Asymmetrical Information

mock all you want, but socialism's day will soon come.

I love this Soviet stuff. I saw an exhibit that traced the evolution of Soviet art, and some of it was just awesome. Its a combination of funny, sad, scary, fantastic, and alien that makes my mind just melt. Commemorative Plates? Oh, of course! Its like a book with a parallel history of the world, but this one, sadly, really happened.

The fact that most of what survives was literally approved by the govt enhances the experience. That the artists were given guidance, but only few rules, raises the stakes. These were people who were complelled to play with their lives with each act of creation.

There are paintings of Stalin that have to be seen to be believed. One that stood out for me was just him, sitting at a plain wooden table with a bottle of vodka and two glasses, beckoning the viewer to sit with him. I am pretty sure Stalin and his crowd viewed it with pride, showing the common appeal of 'Joe', but the artist was subtle and the result for me and probably many others at the time of the painting, terrifying. A man who will kill you to make his life just slighly easier, smileing, inviting you for a drink.

Its all great stuff, the posters of Lenin striding like a colossus leading the people, the films showing the great progress of the state, the drawings of buildings that didn't get built, the glorification of the tools of war and industry. One of those plates with the red guy with a hammer looking to the glowing city...yeah.

If you get a chance and if they are still on view, see the Duerer prints at the BM. Just astonishing. Ok there is tons of incredible stuff there.

Enjoy the museums and gallerys in sunny London, Jane.

In July 2004, I went to Budapest for a friend's wedding. During the trip, I hit Statue Park, which has all these old Sov-era monuments, turned into a tourist attraction. Writeup and links to pics are here.

That stuff immediately made me think of:

WW2 Patriotica

(keep hitting 'next')

Those are from OUR country! :)

The workers looking towards a bright future remind me of Eric Hoffer's book 'The True Believer', which first for me pointed out how similar religions and political mass movements are to each other.
Always promise a reward over the horizon!

Earlier this week I was looking at this site--a walkthrough of the Palace of the Republic in the former East Berlin.

http://www.pdr.kultur-netz.de/palace_e.htm

The space was once occupied by a Prussian palace, but it was heavily damaged during the war and demolished by the Russians in 1950 as a reminder of the militaristic past. Also, it would have cost a lot of money to rebuild.

25 years later, the East Germans honored the memory of the Schloss with the Palace of the Republic, which was built in the same blockish form and with the same governmental purpose of the old building. Only instead of stone, they used bronze-tinted glass and concrete.

The building housed the East German parliament, theatres, restaurants, even a bowling alley and a disco. When the wall fell, inspectors discovered it was riddled with asbestos. It's been abandoned since 1990 and now Berlin doesn't have enough money to demolish it.

As a huge fan of chess and Soviet propaganda art, I've always loved the Heroic Socialists vs. Evil Capitalists porcelain chess set produced by the State Porcelain Factory in Petrograd/Leningrad in the 1920's. The Czarist/capitalist king with a death's head and the pawns as serfs bound in chains are just amazing.

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues99/jul99/object_jul99.html

I'd beg, borrow or steal to get my hands on one of these. Great stuff.

I'm just glad I bought that Josef Stalin bottle opener when I visited the Terror House during that Budapest trip.

"I'm just glad I bought that Josef Stalin bottle opener when I visited the Terror House during that Budapest trip."

I'd be mind-bogglingly jealous of you, if petty capitalist desires for material possessions weren't so wrong!

Obelisks are obviously phallic symbols. The can be found in many cultures, from ancient Egyptian to the present (the Washington Monument comes to mind).

I think of the towers of San Gimingniano (sp?) as further examples of the need men feel to erect tall structures.

That bottle opener really helps in my five-year plan to develop cirrhosis of the liver.

That bottle opener really helps in my five-year plan to develop cirrhosis of the liver.

Well, if it's as successful as the other five-year plans, you should live a long, healthy life! :)

Today being the birthday of both Lenin and Kerensky it is right we celebrate the great achievements of the Socialist past in the area of tableware. Comrade Galt was no doubt aware. Perhaps a picture of Comrade Marx will be forthcoming?

In Dmitri Shostakovich's (? — the controversy over what fraction of the book he wrote and what fraction the alleged "editor/translator" Solomon Volkov did is as live as ever) memoir Testimony there's a lovely anecdote about official portraits of Stalin. Stalin was short and had hands of different sizes; he wanted to be depicted as tall and handsome and perfectly formed, but not so that the deception was glaring. So accuracy and outright whitewashing were both out (as, Shostakovich/Volkov alleges, several artists discovered when they were executed for falling short of the mark). One Nalbandian hit on the solution by having Stalin appear to approach the viewer with hands folded across his stomach, seen from below so that he appeared to tower over the viewer.

Shostakovich/Volkov quotes Mayakovsky: "The artist must look at his model as a duck looks at a balcony." That really does sum up totalitarian art rather succinctly, doesn't it? I'm minded to wonder whatever happened to that ghastly triumphal arch Saddam Hussein had made out of melted-down Iranian munitions, in the shape of his own meticulously-replicated arms wielding crossed scimitars. I hope it's no longer there.

". . . mock all you want, but socialism's day will soon come."

I think you can take that in one of two ways. Empirical evidence of today's world would point more toward capitalism's (or, more accurately, liberal democracy's) ascent. Socialism's "day" could very well mean its last. Unless, as is the habit of many on the Left, the original statement above is strictly ironical . . . ?

My husband actually loves Russian Films from the 30s, 40s and 50s all about the noble factory worker working daily to make a glorious soviet society. I periodically worry that he doesn't quite get the joke.

On another note, I would like to say that those are exceptionally lovely pictures.

Well, if Jane would ever post on standards-of-living in Sweden or Denmark, I'd send the link to my great pix from THAT trip...

"Well, if Jane would ever post on standards-of-living in Sweden or Denmark, I'd send the link to my great pix from THAT trip..."

And their sky-high suicide stats!

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