Thaw 2000, oil on canvas, 60 × 48 in. (152 × 122 cm) A peasant woman in a red kerchief kneels before an ice hole in the shape of Stalin’s profile against the backdrop of crimson skies. The hole retains its contours, while the ice around begins to melt. The painting is the artist’s tribute to the relative liberalization of Soviet society after Stalin’s death known under the historic term “The Khrushchev Thaw” (Ottepel). The term refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from the Gulag labor camps, thanks to Nikita Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization.
opposite
Aurora 1991, oil on canvas, triptych, 30 × 90 in. (76 × 229 cm) Each panel: 30 × 30 in. (76 × 76 cm) The triptych is a derisive deconstruction of the revolutionary Soviet mythology. The central panel depicts the Russian cruiser Aurora stationed in St. Petersburg in October 1917. According to the Soviet myth, on October 17 the Aurora, refusing an order to go to sea, fired a blank shot sparking the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution. According to other accounts, there was no shot fired, or the crew was simply not sober enough to load the forecastle gun. The artist flanks the glorious cruiser with the smoking profiles of two Communist leaders, Lenin and Stalin, symbolizing the absurd course of Russian history.
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