Totalitarian Art and the Art of Resistance in the Ukraine of the 20th Century According to the Research of Oleksiy Rohotchenko

The monograph of art historian Oleksiy Rogotchenko “Sixty Totalitarian Years: Fine Art of Ukraine 1920-1980” emphasizes the important and topical issues of modern art criticism, the issue of the interaction of art and power in the context of the deformation of the artistic space, the issue of the role of the artist and fine art in social communication under the conditions of the proletarian dictatorship. The extremely factual monograph acts as a kind of encyclopedia of “fine” art in the specified period, and beyond this, it encourages reflection and continuation of the discourse about the era of the “Great Fear”. The proposed review of the monograph actualizes the problem of the national in art. It is established that national art, as well as national identity in the totalitarian years, could not be anything other than a reflection and continuation of the policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The work of Oleksiy Rogotchenko is important in the context of understanding the anthropology of art of the totalitarian regime and the transformation of the role of the artist from the concept of free creativity to the proletarian artist, a servant of the ideological postulates of the proletarian dictatorship. It is noted that the development of fine art in Ukraine in the sixty totalitarian years took place on the basis of the ideology of proletarian culture in the expression of the method of socialist realism. Oleksiy Rogotchenko explores the phenomenon of resistance of the Ukrainian artistic society to the official doctrine, which is designated in the Ukrainian art historical discourse by the term nonconformism. It is proved that the method of socialist realism in fine art at the end of the dictates of the Soviet government had a tendency towards individuality and free creativity of the artist.