Public administration practices in the visual arts of the 1930s (on the example of the Taras Shevchenko Kazakh National Art Gallery)
The present work aims to identify the features of public administration, their real practices in the field of visual arts on the example of the Kazakh State Art Gallery named after T.G. Shevchenko in the second half of the 1930s and to make adjustments to the existing historiographical gap. As a source base, office documents deposited in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsGA RK) in Fund 1792, Kazakh State Art Gallery named after T.G. Shevchenko, and Fund 1736, Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Artists of the Kazakh SSR, were mainly used. Orders, resolutions, instructions, information letters dated 1937-1939, emanating from the Department of Arts Affairs under the SNK of the Kazakh SSR and the All-Union Committee for Arts Affairs under the SNK of the USSR were analyzed. Archival sources made it possible to identify the range of issues supervised by the departments, to determine the degree of integration of the cultural institution into the all-Union museum system, to highlight the situation regarding the replenishment of museum funds and the personnel issue. The methodological basis was the theory of modernization. A systematic approach was used to implement the research objectives. The study shows that, due to the historically prevailing conditions, professional visual arts did not receive a proper development on the territory of the Central Asian ethnoregion. The peripheral position of art, which persisted for quite a long time after the revolution, began to change by the mid-1930s with the coming to power of L.I. Mirzoyan (1897-1939), the first secretary of the Kazkraikom of the CPSU (b). During this period, the process of the all-Union restructuring of the management system in the field of culture coincided with the formation of the republican artistic infrastructure. The Kazakh National Art Gallery in Alma-Ata was made the profile center responsible for the presentation and popularization of visual arts in the republic. In general, public administration in the field of visual arts was implemented in line with the development of the state program of assistance to national suburbs through the formation and development of regional art infrastructure, accelerated growth of the museum art fund, with a parallel strengthening of integration into the all-Union socio-cultural space. At the same time, the analysis of the main elements of management testifies to their belonging to the administrative and command management system, with the inherent cumbersomeness of the bureaucratic apparatus, adherence to the principles of personnel appointments, and not electability, the presence of power centralization, which left minimal opportunities for the manifestation of initiative on the ground.