At all stages of cultural construction in our country, a huge role belongs to the Soviet state, which, in accordance with its cultural and educational function, contributed to the creation of a new, socialist culture and gave this process a truly communist orientation. This goal was served by special state bodies for the management of culture, as well as the introduction of a planned beginning in all its branches, centralized distribution of public funds, and the adoption by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government of decisions and resolutions summarizing the experience of cultural construction. In the conditions of the pre-war years, the Communist Party, through the organization of special state bodies for directing the arts and the struggle to improve their practical activities, carried out a further "rise in the culture and communist consciousness of the working people" .1
A number of major works are devoted to the history of cultural construction in the USSR, both generalizing and on individual issues. The activities of state bodies that manage this process are much less studied. The exceptions are articles on the organization and some aspects of the activities of the first Soviet state cultural management body, the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR, 2 as well as works on the history of state institutions , 3 which briefly describe the Soviet state cultural management bodies. From the whole variety of issues of state cultural management, this article touches only on those that relate to the organization and first stage of the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, created by the decision of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of January 17, 1936 in connection with the need to better meet the needs of the population in the field of art and " unite the whole business of managing the development of the arts in the USSR " 4 .
The Committee for the Arts was the first state body
1 "The CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee". Ed. 8-E. T. 5. Moscow, 1971, p. 365.
2 I. S. Smirnov, V. I. Lenin and the leadership of national education. "V. I. Lenin and problems of public education", Moscow, 1961; M. B. Keirim-Markus. State Commission for Education (1917-1918). "History of the USSR", 1969, N 6; E. A. Shulepova. Reorganization of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR in 1933-1936. Collection of articles by postgraduates and applicants of the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Part II. Moscow, 1973, etc.
3 A. A. Nelidov. Istoriya gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdeniy SSSR [History of State Institutions of the USSR, 1917-1936]. Moscow, 1962; V. A. Tsikulin. Istoriya gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdeniy SSSR [History of state Institutions of the USSR, 1936-1965]. Moscow, 1966; T. P. Korzhikhina. The history and present organization of the state institutions of the USSR. 1917 - 1972 M. 1974.
4 "Collection of Laws and Orders of the Workers 'and Peasants' Government of the USSR", 1936, No. 5, Article 40.
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to guide the arts across the country. His work is associated with significant success in the development of Soviet art. But its role in the complex process of organizing and directing artistic life in the USSR, as well as various types of multinational Soviet art, is not yet covered by numerous publications on the history of Soviet theater, music, fine arts, etc. Meanwhile, without studying and analyzing the system of government bodies and the practical activities of each of them, it is impossible to fully find out and understand the patterns of development of Soviet culture as a whole and its individual branches. When analyzing the practical activities of individual parts of the state apparatus, researchers dealing with problems of state history of the USSR usually highlight such issues as the history of their creation, competence, functions, forms and methods of work, personnel policy, etc. It is these aspects that will be discussed in the article when covering the activities of the Committee for Arts in the pre-war years.
In the mid-1930s, socialism was largely built in our country under the leadership of the Communist Party, and the political, socio - economic, and cultural prerequisites for completing the construction of a socialist society were created. By this time, the country already had a certain cadre of specialists for all branches of the national economy, culture and management, who, by their education and experience, met the ever-increasing requirements for the growth of their competence. The process of forming a new Soviet intelligentsia from representatives of the working class and collective farm peasantry was successfully developing.
In the conditions when the pathos of labor enthusiasm transformed our Homeland, the economic and cultural potential of the USSR grew at an unprecedented pace, the socialist state continued to improve the management of all areas of cultural construction. The People's Commissariat of Education, as organs of a national rather than a union scale, could no longer cover all branches of culture. For example, at the beginning of the second five-year plan, the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR alone was responsible for 100 thousand general education schools, about 19 thousand libraries, more than 30 thousand club institutions, more than 19 thousand film installations, 354 theaters and a number of other cultural institutions .5 Therefore, in the first half of the 1930s, the process of transferring certain powers of the People's Commissariat of Education to other departments and institutions, which began in the 1920s, was intensively continued. All-Union state bodies of centralized management of cultural construction in separate branches began to appear. One of them was the All-Union Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. It began its activity when all types of Soviet art were successfully developing on the basis of communist ideology in a close, organic relationship. The Soviet state expanded the material basis of this process by increasing allocations for cultural needs. If at the beginning of 1933 more than 100 million rubles were allocated for the development of art, then in 1937 - about 400 million rubles .6
The resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on the formation of the Committee for Arts, as well as the later adopted Regulations on it, clearly defined its main tasks. He was supposed to directly manage the art institutions of union significance 7, review and approve their repertoire, direct and control the dey-
5 "Cultural construction in the USSR". Statistical collection. Moscow, 1940, p. 10, 40.
6 Ibid., p. 31.
7 The exception was cinematography, which was set apart in 1937 as an independent branch of management (see Sobranie razrektsii Govt. of the USSR, 1938, No. 13, Article 81).
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activity and repertoire of artistic and entertainment enterprises of republican and local subordination. His duties included reviewing and approving monument projects, organizing exhibitions, competitions, and Olympiads, providing methodological guidance and assistance to amateur artists, and overseeing the activities of public organizations that unite workers in various branches of art. The Committee was called upon to train, record and distribute personnel for various branches of the arts, participate in the work of awarding honorary titles to art workers, approve the charters, structure, and staff of subordinate art institutions, etc .8 The Committee, without regulating the creative process of directors, actors, and artists, was supposed to direct first of all the activities of institutions and enterprises where this creative process took place. At the same time, it was necessary to show maximum attention and care to artists and their talent. In such a highly emotional sphere as artistic creation, the committee was to be guided by Lenin's instructions that "in this matter it is absolutely necessary to provide greater scope for personal initiative, individual inclinations, freedom of thought and imagination, form and content." 9 Representatives of all types of art were given the freedom to choose the genre and form of the work, style, individual creative forms and aspirations. At the same time, the ideological and political level of all work in the field of art was determined by the consistent implementation of Lenin's principle of partisanship of art. In a well-known conversation with K. Zetkin, Lenin said: "Every artist and everyone who considers himself such claims the right to create freely, according to his ideal. ...But, of course, we are Communists. We can't just sit back and let chaos spread as it pleases. We must strive to guide this development with a clear mind, so that we can shape and determine its results. " 10
The specific nature of the Committee for the Arts and the importance of its tasks required a certain organization of its staff. It was built on the basis of industry, the main structural divisions were departments: theaters, music institutions, fine arts, circuses, educational institutions, etc. The Committee was created as a union-republican body. Therefore, under the Council of People's Commissars of the Union and Autonomous Republics, special departments for arts were formed, and under the executive committees of regional, regional, and city councils (in large cities) Soviets of Workers ' Deputies - arts departments. The working apparatus of local authorities was built depending on the nature and scope of work. While the Department of Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, which had a very extensive network of art institutions and enterprises, had special departments of theater, fine arts, etc., in a number of other republican departments, general departments of entertainment enterprises were created, which had a staff of inspectors for various types of art. In turn, in regional and city departments, inspectors were singled out, who relied in their practical activities on local cadres of museums and folk art houses. 11 In total, at the beginning of the committee's activity, there were 70 subordinate local departments and departments for the management of art12 . Through them, the management of local art institutions was carried out.
8 See NW OF the USSR, 1936, No. 5, Article 40; SP of the USSR, 1939, No. 53, Article 458.
9 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 12, p. 101.
10 "Memories of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin". Vol. 5. Moscow, 1970, p. 13.
11 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 203, ll. 6-9.
12 Ibid., d. 266, l. 25.
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The creation of an extensive network of art management bodies, built on the principle of democratic centralism, was designed to ensure coordinated work on the development of art on a national scale and to involve broad segments of the population in it. 657 theaters, about 30 thousand movie installations, more than 450 different educational institutions, a huge number of musical groups, circuses, art museums and other institutions were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Committee for the Arts .13 The management of such an extensive network of art institutions depended entirely on what organizational forms the committee's activities would take, how this network would develop and improve, and how the problem of personnel would be solved.
One of the tasks of the committee was to expand the creative exchange between the peoples of the Soviet Union in the field of art for the development of socialist culture on the basis of the creative capabilities of all the peoples of the USSR. The first chairman of the Committee for Arts Affairs P. M. Kerzhentsev said: "If you look at the creativity of the Soviet Union in the field of dance, song, art craft, if you recall the coinage of silver in the Caucasus, artistic carpets of Transcaucasia or Tajikistan, folk dances of Uzbekistan or the peoples of the Caucasus, you can immediately imagine the exceptional wealth of creative opportunities that we have" 14 . It is no coincidence that the committee began its work by showing the achievements of Soviet multinational art. Under his leadership, in the pre-war years, decades of national art of a number of union republics were prepared and held in Moscow: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Buryatia. These decades were a new form of creative communication between representatives of multinational Soviet art. Already the first art reviews of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, held in the spring of 1936, showed what success Soviet national art had achieved during the years of Soviet power, and demonstrated the unity of Soviet art as the art of socialist realism. The first decades proved convincingly that socialist art must and will speak many languages, that it is natural and necessary.
In its organizational and practical work, the committee focused on providing specific assistance to the country's art institutions. Thus, in the process of preparing for the first decade of Buryat art, the committee sent a group of creative workers to the autonomous republic, including such figures of Soviet art as I. A. Moiseev, I. M. Tumanov and others. In a short period of time, a musical theater was created in the republic with the support of the committee, which showed the first national opera "Enkhe Bulat Bator" and two musical dramas during the decade. In the course of preparing the decades, many Russian artists have forever linked their lives and works with the national art of the Union republics. For example, such composers as E. G. Brusilovsky, A. F. Kozlovsky, became the authors of a large number of works on Kazakh and Uzbek themes, educators of national composers.
The decades contributed to the cultural exchange and rapprochement of the Soviet peoples, which was caused by the needs of their social, including artistic, development and mutual enrichment. This fully corresponded to the Marxist idea that "every nation can and should learn from others." 15 As a result of the decades, the ideological and artistic growth of the Soviet national monuments took place.
13 "Cultural construction in the USSR". Statistical Collection, Moscow, 1956, p. 293, 300; TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 411, l. 5.
14 "Soviet Theater", 1936, N 3, p. 3.
15 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 23, p. 10.
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art institutions. The Decades have become a truly creative laboratory for artists of various types of art.
Various exhibitions, contests and creative conferences prepared and held by the committee and its local bodies were of great importance in solving the problems of art development. In the second half of the 1930s, All-Union reviews of children's theaters, orchestras of folk instruments, collective and state farm theaters, opera and ballet artists, variety shows, as well as the All-Union conference of directors, etc. were held. These events received a great response from the country's artistic community. The greatest attention, in particular, was drawn to the All-Union review of creative youth of the theater. It was organized in the autumn of 1939 by the committee's theater department and covered over 300 theater groups. The show was attended by more than 3 thousand young artists, directors, artists 16 . Decades, reviews, competitions, and conferences responded to various creative requests, gave an assessment of Soviet drama and repertoire, drew attention to the use of young creative forces in art institutions, and so on. During the preparation and conduct of decades, screenings, and competitions, the committee learned more about specific creative teams, individual art institutions, their personnel, repertoire, creative search, and plans.
The Committee, as an all-union organization designed to monitor the development of art not only in the center, but also in the field, it was important to establish a live connection with the network of art institutions in the country, so that directly, and not only on the basis of reports from local authorities, it could observe the activities of numerous art institutions. At the first stage of the committee's work, special inspection groups organized along administrative-territorial lines were called upon to fulfill this task in the current system of art management .17 Inspection in the committee, as in other State cultural management bodies, has become an essential method of guiding local authorities and the growing network of art institutions. Inspections provided a concrete picture of the state of work of art bodies and institutions, identified the need to provide them with organizational and creative assistance, and played an important role in the executive and administrative activities of the committee. A series of inspections conducted in 1936 and 1937 showed the growing mastery of local art institutions and their increasing role in expanding cultural and educational work among the masses.
At the same time, inspections have shown that in some regions and cities of the country, art institutions are divided and sometimes look like a kind of "farmstead". Local creative forces were not fully used everywhere, and the best bands of the country were not involved in tours. In order to improve the service of the periphery, on October 11, 1938, the committee made a decision "On the organization of the All-Union Concert and Variety Touring Association" 18. Its creation contributed to the establishment of planned concert and tour activities of the country's leading collectives, their systematic maintenance of the main industrial regions of the USSR, systematic display of the best achievements of Soviet Art, and organization of mutual exchange between the creative collectives of the republics. In 1939, the concert and touring association gave more than 18 thousand concerts, including about 10 thousand on the periphery, and in 1940-30 thousand concerts, including
16 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 704, l. 12.
17 Ibid., d. 162, l. 31.
18 "Bulletin of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR", 1938, N 19-20, p. 12.
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about 24 thousand on the periphery 19 . The creation of the All-Union Concert and Variety Touring Association contributed to the implementation of the decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of October 21, 1938 on improving cultural services for workers and employees of the coal industry .20 This decision gave the Departments of Arts of the RSFSR, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan the task of creating new and strengthening existing art groups to serve workers and employees of the country's coal basins. In order to improve the service of various regions of the USSR by leading art groups, the committee in 1938 first developed and successfully implemented a unified state plan for summer tours in the pre-war years. This put an end to the haphazardness that had existed for many years in the summer trips of creative teams and the expenditure of public funds.
For the management of art institutions and their local management bodies, brigade surveys were of some importance, which were regularly conducted by the committee starting in 1938. By this time, its inspection had been restructured along industry lines. As a rule, instead of individual inspectors, special teams-commissions consisting of senior employees of the committee, employees of its inspection and qualified creative workers-began to go to the field. Based on the results of the survey, these teams directly contacted local party and Soviet bodies, informing them of their findings regarding the work of local art institutions. On a number of such surveys, special decisions were made by local party and Soviet bodies, and extended meetings were held in the committee itself. They discussed, for example, the results of inspections of the art departments of Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.
The materials obtained as a result of inspections of local art management bodies testified in general to the progressive development of all types of art. The decisions taken as a result of the survey by local party and Soviet bodies, as well as by the committee itself, indicated, along with individual shortcomings inherent in the work of each particular department, general tasks that would contribute to the rise of Soviet art as a whole. First of all, it was noted the need to create highly artistic works on current Soviet themes, develop and improve the network of art institutions and their establishment, improve the training of young specialists on the basis of expanding the network of local educational institutions and more rational distribution of personnel.
Research on the state of affairs in various departments and departments of the committee's system helped it to improve and develop the network of art institutions in accordance with the needs of the country. Thus, an inspection of the Department of Arts of the Far East in December 1938 showed that the rapid growth of the national economy of this region, as well as the growth of cultural needs of workers, required an increase in the number of theaters, as well as a number of other art institutions. Therefore, already in December 1938, according to the order of the committee, measures were taken to conduct long tours of the best bands of the Russian Federation in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky Territories, and the organization of a studio theater in Vladivostok was started .21 Based on the results of the survey of the Far East and other regions of the country
19 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 704, l. 26.
20 SP USSR, 1938, N 40, article 279.
21 "Bulletin of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR", 1939, N 1-2, p. 3.
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The committee submits proposals for the improvement and development of the network of art institutions to the central party and Soviet bodies. Only with their help and direct support did he manage to practically solve organizational issues of art management, and promptly assist in the development of a network of local art institutions. For example, according to the decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), in 1939 funds were allocated for the restoration of the theater in Petropavlovsk - Kamchatsky (500 thousand rubles), projects are being drawn up for the construction of theaters in Khabarovsk for 1 thousand seats, Komsomolsk-on-Amur-for 1 thousand seats, Birobidzhan-for 800 seats 22 . Similar decisions were made by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Voronezh Region, Bashkir ASSR, Armenian SSR, etc. In the pre-war years, these and a number of other decisions of the party and Government on the development of a network of art institutions were successfully implemented by the committee.
The practical work of the committee on the improvement and development of the network of art institutions has led to the creation of many new state collectives. So, already in 1936, with the participation of the committee, the largest musical groups of the country were born - the State Symphony Orchestra, the State Orchestra of Folk Instruments, whose skills are still loved and appreciated by the audience in our country and abroad. In 1938, the State Opera Ensemble, the State Jazz Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Choir, and others were created. From year to year, the number of musical, circus, and theater groups grew in the country, including collective-farm and state-farm theaters designed to serve the masses more widely. The network of philharmonic halls and art museums increased, numerous special and thematic exhibitions of works of fine art were opened, and their attendance grew rapidly. In the first year of the third five-year plan alone, 83 new theaters were opened, more than half of them in national republics. In 1938, the network of musical groups increased from 161 to 191. 22 philharmonic societies were re-opened, 14 of them in national republics .23 In 1940, 60 more theaters were opened in the Union republics .24 In total, by the beginning of 1941, 908 theaters, 86 circuses, 115 art museums and a number of other art institutions were functioning in the committee's system25 . Behind these figures lie serious internal processes of rapid development of all types of multinational Soviet art.
Theater, music, circus, and visual arts grew not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Under the leadership of the committee, opportunities were created to achieve unity of ideological positions, unity of creative method in art, which was based on the principle of partisanship. This unity, in turn, proved to be the basis of a new variety of searches, unprecedented in their type, aimed at a more complete, consistent and vivid embodiment of the new socialist reality by artistic means. The most important achievement of the Soviet art of the pre-war period was the creation of such monumental works in the field of art as performances based on the plays of A. E. Korneychuk, N. F. Pogodin, K. A. Trenev and other playwrights, musical works by S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, A. I. Khachaturian, D. B. Kabalevsky and other composers, numerous paintings by artists, dedicated to Soviet reality. Main images, pops-
22 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 9, d. 480, l. 47.
23 Ibid., d. 390, ll. 5, 10; d. 395, l. 2.
24 Ibid., d. 651, l. 1.
25 "Cultural construction in the USSR", 1956, pp. 286, 293, 312.
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images of ordinary people, heroes of labor, creators of a new life became the most popular Soviet art in these years. A great deal was done to recreate the image of V. I. Lenin by all kinds of art. Truthfully reflecting reality in its revolutionary development, Soviet art became an increasingly powerful tool for communist education.
The Committee on Arts Affairs sought to closely link the ideological and creative solution of works of art culture with the tasks of patriotic education of workers by means of art. This was one of the most important aspects of the committee's work. The systematic ideological, educational, and patriotic work carried out in the country by various artistic means contributed to the formation of a new, socialist consciousness among the Soviet people, which was fully manifested in the terrible years of the Great Patriotic War.
As the committee expanded its network of art institutions, it also did a lot of work to consolidate creative groups in certain groups, i.e., to establish them. This work was of great practical and artistic significance, especially for theaters. By the end of the second five-year plan, there was a practice in which peripheral theaters concluded annual individual employment contracts with actors, which led to seasonality in the use of creative forces, to inflated wages and unsystematic spending of its funds, and prevented the correct accounting and distribution of creative personnel. Only in Moscow annually gathered from 3 to 5 thousand actors in order to get a new engagement 26 . The committee's decision to establish theaters in April 1938 promoted the establishment of each peripheral theater group as a permanent unit .27 The creation of permanent troupes in peripheral cities freed theaters from solving unnecessary organizational issues that inevitably arose in connection with the annual renewal of the creative staff, and allowed local departments for the arts to more specifically manage theatrical activities. Without a permanent creative team, words about a single method, artistic solidity, and the creative profile of theaters inevitably remained an empty phrase. The artistic director of the Voronezh Regional Theater, Honored Artist of the Republic V. Engel-Kron, wrote about the significance of this event:: "Once and for all, there is a limit to actors' wanderings from theater to theater, each of us, stage workers, becomes the builder of our own theater, connecting our creative life with the life of this particular theater. " 28
Under the direct supervision of the committee, stationing was widely deployed throughout the country. On the ground, it was held with the active support of local party and Soviet bodies. In the Leningrad Region, for example, on the initiative of A. A. Zhdanov, the party and Soviet authorities began to establish theaters in such cities as Novgorod, Pskov, Borovichi, etc. In 1938 alone, the number of established theaters reached 401, or more than half of the existing ones in the country29 . Stationization led to the opening of new philharmonic halls in republican and regional centers, as well as in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic Republics and Moldova. In 1940, on the initiative of the committee, national and regional philharmonic societies were established in Chisinau, Kaunas, Lviv and other cities.-
26 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 426, l. 13.
27 " Bulletin of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars. USSR", 1938, n. 7-8. p. 2.
28 "Iskusstvo i Zhizn", 1938, N 11-12, p. 64.
29 "Cultural construction in the USSR", 1956, p. 293.
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dah. In these philharmonic societies, along with creative groups that performed under the All-Union Concert and Touring Association, permanent creative groups of various genres began to function. The Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, opened in October 1940 in Moscow, became a hospital for leading state ensembles.
In the pre-war years, the process of recruiting and attaching permanent circus troupes to specific circuses took on a wide scale. This work was carried out by special economic and creative associations formed as part of the Management of circuses. The creation of such independent units as the Association of Urban Circuses, the Association of Collective-Farm and State-farm Circuses, the Bureau for Servicing Small Stage Venues, etc., on the one hand, brought the working apparatus of the committee closer to the production and creative work of circuses, and on the other hand, in practice helped to consolidate circus troupes in a certain creative composition.
The establishment of theaters, circuses, and musical groups, which was successfully carried out by the committee during the third five-year plan, contributed to the establishment of systematic work in the work of art institutions, the improvement of their repertoire, and the improvement of services to the broad working masses.
Art groups presented to the Soviet audience the best works of their repertoire, in the creation of which the Committee for Arts Affairs played an active role from the first days of its activity. He introduced the practice of considering the repertoire plans of theaters of union significance, large regional theaters and musical groups. Similar work was carried out by local authorities in relation to the repertoire of art institutions under their jurisdiction. This had a particularly beneficial effect on the theater repertoire, in which the Soviet play began to occupy an increasingly leading place. For example, N. F. Pogodin's plays " The Man with the Gun "and A. N. Arbuzov's" Tanya " were translated into many languages of the peoples of our country, and their production was carried out in republican and regional theaters.
Considering that art can and should be the object of forecasting and planning, the committee in July 1939 ordered its local authorities, together with the unions of writers, composers and leading creative workers, to develop long-term plans for the creation of a new drama, opera and ballet repertoire, as well as to translate the best Soviet and classical plays .30 The long-term planning of the repertoire, which the committee undertook to implement, the planned development of the entire system of art institutions and their concert and tour activities, and, finally, the planned training of young specialists were an important guarantee of the successful work of the committee to guide the development of Soviet art in the pre-war years.
From the very first days of its activity, the Committee paid close attention to the issues of training and placement of personnel. Future ministers of art, as a rule, passed the first stage of professional training in educational institutions of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkiv, Tbilisi and other cultural centers of the country. A special role was played, in particular, by the Lunacharsky Moscow State Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS), where, under the leadership of the committee, the practice of training students in national workshops became widespread in the pre-war years. In the second half of the 1930s, the following national workshops operated::
30 "Bulletin of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR", 1939, N 18-19, p. 11.
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Kazakh, Kalmyk, Turkmen, Ossetian, Adyghe, Karakalpak, Yakut, etc. Young people who came from the republics studied under such famous masters of the Moscow Art Theater school as V. Ya. Stanitsyn, I. Ya. Sudakov, O. I. Pyzhova, I. M. Rayevsky and others. In the pre-war years, about 300 young actors were trained from the national workshops of GITIS .31 This is how the foundation of the country's national theaters was created. The Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories, as well as the Moscow and Leningrad Choreographic Schools, did the same work in relation to the training of national cadres.
Along with the development of national studios and workshops, the committee also sought to improve the network of art educational institutions. It is known that in the first half of the 1930s, training of future specialists was widely practiced directly at music, drama and other theater groups. However, such training suffered from one-sidedness and narrowness. Therefore, the committee sharply limited the number of theaters that were allowed to train actors on the rights of secondary special schools and universities. These theaters primarily included such leading ones as the Maly Theater, the Moscow Art Theater, and others. For the first time, at the beginning of the third five-year plan, teaching of socio-economic subjects was introduced in art universities. All the educational and creative work of universities, as well as secondary specialized schools and schools was seriously rebuilt. The attention of young people was directed to a more in-depth and systematic mastery of the skill. The Committee sought to strengthen the management of educational institutions with the best creative staff. People's Artist of the USSR L. M. Leonidov was appointed artistic director of GITIS, People's Artist of the USSR A. A. Horava is the artistic director of the Theater Institute in Tbilisi, People's Artist of the RSFSR A. B. Goldenweiser is the director of the Moscow Conservatory, and so on.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the network of art educational institutions had grown significantly. It consisted of 577 educational institutions (including 24 universities) with 125 thousand students .32 In 1940, only the higher educational institutions of the committee, together with postgraduate studies, gave the country more than 1 thousand specialists, which is one third more than the graduation rate in 193933 . With young specialists, the committee primarily strengthened local art institutions, as well as the working apparatus of its system.
The intelligentsia, including the creative intelligentsia, acting not only as an object, but also as a subject of the cultural revolution, in the pre-war years was an active force in the creation and dissemination of spiritual values, in the communist education of the working masses. The growth of its cadres at that time had great social consequences, being one of the prerequisites for successful cultural construction and, in particular, the development of multinational Soviet art and its education by means of the working masses. That is why the role of the Committee for Arts is so important and indisputable as a guide to the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet State in the field of culture. According to the census of 1939, there were over 57,000 directors and actors in the USSR, over 44,000 composers, conductors, musicians, and about 33,000 artists and sculptors .34 Having an internationalist worldview, having absorbed the best national features, this army of fighters of the cultural front became a serious assistant to the party and the state in carrying out cultural and educational work.
31 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 827, l. 21.
32 Ibid., 704, p. 46.
33 Ibid., d. 827, l. 105.
34" Sovetskaya istoricheskaya entsiklopediya " [Soviet Historical Encyclopedia], vol. 6, Moscow, 1965, p. 119.
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Expanding the network of art institutions and increasing the training of personnel for it, the committee in the pre-war years developed and implemented a number of regulations concerning the activities of art institutions, conditions and remuneration of art workers, etc. These acts are highly humane and express the concern of the party and the State for Soviet actors, directors, artists and other employees of theatrical and entertainment enterprises.
The tasks of progressive development of Soviet art required further improvement of the professional level of the state administration apparatus. That is why, as an advisory body under the committee, the Art Council was established in 1939, consisting of sections: theater and drama, music, and fine arts. The personal composition of the Council was approved by the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of March 4, 193935 . In its first composition, the leading figures of Soviet art worked: V. V. Barsova, A.M. Gerasimov, R. M. Glier, I. E. Grabar, I. O. Dunaevsky, S. M. Mikhoels, V. I. Mukhina, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, N. F. Pogodin, S. A. Samosud, A. N. Tolstoy, K. A. Trenev et al. The creation of such a representative Artistic Council under the committee contributed to solving many creative tasks at the highest professional level.
The qualified staff (on the eve of the war, it consisted of 313 people, 113 of them with higher and incomplete higher education, and about 40% of party members and Komsomol members), which the committee had from the first days of its existence, concentrated around itself the leading creative forces of the country. This was achieved not only by uniting an artistic asset around the committee, but also by coordinating its work with the activities of creative unions and societies. The Committee drew on the experience and knowledge of the Union of Soviet Writers, the Union of Soviet Composers, the All-Russian Theater Society, and others. He practiced placing government orders in the field of drama, music, and fine arts among the members of these creative associations. Such events as holding joint meetings, conferences, and visiting creative plenums to discuss the most pressing problems of Soviet art were also an effective form of coordinating the committee's activities with the work of creative unions. For example, the All-Union Repertory Meeting held by the committee in 1937 together with the Playwrights ' section of the SSP was very fruitful.
The Committee took an active part in the work of the literary, musical, artistic and other foundations of creative associations; its leaders were members of the councils and sections of creative unions. Thus, along with leading actors and directors, the heads of the committee were also members of the WTO Council. With the support of the WTO Committee in the pre-war years, it became a kind of consulting creative center, posing and developing pressing issues of the development of the Soviet theater. The Theater Society, together with the committee, organized creative trips to the periphery of the most qualified critics, theater critics and other specialists. Relying on public unions in the field of literature and art, the committee directed the experience and knowledge of leading creative workers to solve important problems in the development of Soviet art. At the same time, he provided daily assistance to the creative unions themselves in their work to improve the level of drama, acting and stage skills, and the quality of works of music and fine art. In such a close collaboration, the relationship between creative communities was strengthened.-
35 "Bulletin of the Committee for Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR", 1939, No. 7, p. 2.
36 TsGALI, f. 962, op. 3, d. 704, l. 5.
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cooperation with public authorities in the field of art.
Getting acquainted with the pre-war period in the history of Soviet art, when the Committee for Arts Affairs was established and successfully started its work, we can conclude that its daily practical activities laid the foundations for the formation and improvement of the Soviet art management system throughout the country. The first two years of his work were a period of formation and search for the most perfect organizational forms and methods of managing individual art forms. Since 1938, the committee has taken useful steps to improve and develop the network of art institutions and their repertoire, to organize concert and tour activities of creative groups and to better serve the broad working masses. The Committee proved to be a state governing body that performed the growing cultural and educational function of the socialist state. However, the new all-Union state management body in the field of art could not then solve all the problems of managing this industry. Outside the sphere of its influence, amateur art has practically remained, and a more advanced system of training highly qualified specialists for all types of Soviet art has not been developed. The committee also demanded increased attention to planning issues, including long-term planning, in the field of art, taking into account the growth of the country's population and the needs of the working masses.
At the same time, the practical experience of the committee's work has shown that specialized art management on a national scale is fully justified, contributing to the fullest satisfaction of the growing cultural needs of socialist society. The principle of state leadership of artistic life on the basis of the partisanship of art opened up for all types of artistic creativity the only fruitful prospect of their development in line with socialist realism. The functions of the committee, the forms and main directions of its activities convincingly refute the fictions of bourgeois propaganda that Soviet art culture is a victim of bureaucratic administration. With the victory of socialism in our country, State leadership in the organization and management of the arts became increasingly important. It was a crucial condition for the functioning and further progressive development of all types of Soviet art, the unprecedented flourishing of the spiritual culture of our people.
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