Customer Reviews

Art Under Socialist Realism: Soviet Painting 1930-1950

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This book is the purest kind of propaganda, not communist or Soviet propaganda, but right wing propaganda. It purports to show art in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1950. It concentrates on cult of personality stuff showing Lenin and Stalin and claims that represents Soviet Art. Unfortunately for the author some of the stuff on Lenin is quite good. But what is most annoying to me is the author shows pictures I am familiar with from other sources, great art, but presented in this book with their colors so distorted they are barely recognizable. It's clear they have been made to look ugly. For instance, Deineka's The Defense of Sebastopol. It's been made dark and ugly while in the original, the faces of the defenders are clear, their uniforms white. In Gerasimov's The Partisan's Mother, again, the contrast has been reduced until the woman standing up to the Nazi officer doesn't seem heroic as much as undifferentiated, blending into the background while in the original her bravery shines. In Alexander Laktionov's 1947 Letter From the Front, the colors are shifted, the image blurred. The original was very popular but this reproduction will not show you why. There are about 10 pictures that either are reproduced well enough to show their genius or that were so strong to start that they could survive the distortion and bias of this volume. The text is also just right wing propaganda and very unhelpful to anyone interested in Soviet Art.