust sits upon a stone plinth where information of his background is displayed.

Dmitry Andreyevich Furmanov

Furmanov was a writer, revolutionary and also took part in military campaigns in the Civil War. After the Revolution he worked in the propaganda department in the Yaroslavl District before heading off to take an active, fighting, part in the Civil War on the Turkestan Front. He died of meningitis in 1926. His most famous written work (which was translated into English in 1940) was a novel about Vasily Chapaev, a Red Army Commander in the Civil War. His image is depicted in the uniform as an officer in the Red Army with his ornate signature carved into the marble of the plinth.

Mikhail Frunze

Frunze was a revolutionary who rose to prominence in the struggle against the White reactionary (and imperialist supported) forces during the Russian Civil War, eventually becoming commander of the entire Eastern Front. He later was elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and later to its Politburo. His influence in military matters was such that his name was given to the most respected Soviet Military Academy. He is depcited as if giving a speech at a podium, the marble plinth doubling as that podium. There’s a museum dedicated to Mikhail Frunze in the Kyrgyzstan capital, Bishkek.

Monument to the October Revolutionaries

This group sculpture was commissioned to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967 and was originally installed at the top end of the wide, tree-lined avenue that is Pushkin Street. (I don’t know when it was moved here.) It depicts revolutionaries of various ethnicities defending the Red Banner, demonstrating the multi-ethnic nature of the Socialist, October, Revolution.

Mikhail Kalinin

Facing VI Lenin, at the opposite end of the small avenue formed by young trees and wooden benches, stands a statue of Mikhail Kalinin. Kalinin was a long time Bolshevik, having been a Party member at the time of the 1905 Revolution. After the Revolution he became the first, titular Head of State, being Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, until his death in 1946.

There’s also a now empty platform but I have no idea what might have stood there.

How to get there;

The exit from Saryarka Metro station is right at the main entrance to the park. Go though the arch and keep to the right as you enter the park, passing the collection of military vehicles and the amusement park on your right. You’ll start to see the statues through the trees on your right hand side.

Location;

Located in a small spur of the northern edge of Family Park.

GPS;

43.227245 N

76.856266 E

Moscow Metro – Park Kultury – Line 5

Posted on 30/04/2023 by Michael

Park Kultury – Line 5 – by Alex ‘Florstein’ Fedorov

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery

Moscow Metro – Park Kultury – Line 5

Park Kultury (Парк культу́ры) is a Moscow Metro station in the Khamovniki District, Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya line (Circle line), between Oktyabrskaya and Kievskaya stations. Park Kultury opened on 1 January 1950.

Park Kultury – Line 5 – 02

The station is a standard pylon tri-vault, that was built in the flamboyance of the 1950s. Architect Igor Rozhin (who would then design the Luzhniki Stadium) applied a classic sport recreational theme to match the connotation with the ancient-Greek inspired transfer station. This includes large and imposing pylons faced with grey marble that came directly from Georgia. The floor is laid with black and grey granite tiles imitating a carpet. The walls are faced with white marble and labradorite. Decoratively the station contains 26 circular bas-reliefs by Iosif Rabinovich which depict sporting and other leisure activities of the Soviet youth.

Park Kultury – Line 5 – 03

The white vault of the station contains complex geometry which repeats that of the arches, and along the apex are suspended a set of intricate hexagonal chandeliers. Rozhin later admitted that he made a grave error in choosing to place the chandeliers amid the arches, not between them, that way he would have avoided giving the bas-reliefs a double shadow. At the end of the station is a massive marble wall with a small profile bas-relief of Maxim Gorky. The station was initially called ‘Park Kultury imeni Gorkogo’ (Парк Культуры имени Горького) but during the 1980 Moscow Olympics this was shortened as the Russian announcements were repeated in English and French during the games. After the Olympics, the shorter name was retained. The original long form appears in bronze letters next to Gorky’s image.

Park Kultury – Line 5 – 01

The station has a large imposing vestibule located on the corner of Komsomolsky Avenue and Garden Ring next to the Krymsky Bridge which was co-designed with Rozhin by Yelena Markova. Originally Rozhin planned for an extended arcade modelled after Russian trading rows, but this was rejected in favour of a more traditional design. The large building features a central dome, and inside has four bas-reliefs of sportsmen, and another one on its portico outside (all by G. Motovilov). The vestibule also doubles as a transfer to the Sokolnicheskaya line.

Park Kultury – Line 5 – 04

As the station was initially terminus, a set of reversal sidings exist in front of it, also from them runs a service branch to the Sokolnicheskaya line which was used initially as the primary way of transferring rolling stock to the station before the opening of the Koltsevaya line’s depot in 1954.

Park Kultury – Line 5 – 05

On 14 January 2011, Moscow Metro authorities announced their plans to close the station on 5 February 2011 so as to replace the ageing escalators. Park Kultury was supposed to open in December 2011 but the date was shifted to 30 March 2012 due to delays in shipping new escalators and opened the station on 28 April.

Text above from Wikipedia.

Park Kultury, Circle Line

Date of opening;

1st January 1950

Construction of the station;

deep, pier, three-span

Architect of the underground part;

I. Rozhin

Transit to Station Park Kultury of the Sokolnicheskaya Line

On the face of it, Park Kultury seems to be a dark station, particularly compared with bright mosaic and festive Kievskaya. The massive pylons are faced with very original marble from the Fominskoye Deposit of the Middle Ural, first used in the Moscow Metro. It is very decorative stone but of moderate and subdued shade. It has a streaky, spotted, and folded pattern of grey, dark grey, and greyish-yellow colours. The parts of walls with doors to technical facilities are faced with the same marble. The upper parts of the walls are faced with dark grey marble from the Ural Karkodinskoye Deposit with inserts of mat black marble of the Armenian Davalu Deposit, while the socles are decorated with deep black labradorite with sparkles of southern-night-sky colour from the Volynskoye Deposit.

The floor of the platform is covered with grey granite and that of the central hall is with black diabase. It is also decorated with six squares of white and black marble with meanders.

The station is illuminated with chandeliers in the form of large ‘Chinese lamps’ suspended from the ceiling and four torchieres of the Empire style. The small metal bas-relief of A. Gorky and inscription ‘Gorky Park of Culture and Rest’ made of metal letters are on the blind end of the station. The letters are regularly stolen. There are three long wooden benches with the legs and massive elbow-rests of white marble at the ends of each platform.

Although the station has restrained and chamber architecture, it is rather cosy, and the abundance of black marble in the decoration of the walls and ceiling does not spurn or make it cold. On the contrary, this creates the feeling of a warm summer evening in the Gorky Park.

The round marble medallions (sculptor S. Rabinovich) in metal frames are put in the niches of the pylons on the sides of the central hall and platforms tell how one can have a good time in the park. There are totally 26 medallions on 14 different subjects. It is needed to look over the platforms to observe all of them because the central hall has not all of them – no ‘Skiers’ and ‘Music lessons’.

Let’s go from the last carriage in the direction of station Kievskaya, reach the end of the platform, then transit to the other platform, and go backward.

‘Music lessons’ – A young girl violinist is before a music stand and a female teacher analyses what she has played.

‘Chamber concert’ – A female singer plays music by score. There are flowers at her legs.

‘Flower-growing’ – A little girl (with a pioneer tie and a basket in her hand] and a girl admire flowers.

‘Chess playing’ – A father and his son play chess. The mother watches them playing. The boy is engrossed in thoughts and the father moves pawn.

‘Aircraft modelling’ – Two boys, one with pliers in his hand, the other with a plane-table, admire the model they’ve just made.

‘Ballet’ – Ballerina dances on the stage. Flowers are at her legs.

‘Lovers’ – A young boy leans on a tree and, holding a book in his hands, reads poems to his girlfriend who sits in a wicker chair. Such chairs were in the alleys of the Gorky Park until the end of the 1960’s.

‘ Mode1ling’ – Two boys are carried away with the construction of a working model of a lifting crane.

‘Football-players’ – A sportsman stands with a ball in his hands.

‘Dances’ – A sailor waltzes with a girl. He puts his arm round her waist but keeps a distance. A girl gracefully holds the lap of her dress with her finger tips.

‘Folk dances’ – A man, sitting on a stump, plays accordion and two women sing and dance.

‘Skating rink’ – A young boy and girl are evidently quite skilled in skating based on fancy poses they have stiffened. Pay attention to their dress – the girl’s skirt and ribbons in her hair and the boy’s baggy trousers put in spats.

‘Tennis’ – A girl with a racket in her hand, a tennis-ball is at her legs.

‘Skiers’ – A man and a woman have prepared for skiing. The man ties up his boot, while the woman waits for him.

The long escalator serves for the transit to Station Park Kultury of the Sokolnicheskaya Line and exit to the city. It leads to the common ground entrance hall of both stations.

Text from Moscow Metro 1935-2005, p86/7

Location;

GPS:

55.7357°N

37.5915°E

Depth:

40 metres (130 ft)

Opened:

1 January 1950

More on the USSR

Moscow Metro – a Socialist Realist Art Gallery