Universal happiness in a “Land of Milk and Honey” was a favorite propaganda theme percolating throughout Stalin’s USSR. It was an alternative reality conforming to State doctrine at odds with reality. Among artists, Fedor Sytskov’s Day Off at the Kolkhoz (1937) perpetuates the fantasy that life on a kolkhoz (collective farm) is a picnic.
Ukrainian Exiles. Post Card of the Famine in Ukraine (1935). A
Sytskov’s agricultural workers, in traditional Mordovian peasant costumes, anticipating a successful harvest, take a day off to celebrate. Sytskov masks the terror of Stalin’s Great Terror (1937/38) and the famine in Ukraine (1932/). The green meadow studded with flowers and the entire river indicates abundant rainfall, sure signs of more happiness to come.
The artist’s name is also spelled as Sychkov.
See Vern Swanson. Hidden Treasures: Russian and Soviet Impressionism 1930-1970s. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994; Anne Applebaum. Stalin’s War on Ukraine. New York: Doubleday, 2017; Timothy Snyder. “Ukraine’s Past on Trial.” NYR Daily, 2010.
Featured Image: Systskov’s Alternative reality. Private Collection; http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=483HV