IB: Authoritarian States

'The great generation of women artists of the Russian avant-garde, including Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, Aleksandra Ekster, Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova, is by now relatively well known, as is its largely gender egalitarian, or at least gender neutral, abstract imagery. But we know much less about women artists of the 1930s under Stalin. Work from this decade is most often simply dismissed as “Socialist Realism” or “propaganda art”, yet many worked in modernist figurative styles, and saw themselves as every bit as revolutionary as the previous generation. Like their Constructivist forebears Stepanova and Popova, they continued to produce exhilarating images of emancipated Soviet women well into the 1930s, until the state ideology of woman reverted to a more traditional, feminine and maternal model of limited equality.'

Stalin's Russia: Society and Culture by Ian Thatcher [1]

'Poetry is an art of refinement, synonymous with delicacy and sensitivity. It seems counterintuitive that it might also be a celebration of brutality, and the art form beloved of tyrants. But from classical antiquity to modernity, dictators have been inspired to write verse – seeking solace, intimacy, or glory. Their work informs us about the nature of power, the abiding appeal of poetry, and the perils of artistic interpretation.'

Stalin's Russia: Society and Culture by Ian Thatcher [2]

Prof Ian Thatcher: a 2-part lecture on Stalin, society and culture