The Soviet regime “employed” both Soviet writers and photographers to act as “engineers of the human soul.” The ideological system of Soviet cultural policy used photography in its development of a visually and emotionally compelling “Soviet legend” dominated by a framework of ideologized justice. Soviet ideologues had already outlined the functions that photography must fulfill before the start of World War II, when the editorial board of the influential magazine Sovetskoye foto Sovetskoye foto A trade journal published in Moscow meant to serve as an ideological tool for the education and “orientation” of photographers. Because there was no educational institution specifically tasked with the training of photographers, the ideological management and distribution of photographic images depended on the editorial boards of journals and magazines implementing various Communist Party and government programs. (Soviet Photo), reacting to Josef Stalin’s speech at the Seventeenth Communist Party (Victors’) Congress on the party’s leading role in the struggle for complete and final liberation from the so-called old world and the victory of the new Socialist society, created a new programmatic strategy in 1934: “We use photographic means to demonstrate how this victorious march to Socialism is progressing.” Margarita Matulytė, Nihil obstat: Lietuvos fotografija sovietmečiu, Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2011, p. 122.  Photojournalists were required to adhere to certain principles: specificity, timeliness, a portrayal of facts with “artistic correctness”, and purposeful presentation to millions of people. But what constituted “artistic correctness”? Photographers had to “develop” the ability to grasp and properly convey this concept, because it was judged to be Socialist Realist photography’s core value.

 

This new defining characteristic of “good” photography had to be obtained not by directly capturing a subject, guided by a moment’s fascination or the impulsive inspiration of the photographer, but through the deliberate arrangement of details and emphases based on the needs of political circumstances and context, i.e. by portraying a concentrated version of the essence of reality. This creative approach differed considerably from previous realist or ethnographic photography movements mainly in the photographer’s relationship with reality. In Socialist Realism, the photographer’s interaction with reality was so complicated (neither critical, nor social, nor representative) that the Soviet requirement to reflect an “ideal” Soviet world forced photographers to discover a completely new “stylistic language.” The style’s main point of reference became the “man of the future.”

 

According to Matulytė, one of the first to “discover” this style was Russian photographer Moisei Nappelbaum, who experienced the demand for a radically different artistic style as he composed portraits of Lenin and Stalin. One experience in particular helped complete the shaping of his approach. While on a visit to a factory, Nappelbaum asked a worker to pose for him, instructing him to hold a manufactured item in his hand while bending over, his legs firmly planted on the floor, every muscle tensed in labor. Nappelbaum was pleased with the photograph of his directed scene, but the factory’s director criticized the image, saying that the fact it portrayed did not correspond with reality: workers in Soviet factories didn’t carry what they produced—cranes did. This experience helped Nappelbaum to understand that, in order to depict life persuasively, one had to understand its essential elements so “one could differentiate between the random and the regular, and [thus] arrive at a summation.” Margarita Matulytė, Nihil obstat: Lietuvos fotografija sovietmečiu, Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2011, p. 148.

 

Ideas on how to “capture and record the characteristics of Soviet man, his development, and moral virtues” Albinas Žukauskas, „Keletas tarybinio žmogaus bruožų mūsų literatūroje“, Literatūra ir menas, 1948 07 19. could be drawn from “noble” examples of “engineers of the soul” present in post-war literature, such as Petras Cvirka’s collection of short stories Brolybės sėkla (Seeds of Brotherhood, 1947), Jonas Marcinkevičius’ play Kavoliūnai (1947), and a collection of poetry by Antanas Venclova titled Šalies jaunystė (The Youth of the Country, 1947). Archetypes of “strong characters” could be found in art: in the sculptural composition Keturi komunarai (The Four Communards, 1950) by Napoleonas Petrulis and Bronius Vyšniauskas, Jonas Mackonis’ canvas Kolūkio brigadininkas Jonas Mikalevičius (Collective Farm Brigade Leader Jonas Mikalevičius, 1952), and elsewhere. The total indoctrination of “artistic correctness” in all cultural sectors in the Stalinist years was evidenced by a photograph captured by Vytautas Vanagaitis, showing sculptors Petrulis and Vyšniauskas completing another composition, Pramonė ir statyba (Industry and Construction), on the Green Bridge in Vilnius. The image gives a sense of the effort to stage a scene in the pursuit of emotional persuasion and “artistic correctness”, whose Socialist Realist style was imposed on both the composition being created by the sculptors as well as the photograph captured by the photographer.

 

The demands placed on photographers necessitated directorial talent. Because post-war reality often failed to correspond to the standards of Socialist perfection, that reality often had to be fabricated, something rather easily achieved through photographic means.  Staging of scenes, the use of montages and retouching, and photographs assembled from several frames—all of these became tools routinely used by Soviet photographers. Archives are full of examples of inconsistencies between the reality captured on a negative and the images eventually published in the press. One example is Kacenbergas’ photograph Tostas už Staliną (A Toast to Stalin), in which workers ceremoniously stand around a New Year’s Eve celebration table, raising their glasses in Stalin’s honor. Unfortunately, the original photograph exposed the poverty of everyday life at the time. Threadbare walls, meager banquet offerings, and an unsuitable full-length portrait of Stalin were, like all betraying evidence of poverty, retouched before the photo ever reached print.

 

A particularly common practice was the “pasting” of Stalin’s portrait into an image in an attempt to cement the leader’s cult and stage an ideologically correct scene. For example, Šiška’s photograph “Kauno audinių“ partinis biuras svarsto darbo kokybės klausimą (The “Kauno audiniai” Party Office Considers the Matter of Labor Quality, 1952), features a portrait of Stalin pasted into the image above the heads of council members. An analogous situation occurs in Fišeris’ photograph Tarybinės armijos kariai – taikiosios šalies sūnūs (Soviet Army Soldiers—Sons of a Peaceful Country, 1952) which, when being developed by the photographer, was judged to be missing only one essential element: Stalin’s portrait. In order to avoid any unnecessary questions or associations, portraits of leaders hanging on walls were retouched. For example, the original image of Fišeris’ photograph titled Petro Cvirkos kolektyvinio ūkio pirmininkas ir valdybos narė pasirašo sutartį su kolektyvinio ūkio „Gedimino pilis“ pirmininku (The Chairman and a Councilwoman of the Petras Cvirka Collective Farm Sign an Agreement with the Chairman of the “Gedimino pilis” Collective Farm, 1949), shows a rather faded family portait of a man and a woman. Fišeris was required to remove it as a relic of a bourgeois way of life. In truth, Fišeris’ efforts to meet the demands of Socialist Realism have resulted in interesting imagery. For example, in a photograph from a reportage piece about life in the small town of Saločiai (1950), Fišeris’ directorial talents produced more than just an ideologically corrected result. Today, we could call this photograph a metaphor for the creation of alternate reality. In the image, we see three generations of a family, dressed appropriately for a photograph, sitting around a table. All of them have turned their heads to a single source of light—not to the nearby window, but to a radio receiver hanging above it, undoubtedly listening to news being broadcast about idyllic Soviet life. The grandmother holds a newspaper in her hands, but not just any rag. A mirror reflects the front page of the paper back to the viewer, ensuring that we will see the banner head Tiesa (Pravda, or Truth). The staged image illustrates an entire system of “brainwashing”, though readers of the day were meant to understand the photo as the only correct model for their daily lives.

 

Another example is Fišeris’ photograph from the same series about the residents of Saločiai, in which a father and son are captured fixing a bicycle. It is not just any bicycle, however—it is a Latvian (from a “fraternal” republic) “Red Star”, used in the image as both a compositional and conceptual centerpiece. Today, walls covered with newsprint from Tiesa, as in this photo, would attest to the poverty of daily life, but Stalinist era readers were meant to grasp that such wallpaper reflected the dedication and loyalty of the residents of the home to the truths of Communism. The seemingly inadvertent presence of a small painting of the Mother Mary on the wall betrays the fact that such political views were obligatory. To be sure, this small detail was easily handled with some retouching.

 

Photographers were not always able to capture staged scenes with such skill and effectiveness. Sometimes, the artifice of an image is visible to the naked eye, but even this approach was more acceptable than any improvization that could provoke unnecessary questions or insinuations. Take, for example, Kacenbergas’ image, in which the family of the main character, K. Vanagas, senior accountant for the “Žibutė” company, poses to welcome him home. The father is shown returning with New Year’s gifts, an event that is meant to inspire great joy in the hearts of his family (particularly the children). But here the children are restrained, frozen in staged poses, much like their parents with artificial smiles on their faces.

 

There were images that no amount of retouching could “improve”, so they were stuffed away into desk drawers. A photograph by Fišeris, for example, capturing a train trip from Vilnius to Kaunas by one of the top workers at the “Liteksas” factory showed wind blowing snow through a broken train car window and thus could never be published and possibly muddle the carefully crafted image of a perfect alternate reality. And yet, the photo depicted the same kind of train pictured in Josifas Šapiras’ image Keleiviai dyzeliniame traukinyje (Passengers on a Diesel Train, 1949). Everything in the alternate reality was to be beautiful, optimistic, progressive, and abundant: from the piles of canned fish in a factory, to the number of radiators on a production line, to the size of the crowds demonstrating at a May Day rally. But photographers’ negatives and the images never used in the press reveal the true reality, one in which store shelves were dismally bare and where Soviet Lithuanian citizens walked the streets with tired faces, clad in threadbare, quilted “vatynki” coats.

 

A rare exception were images captured by Alytus photographer Vytautas Stanionis and later published in Tarybinė Dzūkija (Soviet Dzūkija), a newspaper circulating in southern Lithuania. The images portrayed the same scenes from Soviet life, the average citizens’ accomplishments and commemorations, but something was a bit different—they lacked the staged pathos of other photographs. Stanionis observed events with an impartial, even “incidental” eye, thereby turning the entire event into something meaningless. According to researcher Agnė Narušytė, “the image seemed to bow to the regime, but it was also almost accidental, disrupting Soviet man’s optimistic serenity. Not overtly, since that was not permissible—but in the mind of the viewer.” Agnė Narušytė, „Tas ir ne tas pokaris: Vytauto Stanionio fotografijų albumas“, 7 meno dienos, 2003 06 06.

 

The press was the greatest distributor of the alternate reality—given its circulation, the ability to respond quickly to current events, and because of easy access. But there were also other means associated with photography—chiefly through albums and exhibitions. An illustrated propaganda book about Lithuania was being readied for publication in the first year of Soviet rule, but the Nazi occupation ended the project. The first Soviet photography album, Tarybų Lietuva (Soviet Lithuania), was eventually published only in 1950. The publication was much anticipated and was dedicated to the tenth anniversary of Soviet rule in Lithuania. The album included images taken by the country’s first Soviet photographers—Ilja Fišeris, Povilas Karpavičius, Judelis Kacenbergas, Chanonas Levinas, Michailas Rebis and others—that “demonstrated” Soviet victory and achievements in all aspects of life. Pompously “staged” photographs were combined with Lithuanian ethnographic symbols and Soviet heraldry.

 

Another important tool for the dissemination of Soviet ideology operated through the country’s museums. Museums in Vilnius established by the independent, pre-war Lithuania or the Polish occupational government were reorganized in 1940 and 1941, but the Soviets established new museums in an effort to reach new audiences, including in Šakiai, Vilkaviškis, Utena, Kaišiadorys, Švenčionys, Kupiškis, Kaunas, and Vilnius. Thirty museums were already in existence by 1953. To be sure, their purpose was not so much to function as museums, but rather as tools of propaganda. Previous exhibits were reviewed and those deemed unnecessary were removed. The greater portion of newly assembled exhibit pieces focused on illustrating Soviet reality through newspaper clippings, citations, slogans, and photographs. Large display stands with arrangements of texts and photographs dictated by Communist Party and government programs became the popular norm. Tours were organized to view the new exhibits, particularly for students, for whom materials on display in a museum became an important source of knowledge, since textbooks about the “new history” had yet to be issued.

 

Operational control over museums was extremely strict and exhibition standards were uniform across the Soviet Union. Ideological content had to be reflected unambiguously to prevent any questions arising in the minds of museum goers. “Violations” resulted in public reprimand. In 1950, for example, the Tiesa newspaper issued a harsh critique of an exhibition at the Regional Folklore Museum in Biržai:

 

 

Occasional photography exhibitions were organized immediately after the war, but their purpose was ideological and political: to expose the crimes committed under the fascist occupation and to indoctrinate society with the proper understanding of the assistance provided by Stalin and the “return of justice.” Exhibitions aiming to present the photographic process as its own artistic genre did not exist, since neither “art for art’s sake” nor “experimentation for experiment’s sake” was tolerated. The first exhibition to break the ice in this regard was a showing of color photographs by Karpavičius in 1953 (with the appearance that same year of an album of the photographer’s work—the first to be published in color).