Russian Revolution & 20th Century Spain: Art & Politics
Russian Revolution: Seeds of Socialism
The Russian Revolution, initiated in 1917, led to the establishment of the first state based on the premise of socialism. It is considered, alongside the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the third major revolutionary act of the Modern Age.
Tsarist Russia: An Empire in Decline
In the early twentieth century, Russia was an empire with substantial backlogs in different processes:
- Political: It was ruled by an authoritarian system led by the Tsar, oblivious to the principles of liberalism. The opposition was organized into several parties: the Democratic Constitutional Party, a socialist revolutionary party, and the Menshevik and Bolshevik parties, formed by industrial workers with a radical Marxist trend, led by Lenin.
- Economy: A predominantly agricultural country, its industrial development was very limited.
The Avant-Garde: A New Conception of Art
The Vanguard were art movements that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. Their goal was to radically renew art, proposing a new conception of it. The results were provocative.
- Dada: Manifested rebellion against the common sense so characteristic of adults. It was achieved by releasing the fantasy within and creating an incoherent language.
- Ultraism: Emerged in Spain, it sought to go further through clever metaphors, removing punctuation and rhymes. The most representative poet was Guillermo de Torre, well known for his poems and drawings called calligrams.
- Creationism: Of French origin, its aim was to remove poetry from everyday life to create a new reality.
- Surrealism: The most influential movement on the poets of the Generation of ’27, it was based on the analysis of the subconscious, believing that accumulated frustrations needed release. It produced visionary, image-laden poems, as if they were dreams or memories evoked by poets. Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca is a prime example.
20th Century Literature Before the Spanish Civil War
The first third of the twentieth century in Spain was characterized by numerous changes in government. These were the years of the Generation of ’27 and the rich but striking avant-garde art. The Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, disrupted this cultural splendor.
The privileged classes were a minority, formed by the aristocratic oligarchy, a corrupt bureaucracy, and the Orthodox Church. The middle class was not a majority; the majority was composed of proletarians and peasants. These conditions resulted in riots.
The Revolution of 1905
The situation in 1905 led to the outbreak of a revolutionary movement in major cities, known as Bloody Sunday due to the harshness of the repression in St. Petersburg. Political strikes achieved the creation of Soviets and the strengthening of the Bolsheviks.
The Revolution of 1917
Russia’s entry into World War I exacerbated existing tensions, leading to the 1917 revolution.
Juan Ramón Jiménez: Nobel Prize-Winning Poet
Juan Ramón Jiménez was a Spanish poet characterized by his obsession with poetry and a desire for perfection. He connected with the poets of the Generation of ’27 in Madrid and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.
1927: A New Generation of Writers
In Spain, before the Civil War, a new literary generation emerged: the Generation of ’27. They initiated a new Golden Age of Spanish poetry, representing the intellectual and cultural development of Spain before the Civil War.
Everyone contributed to strengthening the cultural environment of Spain at the time, but the 1936-1939 Civil War, with the death of some and the exile of others, cut short this relationship.
A New Style of Poetry
The Generation of ’27 created a new poetic style that added innovative new trends to the traditional values of Spanish poetry.
- Tradition: They valued popular poetry but also felt great admiration for Luis de Góngora. This recovery of popular and cultural elements was called neopopularism.
- Innovation: They assimilated the closest new poetic trends. They admired the intimate poetry of Juan Ramón and modernism. However, the highlight of their poems was avant-garde influences.
- After the Civil War: The poets of the Generation of ’27 who survived the war, most in exile, wrote poems with a social and political tone.
- Common Features of Style: Figures of speech, metaphors (some pure and ingenious), symbols, and visionary images were common. They used traditional verse forms and created new ones, such as free verse, which has no rhyme, typical of the avant-garde.
- Themes: Love, humanity, politics, and religious concerns were common themes.
The Primo de Rivera Dictatorship (1923-1930)
Miguel Primo de Rivera staged a coup in 1923 and imposed a dictatorship. He suspended the Constitution, abolished parliamentary guarantees, banned political parties and trade unions, and imposed a news blackout. Key issues of the time included the crisis of the monarchy, the rise of the labor movement, social unrest, and the development of Catalan and Basque nationalism.
Despite the end of the war in Morocco and a certain peace, along with industrial growth, Primo de Rivera failed to solve the country’s problems. His rule was a throwback to nineteenth-century politics. Following the 1929 economic crisis, he lost support and was forced to resign.