During the Soviet party congress, Industry of Socialism, a monumental art exhibition, was mounted near the Park of Culture metro station. Artists working in photography, industrial design, and even graphic and poster art had been excluded in favor of oil painters. Originally slated to open on the revolution’s twentieth anniversary, it had been mounted in an earlier form by November 1937 in a hard-to-reach hall on the Frunze Embankment, but it had not been open to the public—many of the figures depicted in the paintings had been (or were soon to be) arrested. Artists, too, were arrested, and even some of those not arrested had failed to produce their contracted works. (Soviet paints were known to be of miserable quality, and funds for purchasing foreign paints and canvases were unavailable, a fact that the artists wrote denunciations about.) Most of the works on exhibit in 1939 depicted railroads, canals, coal pits, and gold mines, as well as a Tajik weather station, Arctic exploration, and the good life of workers who enjoyed rewards like motorcycles for their labor exploits. Visitors encountered a gigantic mosaic of precious stones and metals that traced the infrastructure and natural resources of the USSR, Stalin’s epic canvas. Newsreels gave a narrated tour of the works.147 First prize went to Boris Yoganson’s disconsolate In an Old Urals Factory (1937), which showed a muscular worker staring down the fat-cat owner. More innovative was Yuri Pimenov’s New Moscow (1937), which depicted a new boulevard and a prosperous Soviet way of life, symbolized by automobiles and stylish attire, in a decidedly modern look reminiscent of a Cézanne. The painting’s central figure was a woman in an open-top car—and in the driver’s seat.148
HITLER INTRUDES
Stalin, in his congress report, had boasted that “it is necessary to recognize that the most important achievement in the sphere of public-political life during the reporting period . . . is the complete democratization of the country’s public life.”149 He mispronounced the name of the commissariat of agriculture—calling it the Narkomzyom, accenting the last syllable, instead of Narkomzyem—and every speaker who followed copied his mistake.150 Occasionally raising his right index finger for emphasis, he pointed out that the country had to have “at its disposal a well-trained army, well-organized penal organs, and a strong intelligence service.” He also underscored the system’s political fastness. “In the event of a war, the rear and the front, in view of their homogeneity and internal unity, will be stronger than in any other country, which foreign lovers of military confrontation would do well to keep in mind,” he observed, lauding himself for collectivization. “Some people in the Western press are claiming that the purge of spies, murderers, and wreckers from Soviet institutions—the likes of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Rosenholz, Bukharin, and other scum—has ‘shaken’ the Soviet system and brought disintegration,” the despot added. “Such cheap gossip merits only our contempt.”151
Foreign affairs took up about one quarter of Stalin’s speech, and on this score he had thoroughly reworked the text from the draft supplied by aides. He noted that the League of Nations had proved useless but argued that, given the dangerous times, it “should not be ignored.” He stressed the fact of a “new imperialist war,” now in its second year, and named Germany, Italy, and Japan as aggressors, but warned that efforts at collective security were “in disarray” because “the “non-aggressor states,” Britain and France, were playing a dangerous game. They were stronger than the fascist powers but shrank from meeting the threat, refusing to intervene in Spain, China, or Czechoslovakia “to save their own skins.” Remarking on the hysteria in the Western press over supposed German designs on Soviet Ukraine, Stalin warned countries “accustomed to having others pull chestnuts out of the fire for them”—a reference to Britain and France—that they would not succeed in pushing the Soviet Union into war. “We stand for peace and strengthening of businesslike ties with all countries,” he noted, but only “as long as these countries maintain similar relations with the Soviet Union and do not try to damage our country’s interests.”152
