truth is found in the oddest places.
update: the points that i have tried so in-artfully to make below are made in this post, http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2011/02/the-eloquence-of-geert-wilders-at-atlas-shrugs-as-reported-by-pamela-geller-.html , wherein i have set forth in full the remarks of geert wilders this day at his trial for hate speech, ongoing in amsterdam. i have taken the speech to the court by wilders from another post at atlas shrugs, here, proprietor pamela geller, who has done the absolute best reporting, bar none, on wilders since he broke into the international limelight several years ago, partly upon the patronage of ms. geller and her efforts to get him more widespread attention. end update.
savitsky was a child of privilege in czarist russia, but come 1917 it became prudent for him to hide that privilege, so he became a lineman on electrical projects, and then joined an archaeological expedition to uzbekistan.
he had always wanted to be an artist, so he began painting the dessert and its people. rejected by a prestigious member of the soviet academy, he instead returned to uzbekistan, and began to collect artifacts of uzbeki life, fast disappearing in the soviet effort to "make" the "soviet man" in the dessert.
other russians fled the homeland for the remote desserts, and determined to exercise their artistic passions as remote from soviet academic and political control as possible. in their self imposed exiles, they could follow their visions, find their voice, and literary & artistic meter. in alekzandr solzhenitsyn's "the gulag archipelago," the point is made that prison was one of the few places where a man might allow his conscience and thought flourish, without fear of the regime's reprisal.
igor savitsky discovered that all over russia artists continued to create, to follow their passion, intellect and conscience and continued to record events in russia and their view and perspective of them, but that they dared not exhibit or broadcast them, or their artwork. savitsky discovered the art work, on rolls of canvas tucked away in closets and attacks and storage sheds, and over a period of many years gathered to his home in remote uzbekistan, securing the art work on promissory notes signed to pay the negotiated price in the future.
he approached a minister of the uzbeki soviet government, and wangled a grant from the government, paid by sums from moscow, for a building in which to exhibit his works.
and, over the works, he built an utterly fantastic museum in the remotest reaches of russia, which records from a distinctly non-soviet perspective the attempts to fashion the "soviet man," and the emotional and physical violence meted out by the regime as it sought to reshape the clay in its hands.
"the dessert of forbidden art" chronicles the struggle of soviet-era artists as they tried to honor their conscience and talent, and chronicles the struggle of igo savitsky to tend and grow his intellectual and emotional garden.
it shows that truth flourishes in the cruelest of circumstances, even if quietly and circumspectly, and it shoes that while a regime may intimidate the body, it cannot intimidate the soul, nor silence the musings of the intellect, nor stem the artistic impulse.
and, it shows that just every now and again, truth will triumph over cant and ideology. i saw this film, of all places, at a decidedly leftist showing of the spokane (washington) internation film festival, spiff for short. and, i must add for truth's sake, that the film was warmly received, and when i asked producer/director amanda pope, on hand for the showing, whether the art was jeopardized by muslim fundamentalism in uzbekistan she simply replied "not yet," because the ruler of that country was "... a strong man ... " able so far to keep those forces at bay. and, she did not dismiss my further inquiry, whether any thought had been given to transfer the museum's 45,000 plus pieces of work to the united states to preserve it.
in my recent post concerning "the demise of the modern state [no. 2]" i of necessity discussed my views on why the modern democratic state is unique in political history, and my view that the modern state is designed to allow and foster the flourishing of human individuality and potential. central to that discussion, though not preached so overtly, is that for a modern state to have adherents and defenders it must deliniate its aims and goals, and that its citizens must buy into those goals.
in the west, this has involved a process of argument and persuasion, for the most part, and took a period of considerable time starting with the early philosophers hobbes and locke and blackstone, and to include rosseau and others, and concluding with the thinkers of our own revolution such as jay, hamilton and madison in the federalist papers, and the writing of jefferson and others, even to include the poetry of walt whitman, to bring to final voice and acceptance by the people of this country.
this film, "the dessert of forbidden art," details that the building of the soviet ethos did not follow such a path. the soviets instead relied upon brute force to shape the ethos of the soviet state by ruthlessly eliminating any who opposed or were suspected of opposing or were thought capable of opposing the formation of the state. the film shows the execution of a man, shot in the back of the head by a pistol standing on some lone bleak plain, by a soldier in military tunic.
it also shows an even more graphic display of what the imposition of the soviet vision meant in soviet russia. we are shown a film of a soviet artist's academy, with many artists standing at easels in a very crowded room, painting "soviet art," (one has only to think of 's novel, "concrete," to get the picture), the artist's also dressed in the tunics of military officers.
art, for the soviets, was just another armored division.
i took the opening to recommend to my daughter, "darkness at noon" by arthur koestler, and solzhenitsyn's "gulag", as works that would amplify the meaning of soviet "indoctrination," and the form that "persuasion" took in the soviet union.
and, i recommend to you, once again, this small film at youtube by baxter black. "if you have a mind to, you might go to youtube and watch baxter black explain just what it means to be a citizen of a country invented by 'jefferson & adams,' and yes, perhaps 'bush & clinton.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-RQovKE-Ys ."
it seems for all our difficulties and tumult that our nation, built and assent & dissent, has exhibited "stronger legs" in a historical context, than those nations built on the cudgel and the bullet to the mastoid, administered in dark basements and sere empty winter plains.
but, remember, this longevity has not been engendered by passivity.
we are americans so long as we believe in being americans, and so long as we are willing to rise in defense of our conception of our country and ourselves. just as the english will remain english, so long as they believe in england and being english, and only so long as they are willing to rise in their defense of those ideals, and in defense of what it has meant to be english.
throwing the magna carta into the dust bin of history to ratify the euro union's lisbon treaty was not a good start in that defense of their home land, and the english are going to have to rouse themselves from their slumber.
john jay @ 02.06.2011
the modern democratic nation state has looked to gain its loyalists by reason, argument and persuasion, and asks only of its citizens acceptance of doctrine designed to allow them to flourish and maximize their own potential, as a mechanism to achieve the betterment of us all, as a community.
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