''LEF'' ("''ЛЕФ''") was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts ("Левый фронт искусств"''"Levy Front Iskusstv"''), a widely ranging association of
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
writers, photographers, critics and designers in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as ''Novy LEF'' ('New LEF'). The journal's objective, as set out in one of its first issues, was to "re-examine the ideology and practices of so-called leftist art, and to abandon individualism to increase art's value for developing communism."
Productivism
Although ''LEF'' was catholic in its choices of writers, it broadly reflected the concerns of the Productivist left-wing of
Constructivism
Constructivism may refer to:
Art and architecture
* Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes
* Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...
. The editors were
Osip Brik
Osip Maksimovich Brik (russian: link=no, Óсип Макси́мович Брик) (16 January 1888 – 22 February 1945), was a Russian avant garde writer and literary critic, who was one of the most important members of the Russian formali ...
and
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...
: fittingly, one a
Russian Formalist critic and one a poet and designer who helped compose the 1912 manifesto of
Russian Futurists
Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism," which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...
entitled, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". The covers were designed by
Alexander Rodchenko
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (russian: link=no, Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Ро́дченко; – 3 December 1956) was a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders ...
, and featured photomontages early on, being followed by photographs in ''New LEF''.
Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova (russian: Варва́ра Фёдоровна Степа́нова; – May 20, 1958) was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant ...
also designed covers.
Among the writings published in ''LEF'' for the first time were Mayakovsky's long poem ''About This'', and
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...
's ''The Montage of Attractions'', as well as more political and journalistic works like
Isaac Babel
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (russian: Исаак Эммануилович Бабель, p=ˈbabʲɪlʲ; – 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of ''Red Cavalry'' ...
's ''
Red Cavalry
''Red Cavalry'' or ''Konarmiya'' (russian: Конармия) is a collection of short stories by Russian author Isaac Babel about the 1st Cavalry Army. The stories take place during the Polish–Soviet War and are based on Babel's diary, which ...
''. The journal had funding from the state, and was discussed critically, but not unsympathetically by
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
in ''
Literature and Revolution
''Literature and Revolution'' (russian: Литература и революция) is a classic work of literary criticism from the Marxist standpoint written by Leon Trotsky in 1924. By discussing the various literary trends that were around i ...
'' (1924).
Factography
The later ''New LEF'' ("Новый ЛЕФ"''"Novy Lef"''), which was edited by Mayakovsky along with the playwright, screenplay writer and photographer
Sergei Tretyakov, tried to popularise the idea of '
factography': the idea that new technologies such as photography and film should be utilised by the working class for the production of 'factographic' works. In this it had a great deal of influence on theorists in the West, especially
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
and
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
. Linked journals also appeared such as the Constructivist architectural journal ''SA'' (edited by
Moisei Ginzburg
Moisei Yakovlevich Ginzburg ( be, Майсей Якаўлевіч Гінзбург, russian: Моисей Яковлевич Гинзбург; , Minsk – 7 January 1946, Moscow) was a Soviet constructivist architect, best known for his 1929 ...
and
Alexander Vesnin
Alexander Aleksandrovich Vesnin (russian: Александр Александрович Веснин) (28 May 1883, Yuryevets – 7 September 1959, Moscow), together with his brothers Leonid and Viktor, was a leading light of Constructivist arch ...
) and ''Proletarskoe Foto'', on photography. The ''New LEF'' closed in 1929 over a dispute over its direction between Mayakovsky and Tretyakov, and under pressure for its 'Formalism', which jarred with the incipient
Socialist Realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
.
Some Contributors to ''LEF'' and ''Novy LEF''
*
Boris Arvatov
Boris Ignatievich Arvatov (Russian: Борис Игнатьевич Арватов; 3 June 1896, Vilkaviškis – 14 June 1940) was a Russian and Soviet artist and art critic. He was active in the constructivist movement.
His father was a special ...
*
Isaac Babel
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (russian: Исаак Эммануилович Бабель, p=ˈbabʲɪlʲ; – 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of ''Red Cavalry'' ...
*
Osip Brik
Osip Maksimovich Brik (russian: link=no, Óсип Макси́мович Брик) (16 January 1888 – 22 February 1945), was a Russian avant garde writer and literary critic, who was one of the most important members of the Russian formali ...
*
Nikolai Chuzhak
*
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenw ...
*
Aleksei Gan
Aleksei Mikhailovich Gan (Russian: Алексей Михайлович Ган; born Imberkh; 1887 or 1893 – 8 September, 1942) was a Russian anarchist and later Marxist avant-garde artist, art theorist and graphic designer. Gan was a key fi ...
*
Aleksei Gastev
Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev (russian: Алексей Капитонович Гастев) (8 October 1882, Suzdal, Vladimir Governorate – 15 April 1939, Kommunarka, Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary, a pioneering theorist of the scien ...
*
Aleksei Kruchyonykh
*
Boris Kušner
Boris Anisimovich Kušner (Russian: Борис Анисимович Кушнер; 1888 – 1937) was a Russian poet, critic and political activist. He was a publicist for the Cubo-Futurists: In 1917 he wrote a manifesto, "Democratic Art", which c ...
*
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...
*
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
*
Liubov Popova
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova (russian: Любо́вь Серге́евна Попо́ва; April 24, 1889 – May 25, 1924) was a Russian-Soviet avant-garde artist, painter and designer.
Early life
Popova was born in Ivanovskoe, near Moscow, to ...
*
Alexander Rodchenko
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (russian: link=no, Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Ро́дченко; – 3 December 1956) was a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders ...
*
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures ass ...
*
Sergei Tretyakov
*
Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova (russian: Варва́ра Фёдоровна Степа́нова; – May 20, 1958) was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant ...
*
Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov (russian: Дзига Вертов, born David Abelevich Kaufman, russian: Дави́д А́белевич Ка́уфман, and also known as Denis Kaufman; – 12 February 1954) was a Soviet Union, Soviet pioneer documentary f ...
The "Lenin issue"
After
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
’s death on January 21, 1924, LEF’s first issue of the year dedicated its critical section to the Soviet leader (though the publication’s artistic prose and poetry were not Lenin-themed). These critical articles mainly focused on an analysis of Lenin’s writing and his oratory: this is because the Formalist critic
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures ass ...
independently organized the project and presented it to LEF.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 Apr ...
did, however, contribute an unsigned editorial to the issue, in which he criticized the newly-forming habit of Soviet authorities to “canonize” Lenin by mass-producing commercial objects with his portrait or likeness on them. The editorial argued that this practice would undermine Lenin’s significance for future generations. In Mayakovsky’s words, “Don’t take away his living gait and human traits, which he was able to preserve as he guided history. Lenin is still our contemporary. He is among the living. We need him alive, not dead.”
VS 148The other articles do not explicitly develop this point, although they do focus on certain unusual, “human” particularities of Lenin’s style.
In total, six writers contributed articles to the critical section of the issue. Their names and the titles of their works follow:
*1. Shklovsky - "Lenin as Decanonizer" («Ленин, как деканонизатор»)
*2.
Boris Eikhenbaum
Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum ( rus, Борис Михайлович Эйхенбаум, p=ɨjxʲɪnˈbaʊm; 16 October 1886 – 2 November 1959) was a Russian Empire and Soviet literary scholar and historian of Russian literature. He is a repre ...
- "Basic Stylistic Tendencies in Lenin's Speech" («Основные стилевые тенденции в речи Ленина»)
*3. Lev Yakubinsky - "On Lenin's Deflation of the High Style" («О снижении высокого стиля у Ленина»)
*4.
Yuri Tynyanov
Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov ( rus, Ю́рий Никола́евич Тыня́нов, p=ˈjʉrʲɪj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ tɨˈnʲænəf; October 18, 1894 – December 20, 1943) was a Soviet Union, Soviet writer, literary criticism, literary cr ...
- "Lenin's Lexicon as a Polemicist" («Словарь Ленина-полемиста»)
*5. Boris Kazansky - "Lenin's Speech - An Attempt at Rhetorical Analysis" («Речь Ленина: Опыт риторического анализа»)
*6.
Boris Tomashevsky
Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky ( rus, Бори́с Ви́кторович Томаше́вский, p=təmɐˈʂɛfskʲɪj; 29 November 189024 August 1957) was a Russian Formalist literary critic, theorist of poetry, textual analyst, historian o ...
- "The Construction of the Theses" («Конструкция тезисов»)
All of these men either belonged to one of two Formalist collectives,
OPOJAZ OPOJAZ (ОПОЯЗ) (russian: Общество изучения Поэтического Языка, ''Obščestvo izučenija POètičeskogo JAZyka'', "Society for the Study of Poetic Language") was a prominent group of linguists and literary crit ...
(The Society For the Study of Poetic Language) and the
Moscow Linguistic Circle
The Moscow linguistic circle was a group of social scientists in semiotics, literary theory, and linguistics active in Moscow from 1915 to ca. 1924. Its members included Filipp Fortunatov (its founder),Defamiliarization
Defamiliarization or ''ostranenie'' ( rus, остранение, p=ɐstrɐˈnʲenʲɪjə) is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they could gain new perspectives and see the world diffe ...
, which can broadly be defined as the idea that the power of a work of art depends on how effectively it defies norms and subverts audiences’ expectations, is one of the most important and long-standing ideas in Formalist theory. It emerges as early as 1916, in Viktor Shklovsky’s manifesto “Art as Device.” It is therefore unsurprising that several of the articles explain Lenin’s ability to communicate ideas effectively, an end he achieved through successfully “defamiliarizing,” or disrupting, stale, established revolutionary language. As Shklovsky writes, “His style consists in downplaying the revolutionary phrase, in replacing its traditional words with workaday synonyms.” Tynyanov also pays attention to this aspect of Lenin’s style, arguing that Lenin was always intently focused on whether or not the words that he was using at a given moment were “in sync” with the material realities that they were meant to describe, and that this attention to specificity was more important for Lenin than pretty-sounding turns of phrase.
''Lowering language:'' As a result of Lenin’s defamiliarization, his speeches and writing begin to seem “artless” in their straightforwardness. Kazansky, along with others, acknowledges this explicitly: “Lenin’s discourse always comes across as direct, artless, even colorless and indifferent… but this is not so.” The Formalists do not intend this to be a criticism of Lenin’s rhetoric: they instead argue that his atypical style was a pragmatic and effective rhetorical device itself, one that both set Lenin apart from his contemporaries and rivals (e.g.,
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
) and convinced his audience of his sincerity: “Nobody suspects Lenin’s discourse of artificiality and pretentiousness: it is utterly pragmatic.” Eikhenbaum and Shklovsky suggest that Lenin shares this quality with established writers, such as
Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
and Mayakovsky. In his article, Yakubinsky uses the word “deflation” to describe Lenin’s antipathy to the traditional high style of Russian oratory.
''Polemics and parody:'' Another essential element of Lenin’s success was his willingness to openly mock his enemies, both in print and in his speeches. Eikhenbaum and Tynyanov suggest that Lenin’s constant criticism of writings from tsarists and those socialist parties that were opposed to the
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
helped him develop a unique, striking rhetorical voice, since he was careful to oppose his opponents both ideologically and stylistically: “Lenin’s polemic itself was a significant shift in the tradition and realm of Russian oratory and Russian journalism. In his analysis of his opponent’s lexicon, Lenin supplies all the typical traits of his own lexicon.” Lenin not only avoided “flowery,” cliché phrases in his work, but also actively strove to introduce “rude,” everyday words and ideas into his writing. This was extremely uncommon at the time, and therefore made him more memorable as a rhetorician: “They appeal to everyday life, and link up with everyone’s daily, ubiquitous speech. Consequently, they extend the most solid, quantitatively and qualitatively mundane associative ties between speaker and listener.” Tynyanov is especially interested in this aspect of Lenin’s style: it is connected with his own interest in parody, which he believed to be the artistic device that spurred literary evolution and the development of new forms of art.
''Poetic devices in “prosaic” speech:'' Although the Formalists were sometimes accused by their opponents of being pure aesthetes, who were attempting entirely to separate art from reality, their work on Lenin reveals that this charge was not entirely accurate. After all, Lenin’s journalism and speeches were not art, as Eikhenbaum readily admits: “the realm of so-called practical language is extremely broad and varied… As for such forms as oration, despite its seemingly practical character, it is quite like poetic speech. Poetic speech is typified only by a particular attitude to discrete discursive elements and their specific use, especially in poetry.” In this sense, the Lenin issue represents a turning point in Formalist thought. They are applying concepts originally devised for poetic analysis to “prosaic” work, which furthers their project by demonstrating that Formalism’s theoretical concepts, like defamiliarization and parodic evolution, need not be restricted to the study of art.
Shklovsky’s original interest in analyzing Lenin may have been prompted by the ongoing polemic between the Formalists and more orthodox Marxist critics, like Leon Trotsky. The overall effect of LEF’s Lenin issue is that Lenin is presented as deeply pragmatic, more interested in the day-to-day questions of maintaining Bolshevik power than in any larger ideal. Moreover, by presenting Lenin as an ironic, flexible thinker, the Formalists subtly appropriated the Soviet leader for themselves. For as Ilya Kalinin writes, “their engagement with the figure of Lenin, which was only beginning to be canonized but already possessed an exceedingly powerful symbolic significance and social charge, for the sake of providing themselves with additional, political legitimation for their conceptions about the nature of poetic language, led to far-reaching theoretical consequences.”
Reactions to LEF’s interpretation of Lenin have varied. Within the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, it was received positively by the
Futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
poet
Aleksei Kruchenykh
Aleksei Yeliseyevich Kruchyonykh (russian: Алексе́й Елисе́евич Кручёных; 9 February 1886 – 17 June 1968) was a Russian poet, artist, and theorist, perhaps one of the most radical poets of Russian Futurism, a mo ...
, who went on to write and publish his own analysis of Lenin’s language in the following year, heavily citing the LEF critics in his work. The emigre poet
Vladislav Khodasevich
Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (russian: Владисла́в Фелициа́нович Ходасе́вич; 16 May 1886 – 14 June 1939) was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian e ...
, conversely, stridently criticized the issue, claiming that it proved Shklovsky and his compatriots to be sycophants for the Communist government. However, although he found the critics’ language to be evasive, he admitted that their theoretical observations were justified. The issue has received relatively little mention in the West: Victor Erlich refers to Lenin’s rhetoric as an “essentially bleak” topic that did not merit the attention lavished upon it. More recently,
Boris Groys
Boris Efimovich Groys (born 19 March 1947) is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a global distinguished professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and senior research fellow at the Karlsruhe Univer ...
mentioned the issue in his book ''The Total Art of Stalinism'', claiming that it served as an example of how the Soviet avant-garde inadvertently helped canonize Lenin after his death.
He does not, however, discuss the actual content of the articles.
See also
*''
Iskusstvo kommuny
''Iskusstvo kommuny'' (Art of the Commune – IK) was a Russian arts magazine published by IZO-Narkompros. It was edited by Osip Brik, Nathan Altman and Nikolay Punin who produced nineteen issues between 7 December 1918 and April 1919. Each issue ...
''
*''
Novyi LEF''
References
Sources
*Victor Osipovich Pertsov (1954), 'Mayakovsky and LEF', ''News of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR'', Department of Literature and Languages, 1954, Volume 8, Issue 4
{{italic title
1923 establishments in the Soviet Union
1929 disestablishments in the Soviet Union
Russian artist groups and collectives
Constructivism (art)
Defunct literary magazines published in Europe
Magazines published in the Soviet Union
Magazines established in 1923
Magazines disestablished in 1929
Russian avant-garde
Russian formalism
Russian-language magazines
Soviet art
Literary magazines published in the Soviet Union