Finding the Symbolic Center
At the advent of Bolshevik rule, there was a profound ambivalence toward Russia's symbolic centers. The ceremonial centers of Petrograd were inherited from previous regimes and had to be symbolically reoriented, which had been one objective of Lenin's unsuccess-
ful monument plan. Parade routes were another instrument of reorientation. Parades can be linear, with each place and spectator along the route being addressed equally; or they can be centripetal, with a central point being served above others. American towns usually define the town center as a street; the linear Veterans' Day parade marches down Main Street. Russian cities have always defined the city center as a point, and their parades have been centered. Moscow of course offered an ideal central point, Red Square, which had the additional advantage of centralizing celebrations in front of the seat of government. Postrevolutionary Petrograd was a more difficult problem. There were many potential central points: Palace Square, which would have been appropriate but for associations with the old regime and Provisional Government; the Field of Mars, centrally located yet a "neutral" site associated with both revolutions; and Smolny, the source of the Revolution and seat of the party yet located at the edge of town. May Day 1918 was focused on the Field of Mars (as had been May Day 1917); November 7, 1918, was celebrated at Smolny. And for the 1919 anniversary celebration, Uprising Square (formerly Znamenskaia), "where the first revolution began," was chosen.[33]
Parades also signal centers of power by whether they are made to see or to be seen: the first makes the marcher the center, the second the viewer—usually the VIPs on the tribune. On May Day, the marchers were taken all around Petrograd to see the fine decorations put up by artists and to let the marchers be seen by the city.[34] Afterward all gathered on the Field of Mars for some speeches, but this part of the festival was secondary, almost impromptu.[35] The Winter Palace was also deliberately assigned a "democratic" value; it was renamed the Palace of the Arts and was opened to the general public for the first time. Lines were tremendous, and the gesture was the most successful of an otherwise equivocal holiday. On November 7, a centralizing tendency absent on May Day was noticeable. A hierarchy of places and symbols developed, and with this a new centeredness, a hierarchy of participants. All parade routes led to Smolny; maneuvering the marchers past a single point led to the long periods of standing and to the human traffic jams that became a lamentable tradition.[36] Perhaps the most critical innovation was the tribune; leaders were segregated from the people and marked as the primary spectators.[37] The marchers filed through a seventy-five-foot temporary arch decorated with the new Soviet seal and past a smoke-currtained altar. Around the arch were placed obelisks, on which rested
busts of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Volodarsky, Uritsky, Lunacharsky, Kamenev, and Sverdlov, as well as Marx and other socialist heroes.[38]
Palace Square would have to wait until 1920 for its time. Like Red Square, Palace Square was ideally suited to project an image of strong central authority. Marking the center of the city, occupying and imposing on its most valuable space, Palace Square also offered an opportunity for the central review of a parade. Only those unfortunate associations interfered. If the festival wanted the square for its own purposes, the image of the square would have to be "cleaned up." Renaming it Uritsky Square, after the slain Chekist, was an important change; and Altman's November 1918 decorations had subverted its old values; but symbolic reorientation was most fully effected by the May Day 1920 subbotnik . In the early eighteenth century the square before the palace had been a tree-lined park for public use; but it was gradually transformed by the dynasty into a appendage of the palace, a process completed in 1990, when Nicholas II ordered it enclosed by a massive iron fence. The subbotnik reopened the space to public circulation and linked it to the surrounding city. Still, though it was suitable for a review of the demonstration for the Third International in July, the square was not yet the mythic Palace Square, "center of the Revolution." That honor belonged to Smolny, as it should.
Agit-Prop, the state propaganda agency, issued a decree for the third anniversary forbidding large expenditures,[39] which essentially removed the outskirts and peripheries from the festival. In Petrograd only the central places, Smolny, Palace Square, and the Field of Mars, plus the graves of fallen revolutionaries in Lesnaia were to be decorated.[40] In that same spirit of frugality, Mayakovsky did a series of Russian Telegraph Agency posters condemning sumptuous celebrations:
He celebrates [the anniversary] correctly
who forgets all sort of carnivals,
and
tirelessly
fixes the railroads.[41]
But the message never made it to the Petrograd Soviet and the Northern Army. With victory close at hand, they ordered a magnificent festival, one that—if all plans had been realized—would have restructured the center of Petrograd. Petrograd was a city of long, broad avenues and yawning spaces embodying the values of order and power.
Festivals have often had a hand in determining the growth of a city; ancient Olympia was built entirely to the specifications of a festival, and the modern Olympics usually change the face of their host city. In fact Lazar Kaganovich, leader of Moscow in the 1930s, justified tearing down the jumbled alleys and churches of the capital by saying, "My aesthetics demands that the demonstration processions from the six districts of Moscow should all pour into Red Square at the same time."[42] But in 1920 Petrograd was far from its former imperial splendor; as Osip Mandelstam noted in an image of both degeneration and regeneration, grass was sprouting through the pavement.[43] There would be no major construction in Petrograd for many years; and the festivals, by gestures such as the placement of monuments, could define the city only by reorienting extant symbols.
That is not to say there were no plans for the physical reworking of Petrograd, just no funds. The third anniversary of the Revolution led to the formulation of one of the first postrevolutionary plans for altering the face of Petrograd. A massive spectacle was envisioned as the centerpiece of the festival; and had it been produced, the performance would have required great changes in the city. The performance was to stretch from Semenov Place to the Admiralty—about a mile altogether. Because the space between was not completely open, planners decided to clear several buildings to open a view.[44] On Semenov Place a monument was to be erected (as a model) that would have fixed a new center for both Petrograd and the world revolution: Tatlin's Monument to the Third International.
Tatlin's monument was designed to remedy the obvious deficiencies of the Lenin Plan. His working group was assembled in 1918 to draft plans for a monument that could change with time,[45] which would overcome the basic contradiction noted by Shklovsky: "I'm always surprised . . . by the intention to erect monuments to the Russian Revolution. It seems the Revolution hasn't died yet. It's somehow strange to build a monument to something still alive and developing. . . . The attempt to create this revolutionary art leads to the creation of false works of art."[46]
The Monument to the Third International rested on the tradition begun by Altman's restructuring of Palace Square for the first-anniversary celebration. Tatlin's monument, however, was designed to be permanent. Using the materials and reflecting the dynamics of the new (as yet nonexistent) urban environment, it was to consist of three great glass chambers connected by a system of vertical axes and spirals.
These chambers are arranged vertically above one another, and surrounded by various harmonic structures. By means of special machinery they must be kept in perpetual motion, but at different rates of speed. The lowest chamber is cubiform, and turns on its axis once a year; it is to be used for legislative purposes; in the future, conferences of the International and the meetings of congresses and other bodies will be held in it. The chamber above this is pyramidal in shape, and makes one revolution a month; administrative and other executive bodies will hold their meetings there. Finally, the third and highest part of the building will be used chiefly for information and propaganda, that is, as a bureau of information, for newpapers, and also as the place from where brochures and manifestos will be issued. Telegraphs, radio-apparatus, and lanterns for cinematograph performances will be installed. . . .
The use of spirals for monumental architecture means an enrichment of the composition. Just as the triangle, as an image of general equilibrium, is the best expression of the Renaissance, so the spiral is the most effective symbol of the modern spirit of the age. The countering of gravitation by buttresses is the purest classical form of statics; the classical form of bourgeois society, aiming at possession of the land and soil, was the horizontal; the spiral, which, rising from the earth, detaches itself from all animal, earthly, and oppressing interests, forms the purest expression of humanity set free by the Revolution. . . .
Most of the elements of architecture hitherto in use possessed no practical importance, and remained unorganized. To-day the principle of organization must rule and penetrate all art.[47]
Monuments define the symbolic center of a city; but dynamic constructions—like Altman's—tend to negate symbols and move to the periphery. There was some ambivalence about where the monument should be placed: in Moscow or Petrograd; in the center of the city or in the factory zone on the outskirts.[48] The issue was decided in planning for the third anniversary, when the Petrograd Party Committee decided to build the monument in Petrograd.[49] The model was to be exhibited as the center of the festival, and the space cleared would afford a view of the new center once it was constructed. The model, however, was never exhibited on the square; and the buildings were never knocked down. Petrograd would have to content itself with the old center of town, a center symbolically redefined.
In 1920 the center of Moscow was set firmly in Red Square. Previously, there had been ambivalence. The first-anniversary celebration of November 1918 provoked some controversy as to what the center of revolutionary Moscow was: organizers proposed creating an artificial center, a "Red city," extending from Red Square to the Metropolitan Hotel. The March-Route Committee thought Red Square should be the center, but the Central Organizing Committee preferred Theater
Square. Furthermore, as one delegate noted; "Those who will appreciate the entire majesty of the holiday with their hearts live, after all, on the outskirts. Why should they march to the center to amuse the bourgeosie?"[50] On May Day 1919, the demonstration was routed to Red Square; and it was there that Lenin addressed the masses. Yet even Red Square was not a uniform space; the placement of Lenin's Mausoleum by the Kremlin wall in 1924 would connect it to the center of power, but in 1919 Lenin gave his address from Lobnoe Mesto, located on the opposite side of the square and associated with Razin—a subverter of power.
The International Congress of 1920 helped fix the point. The Russians centered the International in Russia, in Moscow, in the Kremlin; and a huge military demonstration through Red Square marking the conclusion of the Congress on July 29 emphasized the symbolic claim to the center. Judging by their memoirs, the delegates were susceptible to the symbolic assault. Trotsky, the organizer, pulled out all the stops to show off Soviet power. Mayakovsky wrote striking verses that caught the spirit of the demonstration and the rhythm of its march.
We sally forth
a revolutionary charge.
Above the ranks
the scarlet flag of fire.
Led by the million-headed
Third International.
We advance.
No beginning to the flood of our ranks.
No end to the Red Army Volgas.
A belt of red-armies
to the West
from the East,
encircling the Earth
from the poles.[51]
Trotsky, flanked by delegates atop a tribune, reviewed the demonstration from noon to 5 P.M. The tribune, set by the Kremlin wall for the first time, was a mark of the center, concentrating the symbolic and political center in one. Around it were arrayed trophies seized from the allied intervention forces: cannons and transport, tanks and "other useful inventions of the bourgeois mind."[52] Buildings surrounding the square were hung with slogans stenciled on linen; marchers greeted the delegates with gold-lettered placards that sparkled in the sunshine. Sausage-shaped
balloons, trailing red pennants and streamers, were anchored to the crosses of St. Basil's onion domes.
The real show was the people. All of Moscow was turned out to march in the parade, though citizens were not allowed onto the square as spectators.[53] Boy Scouts trooped by and saluted the tribune; Caucasian tribesmen in native dress rode by. Athletes clad only in swim trunks made a particular impression. According to the press this was a perfect example of the potential of festivals to "create the new Soviet man." Exhausted workers had only to pass through the square with the rhythmic columns and they were transformed from "decrepit old men into handsome youths."[54]
Perhaps, but the political message sent to the foreign delegates was surely of greater consequence. Karl Radek's claim that "the demonstration . . . meant more than all the theoretical discussions [of the Congress]" was probably close to the truth. It established the claim of the Russians to be the source of international socialism's strength. A foreign delegate was overheard observing that it was "absolutely clear [!] that nobody could force such a mass onto the streets," a comment Radek used to refute Karl Kautsky's claim that the Russian workers' initiative was not manifest in the Revolution. But it was the pounding rhythm of marching feet, the tremendous organization of the demonstration that transmitted its message. The delegates, some of whom had been in Soviet Russia now for months, had not been impressed, to say the least, by the organization they had encountered. The Bolsheviks arranged the festival as a special show of organization, five hours of demonstration to erase months of contrary observations. The event seems to have made the proper impression. When Trotsky turned to a French Syndicalist and asked, "With all this, won't counterrevolution be impossible in Moscow?" the French comrade only silently nodded his head.[55]