Vladimir Semyonovich Kemenov (; 2 June 1908 – 14 June 1988) was a Soviet art historian and statesman who headed the VOKS for the USSR in the 1940s.[1] [2] [3] [4]
He was born in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro).
In 1940, he succeeded Viktor Smirnov as chairman of VOKS ("Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Kul'turnoi Sviazi s zagranitsei" — Всесоюзное общество культурной связи с заграницей — All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), a propaganda organization created in 1925 and restructured in 1958.
VOKS also often served as a convenient 'roof' for operations of both branches of Soviet intelligence, whose residents and operatives used opportunities provided by VOKS to establish and maintain contacts in intellectual, scientific and government circles. These contacts were, for the most part, unaware that they were dealing not with 'cultural representatives' and diplomats, but with intelligence officers.[5]In 1944, Mihail Sadoveanu hosted official Soviet envoys Kemenov and Andrey Vyshinsky in Romania shortly before he became president of the ARLUS "Literary and Philosophical Section."[6]
On June 23, 1945, Kemenov wrote the Soviet National Council of Foreign Affairs to request that the Soviet Union send artists to the United States and United Kingdom; the request met little interest. In 1947, Kemenov joined Alexander Fadeyev in asking the USSR to invite American writer John Steinbeck to visit; the Kremlin declined.[1]
In 1948, Andrei Denisov succeeded Kemenov as chairman through 1957. In 1958, VOKS became the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Contacts (SSOD), itself disbanded in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.[5]
In 1950, Kemenov was deputy director of the Institute of Art History.[2]
He died in Moscow, and was buried in the Kuntsevo Cemetery.
In 1947, Kemenov published an article "Features of Two Cultures" in English, French, German, and Russian that caught wide attention during early years of the Cold War.[3] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. noted that Kemenov had attacked artists Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Cézanne among others.[7] In a 1950 article, Kemenov defended Socialist realism and Marxist–Leninist theory of history and attacked bourgeois art historians in a manner "lurid and angry."[2]
. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.. The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. Houghton Mifflin Company. 80–81. 1947. 20 January 2020.