Lamarck and Darwin have killed God, finally, and for all time, so that He may never reappear after such blows. These great murderers deserve the gratitude of all mankind. Here is Vladimir Taneev, whose statement, published in 1879 on 'Communism States of the Future', reflects the anti-religious feeling of the socialist doctrine. Likewise, once the Soviet regime was established in 1917, Lenin launched an anti-religious policy, particularly directed against the Russian Orthodox Church. And yet, under the Soviet authorities, we could hear Stalin celebrated as "our happiness" or "our teacher, "our father", "our vozhd". The leaders, Lenin and Stalin were described with superhuman qualities of immortality, infallibility and perfectibility, and their images in political posters were represented the same way as icons in the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, these two leaders received the same treatment as the god of a religion, and yet, the regime advocated an anti-religious policy. We will therefore take an interest to the implementation of the anti-religious policy, at the time of the development of the cult, and,we will then deal with the reasons for this cult and the different way it manifested itself.
...
Sommaire de l'exposé
The Soviet regime as creator of a new type of religion, the cult of their leader
Goals through the development of this cult
How this cult manifested itself through the arts
Analysis about if this cult of the personality could be considered as a religion or not
Extraits de l'exposé
[...] He then appeared as an abstraction, an essence. He was simply required to be, to exist as a presence in painted or sculpted form. In this kind of representation, artists no longer portrayed the man but the idea of the man; he thus had become a concept, the embodiment of all virtue, a divinity. His superhuman nature was sometimes depicted by his monumentality compared to other men by the use of a perspectival distortion. In a sense, we can say that what artists were depicting was God. [...]
[...] This dual representation of Lenin on the one hand as an immortal, infallible man and as an abstraction and on the other hand as simple man of the people is called the phenomenon of leader's two bodies?. The cult of Lenin incorporated this idea after Lenin's death and created a system of visual signs for expressing these concepts in image, Lenin could be thus represented either as the man or the politic body, the notion. The sculpture of S.D. Merkurov, The Funeral of the Vozhd' produced in 1927, reflects the theme of leader two's bodies?. It shows Lenin lying after death, his arms at his side, born aloft by eight male pallbearers. [...]
[...] Soviet propaganda ?Lamarck and Darwin have killed God, finally and for all time so that He may never reappear after such blows. These great murderers deserve the gratitude of all mankind.' Here is Vladimir Taneev whose statement, published in 1879 in Communism States of the Future published, reflects the anti-religious feeling of the socialist doctrine. Likewise, once the Soviet regime was established in 1917, Lenin launched an anti- religious policy particularly directed against the Russian Orthodox Church. And yet, under the Soviet authorities, we could hear Stalin celebrated as happiness? or teacher, our father, our vozhd?, the leaders Lenin and Stalin were described with superhuman qualities of immortality, infallibility and perfectibility and their images in political posters were represented the same way as icons in the Russian Orthodox Church. [...]
[...] Likewise, in a 1922 poster by A. Sokolov named Let the Ruling Classes Shudder before the Communist Revolution, we can notice that the composition is highly symbolic. Lenin is depicted with his left arm raised, in the background, the rays of a sun create a circle of lights behind him and on either side are a peasant and a worker. Indeed, certain symbolic forms may recall religious icons such as the large use of the colour red, the distorted perspective since Lenin is larger than the sun, the globe and the worker and peasant, the composition since Lenin is surrounded by the worker and peasant like Christ who was sometimes surrounded by two apostles, and the circular frame that surrounds Lenin since Christ was often situated in an oval frame. [...]
[...] Thus, we are lead to wonder why the government and the new leader Stalin maintained this new-born cult of Lenin, since it was not in agreement with the socialist doctrine, and how this cult of the leader manifested itself. Following Lenin's death, his party colleagues encouraged his cult since they saw it as a useful means of shaping the consciousness of the masses and thus ensuring its devotion and fidelity to the Bolshevik's cause. Moreover, the party on October 1923 recognized that since religion was being discouraged and taken away from the people by the implementation of a ?deconversion? process, a new ritual culture had to be elaborated to replace the ancient one. [...]
