By: Claire Cao
A wave of red sweeps over Russia after a bloody Bolshevik revolution takes power and establishes a totalitarian communist regime. It is 1917, and the Russian royal family has been violently beheaded to make way for Russia’s new radical leader; Vladimir Lenin.
Another radical change occurred in the art industry. Porcelain was once a symbol of the decadent lifestyle reserved only for the Tsar and Russian elites. Under his rule, Lenin took control of the State Porcelain Manufactory to promote his new regime.
Stocks of china were painted with communist ideologies, promoting the socialist era. Instead of the ornate teapots used by the elite class, Bolsheviks decorated their silverware with the sickle and hammer. This porcelain created a strange contradiction between the bourgeois china and ideas supporting peasants.
A porcelain plate featuring the sickle and hammer, the symbol of communism. It represents the tools of peasants since Communism serves the working class.
The core of Lenin’s ideology was increasing Russia’s productivity. Because of this, plates often featured smoking chimneys, telegraph wires, and people hard at work to support the state. These images uplifted the proletariat and idealized their production line.
This communist porcelain that featured effigies of Lenin became known as Agitation porcelain that called people to action.
However, the Bolsheviks had another motive to maintain porcelain manufacture. According to Dr. Sjeng Scheijen, a historian and guest curator at the Hermitage exhibition, “The main reason for the Bolsheviks to maintain the porcelain factory was the preservation of cultural heritage.”
The porcelain factory recruited the most visionary artists that expressed the revolution in all its fullest. Communist influence spread to all dimensions of art, including theatre, music, film, and architecture. While famine, war, and disease devastated Russian civilians, Bolsheviks used art to continue to promote their communist agenda.
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QrYHAFCUNTyLnxWxsxVJu4qmFfVv5JIn/view?usp=drivesdk