Lyubov Popova

Lyubov Popova was a radical multimedia artist and designer, who was an active Communist in the 1917 Russian Revolution and the years that followed. 

She also worked at a time when there were extremely few women artists respected by art institutions or schools, or even in the revolution. Popova travelled Europe and brought a myriad of modern influences to Russian art, in particular Cubism and Futurism - movements focused on multiplicity in the service of showing several angles of an object simultaneously, and demonstrating movement.

Later in her career, she moved to complete abstraction and simplified geometric forms alongside her Suprematist comrades, who wanted to make art in keeping with the industrial zeal of the revolution, and to move away from illusionism and elitism. At this time she also started to make textiles, theatre sets and design work, expanding the meaning and uses of art into broader society. Popova died young, but in her short life had a prolific and varied career and demonstrated that art could have an important part in revolutionary politics and post-capitalist ideas.

Accomplishments

Lyubov Popova was extremely interested in dynamism, or, representing movement in art, a problem at the center of many artistic movements, and the focus of many individual artists' lives. At the start of her career, this took the form of Futurist-style paintings showing movement through visual repetitions.



Later, she would design theatre sets that moved on huge cogs; paintings with warring colors that fought to escape the picture plane, and repetitive textiles suggesting optical illusions.
Like her Suprematist comrades in the revolution, she believed that art should reflect the industrial, egalitarian future, and this meant making work that echoed the geometry and efficiency of machines, as well as moving into a pure abstraction unfettered by elitist ideas of skill, or "natural talent", common to ideas of artistic genius."

She moved away from painting to follow her belief that a revolutionary art should be practical, accessible, and reproducible. She designed stage sets, publication covers, and textiles, and her work is instantly recognizable as emblematic of the (albeit brief) revolutionary hope and fervor of Russian art at the time.

History Is Made At Night - Clinton Walker ---Black Women & Australian Music

The Beatles and Bertrand Russell

The Beatles were so much a part of the youth movement that blossomed in the 1960s that it's amusing to think that one of the main issues that energized the movement--peace--came to the Beatles through a 92-year-old man.

As Paul McCartney explains in this clip from a January 14, 2009 interview on The View, it happened when he decided to pay a visit to philosopher Bertrand Russell. A co-founder of analytic philosophy, Russell had been a life-long social and political activist. During World War I, he was not allowed to travel freely in Britain due to his antiwar views.

Russell lost his fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was eventually jailed for six months for supposedly interfering with British Foreign Policy. After World War II, Russell lobbied strenuously for the abolition of nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, he opposed the Vietnam War.

75th Birthday Einstein Rallies Defence of Rights Resistance to Inquisition

New York Times 14 March 1954

During the "McCarthy hearings" of the 1950s, the government investigated American society and industry in an attempt to root out communist sympathizers. Among those investigated were scientists and scholars, who were called upon to appear before the committee to answer questions concerning their political affiliations. 

Some refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment. Rose Russell, a member of the Teachers Union of the City of New York, considered invoking of the Fifth Amendment in a letter to famous physicist and avowed socialist Albert Einstein in 1953.

Einstein advised Russell, as he did others, to refuse to testify but not on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. 

In his May 28, 1953, letter Einstein wrote that although invoking the Fifth Amendment was not "unjustified," the McCarthy hearings were not the circumstance it was meant for. 

"The 5th Amendment was adopted," he wrote, "in order to make it impossible for the judicial authorities to bring the accused to confess through means of extortion." 

He continued, "In the present cases, it is not a matter of violent extortion of the accused," but rather a "matter of using people as tools for the prosecution of others that one wants to label as ‘unorthodox.’"

Invoking the Fifth Amendment was problematic, Einstein wrote, because "the individual is offered no legal middle ground for him to defend his actual rights." In closing, he pointed to a more "revolutionary" tactic—"non-cooperation, like Gandhi used with great success against the legal powers of the British Authorities."

Later that year, Einstein also counselled fellow physicist Al Shadowitz to refuse to provide testimony at the McCarthy hearings—not by invoking the Fifth Amendment, but by asserting that the questioning was in violation of the First Amendment.

The passing of a local history giant Lionel Munby

We have just learnt that Lionel Munby, one of local history's giants of the 20th century, died in April 2009, aged 90. We met him only once, back in the very early days of Local History Magazine, and spent a good hour together talking about his take on local history and current affairs.

At the time I felt that I was in the company of a kindred spirit. He wrote for us just once (an article about 'Early visitors to the Hertfordshire Record Office, LHM No.49, May/June 1995), but he was always generous in his support for what we were trying to do, such as in his contribution, 'Local Studies in England', to Local History since 1945: England, Wales and Ireland, a Socialist History Society Occasional Paper (No.21) published in 2005.

Lionel Munby was one of a generation of local historians who, despite their academic credentials, spent much of their time working with and encouraging ordinary people to explore and discover for themselves the local history of their own communities. We hold him in the same esteem as we hold the likes of Alan Rogers and Rex Russell.

It was David Short's appreciation of Lionel's life in The Guardian (24 July 2009) which alerted us to the fact that he had died in April 2009. David has kindly sent us the full version of that appreciation (which was not actually published). It is a wonderful tribute from a friend and colleague:

'Lionel Munby, a man who taught and fostered the study of local history in Hertfordshire, edited The Local Historian and played a leading role in developing local history in England, died peacefully on Sunday 19 April 2009.

'Born in Leeds, Lionel developed his interest in social history and politics in the 1930s. After leaving school in Oxford and Clifton College, Bristol, he entered Hertford College where, in 1939, he took a first in modern history. It was during this time that he, like many intellectuals of his generation, joined the Communist Party.

'With the war came military service, mainly in Italy. Initially, promotion eluded him, but on being called into the office he was told that it was silly that he was not being promoted just because he was a communist. The offending pages of his service record were then burnt. Promotion followed and he finished the war as Adjutant of Milan.

'In 1946 he was appointed to teach at the University of Cambridge’s Board of Extra-Mural Studies. He soon started teaching local history in Hertfordshire as well.

From the start, he got students actively involved in their learning, an approach being taken up by other historians, many with communist credentials, who looked at history from below, at the lives of ordinary people.

This involved reading documents, deciphering strange handwriting, studying maps and walking fields, all of which led to writing local history. Many Hertfordshire local history publications in the 1960s, 70s and 80s owe their inspiration and editing to Lionel. Some classes led to the founding of local history societies.

'He was on the committee The Hertfordshire Association for Local History from 1955 to 1987, serving as Chairman and President. He also provided the inspiration for the founding of the Hertfordshire Record Society and became its first secretary.

'For 20 years he was the editor of The Amateur Historian, later The Local Historian. The change of title is indicative of Lionel’s thinking; local historians were not professional or amateur ― just local historians. He was also involved in the British Association for Local History, in later years as President.

'Lionel wrote a number of books. His The Hertfordshire Landscape (1977) is considered a classic, and many of his other works are indispensable items on any local historian's bookshelves.

'For years, Lionel’s wife Diana accompanied him to his classes. A tribute was paid by a young student who, when asked who the lady at the back of the class was, replied: 'Oh that is Mr Munby's wife, she is there to see that he gets it right'.

David Short

David has been an active local historian for many years, particularly in Hertfordshire. He runs an education consultancy, Ashwell Education Services.

24 July 2009