The Strategies of Escapism in the Homo Sovieticus Reality: Art in Cultural and Geographical Periphery of Soviet Latvia
Andris Grinbergs. Wedding of Jesus Christ. 1972. Photographer: Atis Ieviņš. Participants: Andris Grinbergs, Inta Jaunzeme [Grinberga], Māra Brašmane, Mudīte Gaiševska, Atis Ieviņš, Sandrs Rīga, Eižens Valpēters, Irēne Birnbauma, Ivars Skanstiņš, Andris Bergmanis, Aija Grinberga. Courtesy of Atis Ieviņš
Abstract
This article is focused on the question of cultural practices and artistic strategies that were implemented by artists in Latvia in the late socialist period. In order to seek for more autonomy and alternative forms of creativity in the atheist and ideologically permeated state and social structures, artists in Latvia explored the opportunities to engage in art and cultural practices that differed from the dogmatic canon of Socialist Realism. In this way, they created a parallel reality where they could distance themselves from the absurd Homo Sovieticus world and remain immune against indoctrination and internalisation of Soviet values. However, it is also problematic to draw the boundaries between the official and the non-official art. The task of contemporary art historians is thus to revise history and contextualise deviations from Socialist Realism, which despite the control and censorship, did manage to co-exist in parallel with the official domain.
Research challenges
The late socialist period is challenging in terms of research, since it is a rather recent past and historiography still has many gaps. Moreover, several researchers have noticed many problematic assumptions in discussing the late socialist period. For example, Alexei Yurchak, professor in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that these assumptions include the following: socialism was ‘bad’ and ‘immoral’ and binary categories are used to describe Soviet reality as “oppression and resistance, repression and freedom, the state and the people, official economy and second economy, official culture and counterculture, totalitarian language and counterlanguage, public self and private self, truth and lie, reality and dissimulation, morality and corruption” (Yurchak 2005, 5).
Some researchers, such as Irina Uvarova and Kirill Rogov, have suggested that the Soviet culture can be divided into censored and uncensored (Yurchak 2005, 6). According to Yurchak, this terminology highlights the ambivalence of cultural production in the Soviet Union; however “it still reduces Soviet reality to a binary division between the state (censored) and the society beyond it (uncensored), failing to account for the fact that many of the cultural phenomena in socialism that were allowed, tolerated, or even promoted within the realm of the officially censored were nevertheless quite distinct from the ideological texts of the Party” (Yurchak 2005, 5). It can be argued that these binary categories originated under the conditions of the Cold War, “when the entity of ‘the Soviet bloc’ had been articulated in opposition to ‘the West’” (Yurchak 2005, 7) resulting in “many metaphors that set a sort of dichotomy between ‘us-them’, according to the dominance of the two empires: the USA and the USSR” (Banaszkiewicz et al 2016, 110).
If Western Europe was separated from the Soviet sphere of influence with the ‘Iron Curtain’, Latvia, along with the other two Baltic States – Lithuania and Estonia –, as well as today’s Ukraine and Belarus were in the area of the Soviet Union infrastructure, where Moscow’s sphere of influence in terms of ideology, politics, economy and culture was the most evident. The so-called Satellite States – Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany – were further to the West and enjoyed greater political or economic freedom (Banaszkiewicz et al 2016, 110). Therefore, when carrying out research of the historical and political context in the previous Soviet bloc (also called ‘Eastern bloc’) countries, the heterogeneity and diversity of the region must be acknowledged to avoid superficial simplifications. Moreover, as stated by Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, associate professor in intercultural studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and Nelson Graburn, professor in sociocultural anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, “it is very insofar significant that for many years mainly Western researchers wrote about the events happening behind the Iron Curtain. There was actually no account ‘from the inside’, which would reach wider reception” (Banaszkiewicz et al 2016, 110). Local researchers coming from East-Central Europe “constitute an interesting and important counterpoint to the research from the Anglo-Saxon perspective” (Banaszkiewicz et al 2016, 110), and such heteroglossia is crucial to achieve more objective research results examining the very complex historical and political context in the socialist period.
It must be noted, though, the socialist period has not been thoroughly examined in the art discourse locally. According to Latvian art critic Vilnis Vējš, this period “was characterised by massive control of society and personal life in which every form of expression, including creativity, had a set place” (Vējš 2010, 25), whereas Elita Ansone writes that “the Soviet era conjures up negative emotions. That is why we have done little work in relation to Socialist Realism since the restoration of Latvia’s independence in 1991” (Ansone 2009, 66). These a priori negative emotions also cause a problem in the research of art history: “In general terms, the art of Socialist Realism has been seen as something that was bad, political, commissioned, literary, natural, not really artistic – something, in short, which has nothing to do with ‘good art’” (Ansone 2009, 66). In the neighbouring country Estonia a book entitled Lost Eighties was published in 2010 by the Center of Contemporary Arts. In the foreword art historian Sirje Helme writes that “the eighties have been dealt with the least. It has been a popular notion that the eighties were a time when nothing happened; everything was stamped upon by the strict heel of stagnation and if anything was happening, it was probably a clone of the ideas and achievements of the previous decades” (Helme 2010, 5). This approach is not productive in terms of analyzing the diversity, versatility and plurality of heterogeneous genres, movements and directions, which developed in this period beyond the dogmas of Socialist Realism – the dominant aesthetic theory and practice in the Soviet Union, which “in itself [is] increasingly hard to define” (Bužinska 2010, 26).
It cannot be denied that “the Soviet system produced tremendous suffering, repression, fear and lack of freedom” (Yurchak 2005, 8), but “what tends to get lost in the binary accounts is the crucial and seemingly paradoxical fact that, for great numbers of Soviet citizens, many of fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialist life (such as equality, community, selflessness, altruism, friendship, ethical relations, safety, education, work, creativity, and concern for the future) were of genuine importance” (Yurchak 2005, 8). Neringa Klumbyte, professor in anthropology at the Miami University, USA, points out that “this period is also different because of gradual societal changes, such as liberalization of the social order and moves away from the revolutionary values of asceticism, collectivism, and proletarianism, that prepared people for the coming state-initiated shift toward regime liberalization in the mid- and late-1980s” (Klumbyte 2013, 3). Therefore, modern-day researchers have the challenging task to reconstruct the ethical and aesthetic complexities of socialist life, and “the challenge of such a task is to avoid a priori negative accounts of socialism without falling into the opposite extreme of romanticizing it” (Yurchak 2005, 9-10).
As regards this period in the historiography of Latvia, it is an important task for the modern-day researchers to analyze the 1960s–1980s period, because after the independence of Latvia was restored in the 1990s the research of this historical period nearly stopped and it could be explained with the hierarchy of priorities (Ivanovs 2007, 30). The historians mostly paid attention to the painful and tragic events in the history of Latvia – the occupation of Latvia, repressive politics implemented by the German and Soviet Union occupation regimes, and sovietization of Latvia; however, the 1960s-1980s period was not a research priority (Ivanovs 2007: 31). Scholars who included late socialism in their works usually associated this period with ‘stagnation’ – a time when there was relatively no change in the economy, society, or politics, whereas the revolutionary and the Stalinist periods seemed more captivating than the era of relative stability (also explained by the opening of Soviet archives and new opportunities to revisit the Soviet past) (Klumbyte 2013, 2). The situation has slightly changed since 2014, when a special Government Commission for the KGB Research was established in Latvia. In the period from 2015 to 2018 the Commission published five volumes of 13 scholarly articles and reports dedicated to the research of the totalitarian regime and its chief government agency – the Committee for State Security (the KGB) – based on the available archive documents.
Latvian historian Daina Bleiere explains that the subject of repressions and the manifestations of political power exercised by Moscow – the totalitarian model – is popular in Latvian post-Soviet historiography because in Latvia, as well as in Estonia and Lithuania, “the Soviet regime was forced from outside, so the anti-Communist and anti-Soviet perspective reflects not only a purely normative attitude – the Soviet regime was brutal and bad – but also a view on the Soviet regime as an outside force that had no roots in Latvia and that had failed to conquer Latvian affection. Relations between the centre (Moscow) and the periphery (Riga), as well as the relations between society and power structures are perceived as distinctly vertical, forced and asymmetric” (Bleiere 2012, 33).
In this context, it is also very problematic to use the sources written in the 1960s-1980s period, because they were ideologically biased and apologetic of the Soviet regime, since the meaning and content of the Soviet politics were interpreted as the increase of welfare, development of economics and culture, etc. When examining the history and historiography of the late Soviet period, a critically new research approach is needed, asking new questions and providing new perspectives. It can be questioned whether the late Soviet socialism can only be understood and explained in “orientalist idioms, namely, as backward, oppressive, irrational and immoral” (Klumbyte 2013, 2), or the change of paradigm is needed in order to obtain a more detailed image of this sociocultural phenomena (opposed to the cliché of a Cold War dichotomy). Since the overlooked or misunderstood phenomena need to be re-addressed and the established views must be questioned and, if possible, re-interpreted, legitimate historical revisionism must be carried out.
The borderline between the official and non-official art
The ‘official’ art of many socialist countries was Socialist Realism: “Socialist Realism replaced the heterogeneous artistic endeavours of the Russian avant-garde and became the dominant aesthetic theory and practice in the Soviet Union. Social realist art proclaimed an antiformalist politics of representation that propagated the building of socialism and the performative creation of reality not yet existent but in the making” (Cseh-Varga, Czirak 2018, 2). In essence, Socialist Realism tried to “represent the Communist future with the means of traditional academic painting, combined with photographically or cinematographically inspired imagery” (Groys 2003, 59). Although Socialist Realism had become the official doctrine in the early 1930s, in Latvia, for example, it became the official style only in the late 1940s after Latvia’s annexation to the USSR. Those artists who conformed to the doctrine, were supported by the state through the Artists’ Union and regularly received offers to carry out commissioned works. In the first decades of the Soviet period, the exhibitions were Sovietized and “collections on display at the state museum were censored, and works found objectionable were banished to the storerooms, replaced by either Socialist Realist exemplars or the traditional realist works freshly confiscated from private collections of Riga’s bourgeoisie” (Svede 2002, 191).
The art of the late socialist period in Latvia appears to be creative and experimental as proved by the heterogeneous artistic practices, media, events, etc. However, even if these activities were more or less tolerated by the state authorities, the political and economic control of artistic activity under the Soviet system can still be noticed. For example, those artists, who could be defined as pursuing ‘unofficial’ art, for example, performance art, were subjected to the mechanisms of oppression imposed by the art system, since the artists had to survive on the margins of the Soviet system: “Since no art market, no private galleries, no independent curators, and no revues existed that were not state funded, it was impossible to enter the usual channels of promotion” (Erjavec 2003, 21). However, the peripheral position both culturally and geographically was often preferred by the artists: “The freedom of interpretation, the plurality of perspectives and the independence from directives of artistic ideology were the most important motivating factors for underground artists to refuse to participate in centrally managed art production and instead support themselves and their art by taking up private jobs” (Cseh-Varga, Czirak 2018, 7).
Therefore, although, at least in Latvia, there were no instances of openly dissident or political art, the dichotomy between the official and the unofficial art definitely existed (although with certain fluidity). For example, experiments with photography and performance art practices stood further away from the official discourse. These creative practices were not supported by the state cultural institutions and often took place in the cultural and territorial periphery. Due to this outsider’s or art brut position, there was no possibility for the performance discourse to establish itself – no systematic knowledge was accumulated or produced and the information from the West was obtained sporadically and inconsistently. Consequently, it can be argued that performance art belonged to ‘subculture’ or ‘alternative culture’, where even the artists and participants themselves were unsure about the definitions of their activities, often referring to it as ‘partying’, ‘socializing’ and in the best case ‘non-art’. These tendencies and processes must be viewed in parallel with the emergence of youth culture during the 1960s and the alternative developments of the 1970s (Hyperrealism, sporadic outbursts of Conceptualism, experiments in visual arts).
To discuss the period of late socialism in the context of art history, of course, one must take into account the terminology that has been applied to discuss the official art versus the non-official. The usual terms to describe the underground scene are: “Oppositional, dissident, alternative, differently minded, parallel, non-conformist, autonomous or independent” (Eichwede 2011, 20). In the context of Russian art history it is possible to discuss ‘dissident art’ as a form of political opposition. However, in the context of Latvian art history the juxtaposition of conformism and non-conformism (or even semi-non-conformism as proposed by several Baltic art historians) has been used to explain the deviant manifestations of art, which were not in accordance of the requirements of the Socialist Realism, but paradoxically managed to exist, as, for example, the so-called Harsh Style, as well as Hyperrealism in painting. These deviances have been explained as mutations of Socialist Realism, as, for example, proposed by Latvian art historian Eduards Kļaviņš. He defines these mutations as the ‘Socialist Modernism’ and ‘Socialist Post-Modernism’ (Kļaviņš 2009, 103) and proposes that there are certain artworks created during the late Socialist Realism period, which possess a double code, when “the subject matter chosen by the artist may have been in line with the iconographic typology which was forced onto artists by Socialist Realism [..] at the same time being in line with the artist’s subjective orientation toward a world of democratic images” (Kļaviņš 2009, 106). According to Kļaviņš, “the relevant historical and political context helps us to explain this double code, but it does not allow us to differentiate with full certainty between works of art that are clearly in line with political demands and those which are not. This means that the boundaries of ‘Socialist Modernism’ are frequently indistinct” (Kļaviņš 2009, 106). This double code was often difficult to decipher, because artists tended to use visual metaphors and the so-called Aesopian language. Overall, Socialist Realism as a period in the art discourse in Latvia cannot be regarded as strictly consistent and homogeneous and should rather be viewed as “a simultaneously existing, multi-layered body of stylistic trends” (Bužinska 2010, 26).
The synthetic construction of Homo Sovieticus
As indicated by Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, “the concept ‘New Man’ or ‘Soviet Man’ appeared in the 1920s and 1930s as a postromantic version of the subject of historical changes” (Gudkov 2008, 13). The socialist society had to be built as an optimistic, classless society by the new human species – Homo Sovieticus. This new man was a significant model for mass orientations and identities. He was the carrier of certain values, qualities, and properties, and, accordingly, of a better future. The Soviet ideologues postulated that the man of the future should place the social and public interest first, and should share the aims and principles of the communist ideology by demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of ‘the future of the country’, ‘the Motherland’, ‘the Party’, and the ‘people’. In 1932, Maxim Gorky wrote:
“A new type of person is being created in the Soviet Union, his character traits can be determined with no doubt ... He feels himself as the creator of the new world, his goals depend on his mind and willpower, and therefore he has no reason for pessimism. He is young not only in terms of his biological age, but also historically. He is a power that has just realized his path [of life], his historical significance. He … is led by a simple and clear doctrine” (Gorky 1953, 289).
In Latvia, too, this ideological plan was implemented, first, from 1940 to 1941 and, later, from the end of World War II until the years of the Soviet occupation until 1991, when state independence was restored. As noted by Latvian art historian Elita Ansone, socialism and communism were dogmatic systems with their own mythology based on the hierarchy of signs and symbols, for which, similarly to religion, it was very difficult to find affirmation in real life, therefore literature, cinematography and fine arts were regarded as ideal tools to make the Soviet myths, among them the one on a new type of individual, seem believable, fascinating and inspirational (Ansone 2008, 6-8). The new human type, the positive hero, that the Soviet system was supposed to produce as a result of indoctrination, collectivization, repression and social control had to be healthy, athletic, heterosexual, optimistic, selfless, diligent and patriotic (having a Soviet, rather than a national identity). An article entitled The New Soviet Man published in the daily newspaper in Latvia in 1940 praised the New Soviet Man stating that “conscientiousness, cordiality, excitement and modesty are the main traits that characterize the young Soviet patriots. From their perspective, domesticity, work and heroism are firmly and clearly defined. Each person is included in the collective of all Soviet nations” (Anonymous 1940, 4). The positive hero was also propagandized by Socialist Realism in fine arts, leaving behind numerous portraits of cultural workers, excellent labourers, war veterans, athletes, militiamen and representatives of other professions in public service (Ansone 2009, 74).
The positive hero of the Soviet ideology was expected to demonstrate obedience, trust in the superior authorities, discipline, and responsiveness to the commands of the regime. These values were needed to ensure the continuity of the totalitarian regime:
“The qualities of the positive hero could be best explained in terms of the requirements of a totalitarian society, which desires to maximize control over its citizens. Patriotism and Party-mindedness, anti-individualism, [..] acceptance of subordination, unquestioning loyalty to leaders, lack of genuine initiative, obedience, adaptability, susceptibility to shame – all these are qualities, which facilitate control over the individual” (Hollander 1983, 49).
Control was also manifested through theatrical and performative means in the public sphere. The public life had to be organized as a constant reminder of the ubiquitous presence of the state and its power. The concept of state was defined through the metaphors of family – ‘fatherland’, ‘motherland’, ‘brotherhood’, ‘sisterhood’; however, it was exercised as a panoptic mechanism of control. The reminders were implemented in a ceremonial and ritualised form, introducing the new Soviet calendar with secularised traditions and building the new Soviet identity on a newly constructed collective memory, whereby military victories and heroes were commemorated and the narrative of ‘friendly occupation’ was built. After all, it was crucial that the state maintained the rituals, since the rituals maintained the state. The duty of the new Soviet man was to express his/her solidarity and passion for collectivism and to participate in mass demonstrations accompanied by the speeches of political leaders, applause and demonstrations of military capacity. The carnivalesque demonstrations were built in the aesthetics of Gesamtkuntswerk or the total work of art (mass spectacles); there were colonnades of gymnasts, flower arrangements, posters, flags, etc. Often, the Soviet space programme and the image of a cosmonaut – the explorer of the Space and a role model of Homo Sovieticus – were integrated in the visuals of demonstrations. It was important that the youngest generations participated in the demonstrations, too, in order to reassure society of the continuity of the ideology and political system. The urban environment became a stage for the manifestation of power symbols:
“Symbolic dimension of space is both a power issue and a power instrument: the person who manipulates symbols can also manipulate processes of identification, and thus have influence over the constitution of the group that legitimises the exercise of power” (Monnet 2011).
However, it must be noted that the synthetic construction of Homo Sovieticus has not remained constant from the 1920s until today. Moreover, each Socialist Republic must be assessed individually. Gudkov writes that the first attempts to provide evidence of the empirical – rather than the ideological – existence of the individual of a fundamentally different type than the ideologues postulated appeared at the end of the 1950s in Russia (Gudkov 2008: 14). Other interpretations followed in the 1970s and the 1980s offering parodies or transfigurations of the idea of Soviet Man. Important studies on the existence of the Soviet Man as a sociological phenomenon were carried out in the late 1980s under the supervision of Russian sociologist and political scientist Iurii Levada (2003). This contemporary perspective provides a more critical approach to examine the (de)construction of Homo Sovieticus.
According to Gudkov, Levada and other contemporary Russian researchers, the Soviet system did shape a new category of human being, but this new human type was not a strong and convincing role model. On the contrary, it possessed the following features: he was a mass, very average type, someone who had passively adapted to the existing social order by lowering the threshold or his level of needs and demands; Homo Sovieticus was the “ordinary” man with (intellectual, ethical and symbolic) limitations, who knew no other models and ways of life, because he had to live under conditions of an isolated and repressed society (Gudkov 2010, 61). Homo Sovieticus was not allowed to differ, show initiative or strive for innovation – he was morally and intellectually paralyzed. According to Gudkov, he did not exercise any control over ruling authority or his own leadership, he was a “supervised man” – supervised by the ruling authorities on all levels of life (Gudkov 2010, 52).
The counterculture of Homo Sovieticus
Riga in the late socialist period was “a mecca for the Soviet youth counterculture” (Svede 2004, 232), which included poets, writers, artists, theatre and film enthusiasts, hippies, etc. They were a “colourful and freethinking generation, who was in search of new artistic language” (Traumane 2010, 34). To escape the dullness of the regulated and politicised Soviet everyday life, the creative youth gathered in cafes (Kaza or Goat being the most famous one), where they could socialize, exchange ideas and discuss the films that they had seen, the music they had listened to and the books that they had read: “Reading saved us from the dull reality behind the door of Kaza, [from] the Soviet everyday life – fight for peace, meetings of trade unions, festive demonstrations of 1 May and the October Revolution” (Zvirgzdiņš 2004). Overall, the countercultural youth wanted “distance – spatial, mental, and ideological – from the regime under which they lived” (Fűrst 2017, 3).
For the Soviet counterculture, it was essential to confront the homogenous masses of proletariat, even if it was merely manifested through fashion and provocative looks. For example, Maija Tabaka was a young, emerging artist, who was also known as a free-thinking individual preferring eccentric looks. According to Jānis Borgs, “she could not go unnoticed” (Borgs 2014: 114) in the dull societal and environmental background. Borgs refers to Tabaka as an “exotic flower” – an exceptionally beautiful and elegant woman wearing “silk dresses and shawls, large hats, expressive make-up and bright red-coloured lips, contrasting with black hair” (Borgs 2014: 114). In the Soviet period, this kind of a dandy-like attitude was a form of a silent protest and identity expressed in an aristocratic lifestyle and appearance to provoke the conservative society (Borgs 2014: 115).
Tabaka herself refers to such performative manifestations as the ‘theatre of life’:
“The dullness of the life in the 1960s was unbelievable. The streets of Riga were dominated by the insanity of standardization. I wanted to stand out. [..] Once I wanted to provoke the people on the streets, I put on my Redington coat and a bowler hat from the 1920s [..] and walked down the former Lenin Street [..]. Everyone looked back at me, and that was the friendliest attitude. The reaction of many people was shockingly hostile: I was verbally abused, men whistled, others run after me, some spat on me. [..] The normal society could not stand those, who were different. [..] They allegedly embodied something Western, thus threatening the homogenously faultless society. [..] It can be said that it was the theatre of life” (Blaua 2010, 49).
Due to the extravagant non-Soviet looks and a free-thinking mindset, as well as overly Western features in her artwork, Tabaka was excluded from the State Art Academy of the Latvian SSR in 1961. According to Lancmanis, “her work Pineapple Eaters had annoyed instructors not just by the subject and unusually bright colouring but, first of all, by the mood created by the bizarre characters” (Lancmanis 2004, 107). This style echoed with the Surrealists and was not acceptable to the Soviet ideologues and censors.
Another artist Andris Grinbergs, who was the pioneer of performance art in Latvia, championed individualism and eccentricity, for example, by strolling on the most central street in Riga dressed in the clothes that he had designed. As Grinbergs notes: “Brīvības Street used to be a promenade – people would go there to show themselves and observe others. In the evenings, I would go by tram to the marketplace on Matīsa Street, walk down to the Laima clock, stroll around for some time and return home, because there was nothing else to do” (Grinbergs 2011, 250). This assertion also speaks of the paralysed creative agency in the Soviet political and economic system. Unable to express innovation and creativity within the dogmatic canon of Socialist Realism, the creative youth sought ways to express themselves further away from the official domain. Moreover, “there was nothing else to do” echoes with the futility of Soviet life, the sense of uselessness when whatever one does has no practical result.
Andris Grinbergs. The Green Wedding aka Summertime. 1973. Performance. Photographer: Atis Ieviņš. Participants: Andris Grinbergs, Inta Grinberga, Jānis Kreicbergs, Jānis Sējāns, Irēne Birnbauma, Ingūna un Alfrīds, Ināra Podkalne, Ināra Eglīte. Courtesy of Courtesy of Atis Ieviņš
If such provocative everyday manifestations might seem trivial and unimportant from today’s point of view, in Riga in the period of late socialism it required a certain degree of courage to exhibit these manifestations of Western culture and to differ from the mainstream proletarian population (alas Homo Sovieticus) due to the involved risk of being arrested: “The strolls along Brīvības Street looked like this: you would get to the city centre, change clothes in the getaway, stride for a while and off you would go. It wasn’t like you could loiter all day long – the militia could arrest you, someone might not have liked your long hair” (Grinbergs 2011, 251). As indicated by Latvian art historian Māra Traumane, “these poetic games of dressing, undressing, [and] strolling [..] acquire importance because through them the body and clothing transformed into a ‘battlefield’ between individual freedoms and social norms” (Traumane 2010, 35). Moreover, such a ‘masquerade’ was a sign of immunity against Soviet values and indoctrination of such values, so this everyday performance can be seen as a political gesture.
However, creativity and improvisation later became the trademarks of Grinbergs’s art. At the end of the 1960s, when the hippie movement started to emerge in Latvia, Grinbergs became the flagman of this socially quite bullied subculture, which was often viewed – especially in Soviet press – with hostility as “a crowd of backsliders and parasites, infecting our crystal-clear society with a foreign ideology” (Borgs 1989, 9-10). Though Grinbergs is often cited as the leader of the hippie group in Riga, he denies it, saying that he was “just a visual rendition” and what mattered more to him than, for example, the hippie ideology, was the excitement about clothes and an opportunity to dress his friends (Grinbergs 2011, 254). The motto ‘life is a fashion show’ remained crucial to Grinbergs as a performance artist, too: “I dressed my models and created an environment, where they could express themselves and which could to some degree ‘rip’ them out of their masks, turn them into live human beings, containing more than you see on an everyday basis” (Grinbergs 1992, 2). By “masks” Grinbergs refers to the double life phenomenon in the Soviet period, which was based on pretence and artificially constructed identities of Homo Sovieticus. These masks had to be worn on an everyday basis in the official domain – whether at one’s workplace, university, school or other institutionalised spaces. With the help of alternative counterculture there was an opportunity to lead a more authentic lifestyle, unbiased and non-regulated by ideology.
The hippie movement in Latvia existed – at least in the beginning – without any canons or ideology, and as it is stated by the former members of this subculture: “There was curiosity and joy about this opportunity – to live one’s life differently. An opportunity to wear flamboyant clothes, walk barefoot in the streets of the city, gather at the Dome Square, sing All you need is love” (Borgs 1989, 9-10). The ideas that were interwoven in the hippie subculture in the West and mainly in the USA, such as sexual liberation and opposition to nuclear weapons, resonated with the hippie movement in Soviet Latvia, too. For example, Grinbergs in one of the interviews in 1992 admits that “at that time there were all those instabilities with the atomic bomb, and it seemed that you lived for one day, perhaps there was no tomorrow and you had to live to the maximum” (Grinbergs 1992, 2). Whereas in regard to sexual revolution Grinbergs states that nudity was a form of protest against the prevailing puritanical attitudes: “Sexual revolution wasn’t only self-gratification. Its essence was manifested in the protest against the system, when you didn’t belong to yourself, all your thoughts were regulated, and the only [thing] that you had was your body – you could do with it anything that you wanted” (Grinbergs 1999, 22-23). When one experiences a situation of “controlled thoughts”, it means that through constant indoctrination and other Sovietisation instruments a person has internalised Soviet values and is disconnected from his/her authentic self. In psychotherapy, such a disconnection is often seen as trauma. To a certain degree, Soviet experience was traumatic at many levels, but especially in terms of leading a fake, untrue, and unauthentic life based on lies, pretence and manipulation.
Performance art as alternative and non-official art
It can be stated that performance art in Latvia developed through the anthropocentric Hippie movement. First of all, because Grinbergs was a participant of the Hippie movement, and, second, because the Hippie aesthetics celebrated through nudity and awareness of non-suppressed sexuality, liberalisation and harmony of nature was manifested in several performance pieces of Grinbergs. Of course, performance art was not in any way institutionalised or officially acknowledged discipline. It could not be studied at the Art Academy or any other educational establishment, and it lacked any visibility, since it was only implemented in small networks and microenvironments of friends, acquaintances and family members. There was no knowledge or understanding of this discipline gained through studying or contributing to a discourse, and it was practiced rather intuitively – as a form of ‘being’ or ‘lifestyle’. Performance artists and practitioners did not object to their marginal position in the cultural and geographical periphery, since it allowed them more freedom in experimentation and an opportunity to create depoliticised and uncensored art. To draw some parallels, it is intriguing that, for example, pantomime, which was very close to performance art as a performative art based on non-verbal communication, was supported by the state ideologues as a form of “Soviet Esperanto” (Iliev 2014, 219).
One of the performances where the Hippie aesthetics can be noticed in Grinbergs’s oeuvre is The Green Wedding (1973; with the alternative title Summertime). It was not the first performance piece by Grinbergs, yet it is a useful example to examine artistic strategies applied by artists in the cultural and geographical periphery to reflect – even if intuitively – on the (dis)balance between the private and public domains. The performance piece was entitled The Green Wedding, since the green colour was the leading motif: there were green clothes for Grinbergs and his wife, and a green cab that took them from the Old Riga to the greenery in the countryside. This performance piece started as a post-nuptial procession through the streets of Old Riga following the official wedding ceremony of the Grinbergs couple at the State Registry Office and ended in the countryside were the panoptic sight of the KGB could be avoided. As Grinbergs states, the setting of this happening was “very romantic and hippie – the horses, swings, grass wreaths, naked bodies” (Grinbergs 2011: 255). Nudity, a self-evident norm and a form of liberation was a prominent element of creation, too, since the totalitarian body of Homo Sovieticus needed to be freed from all the restrictions and ideological burdens. To Grinbergs, the body was “the only zone of freedom” (Grinbergs 2011: 257).
However, not only the Hippie aesthetics and philosophy were manifested in this performance piece, but also blurred boundaries between art and life, as well as the official and non-official. By integrating an event of private life – a wedding ceremony – in the work of art, Grinbergs artistically deformed Soviet reality, because wedding ceremonies in Soviet social life could only be implemented in the state-controlled sphere and institutions. Also, by improvising the celebration and carrying it out as a performance piece, as well as expanding the boundaries of the private event to the realm of art, Grinbergs raised the question of ‘doubleness’, which can be interpreted as dichotomy of the public versus the real or the authentic. In Grinbergs’s case, it could be the role of an obedient and conformist Soviet citizen – Homo Sovieticus, on the one hand, and the role of a non-conformist artist expressing himself in performance art, on the other. In one of the interviews Grinbergs also mentions this dramatic aspect of doubleness in his life and art: “Of course, I have often thought that the entire life is a theatre and all that we get depends on how good we play our roles. Where is that place where one can be real? This double life continues endlessly” (Grinbergs 1992, 2).
It can be suggested that for Grinbergs the cultural and geographical periphery provided a certain asylum, which allowed him to avoid the distortion of his personality and identity, or even suffer legal consequences for not meeting the ideals of Homo Sovieticus. Performance art provided time and space, where Grinbergs could feel ‘authentic’ and ‘autonomous’ as an artist. He has repeatedly emphasised that he has always preferred the life of an outsider as opposed to being part of the Soviet art system, creating commissioned and conformist artwork and exhibiting it in the official museum or gallery space. This strategy also helped him to avoid the internalization of Soviet values, which were epitomised by the ideological construction of Homo Sovieticus.
Conclusions
The existence of countercultures and art disciplines that did not correspond to the Soviet ideals or instruments of Sovietisation signifies that there was an opportunity to create an alternative reality – a microenvironment, where it was possible to exercise more democratic and horizontal forms of collectivism. Indeed, members of countercultures and alternative art disciplines could create small islands of freedom – networks – not permeated by ideology and censorship. These efforts can be seen as attempts to create depoliticised and participatory art, free of ideological dogmas or political counter-arguments. In this microenvironment democratic principles of freedom of expression, participation, initiative and non-hierarchical work relationships were implemented, thus demonstrating how community and selfhood could be exercised under the restrictions of a totalitarian regime.
Consequently, it can be concluded that the totalitarian regime was unsuccessful in creating fully obedient human beings with a paralysed creative and intellectual agency – Homo Sovieticus. On the contrary, the political regime was even stimulating the creativity of artists, since they had to find innovative artistic strategies to be able to coexist along the official culture. Undeniably, these strategies were partly subjected to the mechanism of fear (and survival) imposed by the totalitarian regime and, thus, are historically, socially and politically specific. Yet, paradoxically, it also shows that the regime was unable to silence the creative expression, individualism and initiative.
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