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The work depicts a train stretching into the distance, with only the passengers in the first car visible through a hazy rendering of the train’s exterior. The car is filled to the brim. Above the train is a cloud of dark smoke with the dates 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1940. There is a hint of faded numbers both before and after the written dates. The dates encompass the years of Stalin’s Great Purge, when hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were arrested, exiled, and executed. Those exiled were shipped by train to live and work in gulags, often never to be seen again. Alexei Rezaev, 1935–1940, n.d.
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Stalin’s train is stalled at a barrier containing the word “Communism.” The barrier is a cracked bar with bones, a skull laying on the ground below. Several sillouhettes of Lenin monuments are scattered behind the train, each pointing in a direction different from the pointing hand coming out of the train. The smoke from the engine contains the image of a faceless crowd behind a barbed-wire fence, an allusion to the Soviet citizens sent to the gulag under Stalin.
Alexei Rezaev, A Standstill in the Commune, 1991
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Belozerov’s painting ironically depicts the Russian Order of Glory, the highest honor a soldier could attain for bravery. However, the medal here is fashioned out of barbed wire, hanging from a black piece of textile. The space is inscribed with the slogan “For Motherland, for Stalin,” the rallying cry for Soviet soldiers fighting Nazi troops during World War II. After the war, almost 1.5 million soldiers were arrested and sent to prison camps, accused of lack of bravery, as they had “allowed” the Germans to take them prisoner instead of fighting to death.
Gennadi Belozerov, For Motherland, For Stalin, 1990
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