”The fairy tale about the apoliticism of art should be smashed to smithereens…”

V. V. Mayakovsky

     The mass production and distribution of photographic images in the agitprop era was configured so as to function as part of a comprehensive propaganda apparatus, as a rule in synthesis with the other media that formed the complex structure of the mechanism for the “re–education” of the population millions. The concept of the total work of art, articulated even before the advent of the avant–garde, was revitalized with the victory of the revolution, suited as it was to the complex strategy for promulgating the new principles upon which the revolutionary society would function. The agitation tactic program encompassed all the media, so that the heterogeneous auditorium in the country of the Soviets and in the country of the partisans would simultaneously, from manifold aspects and at an accelerated pace, learn to think in the Marxist way. Aleksandar Flaker reserved the designation “the Soviet mass Gesamtkunstwerk” for a “big mass spectacle in the open space of a square, the street or an arena, that was performed with the participation of several arts: the spoken, the figural and the musical, with body movements – they were all united by the general function of the spectacle, that went from didactics to carnival ludditism, with the crowd gradually becoming a part of the spectacle–ritual itself. … In the aesthetic precept of Gesamtkunstwerk (there are) active masses and a charismatic leader, who “receives” the spectacle, directed according to a previously given system of value and a strictly hierarchized aesthetic one, with the aesthetic performers, as a rule, remaining unknown to the masses.” ⁴⁹

    It is common knowledge that the biggest mass spectacles were organized in the Soviet Union to honor the October Revolution and 1 st of May, International Labor Day, and when the Communist Party assumed power in Yugoslavia, there was a rerun of the public mass performances dramaturgy on a smaller scale. The first 1 st of May Parade, modeled upon the Soviet spectacles, needless to say, was held in Yugoslavia immediately after the liberation – in 1945. The other scheduled date, for a somewhat more modest mass gathering with singing and dancing and presentation of gifts and photographic rituals, was reserved for the birthday of the leader, Josip Broz Tito, and was celebrated every 25 th of May, first at the White Palace in Dedinje, and as of the mid–1950's, also at the stadium of the Yugoslav People's Army in Belgrade. The birthday of the most beloved comrade was proclaimed Youth Day in 1957, when the first “pan–Yugoslav” Youth Relay Baton Run” was organized, which set out from Kumrovec, the birthplace of the president of Yugoslavia for life, and traveled through the entire country, covering 2,300 kilometers. The reports at the time, using the true language of propaganda that employs the rhetoric of large numbers, registered that in that year, 1957, over 50,000 spectators had attended the final ceremony at the Yugoslav People's Army stadium.⁵⁰

	Градилиште Нови Београд, 1952. The New Belgrade Construction Site, 1952

    Photographs recording Yugoslav mass spectacles from 1945 to 1958 represent an ideal model of the relationship between the ideology of totalitarianism and the mass communication media. The disbanding of agitprop committees in 1952, did not also mean that agitation and propaganda of the ideology of communism was no longer necessary. It more or less went on as long as the Communist Party stayed in power in Yugoslavia, but 1958 was set as the demarcation line in the articulation of the totalitarian visual rhetoric. In choosing the time frame in which to ponder the relationship between photography and propaganda, the year 1958 perhaps symbolically presaged the future – the magazine Jugoslavija was extinguished then. That large virtual mirror of socialist Yugoslavia, with its multitude of photographs and a number of topic–specific sections in a number of languages, propagated the concept of communism with a human face. Nevertheless, the decisive juncture for photography was the publication in the Foto–kino revija (Photographic and Cinema Review), the only photographic magazine in the country, of a text by Edvard Štajhen entitled: “What the Artist Feels is What Matters”.⁵¹

    That was a clear signal that if not a door then at least a window on the still firm Iron Curtain had been opened to the concept of subjective photography.

    It may, at first glance, appear to the contemporary observer that the Yugoslav communists, by appropriating the ready–made model of the Soviet mass spectacle, were completely spared any dilemmas in respect of the structure of the mass Gesamtkunstwerk. Up to the moment when parades were to be organized in Yugoslavia communist mass spectacles had passed through several stages, from a repeated storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg and the staging of classical tragedies up to carnival plays⁵². It is, however, essential to know that like the first so were all the subsequent mass spectacles, whether in Russia or Bulgaria, Hungary or Yugoslavia, not only well planned and organized, but also systematically and meticulously recorded by film and photographic cameras.⁵³ All that enormous quantity of documentary visual material subsequently passed through the filters of the Tanjug Agency and of the large papers in which the Party had its representatives at key positions, so that only a limited number of photographic and film images was distributed as the officially endorsed representation of the mass spectacle. If we know that after Tito's “intimate” birthday receptions, numerous photographs, exclusive “souvenirs” ⁵⁴ arrived at numerous addresses of enterprises, institutions, organizations and individuals, then there is no doubt that the top Party echelons programmatically accentuated the special propaganda function of the visual message. After all, the advertising aspects of mass–produced pictures are expected and designed precisely in political bodies, because, “in the fast pace of development of a socialist country, the importance of photography is immense. In such a country, with its influence it plays the role of a direct agitator and propagandist” is written in the magazine Fotografija.⁵⁵

    It is possible to relativize the limited temporal and spatial character of any spectacle by ensuring its prolonged effects and its “durability” through the reproduction and multiplication of pictures of it. Numerous photographs of the individual fragments of the Yugoslav mass performance, registering simultaneous happenings at different geographical points, support the spectacle in its basic intention to progressively increase and expand by turning everything into pictures. The spiral resides on the need, says Debord, for the “real world to be transformed into simple images, simple images become real beings and efficient motivations of hypnotic behavior.” ⁵⁶ Contributing to the exciting swelling of the mass spectacle is also the fact that the large number of subsequent viewers of im-ages/photographs surpasses by far the number of the original, active and passive, participants in the spectacle. Some of the theoreticians of photography of the time knew that well, Macarol, for one: “If we compare once more photography with the second strongest propaganda medium – the press, then we could say: every piece of news, every report and every article have a beginning and an end; the photograph does not! It speaks for hours and days, it speaks a language understandable to both the worker and the intellectual, understandable and convincing to every man, regardless of his national affiliation. In that sense, photography is an international language.” ⁵⁷

	Портрет Јосипа Броза Тита на Дому синдиката, Београд, 1957. Portrait of Josip Broz Tito on the Trade Unions Hall, Belgrade, 1957

    The 1 st of May and all other parades in Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities were organized and directed by the Yugoslav Army, which was in the agitprop era led by Koča Popović, an intellectual and one of the signatories of the Serbian surrealist manifesto, who had a deep faith in the revolution. Their dramaturgy rested upon foundations of the Soviet mass Gesamtkunstwerk⁵⁸, more precisely on Lenin's concept of “monumental propaganda”, developed on the occasion of the first anniversary of the revolution in 1918.⁵⁹ The new dramaturgy and design of mass festivals, monumental propaganda, were to rearticulate the ideological–aes-thetic concept of the utopistic society. To achieve that objective, at least virtually and fragmentarily, the biggest Russian and Yugoslav urban spaces were transformed into stages showing the spectacle of progress, with the figure of the great and glorious leader, together with other “teachers” of Marxism in the center. The actual architectural stage of streets, squares and buildings was taken over by huge placards, slogans, red drapes, five– pointed stars, sickles and hammers, with thousands of young people in a variety of dress and a variety of haircuts, cheering in step to the rhythm of revolutionary marches. The new visual culture and layout, reared on reduced avant–garde ideas, transformed the actual city into a new, imaginary, urban space according to the fictitious model of the “ideal city” of communism. The entire decorative plane, as a segment of monumental propaganda, by which city squares in Russian and Yugoslav cities were for decades transformed into scenic settings, had but one task – to represent a vision of the communist city of the future.⁶⁰

    The origin of Lenin's monumental propaganda, and it has been written about a lot, should be sought in Campanella's work “ Sun City ” (Tommaso Campanella, Civitas Solis, 1602). The walls of the ideal city, according to Campanella, must be covered with frescoes that would visually instruct young people in natural laws, on the one hand, while on the other they would promote the feeling of collectivity among the citizens. The walls of the ideal city in communism were, therefore, not only during parades but also on the occasion of many other Party and trade unions celebrations, an excellent base for monumental portraits, lengthy slogans and symbols that imparted Party directives in condensed form. Sometimes they were in fact short texts, similar to a joke or a quip, accompanied by pictures that taught the population Marxist principles. The text had to be combined with other media, pictures, graphics, print, in the structure of the socialist totaldesign, as it primarily functioned as a meta–language articulating multimedia messages. The totaldesign concept did not come into being in the agitprop era. It was known to and practiced by many avant– garde streams, in particular dadaism and surrealism in Yugoslavia . But, in the new social context, it acquired mass proportions and official support, in contrast to the design of historical avant–gardes which operated within a small and closed circle of men of the same ilk. The agitprop totaldesign is also urban design, because it posted effective slogans and pictures on salient positions, ensuring for them unhindered communication with the mass auditorium within the given urban context. The agitprop culture devoted enormous attention to totaldesign and the most eminent artists worked on it, supervised by the Committee, and every collaborator had to be first vetted for moral and political correctness.⁶¹

    The strategy of monumental propaganda focused much more on investing slogans with three–dimensionality than on simply writing them out and painting them, and this meant designing specific structures. In devising monumental propaganda Lenin and Lunacharsky requested that “slogans should be executed as statues – in bas relief or as individual figures and groups. They should not be made of stone, granite or marble with gilded inscriptions, but be modest, since they are to be temporary.” ⁶² According to Russian sources, at the 1925 1 st of May Parade, the ratio obtaining between two–dimensional and three–di-mensional decorations was 11.5% to 88.5% with the subsequent, gradual decrease of that initial distinct prevalence of “three–dimensional decoration”, i.e. of the object, or, ultimately, goods. The same proportion is, likewise, confirmed by photographs of Yugoslav parades, as no systematized and precise analyses of the props of the mass Yugoslav spectacle were made. The first post–war parades, those during the agitprop era to be more precise, display the manifest intention of the new authorities, not so much to manufacture, because objective conditions for that did not exist, as to present objects, i.e. symbols of progress, speedily and on a mass scale.

    “At the 'London' intersection, two enormous figures made of wood – a worker and a peasant – reach out across the street joining a sickle and hammer in the middle – a triumphal arch – the symbol of the union of workers and peasants. A bit farther away, at the 'Putnik' building, the arch of a large cogwheel spans the street – a triumphal arch symbolizing our plan of industrialization and electrification”, we can read in the description of the 1947 1 st of May parade.⁶³ In addition to the sickle and hammer, manufactured goods such as tractors, engines, trucks, airplanes, ships, scale models of entire new urban settlements, but also shoes and telephones, are displayed at parades as part of the mass spectacle of goods. This specifically, or better to put it, in socialist practice, confirms Marx' teaching that the “mysticism of the commodity fetish is not in its usability but in its market value and its symbolical power: as long as a commodity is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it”. ⁶⁴

  This idea of temporary spatial compositions, inconceivable outside the aesthetic context of the avant–garde and the aesthetics of the ready– made, on the one hand, implied the symbolization and rhetoric of propaganda, on the other. The construction of even temporary “statues”, a large mobile still camera, for instance, necessitates the displacement of an object from a given context and its forcible relocation to another, i.e., intervention within the existing urban space and cultural pattern of behavior. In other words, without the complementary confrontation of the old and the new, the inherited cultural milieu and futuristic constructions, there can be no monumental propaganda. Needless to say, the idea of temporary spatial compositions negates the constructive principles of traditional sculpture, finding a foothold in the rich experience of the art of the avant–garde, not only of constructivism, but also of cubism, futurism, dadaism and surrealism.

    Ritual sacral objects, we recall, played an exceptionally important role in Christian religious prac tice. The advent of communism abruptly discontinued, in both the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia, the tradition of religious processions which took place, on established dates, outside the consecrated church area, in the open urban milieu of city streets, with the obligatory public display of icons and other sacred objects – relics.

Парада за 1. мај, Београд, 1948. 1st of May Parade, Belgrade, 1948

    Religious spectacles also necessitated the construction of temporary structures which gave concrete form to biblical scenes and their topography. One can even say that the communists, by abrogating the right of citizens to religiosity, through the newly–established form of mass parades in a way profaned and popularized traditional Christian processions. A case in point is a photograph taken on the occasion of Tito's visit to Rovinj and Dubrovnik in 1958, which visually documents the practice of a revolutionary about–turn in the dramaturgy and iconography of the mass spectacle. Let me observe, however, that propaganda, which is the basic objective of both the sacral and the profane mass spectacle, did not imply any negative connotations in the context of religious ideology. After all, the term “propaganda” itself is associated with the “Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide” established by the Catholic Church in 1622. Several centuries later, with the conceptualization of monumental propaganda, Russian theoreticians made a distinction between two related terms: propaganda and agitation.⁶⁵

    Not only photographs but also documentaries visually preserved the existence of temporary spatial compositions which hallmarked the mass spectacles during the first decade of building com-munism.⁶⁶ Mechanical pictures are documents and testimony ensuring the more reliable identification of the grandiose dimensions of fragile installations in the spectacle of communism than the descriptions of contemporaries and their participants. It is also thanks to them that the multi– media nature of revolutionary interventions in specific urban ambiences has been permanently recorded. The frozen film frame of the shoe walking alone along the streets of Belgrade during the st of May Parade in 1949 can be seen as a continuation of avant–garde, notably surrealist, research in the area of the fetishization of the object and its hidden meanings. But, in the new, revolutionary context, such experiences were successfully synchronized with the concept of a dynamic spatial montage which stresses both the experience of attraction as well as of shock. The frame focuses on an unreal object which, being blown up more than a thousand times in relation to a real shoe, almost defies comparison with the real thing. The public presentation of such a shoe does not mean that the new man of communism will have a gigantic foot – its proportions are a metaphor of the promised progress. Photographs are, like in the above–mentioned example, the corpus delicti of the utopist idea of the ideal city whose streets and buildings are the stage of the urban spectacle of progress. They support the “fundamentally tautological nature of the spectacle, which stems from the fact that its means are at the same time its end: what is visible is good, what is good is indeed visible.” ⁶⁷

    Actual urban areas demolished during enemy and allied bombing campaigns over the 1941– 1944 period were pushed out of the range of sight of the observer. In the focus of the camera, and then of the observer as well, were walls covered with painted stage scenery and squares inhabited with the fantastic props of the new mass spectacle. Temporary objects of worship and adoration are offered to the masses as part of the system of mediated communication with the centre of power. In that self–contained tautological frame only the center of power could be multiplied: once it is the actual figure of Tito, who is physically present and observes the spectacle in real time, but at another time he sees himself as in a mirror, and that is how the other participants in the parade also see him as they carry his multiple images, and last but not least – he occupies the position of the all–seeing on a gigantic poster on the Trade Unions Hall in Belgrade.

    In the artificial context of the spectacle, where the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred, the myth of a new moral order obtaining in a society rid of class conflicts functions perfectly. The utopist illusion, firmly anchored in a monolithic ideology, assumes the form of timeless mythology, for time has become relativized for the participants in and spectators of the mass socialist spectacle – the pictures of dead men (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ivan Milutinović) in the streets linked the past with the figures of living men (Josip Broz Tito, Milovan Djilas, Edvard Kardelj), building, together, the memorial context of the future. Post festum, photography was the ideal medium whose image conveyed precisely that feeling not only of time stopped but also of time mythical. Photography as a popular picture of the mass spectacle extending through time and not only space, registered the reality of the already achieved harmony of the future in the ideal communist city.