A propaganda photographer for the USSR, Dmitri Baltermants (1912–1990) was nonetheless caught in the turmoil of USSR intolerance. Born Jewish, he was impacted by “anti-cosmopolitanism,” a discriminatory Soviet policy that disproportionately targeted Jews. While Baltermants was not himself religious, the Soviet passport included the infamous “Nationality” clause, making it easy for the state to identify minorities.
In an early professional accident that damaged his career, Baltermants took a photo of a destroyed British tank and left his negatives at the editorial office. In the morning, distracted editors looked for something to appear on the front page of the newspaper selected Baltermants’s photograph but misinterpreted the origins of the tank, running a caption indicating that the destroyed equipment was German even though it was easily identifiable as Allied. In the USSR, Baltermants was scapegoated for the mistake and sent to the frontlines as a soldier to atone for his sins.
This story of a propaganda photographer blamed for someone else’s mistake and persecuted for his Jewish identity exemplifies the peculiar path ethnic minorities had to tread in the USSR. On one hand, assimilation into the regime was both expected and encouraged. On the other, these people could never become fully Russian, and the ethnicity they might or might not have leaned into would always haunt them.
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Ukrainian Dance of Virsky
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.610
The Ukrainian ensemble called Virsky revived traditional Ukrainian dances from different provinces as one of the most prominent ethnic dance ensembles in the USSR. In this photograph, they perform the hopak, and dance that first emerged among the Cossacks to showcase a man’s strength and fighting spirit. Its name comes from the word hopaty (to jump, hop), and it involves elaborate leaps, spins, and squats. Despite the ensemble’s success in reviving dances like this as a form of performance art in the USSR, the hopak was still seen as an anachronism from the “village” culture of Ukraine. Thus, Joseph Stalin once forced Ukrainian Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev to perform the hopak as a way to humiliate him.
What might it have meant to Baltermants as a Soviet propaganda photographer to capture a Ukrainian traditional dance? How might its history have then been assimilated into the Soviet narrative?
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Two Hundred Children from Tashkent, Uzbekistan Spend Their Summer in Pushkino
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.532
Under tall birches, children from Uzbekistan are introduced to Moscow’s suburbs. The birch tree is the national symbol of Russia: notice how much visual space the birches take up in the photograph, towering over the joyful little children running along the path and highlighting the power and dominance of Russian culture. These Uzbek children are attending a summer camp meant to train obedient Soviet citizens and introduce them to the Soviet ideology in a manner reminiscent of the residential schools for Native Americans in the United States and Canada. Some summertime children’s camps were famous throughout the Soviet Union and almost impossible to get into, like Artek in Crimea. They promised entry to a utopian future where children are politically active participants in the Communist party. In the current war that Russia has launched in Ukraine, similar children’s re-education camps are reported to be cropping up in the border regions, indoctrinating stolen Ukrainian children from the occupied territories with Russian culture and history.
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Harvest Time: These Are the Grapes from Which Soviet Champagne Will Be Made
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.392
Immersed in their work with tired faces, peasants are here depicted collecting grapes to produce Soviet champagne. The vineyards stretch to the horizon, suggesting the infinite wealth and potential of Soviet agriculture. Soviet champagne was produced on a large scale following the 1936 order of Comrade Stalin just three years after the Holodomor famine in Ukraine, during which thousands of peasants starved to death. Stalin wanted to promote Soviet champagne as a beverage accessible to all, not only the Russian imperial elite. Producers were forced to forego traditional fermentation techniques to speed up the process, so they covered the difference in taste with sweeteners. During a dark time of famine and exhaustion among the peasantry, Soviet champagne was supposed to unite them in the pursuit of working for the common good.
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Polish Children in Ethnic Garb
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.597
Communism had little appeal in highly patriotic Poland. The Communist regime only came into power there after a long struggle between the Soviet-backed Polish Worker’s Party and the anti-Communist resistance, which was supported by the majority of Poles. While they would eventually fail in their goals, the Communists promptly attempted to create a new socialist society in Poland and assimilate the local nationalism under the Soviet umbrella.
In this photograph, unenthusiastic Polish children are shown in their ethnic clothes, with their elaborate embroidery and beadwork. Do they appear happy to be assembled and photographed by a Soviet official, or are their faces in fact reflecting the hostility of Poles toward the regime?
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Triumphant Youth
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.304
Stripped of any signs of a specific nationality, these two young people look into the “bright Soviet future,” a concept coined by Vladimir Lenin. The boy’s gesture emulates traditional depictions of Lenin pointing the way to said future, while the girl presents herself in a supportive role. Their clothes, poses, and props enforce the traditional gender roles that his vision intends to preserve. In their culturally generic presentation, the children are meant to showcase the final “product” of a successfully uniform Soviet culture—that is, the Russian one.
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Watching the Parade
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.583
The parade as a show of Soviet military might was meant to instigate feelings of pride and responsibility toward the Motherland. Here, Baltermants captures Kyrgyz women as they observe the demonstration of tanks and other military equipment that took place every year on May 9, the Day of Victory. The day celebrated the triumph over the Nazi Germany, an accomplishment that was meant to unite all nationalities under the Soviet banner. In contemporary Russia and the former Soviet republics, the Day of Victory is still accompanied by a military parade. In 2014, in a conscious effort to de-Communize its past, Ukraine stopped celebrating it and instead commemorates the victims of World War II on May 8. Russia, on the other hand, continues to fortify its national pride on the basis of this victory.
Was Baltermants intentionally seeking representatives of ethnic minorities to capture with his camera? Was this observance of the parade something that was expected of an upstanding Soviet citizen or someone striving to be one?
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
“Tchaikovsky,” Germany
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.583
Among the ruins, Soviet soldiers in Germany perform the music of Tchaikovsky, one of the most famous Russian composers. The photo was meant to give hope that, despite the deprivations of war, triumph would eventually follow. With mystical light shining from the destroyed window and fresh flowers standing on top of the piano, the soldiers bring their unified “Soviet” culture with them for comfort. This culture, of course, tended to be Russian—composers from the other Soviet republics would have to move to Moscow to be recognized for their work. The cultural capital that every upstanding Soviet citizen was meant to share was also mostly Russian. As Kevin O’Connor writes, “friendship of peoples was intended to signify the existence of a multinational community on Soviet soil, but which in reality put the Russians ‘first among equals.’”
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
Collective Farmers, Kazakhstan
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.339
With a wide smile on his face, this farmer takes a break after a long day of work on a collective farm. Meant to represent the happy routine of a Soviet worker, the photograph celebrates collectivization, the Soviet plan to revolutionize its agriculture that was implemented in all the republics. Amidst collectivization, the famine also known as Asharshylyk, the result of these restrictive Soviet policies, killed over a million Kazakh farmers. Desperate and starving, the farmers would attempt to pick up those leftover grains, but such an act usually resulted in a quick trial and deportation to work camps in Siberia.
The faces of happy workers like those in this photograph also show the extent of Russian colonialism in Kazakhstan and the intermixing of ethnic populations because these workers do not appear to be native to Kazakhstan. Forced deportations and population displacement were complementary Soviet strategies aimed at creating a unified body of “Soviet citizens,” who were in turn modeled after ethnic Russians.
Dmitri Baltermants
Russian (born Warsaw, Poland), 1912–1990
From a Day of Grief, Kerch, Crimea
Print 2003
Gelatin silver print
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through a gift from Harley and Stephen C. Osman, Class of 1956, Tuck 1957; PH.2003.56.106
Grief is a rare Baltermants photograph in that it does not portray a heroic battle or a soldier after his victory. Here, instead, Soviet citizens deal with the loss of their loved ones to war outside of the context of a necessary sacrifice for a heroic victory. Initially banned by the state, this photograph reemerged in the 1960s under more liberal censorship policies in the Soviet Union. The earlier guidelines of socialist realism prohibited works of art from showcasing grief, and the entire history of World War II was told exclusively as a heroic achievement of the Soviet army. The war was presented as the unprecedented invasion by Germany into Soviet lands, and the war’s Jewish victims were not distinguished from its Slavic ones. What, then, did it mean for a Soviet Jewish photographer to take a picture of a tragedy his people were denied the memory of?