the magazine Sovetskoye foto.
During the First Five-Year Plan, creative debates emerged between modernist photographers and professional Soviet photojournalists. While both groups shunned aestheticizing pictorialist approaches and were ideologically committed to the development of uniquely Soviet photography, differences arose concerning creative methods, especially the relative priority to be given to the form versus content of the Soviet photograph. These debates stimulated the further development of Soviet documentary photography. The illustrated magazine USSR in Construction (SSSR na stroike; 1930-1941, 1949) was an important venue for Soviet documentary photography. Published in Russian, English, French, and German editions, it featured the work of top photographers and photomontage artists. Like the nineteenth-century ethnographic albums, USSR in Construction presented the impact of Soviet industrialization and modernization in diverse parts of the USSR in filmlike photographic essays. As the 1930s progressed, official Soviet photography became increasingly lackluster and formulaic. Published photographs
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were subjected to extensive retouching and manipulation-not for creative ends, but for the falsification of reality and history. An abrupt change took place during World War II, when Soviet photojournalists equipped with 35-millimeter cameras produced spontaneous images that captured the terrors and triumphs of war.
Soviet amateur photography flourished in the late 1920s with numerous worker photography circles. Amateur activity was stimulated by the development of the Soviet photography industry and the introduction of the first domestic camera in 1930. Later that decade, however, government regulations increasingly restricted the activity of amateur photographers, and the number of circles quickly diminished. The material hardships of the war years further compounded this situation, practically bringing amateur photographic activity to a standstill. With independent activity severely circumscribed, Soviet photography was essentially limited to the carefully controlled area of professional photojournalism.
During the Thaw of the late 1950s, the appearance of new amateur groups led to the cultivation of a new generation of photographers engaged in social photography that captured everyday life. Their activity, however, was largely underground. By the 1970s, photography played an important role in Soviet nonconformist and conceptual art. Artists such as Boris Mikhailov appropriated and manipulated photographic imagery in a radical critique of photography’s claims to truth. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many photographic publications and industrial enterprises gradually disappeared. While professional practitioners quickly adapted to the new market system and creative photographers achieved international renown, the main area of activity was consumer snapshot photography, which flourished in Russia with the return of foreign photographic firms. See also: CENSORSHIP; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Elliott, David, ed. (1992). Photography in Russia, 1840-1940. London: Thames and Hudson. King, David. (1997). The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books. Sartori, Rosalind. (1987). “The Soviet Union.” In A History of Photography: Social and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Jean-Claude Lemagny and Andr? Rouill?. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shudakov, Grigory (1983). Pioneers of Soviet Photography. New York: Thames and Hudson. USSR in Construction. (1930-1941, 1949). Moscow: Go-sizdat. Walker, Joseph, et al. (1991). Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR. New York: Stewart, Tabori amp; Chang.
(1910-1990), patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church from June 2, 1971, to May 3, 1990.
Sergei Mikhailovich Izvekov took monastic vows in 1927 and worked with church choirs in Moscow. Later, as Patriarch Pimen, his excellent musical sense led him to forbid singers to embellish the liturgy with operatic flourishes.
During World War II Pimen allegedly concealed his monastic vows and served as an army officer in communications or intelligence. When discovered, he was incarcerated, and his political vulnerability was said to have figured in the Soviet authorities’ decision that he could be controlled as patriarch. More friendly sources recount his heroism in protecting his men with his own body under bombardment. His official biography omits his military service.
Judgments of Pimen as patriarch are mixed. He was accused of being withdrawn, passive, and increasingly infirm. On the other hand, he was a gifted poet, radiated spirituality, and was said to have defended the integrity of the Church against corrupting modernism and reckless innovation. Pi-men’s moment came when Communist General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev decided to greet the millennium of Russia’s conversion to Christianity by improving relations with the Church. Gorbachev received Pimen on April 29, 1988, and more than eight hundred new parishes were permitted to open that year. Sunday schools, charitable works, new seminaries and convents, and other concessions to church needs followed. Whether these tangible benefits justified Pimen’s political collaboration with the Soviet regime is a controversial question. See also: RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; RUSSIFICATION
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Pospielovsky, Dimitry. (1984). The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime 1917-1982. 2 vols. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
(1810-1881), scientist, physician, proponent of educational reform.
Nikolai Pirogov was born in Moscow where his father managed a military commissary. After graduating from the medical school of Moscow University, he enrolled at the Professors’ Institute at Dorpat University to prepare for teaching in institutions of higher education. In Dorpat he specialized in surgical techniques and in pathological anatomy and physiology. After five years at Dor-pat, he went to Berlin University in search of the latest knowledge in anatomy and surgical techniques. While in Berlin he was appointed a professor at Dorpat, where he quickly acquired a reputation as a successful contributor to anatomy and an innovator in surgery. In 1837-1839 he published Surgical Anatomy of Arterial Trunks and Fasciae in Latin and German.
In 1841 Pirogov accepted a teaching position at the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, the most advanced school of its kind in Russia. He lectured on clinical service in hospitals and pathological and surgical anatomy. His major work published under the auspices of the Medical and Surgical Academy was the four-volume Anatomia Topographica (1851-1854) describing the spatial relations of organs and tissues in various planes. He was also the author of General Military Field Surgery (1864), relying heavily on his experience in the Crimean War (1853 -1855). In recognition of his scholarly achievement, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member.
Tired of petty academic quarrels and intrigues, Pirogov resigned from his professorial position in 1856. In the same year he published “The Questions of Life,” an essay emphasizing the need for a reorientation of the country’s educational system. The article touched on many pedagogical problems of broader social significance, but the emphasis was on an educational philosophy that placed equal emphasis on the transmission of specialized knowledge and the acquisition of general education fortified by increased command of foreign languages. He also pointed out that, because of the low salaries, Russian teachers were compelled to look for additional employment, which limited their active involvement in the educational process. In his opinion, one of the most pressing tasks of the Russian government was to make the entire school system accessible to all social strata and ethnic groups.
The government not only listened to Pirogov’s plea for a broader humanistic base of the educational system, but in the same year appointed him superintendent of the Odessa school district. Two years later, he became the superintendent of the Kiev school district. In his numerous circulars and published reports he advocated a greater participation of teachers’ councils in decisions on all aspects of the educational process.
Apprehensive of the long list of his liberal reforms, the Ministry of Public Education decided in 1861 to ask
