Russian Postmodernism

Mikhail Epstein

“The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism”

(1995)

In Russia models of reality have always replaced reality itself.

• 988: Prince Vladimir forcefully introduced Christianity

• Early 18th c.: Peter the Great introduced Western culture, built St. Petersburg

• Late 18th c.: Potemkin villages• 20th c.: artificial communist ideals and

enthusiasm• 1990s: ideas of capitalist economy and free

enterprise are pure conceptions against the background of a devastated society

“Russians have only names for everything, but nothing in reality. Russia is a country of façades.[...] How many cities and roads

exist only as projects.[…]”Marquis de Custine, 1839

“Signs of a new reality, of which Soviet citizens were so proud in the thirties and

fifties, from Stalin’s massive hydroelectric plant on the Dnieper River to Khriushchev’s

decision to raise corn and Brezhnev’s numerous autobiographies, were actually pure

ideological simulations of reality. This artificial reality was intended to demonstrate the superiority of ideas over simple facts.”

Mikhail Epstein

Russian Sots-Art

Vitaly Komarand

Alexander Melamid

Lenin and Stalin

Self-Portraits as Lenin and Stalin, 1972

Red Square

Ideal Slogan, 1972

Quotation, 1972

Komar’s Wife with Their Son and Melamid’s Wife, 1972

Stalin and the Muses, 1982

Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live, 1982

Nostalgic View of the Kremlin from Manhattan, 1982

Erik Bulatov

Krasikov Street, 1977

Sunrise or Sunset, 1989

Symbols of the CenturyAlexander Kosolapov, 1982

Adam and Eve

Stalin

Cutlery

Device for Determining Nationality

Young Hope of the World

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