The news photographer is required to have not only expertise, but also politicalism, adroitness and the skill of a true socialist agitator and propagandist, who in the reproduction of real life consciously and in an individual way introduces prospects of tomorrow.

M. Macarol

     The idea of the transformation of the world and the building of a new, happier life, and with it of a new political system as well, seemed realizable with the coming into power of the Communist Party, which, led by Josip Broz Tito, celebrated not only victory over fascism but also an end to the civil war. As previously said, numerous representatives of the avant–garde in pre–war Yugoslavia also supported the ideology of the left and accepted the art of socialist realism. It was, thus, logical that with the victory of the revolution, all of them believed that the utopistic projection would be translated into concrete action and the implementation of the charted program. The avant–garde expected to be given an opportunity for operative action on the wide–ranging front of building the society of the future – communism. The more so as some, like Koča Popović, had been at the helm of partisan brigades or, like Miroslav Krleža or Sreten Stojanović, had themselves been satisfied of the new values of post–revolutionary life, having spent time in the Soviet Union. Those avant–garde artists who had not directly joined in the molding of the revolution and had not manned its barricades, declared their full allegiance to the ideas of communism immediately after the end of the war, like Marko Ristić and Ivo Andrić, aligning themselves again with their pre–war fellows of opinion, some of whom were at the very top of the new power echelons. But the strong impulse that induced representatives of the avant–garde to occupy salient positions of political power, in post–war Yugoslavia equally as in post–revolu-tionary Russia, should not be viewed only in terms of a personal desire for success, but should rather be seen, as Boris Groys put it, as the continued interest of the avant–garde in the success of the overall artistic project. If “the avant–garde artist must create an entirely new world”, he must then have absolute power over that world.²⁹

     The agitprop culture, which in Yugoslavia lasted from 1945 to 1952, can best be understood as a reflection of the Stalinist era, but in a mirror giving a proportionately downscaled image. Namely, immediately after the end of the war, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia set up an ”agitation and propaganda apparatus”, which had numerous and very heterogeneous tasks: from organizing cultural life in the towns and villages, monitoring work at the universities and planning theater repertoires, to reading cultural columns in the press.³⁰Already its very name, “apparatus” taken over from the rhetoric of the industrial society and its belief in technical progress, was inappropriate to the actual circumstances in Yugoslavia, most of whose inhabitants lived in rural areas. But, the “apparatus”, in terms of machines, was glorified in avant–garde circles as well. There, the new aesthetics of the machine was conceived of as a radical reform of overall habits of both representation and perception. It should be particularly emphasized, as well, that the designation agitprop culture, an abbreviation of agitation and propaganda, underlined the revolutionary cultural context through a new lexis that was to openly propagate communism by all means of mass culture, primarily by new linguistic constructions.

	Јосип Броз Тито у радном кабинету, 1948. Josip Broz Tito in his Working Cabinet, 1948

    In that framework, photography, as the language of visual communication, acquired a prominent position in cultural re–education and was charged with quite specific tasks as part of the projected Five–Year Development Plan. “Artistic photography should portray the struggle of the working man who is creating a better future for himself, it should express the thoughts and desires of the people, their aspirations, sacrifices and efforts with which the capitalist society is being brought down and a new socialist society is being built”, is stated in Fotografija (Photography), a newly–founded photographic magazine, which promulgated Party directives by picture and by word.³¹ The same demands, and in fact the same formulations, can be found in respect of other arts, from painting to ballet and music, as the boundaries of artistic creativity were clearly marked and reduced to the framework of socialist realism, which postulated that painting still life, vases and nudes did not reflect the new reality. “Realistic art is”, in the words of Gerasimov, a celebrated artist in the Stalinist era, “both in terms of its subjects, as well as in terms of its form of expression, many–sided, just as the life of the people is many–sided… In our country art is not a luxury, it is a basic need of the people.” ³²

    The harmony of propagandistic and ideological rhetoric was so perfect that not only were calls to struggle constantly repeated in articles on art, but over just a few post–war years, for example, the names of all the streets in the towns and villages, as well as the names of all institutions, establishments and organizations were changed. The new vocabulary was additionally enriched by numerous popular buzzwords, titles, neologisms and slogans that became part of standard mass communication. While more space cannot be devoted here to this extremely exciting subject, suffice it to say that the newly–inaugurated norm of official communication in the agitprop era required that every letter, even the briefest of correspondence, had to end in the victorious cry: “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!” Relativizing the category of real time, the new authorities constantly reminded the people of the threat and danger of fascist occupation that had already been overcome. By propagating potential fear, as shown on the example of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a firm and lasting position of the government as protector and liberator could be promoted. That kind of heedlessness of time coordinates is a key feature in the agitprop era, but will be manifested particularly patently several decades later, at the very end of the Yugoslav community. In the years following the death of Josip Broz Tito, the pillar of Party and political power, a popular slogan was “After Tito, Tito”. The concept of time is vectorial and instrumentalized, as many theoreticians of totalitarian art have observed, because historical time is “appropriated” in the name of an ideology that alone knows the future.³³

    The meta–language of agitation and propaganda remained an enduring part of the ideological monopoly of the Communist Party and was imported together with the entire Stalinist culture concept³⁴ , which was, with minor variations, established throughout the cultural space metaphorically designated by the phrase “behind the Iron Curtain”, or The Others, according to imperialist theories. There one can recognize inklings and elements of the concept of later totalitarianizing cultural trends, such as globalization, for instance, because it involves the transplanting and imposition of ready models, regardless of the specificities of a given cultural environment, as well as the obliteration of spatial and temporal differences. The totalitarian model of societal organization, which the Yugoslav communists, as in other countries of people's democracy, only had to “properly apply”, prescribed the art of socialist realism as the only acceptable one for the entire new society. So, style–wise, the artist had to abide by realism, which caused a lot of confusion, even when photography was discussed at meetings of the Popular Engineering Society whose organizational structure covered photography as well as film.

    Namely, socialist realism insisted on an extremely restricted choice of motifs and a strictly canonized iconography, but in contrast to that aesthetic restriction, it offered an amplification of “politicalism”, which, primarily, referred to the ideological message of the work of art. Photography was openly required to “be in the service of the agitation and propaganda of social reality.” ³⁵ In the years following the dramatic rejection of the Cominform resolution (1948), it was important to emphasize that “the reaction to lies and slander was the presentation of documents that showed the real situation in our country. There is no doubt that the photograph is such a cogent document”, and our “amateur photographers can indeed be propagandist photographers only if they are photographers–artists,” was written in a text on the occasion of the Second Federal Exhibition of Artistic Photography held in 1950.³⁶ The institution of juries of photography exhibitions, as part of the inherited cultural conventions, remained, but, rather than aesthetic, ideological criteria were to be met, with its function of censorship being in the background. Only “tested cadres” could be nominated to the jury and confirmed by the ruling party, as they were the long arm of the politicians in the domain of art. Artists, photographers and “culture workers” at the helm of many associations and federations, represented at the same time the authority of the Party and the authority of art before political organizations.³⁷

	Бранибор Дебељковић, Јосип Броз Тито на Првој међу народној изложби фотографске уметности, Београд, 1952. Branibor Debeljković, Josip Broz Tito at the First International Exhibition of Photographic Art, Belgrade, 1952

    Critique, like the jury, functioned as the corrector and mediator of ideological and political objectives, and its task was eminently educational and didactic. The criteria by which photographs and all other forms of artistic production were evaluated were based as much on ideological as on aesthetic principles – the order reflects their importance. A contemporary reader soon finds reading agitprop critical reviews very boring, because throughout the first post–war decade, they reiterate, with minor variations, one and the same assertion about photography – its subject matter, even though it was increasingly encompassing the new reality, was still not “a reflection of the creative work that the people of the FNRJ (Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia) are investing in the building of socialism.” ³⁸ But, for the art of socialist realism, as in Russia, the most important principle is that of “socialist ideological character”. That is the fundamental aesthetic and ideological category of every work of art in the communist era. No mater how hazy, and in the final analysis, transcendent, this condition may be, it should be particularly stressed that the principle of socialist ideological character was as much an aesthetic as a political category. “The requirement for ideological character in art is a requirement for a high quality of art. Ideological character gives wings to talent”, wrote in 1949 Jovan Popović, one of the leading theoreticians of socialist realism.³⁹

    The society that inaugurated institutions of mass media control from photography to film and radio, could leave nothing to the spontaneous creativity of the artist. In the mass media, it was only allowed to propagate the revolutionary ideology of communism – that was the only ready–made product, as of the most common industrial products there were not enough for even a minimum standard of living (the system functioned on the basis of ration coupons). If we know that soon after the October Revolution, already in 1919, the film industry in Russia was nationalized, it is no wonder that in Yugoslavia film production and distribution was institutionalized immediately after the war. In the same year when the dictatorship of the proletariat was declared, a film censorship commission was set up, its composition virtually Orwellian: representatives of the Ministry of Defence, of the Ministry of Information and of the Ministry of Education, and no one from the world of art.⁴⁰ That is why in the context of the agitprop culture “the Party demanded that film material be employed as weapons, be used “skillfully” and “speedily” where it was the most needed.” ⁴¹ The first post–war Yugoslav feature film, Slavica, was produced in 1947, and until then practically only Russian films had been shown in all Yugoslav cinemas. Amateur photographers and cinematographers were all under the umbrella of the Popular Engineering Society, and some photographers like Georgij Skrigin were also film cameramen. Apart from that, Groys' thesis that some representatives of the avant–garde worked on the concept of the agitprop culture and socialist realism art in the name of the broad working masses, is also corroborated by an example from Serbian surrealism. Heading the film Committee and magazine and also holding the post of director of the FNRJ film enterprise, the key mass propaganda medium, was Aleksandar Vučo, who not only was a superb connoisseur of film, but was himself the author of the admirable surrealist movie script “Ljuskari na prsima (Crustaceans on the Chest)” published in the almanac Nemoguće–L' Impossible in 1930.⁴²

	Долазак младих моделара на Првомајску параду, Београд, 1961. Arrival of Young Model Constructors at the 1st of May Parade, Belgrade, 1961

    In the monumental project of aestheticizing the new political system, photography had a prominent role, second only to film, for, in the assessment of the Party, it had already “done a great service to the National Liberation Struggle”, having “eternalized the most glorious days of national history”, as written in the editorial of the first issue of the 1948 Fotografija magazine. It is also stressed that amateur photographers should, as part of the first Five–Year Plan of the revolutionary authorities, work on “technical education”, which, in addition to the cultural and the physical, “must become an integral part of building our new man.” The position that technical culture, i.e. “technical education”, as the subject taught in elementary schools was called, could lead to societal transformation, points to the original historical time, the time in which Marx' Communist Manifesto was formulated (1847). But, on the other hand, insistence on technical culture also reminds of the positions advanced in the manifestos of avant–garde groups from futurism to the proletkult. The avant– garde idea of the artist as an engineer is necessarily seen as closely comparable and as the ultimate objective aspired after in building the new man.

This first editorial–manifesto of photography in the agitprop culture, signed by Josip Bosnar, goes on to say that “the new amateur photography breaks off with outmoded and former perceptions of art for the sake of art, work without content, with maudlin and unrealistic presentations, the search for effects for effects' sake.” Its concluding sentences stress that “the content of photography must correspond to the time we live in”.⁴³ That didactic tone with the most frequent impersonal use of the verbs “must” and “should”, allowed no deviations from the prescribed standards of realism, and, for photography to function as a mass communication medium, it had to multiply quickly: the number of amateur clubs grew, as well as the number of trainees at photography courses, but the amount of photographic images available in public was limited, because their distribution was based on a strict ideological selection – the “ideological character” criterion was deciby 275% in relation to 1947, and the number of members by 128%, while the number of trainees who completed courses was higher by 280%...” ⁴⁴

	Пионир честита рођендан другу Титу у Белом двору, Београд, 1950. A Pioneer Wishes Comrade Tito a Happy Birthday at the White Palace, Belgrade, 1950

    Theoreticians of the agitprop culture did not expect of photography just a tautological confirmation of the kind “the world is beautiful”, nor a realism corresponding to the neutral naturalistic optics of the objective. Let us recall, they demanded that every picture, and that included the photograph, had to have a specific quality – ideological character. Ergo, something beyond, оr rather, something above a mechanical representation of the visible world. In other words, it was not enough to register new phenomena with the camera, everyone had to be clear on the fact that “precisely photography has extraordinary potential to faithfully express the flourishing of our socialist homeland, not only as a document, but also to shape our reality, imparting through it the author's perception of objective reality, his aspiration to contribute to societal transformation, to mark the great era in which we are living.” ⁴⁵ The photographic representation is more firmly connected with its referent than the traditional picture is, and the photographic Here and Now are the foundations of a convincing visual truth. To one of its inventors, it is the paintbrush of Nature, but the agitprop committees pose quite specific demands before it – as Tarabukin says, “the way in which photography represents reality” needed to be radically changed.

    In the spirit of agitation and propaganda, the neutral concept of photography as a mechanical recording of the real, had to give way to the demand for the mechanical optics to be adapted to the new vistas. The building of the new man and of the new world demanded new photographic methods: by bold foreshortening, dramatic chiaroscuro interplay or photomontage interventions, photography articulated a representation of the “great times we are living in” as Bosnar put it. Most of these “new” procedures were promoted within the context of avant–garde movements, among which, as particularly noteworthy paragons, the photography of LEF but also of Nova Literatura or the jackets of Nolit's editions should be mentioned. In accordance with the objectives of the mass agitprop culture organized on a centralist basis, the relatively limited number of photographs, produced to suit the desired model, was replicated and then again reproduced and published over the years, abiding by the well–known mechanisms of persuasion and propaganda. The visual matrix of the art of socialist realism, including photography, let us stress once again, was not prescribed by either the Yugoslav Communist Party or the working class, nor by the popular masses, it was imposed as a ready–made representational model and an integral part of the imported totalitarian culture. Therefore, one should not be surprised by the striking similarity of the negative marks given to works of art that did not respect the set stereotype within these two cultural zones so different from one another as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were. Works that failed to adopt the socialist realism and ideological character matrix were said to be, both in Moscow and in Belgrade, “decadent”, “formalistic”, “objectivistic”. Lenin's text “Party Organization and Party Literature” is quoted both in Russian and in the Serbo–Croat language, with special emphasis being laid on his position that “new literature is emerging that will not serve…tens of thousands of those who are bored and are choking on their fat, but millions and tens of millions of workers, who are the flower of our country”, regardless of the fact that Yugoslavia did not have tens of millions of inhabitants, let alone workers.⁴⁶

	Носиоци штафете на путу за Нови Сад, 1949. Relay Baton Bearers on the Road to Novi Sad, 1949

    In other words, the ideological plane was dominant in the art of socialist realism at the most general level. It blurred cultural, linguistic and media boundaries, it was openly aggressive because the centralist and monolithic Party network of institutionalized power was behind it. The precise assessment of the potentials of the photographic image as a visual communications medium in propagating the ideology of communism, was paralleled by the decision of the agitprop committees on the mandatory monitoring of not only the production (organizing amateur clubs or news agencies), but also of the distribution of pictures that could be technically reproduced in magazines, bulletin boards, widely circulated Party heralds, but also at exhibitions and in textbooks. Numerous local clubs and chapters of amateur photographers constituted the base of a tall pyramid at whose top was the Federal Committee of the Popular Engineering Society, which maintained that “like artistic paintings, so have photographs to be party–oriented.” ⁴⁷ A thus centrally organized photographic production had no room for individual undertakings, and any experiments and digressions from the system were punished by expulsion from the Party, which meant forfeiture of the right of presence on the public cultural scene. Control of exhibitions in foreign countries, both collective and individual ones, was strict in particular, because, like in every totalitarian system, promulgating the ideology vis–à–vis those who thought differently, outward, was the most delicate and the most important task.⁴⁸