OBERIU (Russian: ОБЭРИУ – Объединение реального искусства; English: the Union of Real Art or the Association for Real Art) was an innovative group of Russian writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The group formed during a time when Soviet culture was becoming more controlled, and the experimental art scene in Leningrad was losing influence as groups with leftist ideas were pushed aside.

OBERIU was started in 1927 by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. The group became well known for unusual performances, such as circus-like acts, readings of strange poems, and plays like Kharms’s Elizabeth Bam, which reminded people of later European theater styles called the "Theatre of the Absurd." These events happened in places like theaters, schools, dorms, and even prisons. The group’s work was criticized in the late 1920s as "literary hooliganism" by newspapers that were becoming more traditional. This criticism grew stronger in the early 1930s, and many members were arrested. OBERIU is often described as "the last Soviet avant-garde."

Origins

Some scholars believe that the OBERIU manifesto was mostly written by the poet Nikolay Zabolotsky with the help of Daniil Kharms. The group included Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolay Zabolotsky, Konstantin Vaginov, Igor Bekhterev, Yury Vladimirov, and others, such as actors, musicians, and filmmakers.

The Russian artist Kazimir Malevich provided shelter for OBERIU members at his new arts institute, allowing them to rehearse in one of the auditoriums. It is reported that he told the young members of OBERIU: "You are young troublemakers, and I am an old one. Let's see what we can do." Malevich also gave a book of his own ("God Is Not Cast Down") to founder Daniil Kharms, including the inscription "Go and stop progress!"

Decline

In the 1930s, Socialist Realism and Stalin's purges prevented the creation of any "leftist" or "radical" public artistic groups. After about 1931, The OBERIU stopped holding public performances, and most members shared their writing only with a small group of friends. However, Zabolotsky later became a poet who was somewhat accepted by the Soviet government.

Although the group was briefly held together by shared interests, some members left. Zabolotsky and Vvedensky had a disagreement. In the 1930s, Kharms and Vvedensky became closer to a group of friends who met regularly for what they called "conversations." Yakov Druskin, a Christian philosopher and music theorist who wrote about composers like Bach, Schoenberg, and Webern, was an important member of this group. Druskin and his friend Leonid Lipavsky, a children's writer who used the name Leonid Savelyev, a mathematician, and a writer of philosophical works, had known Alexander Vvedensky in high school. They also became friends with Kharms and Zabolotsky. Lipavsky recorded many of the "conversations." Nikolay Oleynikov, an editor at a children's publishing house that had long employed young poets from OBERIU as writers and translators, joined this group by the mid-1930s.

This later group, which had no public activities, is usually called the "chinari" (meaning "the titled ones") group in Russian literary studies. However, it is unclear if the group ever officially named itself or used the term "chinari" consistently. Because of this, the names "OBERIU" and "chinari" are often used interchangeably in scholarly discussions. The groups had overlapping members, and the only clear connection between them was the continued presence of Kharms and Vvedensky.

Influence

Although the OBERIU group existed for a short time, its influence on Russian culture lasted a long time. Since the late 1980s, there has been growing interest in Russia among people who study the work of these writers, who were forgotten for many years. Even earlier, during the 1960s and 1970s, the ideas and art of the OBERIU affected the "unofficial" art world in the Soviet Union. Some artists and writers from that time openly said they were influenced by the OBERIU, while others showed it clearly. The OBERIU was seen as a connection between the old Russian avant-garde and the new one. Poets such as Genrikh Sapgir, Alexei Khvostenko, Anri Volokhonsky, Lev Rubinstein, Dmitri Prigov, Timur Kibirov, and Eduard Limonov learned about the OBERIU through secret publications shared in underground art circles. Their writing shows this knowledge, though each poet used it in different ways. A musical group from Leningrad called N.O.M. used many ideas from the OBERIU movement, especially from writers Kharms and Oleynikov. They honored these writers by releasing an album called An Album Of Real Art, which included songs based on their lyrics. A punk rock musician from Omsk named Yegor Letov said he was influenced by Vvedensky’s writing for his own lyrics.

In English

An English-language edition of OBERIU writings, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Genya Turovskaya, Thomas Epstein, and Ilya Bernstein, was published by the Northwestern University Press in 2006. Over the years, several translations of Kharms's short stories, notebooks, letters, poems, and diaries have been published. For example, George Gibian translated works for Norton Library in 1974, Matvei Yankelevich translated works for Overlook Press in 2007, Anthony Anemone and Peter Scotto translated works for Academic Studies Press in 2013, and Alex Cigale most recently translated works for Northwestern University Press in 2017. Kharms's poems were also translated by Roman Turovsky. The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, edited by Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk, and Irina Mashinski and published in 2015, includes 8 poems by Kharms, 1 by Vvedensky, and 6 by Zabolotsky.