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p N. Kiyashchenko

p Like any social phenomenon arising out of the requirements of social development, aesthetic education does not remain constant in its content, aims, functions and methods. It is developed, perfected, and extended in conjunction with the changes in the people’s way of life, the accumulation of mankind’s spiritual wealth, the broadening of the sphere of man’s activities, and the expanding of the means of aesthetic influence.

p The modern ideas about aesthetic education and its theory and practice in the USSR reflect the needs and possibilities of a developed socialist society and the process of full-scale construction of communism in this country. If the task of giving the vast masses of the people access to the knowledge and spiritual values created by mankind and earlier inaccessible to them stood before the Communist Party, the Soviet government, and before the entire country immediately after the victory of the October Revolution, then in the 1920’s and 1930’s aesthetic education concentrated all its attention on teaching people how to “associate” with art and on inducing them to come to love art, to be attracted to it, and to become spiritually and emotionally enriched by this association. The requirements of the social development of that period pushed this task into the foreground.

p In the Status of the Unified School of October 16, 1918, in the Party Programme, adopted by the 8th Party Congress in 1919, and in the activities of the People’s Commissariat for Education all attention was focused on artistic or aesthetic education by means of an art capable of inspiring people to participate in the cause of communist construction and captivating them with communist ideals and true humanism and humaneness. The decision of the 8th Congress of the RCP (B) emphasised: “There are no forms of science and art which are not linked with the great ideas of 215 communism and the infinitely varied work in setting up a communist economy."  [215•1  The Status of the Unified School directed the Soviet educational system, then in its formative stage, to a systematic development of the perceptive and creative abilities in children through the means of art; they were to be given the opportunity of deriving pleasure out of beauty and of creating it. Aesthetic Education in the Unified School, a document of the People’s Commissariat for Education specifying the position of the Status, interpreted aesthetic education in an equally original manner.

p Did the possibility exist then of interpreting more broadly and comprehensively the essence of aesthetic education and of examining its aims and functions in accordance with-this? The theoretical elaboration of these problems in the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism dealing with methodological questions of aesthetic research and the functioning of art in society laid the foundation for a broader approach to aesthetic education. However in actual reality conditions had not yet matured in order that such factors as free creative labour, nature (genuine and that created by man), the realm of moral relations and social and political life, the’ process of cognition and acquiring knowledge, mode of life and others could be used as means of influencing man aesthetically, that is in the practice of aesthetic education. Many of these factors, particularly work and the realm of moral relations, had lost their aesthetic meaning under capitalism.

p In the difficult and lengthy process of socialist construction it was necessary to restore many aspects of the life and activity of people in their aesthetic “rights” and return them their emotional and sensuous attractiveness, infectiousness and effectiveness so as to utilise them in the practice of aesthetic educational work. It was in this very process that socialist realist art was formed, the communist artistic and aesthetic impact of which is considerably higher than the artistic and aesthetic values created in past ages. Furthermore, as the level of education and culture of Soviet people rose their spiritual needs increased, the attitude to art and the understanding of its spiritual significance changed, and feelings facilitating the development of the ability to experience emotionally and to take delight in something were cultivated and shaped.

p Right up to the 1%0’s Marxist-Leninist aesthetics was interpreted as a general theory of art, and by aesthetic education 216 aestheticians and pedagogues understood a purposeful process which formed the ability to feel, understand and evaluate the beautiful in art and the ability to participate, within capabilities, in creating artistic values.

p The completion of the construction of socialism and our country’s entering into the period of creating a communist society, as well as modern scientific and technological progress have considerably broadened the sphere of the aesthetic relations and aesthetic activities of Soviet people and have enriched the means of aesthetic influence on man. This inevitably led to a revision of the ideas about aesthetics and its subject and about the theory and practice of aesthetic education.

p Which objective processes and conditions of developed socialist society summoned a revision of the ideas concerning aesthetics and aesthetic education?

p . Firstly, the aesthetic content of free labour as the most important means of moulding and perfecting man was revealed by the very fact of making all the tools and means of production as well as all the wealth created by the people social property, by the socialist principle of the distribution of all the material and spiritual wealth produced under socialism, and by the very process of socialist construction. Under developed socialism labour turns into a powerful means of aesthetic education. Man’s prime requirements in life and his intellectual and physical power are realised in it. Emancipated socialist, and now communist labour attains ever greater emotional effectiveness and fills man with feelings of joy, pleasure, creative inspiration and satisfaction. Not by chance has the man of labour become the main hero in socialist realist art.

p Secondly, developed socialism restored the true aesthetic and educational significance of nature by making it social property, the object of national care and universal study and by rationally utilising its resources. Developed socialism, for the first time in history, placed on a scientific basis the question of a rational and considerate attitude to nature by man and of the harmonious concord of natural and so-called man-made nature. In this process the attitude of each individual to nature becomes more and more aesthetic, insofar as nature exerts more and more influence on his emotions and feelings. Aesthetic education, which develops man’s ability to perceive, experience arid comprehend the beauty of nature and to take pleasure in it, and which uses this advantage of socialism in man’s inter-relations with nature, increases its social functions, enriching each member of society spiritually, morally, and psychologically.

p Thirdly, the growth of the well-being of the entire people is of no 217 small importance to the broadening of the functions of aesthetic education and its increased influence in developed socialist society. Under socialism tjie creating of “conditions favourable for the allround development of the abilities and creative activity of Soviet people, of all working people,"  [217•1  becomes a reality. Behind this is hidden a different attitude to things and material goods than that of bourgeois society, a different culture of material consumption. In such an approach to things new possibilities emerge for revealing their aesthetic meaning and for their improvement. 1975 and the 10th Five-Year Plan were declared years for improving the quality and efficiency of production in the USSR. Technical aesthetics and aesthetics of labour in our day have demonstrated that the modern understanding of the quality of the material values produced is inseparably linked with their aesthetic perfection (of course not only their outward and decorative but their inner, constructive, and functional perfection as well).

p Fourthly, the equal right of all citizens of socialist society to utilise all the achievements of the intellect of humanity bearing the ideas of progress, humanism, and spiritual perfection is the essential basis for the more complete and all-round aesthetic education of each citizen. The October Revolution made spiritual values the property of the entire people, however, time was needed in order that they could become genuinely accessible to them in all their richness and pithiness and in order that the people might utilise them in their struggle for the victory of communist ideals. Now that time has come, insofar as.the USSR has become not only the first country with complete literacy but also the first social system in the world to introduce a compulsory secondary education, a country where each individual enjoys all the possibilities for mastering the whole store of knowledge and spiritual values acquired by mankind. Almost all our people have developed a need for constant and systematic “association” with art and nature, a craving for the creative transformation of the world and active participation in creating artistic and aesthetic values (in reading, going to the theatre and cinema, etc. the Soviet people are of the most active in the world).

p And the very process of acquiring knowledge (the sphere of scientific research) and passing it on to the younger generation (the sphere of public education) has, under developed socialism, become an effective means for the aesthetic development of man. This cannot but inspire intensive work in the field of aesthetic science and the theory of aesthetic education.

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p Yet another important factor that has given rise to a change in the theory and practice of aesthetic education is the aesthetic significance of the social and political activities of many millions of Soviet people. It is well-known that already Plato had drawn attention to this means for the aesthetic development of man. However in his time social and political activity was the lot of the chosen few, who made up an insignificant section of society. In developed socialism millions of people of the most varied professions and occupations participate in government, in guiding the national economy, in spiritual production, and in the distribution of material and spiritual benefits. With each year Soviet socialist democracy is widening the sphere of application of the civic valour and social enthusiasm of man.

p The sphere of the international relations of the Soviet Union and the other countries of the socialist community has, under developed socialism, acquired greater aesthetic, emotional and effective strength, conducive to the mutual enrichment of all peoples and each man through emotional experience, and a uniqueness of artistic language, character, and way of life borrowed from each other.

p Communist morality, imbued with true humanism, a widespread culture of contacts with people, a depth, purity and emotional pithiness of intimate relations, and a sympathy for, attention to and respect for each other resounded in full, aesthetic force. These morals also organically fused good and beauty and a loftiness of feelings and emotional experiences with the habjts of behaviour, deeds, and activities of man. Art and morals attained a harmony and mutually enriched each other in socialist realist art. And this means that communist morality now has, in art, a powerful ally in their growing influence on man.

p In other words, the entire way of life of Soviet people has undergone an essential aesthetic reorganisation during the past decades. This has engendered a broader and more profoundly serious approach to understanding the essence, aims and functions of aesthetic education, an approach organically linked with the historical demands of social development.

p At the present time aesthetic education presupposes a purposeful process which shapes the ability to perceive, experience, comprehend and evaluate the beautiful and the ugly, the lofty and the base, the tragic and the comic, the heroic and the anti-heroic in the phenomena of reality surrounding man, in human activities, in people’s relations, and in art; that purposeful process which develops the aesthetic ability to create according to the laws of beauty in all spheres and forms of human activities, the habit of 219 showing one’s worth as an aesthetic, creative personality in every deed and action, and of helping to resist and oppose alien and harmful aesthetic and ideological influences and views.

p In its specifics artistic education is seen at the same time as a process, through the means of art, of purposeful influence aimed at forming in those being educated artistic perception and taste, a love of art, an understanding of it, an ability to derive pleasure from it and, when possible, to participate in creating artistic values.

p In artistic education man’s feelings and abilities are shaped by art and for art, for a purely artistic consumption of art itself. In aesthetic education art is used for shaping those features and qualities of the human personality which are revealed in the broad context of its activities according to the laws of beauty. The extent and depth in which art is used are different in artistic and aesthetic education. In the course of artistic education art’s influence on man is limited to the problems of art itself and the artistic development of humanity. In the process of aesthetic education art influences the entire way of life, all spheres of the activity and creativity of the people of today. Art participates in the aesthetic development of mankind—in its material, social and political, cognitive and cultural, moral and ethical creativity.

p Such purposefulness of aesthetic education also determines the range of its tasks, the fulfilment of which helps to shape such a personality as would answer all the requirements of the life of developed socialism and the prospects of its development into communism, and the demands set by the modern scientific and technological revolution and the social and aesthetic ideal of communism.

p Aesthetic education begins from the fact that in every individual a certain reserve of impressions, perceptions and images containing aesthetic information is created under the influence of various aesthetically meaningful objects and phenomena. An aesthetic sense, taste, and aesthetic emotional reactions are later formed on the basis of this reserve. If in all other forms of man’s education and development everything begins with a mastering of conceptually registered knowledge and elementary information, then the aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experience accumulated by all the preceding generations of people is passed on to the new generations in the first place with the help of the various objects that surround them and constitute the background and atmosphere of their existence. If that background and atmosphere are made up of objects on and in which the most modern ideas of the harmony of colours, sounds and plastic movements are impressed and embodied, then this aesthetic 220 experience is fixed in man’s consciousness in the form of various impressions and definite emotional states and moods.

p It is quite evident that the process of creating a reserve of aesthetic knowledge does not end at the level of contemplation and emotional and sensuous experiences, nor does it develop into a purely rational cognition and an acquisition of knowledge. Aesthetic information itself is such that it demands an organic interlacing of the emotional and sensuous, and rational levels of reflection. The development of man’s emotional and sensuous realm leaves its imprint on the process of the rational assimilation of knowledge. The same can also be observed in aesthetic information itself—the higher the level of emotional embodiment of rational aesthetic knowledge in the object and phenomenon, work of art or product of material production, the more significant is its influence on the individual. All this is important for the aesthetic education of any person, but acquires especial significance in the aesthetic education of the younger generation.

p In the Soviet Union, thanks to the extensive development of the various branches of industry and trade, the entire system of family and pre-school public education creates such an atmosphere in everyday life, which provides for the creating of a rich reserve of diverse, vividly remembered and emotionally effective impressions. This same atmosphere opens up before children the possibilities for the most diverse pursuits, always interesting, lively and active, developing the active side of the child’s personality. At the present time, according to statistics, the absolute majority of Soviet children pass through the public education system in children’s creches-kindergartens.

p The entire atmosphere and background of the activities of schools, out-of-school children’s establishments, vocational schools, secondary specialised schools, institutes, and the whole network of cultural-educational facilities for Soviet people also serve in realising this task.

p It must not be forgotten that in the Soviet system of public education (in each of its links) the acquiring of aesthetic knowledge is effected by teaching a series of humanitarian subjects which systematise the person’s knowledge of the history of the aesthetic and artistic development of humanity. Parallel with this is a special aesthetic and artistic education connected with the training of specialists for various branches of aesthetic and artistic activity.

p At the present time aestheticians, pedagogues and psychologists in the USSR are discussing the question of how to aestheticise the 221 entire process of teaching and educating Soviet man and not only its separate links. This appears to be a very promising way of enriching the theory and practice of aesthetic education and heightening its social role.

p Current Soviet aesthetics considers its essential task in the sphere of aesthetic education to be the forming on the basis of acquired knowledge of such social and psychological qualities of the personality as would provide it with the possibility of emotionally evaluating genuine aesthetic objects and phenomena. Man’s aesthetic emotions, in the broad sense of the word, are not simple sensuous reactions of the organism to certain irritants; an evaluative attitude to the objects perceived based on formed conceptions about beauty and perfection are necessarily present in them.

p The forming of man’s emotional realm is, perhaps, one of the most capital and complicated tasks of aesthetic education.

p The difficulty in fulfilling this task is intensified by the fact that in aesthetic emotion (as distinct from others of man’s emotional reactions) the feeling and the intellect are organically interwoven. Aesthetic emotion is a dialectical unity of emotional experience and cognition. Aesthetic emotional reaction, like the reaction of evaluation, like an emotional response to something necessarily presupposes such an evaluative level as would determine the degree of development of not only the processes and organs of sensuous cognition but also the intellect, realm of demands, motives, and the individual’s entire personality. Moreover, evaluation always takes into account the purposeful development of the individual.

p The characteristic teature of aesthetic emotional attitude consists of the fact that by being summoned by a definite object or phenomenon, it is transferred to other objects and phenomena in man’s environment. Aesthetic information and the aesthetic emotional state indirectly influence forms of man’s activity remote from it in content. A transference of experience, its generalisation and an enriching of the reserve of associations take place. This is precisely why the instilling of emotional receptivity and emotional responsiveness is a guaranteed way of shaping the all-round and harmonious development of the personality.

p In emotional aesthetic reactions and states such purely human qualities as dissatisfaction with that achieved and a constant striving for the new and the unknown are also expressed. V.I.Lenin noted that “there has never been, nor can there be, any human search for truth without ’human emotions’ ”.  [221•1  Without emotional 222 reflection man is not capable of comprehending the subjective consequences of everything taking place in the world and evaluating the significance of his own actions for those around him. The role of man’s emotional dimension is particularly great in an age of headlong scientific and technological progress and of the huge scale of man’s influence on the surrounding world and that of the technology created by him on his own life.

p Through emotional reactions and experiences the individual becomes involved in social life, in connection with which the Soviet philosopher Vigotsky called aesthetic emotions the tool by which intimate sides of the personality are drawn into the range of social life. A harmonious merging of the individual with the social is achieved in aesthetic emotion.

p The setting up of a certain reserve of aesthetic knowledge and forming of a realm of aesthetic emotions, feelings, tastes, views and convictions do not mean that the process of the aesthetic development of the personality has been completed. All this provides the personality merely with the possibility of comprehending, feeling and experiencing aesthetically meaningful objects and phenomena and deriving aesthetic pleasure from their contemplation. However from the Marxist point of view the main thing in the aesthetic development of the personality is the forming and developing of such qualities and such abilities as would turn it into an active creator of the beautiful and allow it not only to derive pleasure from the beauty of the world but also to transform the world according to the laws of beauty.

p The question here is not of the ability to discover oneself only in artistic creativity but of the capacity for being aesthetically creative in any form of human activity. Of course the developing of the aesthetic capabilities of the individual was desirable for the process of aesthetic education at all stages of the development of society, however today the fulfilment of this task through aesthetic education has grown into a requirement of the times, inasmuch as society has attained such a level of development where the further improving of the life and activities of all the people must be realised in accordance with the laws of beauty.

p Therefore aesthetic education not only draws into the stores of its means an ever-widening circle of objects and phenomena, but also creates these objects and phenomena through the activities of aesthetically developed people. This is aided by the fact that aesthetic creative ability, in accordance with modern psychology, is such a combination of the personality’s mental features and qualities as provides it with the possibility of attaining success in all 223 forms and spheres of human activity, particularly in producing perfect, harmonious, refined, plastic objects satisfying not only the utilitarian and material, but also the spiritual needs of people. Aesthetic creative ability is a general or generalised, and not a specific ability. The forming of this ability in an individual takes place simultaneously in the process of labour, moral and other forms of education.

p Throughout the entire process of man’s aesthetic development such aesthetic feelings, tastes and views must be formed on the basis of which the aesthetic sphere of his world outlook is strengthened and becomes an integral element of his inner culture, his spiritual wealth, and his ideological position. Under these conditions man becomes capable of giving a correct emotional, sensuous and intellectual evaluation of any phenomenon of reality and art, including those which express feelings, ideas and ideals contradicting humanism and the interests of man’s progressive development and which draw him into moral degradation and spiritual impoverishment.

p Aesthetic education plays a special role in the process of the allround development of the personality. Firstly, it is precisely in this form of education that man’s varied feelings and his mind are developed and the realm of his emotional life, intellect, and harmony of mind and heart are formed in an organic merging and unity.

p Secondly, aesthetic education promotes.an all-round development of these basic aspects of man’s inner life, since its final goal is the discovering of all the inclinations and talents of those being educated and the creating of conditions for forming on their basis the ability for active transformative endeavour in accordance with . the aesthetic demands of the times. Thirdly, the developing of the ability to use one’s imagination productively and creatively, to develop a creative mind, and to think in associations, as well as the acquiring of the knowledge, skills and habits formed by other aspects of a communist education provides the personality with the possibility of actively participating in the many-sided activity of society in a many-sided manner.

p Fourthly, insofar as all aspects of the multiform life of people are drawn into the sphere of the modern aesthetic life of developed socialist society and consequently into the sphere of aesthetic education, such education is the correct path to the harmonious development of the individual—physical, mental, social, moral, and spiritual.

p Fifthly, during the process of the all-round aesthetic development of the individual a harmony of his relations with society is 224 attained—the personal and the civic and the individual and the collective merge as society progresses towards attainment of the communist social and aesthetic ideal.

Such an approach to aesthetic education and such an understanding of it correspond to the spirit and demands of the current stage in the development of socialist society.