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Inside lot 36 of an industrial
estate on the outskirts of Moscow

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lie the fragments of one of
the most spectacular pieces
of 20th-century Russian art.

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It once stood astride the
entrance to the Russian Pavilion
at the 1937 World Fair...

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Crafted by the same engineers
who built Soviet warplanes...

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20 metres high,
a worker and a woman,

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holding aloft the hammer and sickle.

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A Soviet shout of defiance,

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aimed at the capitalist West.

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Communism is healthy.
Communism works.

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Throughout the 20th century,
Russia's leaders used art like this
to spread their political message.

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They were acutely conscious
of the power of images.

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But during the years of Soviet rule
it was also extremely dangerous

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to be an artist - you could
be punished, even eliminated,
for making the wrong kind of work.

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Works of art weren't judged
merely as things of beauty.

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They were far more important
than that.

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They were the building blocks of
an entirely new kind of society.

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1917. Lenin and the Bolsheviks

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seize power,
as revolution erupts in Russia.

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It shook the world and spawned
a thousand fictions.

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Sergei Eisenstein restaged the
uprising in his epic film October.

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This was art spreading the word of
a new, radical creed - Communism.

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With St Petersburg tainted
by its imperial past,

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a new capital was chosen for
the Revolutionary State - Moscow.

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With all of Russia drunk on change,
it must really have seemed that
anything were possible.

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And Russia's artists, so often
at the margins of society, now
found themselves projected

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to its very centre as the Bolsheviks
sought out an art

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that would be radical and
forward thinking as their politics.

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Lenin even included artists
on his list of the heroes
of the Revolution.

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That was a rallying cry
and Russians painters, sculptors

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and architects responded with a
great outpouring of creative energy.

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It was driven by a group of
artists who called themselves
the Constructivists.

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The voice of the movement

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was the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

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But its dominant figure
was his best friend,

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the artist Alexander Rodchenko.

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His early paintings still
pulse with the energies
of an extraordinary time.

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In a sense, Constructivism was
built on a whole series of No-s.

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No to beauty, no to artistic mystery
no to the idea of creativity, even.

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Definitely no to the idea
of art you can buy and sell.

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And he created this very simple
language of form -

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it almost reminds me of the diagram
a convict might put on his wall

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to count off the days to his
release, except here,

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Rodchenko is counting the days until
the Revolution would truly come to
pass, and alter the world forever.

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He pushes art also away from the
language of representation,

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towards the language of mathematics.

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This picture could
almost be a Venn diagram...
or of electrical engineering.

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It looks like it could be a diagram
of some electrical circuitry.

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He said, "We want to be
constructors, engineers,
not creators."

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It's anti-mystical, anti-mystery,
so even when he draws a cross,

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you know very well that Rodchenko
is not alluding to Christianity -
he abhorred religion.

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He said, "What could be
more stupid than a church."

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And over here,
perhaps the oddest, this almost
nothing of a pictorial experiment.

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This very, very strange...
little dot painting.

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Damien Hirst eat your heart out. But
what is he trying to tell us here?

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I think, again, he is conceiving
the canvas rather as if it were
a society that could be remodelled

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and that perhaps these represent
conglomerations of individuals

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that can be altered and moulded.

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And to me, again, it's as if he's
pushing the language of painting

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towards the language
of social engineering.

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Which, of course, is what
Communism would become.

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And the Constructivists would
soon leave the art gallery behind.

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Just four years after the
Revolution, Rodchenko

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took his most radical step.

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He announced the death
of painting itself.

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The future lay in posters,
pamphlets, propaganda.

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Agit-prop spread across
Russia on special agit-trains.

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You can still sense their idealism,

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in this beautiful poster designed
to encourage workers to read.

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Mayakovsky did the words,
Rodchenko the images.

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And the girl was Mayakovsky's lover,
Lilya Brik.

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This vibrant new graphic language

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turned the city into a carnival
of colourful, sharp-edged forms.

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Today, just a few examples survive
like this for the state shop,
Mossel'prom.

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But I'd been told there was
a place where you could still
experience this lost world.

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A great archive,
rarely visited, in the back office

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of Moscow's Mayakovsky Museum.

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Somehow, it didn't seem like the
kind of place you'd want to keep

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a collection worth millions.

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My guide was a rather
inscrutable lady called Eugenie.

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So is this where you keep
your priceless Rodchenko?

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Oh, Wow. Yes, of course.

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It took Eugenie about five
seconds to puncture my scepticism.

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So what have we got? Oh, wow.

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Rodchenko's Constructivist suit.

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Rodchenko montage...

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This exquisite paper cut-out.
That is beautiful.

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Photomontage.

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Financial inspector.

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The earliest experiments in
photomontage.

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Is it OK if I put this
up here with the others?

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Of course.

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Making my own little museum here.
Montage. Oh, wow. That's fantastic.

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For Mayakovsky poetry.

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And that was just for starters.

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They worked together on some
state advertising, like posters?

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Like poster, of course. You can see.

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Mayakovsky and Rodchenko worked

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in advertisement. And you can see.

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I just can't believe you have
this stuff in drawers here.

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Such interesting things.

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That's a priceless
object so be careful.

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That's one of the famous
posters for bread. Yes.

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That's tremendous.

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What else have you got here?

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If you want I can show.

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Could you have a look? Two minutes.

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Two minutes. Yes.

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Yeah, absolutely, I've got all the
time in the world that's very kind.

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Wait here. I will wait.

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No, no, no.

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You're back. Wow.

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With an armful, a cornucopia!

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Oh, how fantastic.

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I much prefer seeing this kind of
work in the chaos

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of an archive because its not all
been sanitised by an exhibition.

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Oh, isn't that fantastic?!

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This is a very famous one
very beautiful.

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Now what's this is beautiful.

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Advertisement of cigarettes.

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I love this just... DANG!

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Exclamation mark. Smoke cigarettes!

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If you look here there is a really
nice little symbol of the closeness

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of their partnership - they put,
not a signature - very important,

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it's an industrial stamp.

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Mayakovsky/Rodchenko.
Isn't that great?

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Is this watches?

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Yes, yes. It's like opening...
literally we are opening the
Pandora's box of your archive.

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But you can feel they were opening
the Pandora's box of this new world

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of cultural possibilities, where
suddenly to design

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a humble watch advertisement, that
was far more worthwhile

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than what Cezanne had been doing
when he painted the Mont Sainte
Victoire 20 years earlier.

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This was real art,
because it was art for everybody.

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Of course.

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Look at that, look at this
frowny face and the smiley face -
Communist biscuits.

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I love this graphic language -
this...

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Neville Brody obviously
took all this for The Face -
still kind of familiar to us now,

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but then that was from nowhere,
this was just totally new
to use words like this.

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And that's one of the paradoxes
that Rodchenko and Mayakovsky

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give to the West - the visual
language of capitalism!

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Because they're inventing
advertising - this becomes...

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the origins of the McDonald's
logo among other things lies there.

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We keep going round in these
revolutionary circles. Oh, wow!

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Such simplicity of design.

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One rouble. I want that made
into a T-shirt - what do you think?

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One rouble, not going to
get you far in modern Russia.

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SHE LAUGHS

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Listen, it's been fantastic - thank
you so much. You've completely...

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My brain is pullulating
with revolutionary ideas.

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Let's take to the streets
and forge a new world.

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Come with me, Eugenie. ..We're
going, we're going to leave you.

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A new society also needed
a radical new architecture.

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And the Constructivists competed
with each other to invent it.

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The most daring of these experiments

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was Vladimir Tatlin's monument
to the 3rd International.

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A giant revolving tower
housing offices for the party.

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Lenin didn't like it, so it never
made it past the model stage.

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But some great structures did.

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This is a radio tower.

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For me,
it's the forgotten masterpiece
of the Constructivist era.

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It was designed by an engineer
called Vladimir Shukhov in 1922.

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Hardly anyone comes here any more.

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But I had to make the pilgrimage,
even though I do hate heights.

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Hand-cranked technology. I think
the guy is winching us up manually.

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This is one of the great
monuments of the Constructivist
post-Revolutionary period.

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Shukhov is a really
interesting character.

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He was somebody from a much
earlier generation.

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Russian revolutionaries cottoned on
to him - got him to build things.

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Lenin got him to build this tower
to broadcast the propaganda
of the Soviet state.

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But he himself
was a political conservative
who saw in the Revolution primarily

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an opportunity to build some
of these designs that had been
seething around in his head.

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He's the first industrial
designer to apply the principles
of non-Euclidean geometry

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to tensile steel structures
and he designed

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these extraordinary hyperboloid,
as they are known, structures.

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This amazing shape.
Its kind of the direct ancestor of a
building like the Gherkin in London.

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It's a long way up.

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What I love about this is precisely
the fact it hasn't been "heritaged".

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Look, it's still rusty -
this is probably the original cabin

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in which Lenin came up to
inspect his great new radio tower!

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It's raw around the edges and
its still a working tower today.

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I just think it's...

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Ah, vertigo...!

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It is absolutely fantastic.

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This is far more exciting,
far more the real spirit
of that early Soviet moment

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than Tatlin's never-constructed
tower.

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This is the real Tatlin tower,
and it's by Shukhov, and it works.
It's still broadcasting today.

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And so the word according to Lenin
was transmitted via the radio waves,

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reaching across the
vast Russian hinterland.

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And that was just the beginning.

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What if their message could be
broadcast by moving pictures?

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For Lenin, cinema was the
revolutionary art-form.

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And so a home-grown film industry
was born.

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Welcome to the movie-set version of
old Moscow - a backlot

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of Communism's very first film
studio - Mosfilm.

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Hollywood, but with a Soviet twist.

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In the fantasy world of the film
set you could create a perfectly
edited version of the birth

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of the Communist state, an origin
myth in which there is no such thing

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as a good aristocrat or a kind
Cossack and every member
of the working class

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is an heroic proletarian engaged
in a struggle for freedom.

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This was really a Communist version
of the Bible's book of Genesis,

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a story in which, again and again,

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the forces of proletarian good
triumph over Tsarist darkness.

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00:16:55,360 --> 00:17:00,240
Now Karl Marx had famously said that
religion was the opium of the people

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00:17:00,240 --> 00:17:04,160
but what was this,
if not another form of religion?

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They might've got rid of the Church,
but they'd replaced it with
something
equally beguiling - the cinema.

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This is the Soviet Gospel, through
the lens of Sergei Eisenstein.

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00:17:20,200 --> 00:17:24,720
His film October
gave Russians the authorised
version of their Revolution.

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00:17:28,680 --> 00:17:31,280
Eisenstein was a great manipulator,

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00:17:31,280 --> 00:17:37,360
who used deeply emotive jump-cut
editing to fire his message home.

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Image follows image,
like icon painting,

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but at 24 frames per second.

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But by the time October
was finished, in 1927,

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the Communist experiment itself
was beginning to lose its lustre.

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00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:04,080
When Lenin died, the country was
in economic and social meltdown.

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00:18:05,600 --> 00:18:09,600
Into the chaos stepped Josef Stalin.

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00:18:13,880 --> 00:18:19,080
Stalin wanted to fast-forward
Russia into modernity.

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00:18:19,080 --> 00:18:23,400
Despite the Revolution it remained
an almost feudal society,

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00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:26,320
with a huge peasant population.

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00:18:28,720 --> 00:18:33,760
Stalin's solution was a series
of brutal Five-Year Plans.

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Millions were press-ganged
into his new factories.

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00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:47,480
And forced to live like
termites in vast communal blocks.

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00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:52,000
Those who stayed on the land
were uprooted

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to industrial-scale
collective farms.

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If they refused
to leave their homes,

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they were machine-gunned
or starved to death.

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At least five million people died.

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Artists too were being forced
to conform,

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00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:23,600
their revolutionary energy
snuffed out.

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00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:37,960
'And Rodchenko's great friend
and collaborator Mayakovsky
was one of the first victims.'

229
00:19:46,040 --> 00:19:48,000
This barely furnished room

230
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:53,400
is the place where
Mayakovsky chose to end his life.

231
00:19:53,400 --> 00:19:55,520
He shot himself,

232
00:19:55,520 --> 00:19:58,960
shot himself dead
sitting at this chair.

233
00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:06,120
His last years had been deeply
troubled - he'd written

234
00:20:06,120 --> 00:20:08,600
highly critical satires
of Soviet bureaucracy.

235
00:20:08,600 --> 00:20:13,640
He'd been denounced by the Russian
Proletarian Writers' Association.

236
00:20:13,640 --> 00:20:18,160
Everyone had abandoned him -
even his long-time lover Lilya Brik,

237
00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:24,080
who'd long ago modelled
for that girl advertising books,
for that beautiful Rodchenko poster.

238
00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:29,640
The story is even she was denouncing
him to Stalin's secret police.

239
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:34,800
Mayakovsky, like all of the
early great revolutionaries,
was a fantastic eccentric.

240
00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:38,440
In those early days, everyone had
their own idea of the Revolution.

241
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:42,480
But that precisely was what was
going to be outlawed from now on.

242
00:20:42,480 --> 00:20:49,560
That individual voice had to be
suppressed in the expression of
collectively enforced optimism.

243
00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:55,600
Everyone from now on had to be
super-positive about everything
in the new Soviet regime.

244
00:20:55,600 --> 00:21:01,080
The death of Mayakovsky
was a real watershed in the history
of the Russian avant-garde.

245
00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:08,800
Stalin wanted art that
depicted Russia as a fertile,

246
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:14,760
pastoral idyll where healthy,
happy peasants tilled the land.

247
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:23,000
The name given to this
state-approved style
was Socialist Realism.

248
00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:31,600
And the most powerful examples
are to be found deep beneath
the streets of Moscow...

249
00:21:36,760 --> 00:21:41,920
..where a series of extraordinary
time capsules take you right
through the Stalin years.

250
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:49,160
My whirlwind tour of the metro
system has to begin here

251
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:56,160
at Revolution Square - it's one of
the earliest stations, and it's
one of the most spectacular,

252
00:21:56,160 --> 00:22:01,120
because here we've got the language
of Renaissance Italian tomb art,

253
00:22:01,120 --> 00:22:03,440
think Michelangelo's Medici chapels,

254
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:07,280
applied to a Moscow Communist
situation.

255
00:22:07,280 --> 00:22:11,840
And what we've got essentially is
a kind of Communist typology -

256
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:17,560
these are the sorts of people
that Stalin and the party want
in their society.

257
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:22,600
It's a kind of
roll-call of desirables -
the intrepid young sailor,

258
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:25,440
the determined young airwoman,

259
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:27,840
a lot of military types.

260
00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:32,960
Here's a very important figure,
the Stakhanovite miner.

261
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:38,120
Stakhanov was this heroic worker
who hewed vast amounts of coal

262
00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:41,360
on one particular night,
and the feat became legendary.

263
00:22:41,360 --> 00:22:46,360
They wanted legions of
these Stakhanovs to turn Russia into
an industrial powerhouse

264
00:22:46,360 --> 00:22:51,320
and to fuel revolution, to push
society on to a higher lever.

265
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:55,120
On this side, we've got, as it were,
his intellectual counterpart -

266
00:22:55,120 --> 00:22:59,200
the engineer, the designer,
the thinker - probably inspired
by Rodin's The Thinker.

267
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:03,320
There are a lot of these references
to classical academic art

268
00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:05,920
in this phase of Socialist Realism.

269
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:12,200
And over here, we've got - very
important - we've got agriculture.

270
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:18,280
The contented peasant, and here's
metaphorically or actually his wife.

271
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:27,640
These are the people you are
supposed to be. These are the shoes
you've got to fill

272
00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,720
if you want to be part
of Stalin's Russia.

273
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:41,880
Eventually the idea, I think, is
that all of these figures
will be running off the trains

274
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:47,440
and going up the stairs, but you
have to think about what's missing
from this pantheon of people,

275
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:52,960
and its of course,
it's the creative melancholic,

276
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:56,040
the dissident, the poet,
that great Russian figure

277
00:23:56,040 --> 00:24:00,640
who has driven so much of
Russian culture over the centuries.

278
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:06,280
That figure is absent because of
course he doesn't fit the pattern,
he doesn't fit the mould.

279
00:24:09,120 --> 00:24:12,680
And people were disappearing
for real.

280
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:18,280
No-one was above suspicion,
not even loyal members of the party.

281
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:30,400
Stalin's police arrested and killed
some 700,000 "undesirables"

282
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:33,600
in two years of terror.

283
00:24:35,360 --> 00:24:37,560
Many more disappeared in the night.

284
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:44,440
Altogether, 30 million would be
sent to a network of prison camps

285
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,120
known simply as the gulag.

286
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:53,920
But a threat from outside would
briefly unite this troubled nation.

287
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:04,040
In 1939,
the Second World War broke out.

288
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:09,680
Two years later, Hitler
began his great assault on Russia

289
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:16,760
and as bombs dropped on Moscow, it
could have been the end for Stalin.

290
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:26,040
But it turned out
to be his finest hour.

291
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:36,480
I'd like you to try and imagine
it's the 7th of November 1941.

292
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:40,960
It's the height of the siege of
Moscow - Hitler's army is encamped

293
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:44,760
outside the city, and instead of
commuters getting off these trains,

294
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,200
you've got a very different scene.

295
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:53,800
Stalin is holding a rally - it's to
celebrate the 24th anniversary of
the October Revolution

296
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:59,560
and in the centre of this hall they
erect a great statue of Lenin
on a podium

297
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,280
and at the end of the meal,
Stalin addresses all his generals,

298
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:10,320
and he says, "We, the Soviets,
we must stand strong against the
Nazis - we will triumph."

299
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,360
Now, what's remarkable about the
decorations in Mayakovsky station

300
00:26:17,360 --> 00:26:21,000
is that they were created three
years before, in 1938,

301
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:26,440
before the war even broke out,
and yet you sense that Deyneka,
the artist responsible,

302
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:31,560
felt very strongly that war was
in the air, because he chose
as his subject the Soviet skies.

303
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:36,040
But these are skies through which
planes are flying in formation

304
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:42,400
releasing parachutists -
there's very much a sense of
Russia gearing up for war.

305
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,800
They're very, very beautiful,
full of a kind of energy

306
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:50,840
and sense of threat and I wonder if
it isn't a case of adversity

307
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:56,320
even under such terrible
a tyrant as Stalin,
sparking a considerable artist

308
00:26:56,320 --> 00:27:00,000
into a truly great piece of work.

309
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:28,120
They famously called the
underground system here in Moscow
the "people's palaces"

310
00:27:28,120 --> 00:27:31,960
but I can't help thinking of them
more like the "people's churches".

311
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:37,240
And here - what this makes me think
of very much are the mosaics

312
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:42,200
in the dome of a cathedral, except
of course, here we are worshipping

313
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,320
at the altar
of Soviet military might.

314
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:49,520
But there is also something sort of
semi-religious about the iconography

315
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:55,640
because what are these planes
and parachutists but Soviet angels,
doing battle

316
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,240
to save the Communist state?

317
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:03,400
I particularly love this image
of the heroic parachutist

318
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,920
coming down towards us as if
through a hole in the ceiling.

319
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:12,080
And his been depicted at the very
moment when he pulls his rip-cord

320
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:16,880
and it's actually fantastically
skilfully done, this foreshortening,

321
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:19,800
and if you look at the face

322
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:24,000
of the parachutist, it's got this
wonderful fresh-faced expression.

323
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:32,360
These really are, I think, probably
among the very few
genuine masterpieces of art

324
00:28:32,360 --> 00:28:35,200
produced under the tyranny
of Stalin.

325
00:28:55,800 --> 00:29:00,240
Russia would suffer crippling
losses in World War Two.

326
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:06,720
But by its end, with Hitler
defeated, Stalin was once more a
hero to his long-suffering people.

327
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:15,640
For a moment, it seemed as
if the Russian avant-garde
might flourish once more.

328
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:23,920
During the conflict, Stalin had
allowed even dissident artists to
rouse the nation with their work.

329
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:27,240
Anna Akhmatova's
poems in the newspapers,

330
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,960
Shostakovich's
symphonies on the radio.

331
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:39,840
But as soon as the war was over,
the clampdown resumed,

332
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,680
under Stalin's cultural apparatchik
Zhdanov.

333
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:51,200
Now, I've travelled one stop.

334
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,920
But I've moved through
a kind of chasm in time,

335
00:29:54,920 --> 00:30:00,200
because now we're in 1952.

336
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:06,440
And this is the era when the dead
hand of Stalinism reasserted itself.

337
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:10,120
And what it's produced
is a dead art.

338
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:15,640
Compared to those beautiful
mosaics of Deyneka,

339
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:19,960
look at these
ossified images set in tile.

340
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:24,920
And what we've got here are images
of a kind of fantasy Russia

341
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:28,040
where peasants
are forever happy and smiling.

342
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:34,000
They've got these smiles
painted onto their face as they
reap the tall corn and prepare

343
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:36,280
to kill the fatted calf.

344
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:41,240
These are images that are being
fed to a starving people.

345
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:45,400
Images of an imaginary happy land
for people who are actually living

346
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:49,080
lives of extreme
misery and hardship.

347
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:56,840
Zhdanov even said that art must be
optimistic, and you can feel that
sense of enforced optimism here.

348
00:30:56,840 --> 00:31:02,000
There's a kind of heaviness
about it, too. This barrel vault,
it's like a Roman imperial vault,

349
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:05,640
emblazoned with,
again, images of things that the
people didn't actually have.

350
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:07,560
Corn, plenty, abundance.

351
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:13,800
Of course, Stalin himself knew that
this wonderfully happy Soviet state

352
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:18,880
could only ever exist in
the images of a fantasy art.

353
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:21,560
So, boy,
did he commission a lot of it.

354
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:38,360
You won't find much of the
art commissioned under Stalin

355
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,600
on the walls of the New Tretyakov.

356
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:43,440
But it's still there.

357
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:45,640
You just have to look
in the right place.

358
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:49,480
Certainly hidden away,
the socialist room.

359
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,160
This is seriously idealised.

360
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:11,400
Is this Deyneka too?

361
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:16,640
They've got a whole Stalin section.

362
00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:26,400
I'm trying to see if I can
find someone who isn't
smiling in this picture.

363
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:28,040
Extraordinary.

364
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:35,280
And in this labyrinth, I was looking
for one painting in particular.

365
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:38,800
Oh, we're here? This side.

366
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:40,760
This side?

367
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:42,280
Oh, fantastic.

368
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:48,480
Here he is.

369
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:50,000
Wow.

370
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:56,920
Uncle Joe.

371
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:00,600
So, yeah.

372
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,880
I bet he never imagined
he'd be in the cupboard

373
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:11,440
one day along with all the
other unwanted lumber of history.

374
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,280
One of the things you immediately
notice about the picture

375
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:20,520
is how reactionary its style is.

376
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:22,760
I mean this painting...
Take the figure of Stalin out,

377
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:26,880
this could be basically
a 19th-century landscape painting.

378
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,040
I think that's part of the message
of the picture.

379
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:32,720
What it's saying is,
it's saying to everybody, yes,
there's been this huge upheaval.

380
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:34,920
Yes, there's been revolution.

381
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:39,640
Yes, it might seem as though
society's turned on its head,
but actually, don't worry.

382
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:44,240
Everything's OK. Everything is as
it has always been except better.

383
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:47,040
Now we've got
factories belching out smoke.

384
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:52,240
We've got these huge collective
farms being ploughed by these new
combine harvesters.

385
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:57,200
We've got pylons taking electricity
and power to every corner of Russia.

386
00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,760
You've got to remember,
these pictures were not painted
for the intellectuals.

387
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:03,160
These pictures were painted
for the people.

388
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:09,080
Every good Communist family was
supposed to have a painting of
Stalin on the wall of their house.

389
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:12,880
And, again, to me, this
is very much taking the language

390
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,680
of old religious art
and bringing it,

391
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:23,480
using it for the Communist cause
because Uncle Joe, standing there
very much like a saint.

392
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:28,240
There's a sense of votive stasis
about this image of him.

393
00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:31,880
And he stands with the sunlight
catching his face just as the sun

394
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:34,440
catches the face of
a Caravaggio saint.

395
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,800
But, just one little detail,

396
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,880
that even in paradise,
you're being watched. Because...

397
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,880
look at that car, that little
tell-tale black car.

398
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:52,120
That's the signature vehicle
of the secret police.

399
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:57,240
So, yes, everything's fine in this
new Russia but just remember,

400
00:34:57,240 --> 00:34:59,120
you're being watched.

401
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,320
All forms of dissidence
were ruthlessly suppressed.

402
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,440
It was actually illegal to say
anything negative about

403
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:21,080
the perpetually positive art
of the Stalinist era.

404
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:27,840
But one critic called
Alexander Kamensky found a way.

405
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:32,320
He wrote an essay that was simply
a list of titles.

406
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,040
And it went like this -

407
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:39,120
'Congratulations to the Heroine',
'The Cotton Growers'
Award Ceremony',

408
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:42,160
'A Toast to the Hero
of Socialist Labour',

409
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:46,840
'The Glorious Days
of the Shipbuilders',
'Industrial Successes',

410
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,360
'Abundance of the Collective Farm'.

411
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:55,760
The list went on and at the end
the critic added just one
ironic word of his own.

412
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:57,280
"Etc".

413
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:09,400
The art of the Stalinist
past still looms like a threat

414
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:11,920
over the Moscow cityscape today.

415
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:22,760
You'd be forgiven for thinking
those who created it were cynically
going through the motions.

416
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:27,760
But not all of them were.

417
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:36,440
The sculptor who carved
these heroic-looking figures
is still alive today.

418
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:53,200
90-year-old Nikolas Nikogosyan's
studio is full of models
for unbuilt monuments.

419
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:57,280
I wondered whether he'd ever had any
qualms about working for the regime.

420
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:54,480
Nikogosyan's the living embodiment
of the betrayed Communist dream.

421
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,960
You can imagine his sculptures
scowling in lofty disapproval

422
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,520
of the new capitalist Russia.

423
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:07,320
And asking themselves
the unanswerable question -

424
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,960
"Where did it all go wrong?"

425
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:22,920
Stalin died in 1953 and his
successor, Nikita Krushchev,

426
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:26,280
quickly signalled a change
of direction.

427
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:33,360
While the West entered
the swinging '60s, Soviet Russia
experienced a more limited thaw.

428
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,560
The Space Programme
opened fresh horizons.

429
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:53,280
And out of this new optimism emerged
Socialist Realism's spectacular
last gasp.

430
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:19,800
The most dynamic and extraordinary
monument of Communist propaganda

431
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:26,040
of the whole 1960s is, I think
they call it, the Space Obelisk.

432
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,640
What we've got is this great
image of a rocket thrust

433
00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:34,640
phallically into the sky on
its own plume of energy,

434
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:39,440
rendered in the form
of this beautiful curve
of aluminium-clad metal.

435
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:44,560
You've got a tremendous sense of
abstract energy and of aspiration.

436
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:52,480
It's as if just for a brief moment
they've somehow managed to recover
the energy and idealism of the very,

437
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:59,240
very earliest Revolutionary
Communist art, the spirit of
Constructivism, all over again.

438
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,120
Now, here at ground level,

439
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:13,320
you've got this wonderful collective
frieze, this kind of Parthenon

440
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:15,880
frieze of Soviet space exploration.

441
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:17,480
Everybody's been included.

442
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:19,880
There's the wireless girl.

443
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:25,200
Here you've got the heroic engineers
pulling levers, pushing buttons.

444
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:33,280
There's ground control talking to
Major Yuri and it's all taking place

445
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:37,040
under the tutelage of this
Soviet deity.

446
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:41,120
This ancient Slavic mythological
figure of Mother Russia.

447
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:45,360
Now, here at the end you've got the
suited figure of Gagarin himself,

448
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:48,240
the very first cosmonaut,

449
00:40:48,240 --> 00:40:53,240
ascending the ladder
metaphorically into space.

450
00:40:53,240 --> 00:40:59,440
I can't help wondering why it was
that space exploration should have
tapped into the Soviet psyche

451
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:04,880
in this way, should have produced
this last great exhalation
of Communist propaganda art.

452
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,880
And I wonder if it wasn't because,

453
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:13,000
really, they weren't just dreaming
of exploring the great blue yonder.

454
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:18,520
They were dreaming of escaping
the Communist collectivist present.

455
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,280
Despite its name,
what Socialist Realism never showed

456
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:47,600
was social reality -

457
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,440
how people actually lived.

458
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,760
For decades,
millions of Russians

459
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:02,040
had co-existed
in cramped communal flats.

460
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:06,920
State propaganda insisted that
this was happy collectivism.

461
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:09,160
But it wasn't.

462
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:22,800
And there was one artist,

463
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:27,320
a dissenter, who was
prepared to expose the rot.

464
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,400
From the 1970s, Ilya Kabakov

465
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:38,280
created haunting installations
inspired by the communal flats.

466
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:40,960
He prepared them in secret.

467
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:46,320
He even made this one look like an
archive so if the KGB came calling,

468
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:49,200
they wouldn't know that it was art.

469
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:54,280
Every object stands for a
different person or event

470
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,120
in the overpopulated tenement.

471
00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:01,880
This is the slipper of the old
man who paced about at night.

472
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:05,360
These are the pots
and pans we argue over.

473
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:08,280
Whose turn is it
to boil the cabbage?

474
00:43:10,720 --> 00:43:13,600
This is a lapel badge.

475
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:17,480
It was worn by the man who reported
our friends to the secret police.

476
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,520
It's a bleak inventory
of unhappiness.

477
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:27,200
But it was also a blueprint
for radical change.

478
00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:37,400
Kabakov was part of a generation of
underground artists who exhibited

479
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:39,680
covertly in their homes.

480
00:43:42,720 --> 00:43:45,800
I've come to see painter
Tatiana Levitskaia,

481
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:49,720
a veteran from those years,
who still lives in Moscow.

482
00:43:49,720 --> 00:43:54,720
She remembers the era of secret
exhibitions and whispered dissent.

483
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:00,440
Hello. Tatiana!

484
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:02,720
Hello.

485
00:44:02,720 --> 00:44:06,120
Hello. Very nice to see you.

486
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,640
Was it difficult,
the life of an artist?

487
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:14,680
Yes, I can say it's difficult
because you always see
at the window, grey people.

488
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,440
You call them grey people?

489
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:19,160
Yes. Was that the KGB?

490
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:20,920
Yes. Really? Yeah.

491
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:23,400
So, you're looking out of the
window to see if the KGB...

492
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:25,320
Because they all the same.

493
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:29,440
From the first glance,
you can see that it's is KGB.

494
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:33,520
Some time they want to make
us to be afraid.

495
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:35,560
Oh, I see. So, they stand

496
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:37,840
outside the flat? They say, "We see.

497
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,200
"We go there and...".
We are not usual...

498
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:44,160
They think your art is irregular?
Yes, very irregular.

499
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:48,880
In 1974, Tatiana was part

500
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,800
of a clandestine exhibition
staged in a forest.

501
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:57,960
It was bulldozed by the police
and the art destroyed.

502
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:02,600
But public response was so strong
that the state censors backed down

503
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:05,640
for fear of
provoking open rebellion.

504
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:10,800
Two weeks later,
the same artists were allowed to
show their work openly.

505
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:14,400
So much people come to this place.

506
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:19,360
They were really happy
and they cried, they cried.

507
00:45:21,160 --> 00:45:25,920
They said, "How wonderful you are!"

508
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:32,760
because they didn't know
that artists like us exist.

509
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:36,320
So for me,

510
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:41,680
it was the happiest moment
of my life.

511
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:54,960
Do you think that you were
actually part of some kind
revolution at that time?

512
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,960
We understood that time was changed,

513
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:03,760
because everybody started to think
maybe I don't go there,

514
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:06,720
maybe I don't make it,

515
00:46:06,720 --> 00:46:09,600
maybe I don't say so,

516
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:12,480
and nothing will happen.

517
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:17,440
Freedom is coming
and grass is growing,

518
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:19,760
growing very quickly.

519
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:23,240
The time when Gorbachev came,

520
00:46:23,240 --> 00:46:30,480
the grass was very old, very tall.

521
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:36,520
For years, the two countries
have been glowering at each other
threatening nuclear destruction.

522
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:40,880
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms
signalled the beginning of the end.

523
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:47,080
In 1991,
the seemingly impossible happened.

524
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:52,040
To universal astonishment,
the Soviet Union simply dissolved.

525
00:46:54,360 --> 00:47:01,800
Exhilarated by the freedom they'd
fought so hard for, Russia's artists
unleashed a tsunami of work.

526
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:07,840
They put two fingers up
to the old world order.

527
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:19,000
Igor Markin is Russia's
answer to Charles Saatchi.

528
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:25,720
In the past 15 years, he's snapped
up pretty much every piece of
post-perestroika art

529
00:47:25,720 --> 00:47:28,000
worth owning, and then some.

530
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:40,240
And he's crammed it all
into his very own museum.

531
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,320
Like Lenin meets Giacometti.

532
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:49,120
Good space, this.
This is my favourite room, the best
room in the museum.

533
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:53,840
LOW CHIME
That's good.

534
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:58,800
Who made this piece? I forget!

535
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,120
But you like it.

536
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:05,520
It feels to me like
a museum about Russia.

537
00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:09,240
In the sense that this generation
of artists you are collecting,

538
00:48:09,240 --> 00:48:11,920
that's actually the question
they are asking themselves.

539
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:13,760
What happens next?

540
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:15,360
What are we going to do?

541
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,320
What's in here? This is the toilet.

542
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,320
This is the toilet?

543
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:22,800
Wow. I think that's fantastic.

544
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,800
In the old Soviet times every
office, every institution,

545
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:34,240
had an official book where you could
make comments and complaints.

546
00:48:34,240 --> 00:48:38,000
And he decided to make
instead of that book,

547
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,320
the lavatory of his museum
would be the space of complaint

548
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,880
and free self-expression.
I think it's a great idea.

549
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:48,400
Write something.
I'll try and write something.

550
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:53,880
I'm just looking for a little bit
of clear space.

551
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:04,600
That's my small contribution.

552
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:15,600
There's a lot of
mockery and free expression here,
but also uncertainty.

553
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:22,520
Art struggling to find an identity.

554
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:27,440
Russian artists today do
face a difficult choice.

555
00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:37,520
Communism may have gone,
but it seems the
old structures are still in place.

556
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:43,280
And if an artist really wants
to be part of the system,

557
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,760
he's got to toe the party line.

558
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:54,760
This is the work of Russia's most
successful modern artist,
Zurab Tsereteli.

559
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:59,240
It's a 200-foot-high
statue of Peter the Great.

560
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:04,400
In one sense,
it says Communism is over.

561
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:08,000
Russia acknowledges
its Tsarist past.

562
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,480
But it hasn't exactly
turned away from autocracy.

563
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:16,160
There's just one man at the helm,
one all-powerful leader.

564
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:19,640
We arranged to meet Tsereteli

565
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:23,000
at the Russian Academy of Arts,
where he's president.

566
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:26,640
He's a man much in favour
with Russia's leadership.

567
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,800
An entire wing of the State Academy
is filled with his own work.

568
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:33,960
Do you know when he's going
to get here? We've been waiting
for two hours.

569
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:36,680
This is his family crest.

570
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:40,480
This is his self-portrait.

571
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:44,360
And here at last
is the man himself.

572
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:57,320
Andrei is good.

573
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,000
In Georgian it would
sound like "Andrik".

574
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:06,120
OK. Andrik.

575
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,440
May we look round the work?

576
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:19,560
I'm fascinated by this apple.

577
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:22,680
Can we go inside the apple?

578
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:33,600
Wow...

579
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:36,320
This is extraordinary...

580
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,440
There is certainly quite a
lot of sex going on in here.

581
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:43,760
You can see in the centre,
avant-garde moments up here...

582
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:48,840
It wasn't the first thing
that struck my attention,
the avant-garde aspects.

583
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:58,920
TRANSLATOR: For me, the main thing
is art for art's sake...

584
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:03,720
'I was genuinely struck dumb
by the Kama Sutra sex apple.

585
00:52:03,720 --> 00:52:07,200
'So I asked him if he could
show me some portraits...'

586
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,440
There's more...
It goes on through here, too.

587
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:17,960
Who's this figure?

588
00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:21,320
This is our mayor, Mr Luzhkov.

589
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:23,480
He's the mayor of Moscow?

590
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:25,400
Mayor of Moscow...

591
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:32,040
The broom symbolises how he is
sweeping bad things out of Moscow.

592
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,800
How he's making life
in the city better.

593
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:38,040
Is Mr Tsereteli
a friend of the mayor?

594
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:45,200
Of course. So...

595
00:52:46,720 --> 00:52:48,240
Do I recognise this man?

596
00:52:52,720 --> 00:52:56,000
What's the title, then?

597
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:58,480
Healthy spirit, healthy body.

598
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:01,600
So it's not called
Portrait of Putin?

599
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:12,160
TRANSLATOR: I've tried to look at
people from an artistic viewpoint...

600
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,600
those whom I love,
those whom I cherish,

601
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:18,680
I try to create the images...

602
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,400
I haven't stopped yet...
If I liked you...

603
00:53:24,160 --> 00:53:27,800
maybe I would make
a sculpture of you.

604
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:31,000
'Tsereteli's world
is certainly unique.

605
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:34,160
'I also find it hard to fathom.

606
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:37,040
'It's an odd mix
of the old and the new,

607
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:41,960
'a strangely hollowed-out version
of the old Soviet Socialist Realism.

608
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:47,840
'Communist art
with the ideology removed.

609
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:53,240
'It's as if the only thing this art
believes in is power itself.'

610
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:11,200
But there is another way.

611
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,840
This strange apparatus

612
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:21,280
is the work of Andrei Molodkin.

613
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:26,920
His heroes are the Constructivists.

614
00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:32,800
You can sense that in the
grid-like forms, in his love
of engineering and machines...

615
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:37,160
He's filling these structures
of the past with new life...

616
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:39,280
and new substance...

617
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:47,920
So is that the smell of Russian oil?

618
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:52,120
Yes, I think it smells of Russian oil
and smell of Russia.

619
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:55,480
When you smell deeply you
can feel the Russia I think,

620
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:58,480
better than you can
see the souls of Russia.

621
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:04,360
For me it's very important
that people can come
and can really touch this oil,

622
00:55:04,360 --> 00:55:08,560
they can really smell it and
understand that oil is organic

623
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:11,880
material and it's part
of Russian identification.

624
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:18,760
In a sense, I suppose
literally, this is the stuff
of Russian history, isn't it?

625
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:21,280
This is Russia's pre-history.

626
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:26,480
Yeah, of course, because as everyone
knows that oil comes from organic
material and we can imagine that

627
00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:31,880
all life, which kind of stains the
territory of Russia, this is it here.

628
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:37,120
That's why, when we burn
in car the oil, we burn our
history, we burn our past.

629
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:40,480
I think it's very important
ideas to think about.

630
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:49,360
Andrei Molodkin's work
is dark and disillusioned,
but there's hope there, too.

631
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:55,160
He's fascinated by the structures
and ideas that once seemed

632
00:55:55,160 --> 00:55:57,760
to promise a Communist utopia,

633
00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:02,040
but he takes a carnival-esque
pleasure in disrupting them.

634
00:56:05,720 --> 00:56:10,320
So I feel like we are getting down

635
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:14,280
into the basement of your thought.

636
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:19,520
Yeah. This is like a mock-altar,
everything's turned upside down.

637
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:23,880
Yeah, that's why it looks like
life to oil...and oil to life.

638
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:27,600
It's funny, I almost want to take
one and turn it upside down...

639
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:29,120
Because when you see it...

640
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:37,560
It's really, ideally, like this works
in this kind of way...

641
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:42,600
it's much more formal, starts to be.

642
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:46,560
Yeah I quite like it that way
round... If we make a revolution...
shall I help you?

643
00:56:46,560 --> 00:56:50,640
Yeah, because before, I was thinking,
"Oh, it's a little bit too direct."

644
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:52,400
I even can't sleep about it.

645
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:54,240
That's great. So we're
actually changing the work...

646
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:58,840
Poor old Karl Marx.

647
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:03,120
If you could change the world...

648
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:07,520
How? Yeah, like we do now.
Turn everything upside-down?

649
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:10,680
Yeah, of course. It's great things.

650
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:12,200
It was

651
00:57:12,200 --> 00:57:15,040
one work...
now it's starting to be other work...

652
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:17,560
I really love it. You love it?

653
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:19,960
So we've done some good work today!

654
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:31,920
I like Molodkin's vision of history.

655
00:57:31,920 --> 00:57:36,480
For him it's a story
of revolution, and circulation.

656
00:57:40,120 --> 00:57:44,760
It's as if, after all the failed
experiments, he's drilling down

657
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,160
to the essence of Russian reality -
oil,

658
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:53,240
the substance of pre-history,
and the fuel of its economic future.

659
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:09,840
But when I think back through a
thousand years of Russian history,

660
00:58:09,840 --> 00:58:12,440
there's surely another
cycle at work here.

661
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:19,560
A seemingly eternal alternation

662
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:23,960
between conformity and rebellion.

663
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:28,320
For centuries, one set of tyrants
after another has tried to contain

664
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:35,120
the population, to fuse the many,
into one, using art as a tool.

665
00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:43,440
But I wonder if Russia's
people have finally had enough

666
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,520
of being controlled and disciplined.

667
00:58:48,760 --> 00:58:52,800
I can't say what lies ahead
for Russia or for Russia's artists,

668
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:56,720
but I know one thing for sure.
As the old Russian proverb says,

669
00:58:56,720 --> 00:59:00,320
"Life will never be just a walk
through an open field".

670
00:59:11,480 --> 00:59:14,400
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

671
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:17,240
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk