How did stalin and totalitarianism effect the performing arts?
Well, there are two answers to the question. One person already took the anti-Stalin view so I’ll help the fellow. Despite the overwhelming pressure put on artists to abstain from unorthodox expression, it is unfair to say that totalitarianism killed the arts. The Soviet Union was a leader in the arts through out its existence. I can only think of its early relevance in the visual arts, social (and later socialist) realism in photography, film and poster art, since i don’t know very much about later Soviet ballet, theater and literature. What i can tell you is that as a testament to the success of early revolutionary art, the methods and aesthetic philosophies which emerged from the movement would become imitated and reproduced by a few generations of modernists and propagandists everywhere. A good example is LIFE magazine, which was largely fashioned after socialist photo chronicles. The Socialist Realist photographers who inspired the FSA campaign are another good example. Other exam
