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Comment by petre | Hacker News Reader

The artists were propaganda or workplace safety poster painters or they made statues of Lenin or of wartime heroes. The musicians were lucky enough to be able to play classical music but they also had to sing patriotic songs. The poets were either censored or had to write patriotic or propaganda pieces. Culture was ran by the state. Real literature like Roadside Picnic circulated undrground.

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Well, first of all Roadside Picnic was actually published by the state. Then, the state funded a rather expensive Tarkovsky movie, inspired by the book ("Stalker"). I think I even had this book at parent's apartment. Plenty of Strugatsky's brothers novels were actually published by the state publishing houses. I think they ran into some problems with their more satirical pieces ("Tale of Troika" comes to mind, for example).

Your description of artists' life is pretty simplistic and one-sided. There were some people who did propaganda posters, but there were many things that existed outside the political domain, from book illustrations, to paintings with less ideological overtones, to working in theater. There was also Soviet cinema and animation, which would hardly be seen as only a propaganda vehicle, there was a lot of very nuanced works, which raised important questions. A lot of good stuff was shelved, or circulated underground of course.

There's a great story about one writer, Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of We about the relation to the State ideology at the beginning of USSR and his subsequent emigration.

The Russian Novel That Foresaw — but Underestimated — Totalitarianism

https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-russian-nove...

I'm not talking about the USSR because I haven't lived there, but Eastern Europe. Yes, you are right, my description is simplistic but art was being amputated by the communist regimes. The Strugatsky novel was rejected on grounds of faul language and the Russian version was initially heavily edited. Of course it was published by the state, as all publishing houses were state owned before 1990.

Have you seen this film? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Look_Away

It is an interesting film in general, and in context of your comment from the politics of art perspective -- it starts with a Nazi lecture on the "degenerate art" of 20s-30s, to art class lectures in Communist times, and ends with the equally ideological forces dictating "what's art" in West Germany (where are hero finally achieves fame and fortune.) It's East German variety of old regime/new regime but likely will resonate at some level.

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