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Culture and the State: Creation of Ministries of Culture in the USSR and France from a Comparative Perspective, 1953-1959
In this essay, the creation and organisational frameworks of the ministries of culture in the USSR and France are compared. Established in the 1950s, they represent an important departure from most then-contemporary European practices, on the one hand reflecting the acceptance of a particular role of the state in cultural governance, yet on the other lackinga clearly defined area of competence, policy strategy, and power resources. In France, the creation of a separate ministry of culture resulted in no small part from a desire to give a ministerial rank to Andre Malraux and make a reverence to French culture as part of national identity. Conversely, the Soviet regime sought to assert culture’s symbolic independence from propaganda, while equally upgrading the status of culture within the state apparatus. In both cases, the ministry of culture was politicallyweak, and in the Soviet Union an appointment to a minister of culture was akin to a demotion compared to top party positions. Malraux found himself without a detailed plan and significant economic and personnel resources, just as the Soviet ministry was relatively underfunded and subordinated to the CPSU Central Committee’s cultural department. While the Soviet and French decisions to raise cultural management to a ministerial level occurred independently from each other, they reveal deep-seated parallels in the respective societies’ perceptions of culture, governance, and the value of cultural goods and habitus that prevailed over a clearly defined policy of cultural management.