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Light in Captivity: Spectacular Glass and Soviet Power in the 1920s and 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Julia Bekman Chadaga
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Abstract

Exploiting what Jean Starobinski has called the “solar myth” of the revolution, the Soviet regime used the visual power of light within glass to create an exalted vision of Russia's transformation. This article explores the symbolism and the spectacular use of the light bulb (as a material and a discursive entity) in the early Soviet period. Julia Bekman Chadaga traces how the light bulb became an ideological icon and then investigates its treatment in Soviet popular culture and in literary works by Mikhail Zoshchenko, Andrei Platonov, and Iurii Olesha. The Kremlin stars are examined as a monumental manifestation of the Soviet light bulb and a case study illustrating the state's appropriation of religious imagery. While official discourse around the Kremlin stars and “Lenin's little lamps” invokes the conquest of unruly nature and the attainment of divine power via technology produced by the triumphant socialist state, the literary works examined here destabilize the fixed symbolic meaning of captive light.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , Spring 2007 , pp. 82 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2007

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References

Research for this article was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The staff of Widener Library at Harvard University provided invaluable materials and assistance. I am grateful for the advice of Svetlana Boym, David Brandenberger, Julie Buckler, Vivek Chadaga, Katia Dianina, Diane Koenker, Julia Vaingurt, my colleagues at Harvard University and Macalester College, and the two anonymous referees of this article.

1. See Gor'kii, M., “Pozhary,” Sobraniesochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1951), 15: 143-44.Google Scholar The journal was published in 1942; Gor'kii dates the story to 1922.

2. Although I consider the evolution of light imagery over several decades, my main goal is not to establish causality; I am primarily interested in tracing the manifestations of the discourse concerning light in written and visual sources as well as exploring the creation of the light-producing objects that themselves generated such discourses. For a broader historical framework within which to view the evolution of light imagery discussed in this study, as well as a compelling approach to the interpretation of visual propaganda, see Bonnell, Victoria, The Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar.

3. Wortman, Richard S., Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, 1995), 1:3.Google Scholar

4. For example, see Geldern, James von, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (Berkeley, 1993)Google Scholar and Petrone, Karen, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington, 2000)Google Scholar. Recently, Jeffrey Brooks has written about the “performative culture” of the Stalin era—the period in which the Kremlin stars were created—when the Soviet leadership “employed rituals of theater to draw citizens into public displays of support.“ Brooks shows how the print media created a space for Stalin to “display himself and the new order he claimed to have created, an omnipresent magic theater in which all active participants in Soviet public life acquired ancillary roles.” Brooks, Jeffrey, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, 2001), xvi Google Scholar.

5. Stites, Richard, “The Origins of Soviet Ritual Style,” in Arvidsson, Claes and Blomqvist, Lars Erik, eds., Symbols of Power: The Esthetics of Political Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Stockholm, 1987)Google Scholar.

6. The Church of the Annunciation and the Church of the Savior in the Wood—the oldest church in Moscow—were destroyed in 1932 and 1933, respectively. Both were located in the Kremlin. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior, situated half a kilometer from the Kremlin, was destroyed in 1931. See Colton, Timothy, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 260-62 and 268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. As expressionist artist Paul Scheerbart put it in 1914, “Glass architecture makes homes into cadiedrals, with the same effects.” Scheerbart, Paul, Glass Architecture, trans. Palmes, James, ed. Sharp, Dennis (New York, 1972), 72 Google Scholar. People living in glass houses would undergo a moral regeneration. See also the extensive use of glass architecture in Velimir Khlebnikov's “Projects for the Future,” Tvoreniia, ed. M. la. Poliakov (Moscow, 1986), 119, as well as a skeptical view of a glass-based Utopia in Evgenii Zamiatin's novel We.

8. Constructivist architects drew an explicit connection between glass and good health in the article “Steklo v sovremennoi arkhitekture,” Sovremennaia arkhitektura 3 (1926): 63. Frederick Starr documents Konstantin Mel'nikov's strategic use of glass to expose the human body to the sun in Melnikov: Sob Architect in a Mass Society (Princeton, 1978), 177.

9. El Lissitzky attributed symbolic values to modern construction materials: “Iron is strong, like the will of the proletariat. Glass is clear, like its conscience.” Lissitzky, El, Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, quoted in Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, 1983), 65 Google Scholar. Such associations informed the design of the glass chambers in Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International. See Punin, Nikolai, “Pamiatnik III Internatsionala” (originally published in 1920), O Tatline (Moscow, 1994), 21 Google Scholar.

10. Other spectacular glass objects included Vladimir Lenin's sarcophagus, the spire of Moscow State University, and the columns inside Avtovo Station in the St. Petersburg metro.

11. See the essay “Lenin's Light Bulb” by Diane P. Koenker, as well as the accompanying photograph of a peasant woman looking on as electric light is installed in her hut, in Fritzsche, Peter and Stewart, Charles, eds., Imagining the Twentieth Century (Urbana, 1997), 30 Google Scholar. Another photograph from the period shows a rural couple trying out electric light for the first time. They gaze upward as the man switches on the light; the woman smiles and looks up at the bulb with wonder, while the expression in the man's eyes is rather more ambivalent. See Grey, Ian, The Horizon History of Russia (New York, 1970), 361.Google Scholar

12. “Over a bright and free world … the Red Army star shines with an international light. Its inextinguishable rays show scarlet through the fog, and the workers of the world walk toward it as pilgrims once did.” As Ivan Esaulov points out, what is notable here is that the Christian star is replaced by the Bolshevik star, an “'antistar’ shining in a peculiar anti- Christian world.” See Esaulov, Ivan, “Sotsrealizm i religioznoe soznanie,” in Gunther, Hans and Dobrenko, Evgeny, eds., Sotsrealisticheskii kanon (St. Petersburg, 2000), 51.Google Scholar

13. The poster is reproduced in Stephen White, The Bolshevik Poster (New Haven, 1988), 48 (plate 3.10). I am grateful to John Malmstad for bringing this poster to my attention.

14. See Velikanova, Olga, Making of an Idol: On Uses of Lenin (Gottingen, 1996), 104 Google Scholar. The Maiakovskii quotation is from Maiakovskii, V. V., “Vladimir Il'ich Lenin,” Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Proza (Moscow, 2000), 368 Google Scholar.

15. Here I am following Nina Tumarkin's definition of the Lenin cult as the organized system of veneration around the leader. See Tumarkin, Nina, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 80–87.Google Scholar

16. Cited in Kotyrev, Andrei, Mavzolei V. I. Lenina: Proektirovanie i stroitel'stvo (Moscow, 1971), 18 Google Scholar. The words of the Soviet state anthem (1944) continue the Lenin-as-light motif: “The sun of freedom shone to us through the storms, and great Lenin lit the way for us.“

17. One poem refers to Lenin as “another heavenly body … the second sun of our days, our little earthly sun.” Egor Nechaev, “Velikomu vozhdiu,” 1922. Another calls him “our red sun.” Kamenskii, Vasilii, “Lenin—nashe bessmertie,” 1924. Both poems appear in Val'be, P. B., ed., Lenin v sovetskoi poezii (Leningrad, 1970), 100 and 120, respectivelyGoogle Scholar. A slogan from 1924 states: “Lenin is the sun of the future.” Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 84.

18. Indeed, the sun was a sacred symbol for the Russian peasantry. The popularity of the sun as a visual motif in Russian peasant art can help to explain why this association was propagated in images of Lenin meant to appeal to large sectors of the Russian population. On the reasons for the centrality of the sun in peasant artwork, see Netting, Anthony, “Images and Ideas in Russian Peasant Art,” SlavicReview 35, no. 1 (March 1976): 53–54 Google Scholar.

19. Abolina, R. la., Lenin v sovetskom izobrazitel'nom iskusstve (Moscow, 1975), 44.Google Scholar

20. The inventor Pavel Iablochkov devised the electric street lamps that illuminated Paris and London in the 1870s and 1890s; as Loren Graham recounts, Iablochkov's lamps were acclaimed in western Europe, but he was unable to duplicate his success when he returned to Russia, and “the major cities of the Russian Empire were eventually electrified by foreigners.” See Graham, “The Fits and Starts of Russian and Soviet Technology,” in Scanlan, James P., ed., Technology, Culture, and Development: The Experience of the Soviet Model (Armonk, N.Y., 1992), 16 Google Scholar. See also the illustration in Déribéré, M., Préhistoire et histoire de la lumiére (Paris, 1979), 257.Google Scholar

21. In his writings, Lenin argued that the wholesale electrification of Russia was the crucial step in creating an industrial base for the new socialist society, as well as in overhauling the agricultural system. See Verkhovtsev, I. P., ed., Svet nad Rossiei: Ocherkipo istorii elektrifikatsii SSSR (Moscow, 1960), 6–7.Google Scholar

22. Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in theRussian Revolution (New York, 1989), 48–49 Google Scholar.

23. Starobinski, Jean, 1789: The Emblems of Reason, trans. Bray, Barbara (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 58.Google Scholar

24. Verkhovtsev, ed., Svet nad Rossiei, 310. On 14 November 1955, the front page of Leningradskaia pravda reported that the village of Kashino was celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of Lenin's visit and referred to Kashino as “the birthplace of ‘Lenin's little lamp.'” “Tarn, gde vpervye zazhglas’ ‘lampochka Il'icha,'” Leningradskaia pravda, 14 November 1955. See also Steklov, V. Iu., V. I. Lenin i elektrifikatsiia (Moscow, 1975), 226-29.Google Scholar

25. Isakovskii, M., “Vdol’ derevni,” in Shvedov, I. A., comp., Poet sovetshaia strana (Moscow, 1962), 97 Google Scholar. Isakovskii's frequent collaborator V Zakharov set the poem to music. I am grateful to Valerii and Larisa Bekman for bringing this song to my attention.

26. Quoted in Belitskii, Pavel, “Poet, vernuvshii pesniu: K 100-letiiu Mikhaila Isakovskogo,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, no. 8 (19 January 2000).Google Scholar

27. “Daite solntse noch'iu! Gde naidesh’ ego? Pokupai v GUMe—oslepitel'no i deshevo.“ The poster is reproduced in Khan-Magomedov, Selim O., Rodchenko: The Complete Work, intro. and ed. Quilici, Vieri (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 149 Google Scholar.

28. Quoted in Miller, Frank J., Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, N.Y., 1990), 164 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Polina Rikoun for this reference.

29. See Bonnell, Iconography of Power, 120.

30. Stalin came to appropriate the luminous aspect (among others) of the Lenin cult. Starting in the late 1920s, literature and particularly folklore praised Stalin in metaphorical language that invoked light or the sun. See examples in Jan Plamper, “The Spatial Poetics of die Personality Cult: Circles around Stalin,” in Dobrenko, Evgeny and Naiman, Eric, eds., The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle, 2003), 25–27 Google Scholar.

31. The fact that the smaller, darker profile of Stalin is placed inside the larger, lighter profile of Lenin may have been an additional cause for concern.

32. Zakharov, Alexander, “Mass Celebrations in a Totalitarian System,” in Efimova, Alia and Manovich, Lev, eds. and trans., Tehstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago, 1993), 210.Google Scholar

33. “'Lenin's little lamp’ is a phrase that has spread throughout the country and has become an expression of the people's gratitude to their great leader for his tireless energy in reconstructing the entire national economy on the basis of electrification and for his concern for the people's well-being.” Verkhovtsev, ed., Svet nod Rossiei, 310.

34. A 1963 poem by Andrei Voznesenskii continues the tradition; describing a visit to Lenin's mausoleum, Voznesenskii refers to the leader's “transparent brow blaz[ing] like a lamp” (prozrachnoe chelo gorit lampoobrazno). Voznesenskii, “Lonzhiumo,” in Val'be, ed., Lenin v sovetskoi poezii, 665.

35. Zoshchenko, Mikhail, “Elektrifikatsiia,” in Dolinskii, M. Z., ed., Uvazhaemye grazhdane (Moscow, 1991), 221 Google Scholar; originally published in Krasnyi voron, no. 17 (1924).

36. Thus, the landlady cuts die wires only in her own room and insists on living in darkness and filth “as before” even after the narrator offers to repair her room “practically for free“; in case any ambiguity remains, a character not present in the first version calls her a “degenerate petite bourgeois.” In die feuilleton, die narrator resigns himself to living in die apartment sans electric light; by contrast, in die revised version die narrator declares: “I am living by electric light [pri elektricheskoi lampochke] and am extremely satisfied.“ Mikhail Zoshchenko, “Bednost',” Rasskazy, fel'etony, povesti (Moscow, 1958), 29 Google Scholar.

37. Bachelard, Gaston, LaFlamme d'une chandelle (Paris, 1961), 3 Google Scholar; cited in Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Davies, Angela (Berkeley, 1988), 29.Google Scholar

38. See Zoshchenko, Mikhail, “Malen'kaia khitrost',” Povesti i rasskazy (New York, 1952), 319-20Google Scholar. For a translation, see “A Clever Litde Trick,” in Hugh McLean, ed., Nervous People and Other Satires, trans. Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean (Bloomington, 1975), 176-78Google Scholar.1 have slighdy revised diis translation.

39. Moskovskii bol'shevik, 9 April 1948, cited in Verkhovtsev, ed., Svet nod Rossiei, 311. By contrast, the narrator of Zoshchenko's “Clever Litde Trick” admits that the bright electric light in his apartment has dulled his ability to think: “golova u menia slabee rabotaet.“

40. In a still later edition (1965), it received die neutral title “Lenin's Little Lamp.“ These dates are cited in Seifrid, Thomas, Andrei Platonov: Uncertainties of Spirit (Cambridge, Eng., 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Seifrid, tiiis story and others including “The Motherland of Electricity” were “conceived at least provisionally as contributions to that body of Soviet literature devoted to … ‘socialist industrialization’ and the ‘struggle for the socialist transformation of the countryside’ that had appeared after the civil war in response to the Party's campaign for electrification and industrialization” (60-61).

41. Platonov, Andrei, “O potukhshei lampochke Il'icha,” Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh (Moscow, 1998), 1:327.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., 1:331 Google Scholar.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 1:332 Google Scholar.

45. Ibid., 1:332-33.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., 1:334.Google Scholar

47. For broader discussions of light and optical imagery in Iurii Olesha, see Beaujour, Elizabeth Klosty, The Invisible Land: A Study of the Artistic Imagination of Iurii Olesha (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Chudakova, Marietta, Masterstvo Iuriia Oleshi (Moscow, 1972)Google Scholar; Ingdahl, Kazimiera, The Artist and the Creative Act: A Study ofjurij Olesa's Novel Zavist’ (Stockholm, 1984)Google Scholar; and Nilsson, Nils Ake, “Through the Wrong End of Binoculars: An Introduction to Jury Olesha,” Scando-Slavica 11 (1965): 40–68 Google Scholar.

48. Olesha, Yuri, Envy, in Brown, Clarence, ed., The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader (New York, 1985), 251 Google Scholar. For the original, see Olesha, lu. K., “Zavist',” Ni dnia bez strochki (Minsk, 1982), 4.Google Scholar

49. The notion of Kavalerov's conflict with the “men of action” is developed in detail by Tucker, Janet G. in Revolution Betrayed: furij Olesa's Envy (Columbus, 1996).Google Scholar

50. Not only is uiis a central image in £71151, D u t t^le image also appears literally at die center of the book—Olesha places it in chapter 3 of part 2, roughly halfway through the novel.

51. Olesha, Envy, 326. This translation has been revised. For the original, see Olesha, Zavist', 64.

52. Eliot Borenstein apdy characterizes Envy as a cautionary tale about overly orthodox reading strategies. See Borenstein, , “Defying Interpretation: Allegory and Ideology in Jurij Oleša's Envy,” Russian Literature 49, no. 1 (2001): 25–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thus, one should be careful about accepting at face value any interpretation that Envy offers, whether voiced by one of the characters or by the narrator in part 2.

53. During die interrogation sequence, Ivan uses such phrases as “peaceful revolt,“ “peaceful demonstration of feelings,” and, in a draft, “shock troop of feelings.” As Ingdahl points out, such expressions “parody the code of die Revolution.” Ingdahl, Artist and the Creative Act, 84. This suggests that tfiere are odier potentially parodic moments in the interrogation sequence.

54. Writing of his visit to Moscow during the New Economic Policy, Walter Benjamin mentions the hourly power outages and die flickering light of Soviet lamps. See Benjamin, , “Moscow,” Reflections: Essays. Aphorisms. Autobiographical Writings, trans. Jephcott, Edmund (New York, 1978), 110 Google Scholar.

55. Velikanova's statistics illustrate the remarkable growdi of the Lenin cult in publishing in the years when Olesha was working on die novel, especially 1924-25. Velikanova, Making of an Idol, 156-57.

56. In diis novel structured by oppositions, die burned-out bulb appears as a counter-image to die hundred-watt bulb, a garish emblem of die technological and aesuietic triumph of die new world diat illuminates Andrei and his cronies as diey feast on his brand-new sausage. Olesha, Zavist', 23. For a reading of diis scene as Olesha's attack on die officially sanctioned art of his time, see Salys, Rimgaila, “Sausage Rococo: The Art of Tiepolo in Olesha's Envy, ” in Salys, , ed., Olesha's Envy: A Critical Companion (Evanston, 1999).Google Scholar

57. Cited in Sukhikh, Igor, “Ostaetsia tol'ko metafora … 1927. ‘Zavist’ Iurii Oleshi,“ Zvezda 10 (2002): 224 Google Scholar, emphasis added.

58. The final light source in Olesha's novel is a wood splinter (luchina), a traditional torch for peasant huts that the electric bulb was meant to drive out; hence the agit-prop slogan: “We used to have die splinter and die candle, but now we'll have Lenin's lamp“ (Byla luchina i svecha, a toper1 budet lampa R'icha). Cited in Mokienko, V. M., Tolkovyi slovar1 iazyka Sovdepii (St. Petersburg, 1998), 307 Google Scholar. An article in Bednota reports that die peasants of die village Berezova have installed electric lighting in all die huts, which had only recendy been illuminated by wood splinters alone. The article ends widi die confident prediction diat soon all of Soviet Russia will be badied in powerful electric light—“die symbol of our new life.” S. Grigor'ev, “Elektrichestvo v derevne,” Bednota, 14 November 1920.

59. Olesha, Iurii, “Zagovor chuvstv,” Pesy. Stat'i o teatre i dramaturgii (Moscow, 1968), 83.Google Scholar

60. Olesha, “Avtor o svoei p'ese,” Pesy, 261.

61. Topolin, M. A., Kremlevskie zvezdy (Moscow, 1975), 40.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., 42.

63. The following account is based on coverage in Pravda, 10, 11, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28 October 1935 and Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 16-22.

64. The red star became the official emblem of the Red Army in April 1918 and was made into a badge to be worn on the breast; in July of that year, die new constitution incorporated the red star into the state coat of arms, and by die end of die year die star was made part of die Soviet flag. See Stites, “Origins of Soviet Ritual Style,” and Maria Gough, “Switched On: Notes on Radio, Automata, and die Bright Red Star,” in Dickerman, Leah, ed., Buildingthe Collective: Soviet Graphic Design 1917-1937 (New York, 1996), 40 Google Scholar. For interpretations of die red star as symbol, see Pokhlebkin, V V., Slovar’ mezhdunarodnoi stmvoliki i emblematiki (Moscow, 1994), 209-11.Google Scholar

65. In July 1935, Stalin publicized his Plan for die Reconstruction of Moscow. The decree to make die first set of stars was issued just a few mondis later. See die remarkable album widi commentary by Shklovskii, Viktor, Moskva rekonstruiruetsia: Al'bom diagram, toposkhem i fotografii po rekonstruktsii gor. Moskvy (Moscow, 1938)Google Scholar.

66. Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 18.

67. These included “wondrous amediysts, smoky topazes, aquamarines, chrysolites, berylliums, and transparent rock crystal.” Pravda, 11 October 1935, 6.

68. Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 19.

69. The last of the eagles (“badly corroded by rust,” as Pravda gleefully reports) was taken down on 19 October 1935.

70. Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 20.

71. Pravda, 24 October 1935.

72. According to Bonnell, Iconography of Power, 107, diese sorts of posters were particularly popular in die 1920s. For an illustration of one such poster from 1930 contrasting the lives of rural women before and after collectivization, see ibid., figure 3.7.

73. Pravda, 24 October 1935.

74. The stars measured 16 feet across and weighed an average of 3,300 pounds. A photograph in Pravda, 12 October 1935, 6, shows a worker dwarfed by one of die stars.

75. The remaining three stars were raised over die next diree days. A brief item in Pravda, 28 October 1935, notes that “die installation of stars on die Kremlin towers is complete,“ die last star having been placed on die Borovitskaia tower “in very difficult conditions“: die workers had to contend widi rain and strong gusty winds. We recall Pravda's earlier reference to die bullet-riddled eagles; once again, die Kremlin is die site of batde—diis time, between die untamed elements and die new Soviet man—and die red stars, originally designed as die emblem of die Red Army, are diere to serve as a constant reminder of a war diat will perhaps never end.

76. Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 23.

77. The Mechanical Engineering Research Institute in Moscow was given two months to manufacture five new stars of a “size and shape in accordance with [the wishes of] the commandant's office in the Kremlin.” Iashanova, V. N., “Kremlevskie zvezdy 1937 g.,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 4 (1997): 77 Google Scholar. The Konstantinovskii glass factory in Donbass was charged with making the special ruby-red glass for the stars and more than a dozen other organizations took part in their creation. See Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 28.

78. A construction comparable to these “ruby” stars is the “gold” spire of Moscow State University. Made of yellow glass on an aluminum backing, it is a mirror that catches the sun and becomes transformed, dirough a trick of light, into blazing gold. See Dmitrii Semenov, “Pervyi sovetskii neboskreb,” Moskovskaia pravda, 18 May 1991, 3; and “Etazhi so znakom minus,” Moskovskaia pravda, 12 October 1991,1.

79. The information in diis paragraph is from Pravda, 29-30 September and 4, 5, 9, 16, and 23 October 1937, and Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 23-33.

80. The stars were red on the outside and white on die inside; widiout the white glass, the red glass would have looked black in die daytime.

81. Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! 51, 142-43, points out die prevalence of die “cleansing” metaphor in official discourse at die height of die Great Purge. The purges provide an important context in which to view die Kremlin stars. In 1937, Soviet citizens were commanded to look up, to marvel at die exploits of Soviet aviators and dirigible pilots, radier dian look around to see what was happening. (In fact, die back page of Pravda on 4 October 1937 features an article widi die headline “Stars on die Kremlin Towers” next to a photograph of die dirigible SSSR-6 and its pilot.) As Toby Clark writes: “Among dieir various propaganda uses, die extensive publicity given to die flights in die media served to distract attention from die Great Purges.” See Clark, “The ‘New Man's’ Body: A Motif in Early Soviet Culture,” in Bown, M. C. and Taylor, B., eds., Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917-1992 (Manchester, 1993), 44.Google Scholar

82. The interior of each tower had to be rebuilt to make room for this equipment, and die rickety old shater roof of the Nikolskaia tower was replaced with a new, metal one. Pravda, 29 September 1937, 3.

83. The remaining stars were raised on 4,9,14, and 23 October 1937. A typical headline announced: “Ruby Stars Blaze over the Kremlin.” Pravda, 5 October 1937.

84. Three years later, Viktor Govorkov created a poster, “Stalin in die Kremlin Cares about Every One of Us,” depicting the leader incorporated in a complex of light imagery: he is flanked by his ornate table lamp on die left and a bright Kremlin star on die right.

85. One example from Pravda, 4 October 1937, is typical: “Depending on die weadier and time of day, die star on die Vodovoznaia tower has die most varied hues. In die morning, when the sun shines, its gold mounting shimmers, and its red glass panes grow brighter. At midday, die color of die glass panes becomes more concentrated. At twilight, diey take on yet anodier hue. The first several days after the installation of die star have shown diat its mechanisms work excellendy.“

86. Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs and Their Meaning and Uses in Design, 2d ed. (Newton, Mass., 1971), 132-33, cited in Lane, Christel, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society—The Soviet Case (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), 199 Google Scholar.

87. Lane describes a “lit-up globe rotating in the sky with Lenin's name above it” used at a political demonstration to “symbolize both the brightness or joy and the enlightenment brought about by the Revolution. The propensity to project lit-up objects or names into the sky must be seen as an effort to achieve permanence, to become like one of the timeless stars of the sky.” Lane, Rites of Rulers, 199-200. These insights provide a helpful frame for looking at the Kremlin stars.

88. In her long poem Requiem (1935-1940), Anna Akhmatova makes her own use of the Bible, associating the Kremlin star with the star Wormwood from the book of Revelation. It now presages, not the coming of a messiah, but the apocalypse. See Akhmatova, Anna, Sochineniia, 2d ed. (Munich, 1967), 1:363 and 365.Google Scholar

89. “Vse iarche i krashe / Sverkaet ona.” A. Kovalenkov, “Zvezda,” Pravda, 2 October 1937.

90. The English text is cited from the King James version; die Russian is from die Synodal version. The word gqret’ can mean bodi to bum like a fire and to blaze like a light.

91. “The Star” was die first of numerous songs and poems diat presented die Kremlin stars as visible from anywhere on die globe. According to a song by Andrei Sal'nikov from 1948, “die light from die Kremlin reaches die most distant lands.” Sal'nikov, “Esli b mog tovarishch Lenin,” in Shvedov, comp., Poet sovetskaia strana, 338. According to anodier song by A Fat'ianov, cited in Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 23, “the Kremlin stars are visible from all ends of die eardi.” Topolin himself proclaims: “The light of die ruby stars blazing in the center of Moscow, in die center of die socialist world, can be seen from all ends of die Soviet land. It penetrates into die remotest corners of our planet…” (3, ellipses in original). He conflates die rhetorical power of socialist ideology—or die emotive appeal of its iconography?—widi die physical phenomenon of die light emanating from die stars, while simultaneously praising Soviet technical achievement. The poems cited here function in a similar way.

92. The fact diat diis letter comes from abroad also underscores die idea diat die Soviets have die support of socialist brediren around die world.

93. “Nam svetiat zvezdy Kremlia,” Pravda, 6 November 1937. On die metaphor of die “padi” in die 1920s and 1930s, see Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! 136.

94. A poem by Aleksandr Zharov diat appeared in Pravda on 15 September 1937, two weeks before die announcement of die new glass stars, ends widi die lines “Guided by our stars, people everywhere now seek die road to joy and happiness.“

95. Muravev, Vladimir, comp., S zemli do zvezd vsiaet Moskva: Moskva v sovetskoi poezii (Moscow, 1989), 164 Google Scholar.

96. “Tvortsy kremlevskogo sozvezdiia,” in Alekseev, M. N. et al., eds., Na krasnoi ploshchadi u mavzoleia: Sbornik (Moscow, 1972), 80 Google Scholar. The article reports that on the hundredyear anniversary of die factory, one of die old master glassworkers was asked to fill out a questionnaire; in reply to a question about the “path” diat he had traveled in his work, he answered, “From church icon-lamps to the Kremlin stars.” Ibid.

97. For a description of one such illumination, featuring an allegorical scene diat celebrated Russia's military might, see Asharina, N. A., “Russkoe khudozhestvennoe steklo,“ in Beskrovnyi, L. G., ed., Na rubezhe dvukh vekov: Iz istorii preobrazovanii Petrovskogp vremeni (Moscow, 1978), 86 Google Scholar. In 1918, the Red Army distributed leaflets to explain die symbolic meaning of its new emblem, die red star. See Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! 70-72, and Topolin, Kremlevskie zvezdy, 3.