Labor
Labor is a reproduction in painted form of a photograph found in the newspaper Labor from May 9, 1985 of a meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. After the publication of this photograph, the entire editorial staff was fired. Prior to this moment, the practice of montaging history and adjusting facts was common but secret, connected to the elimination of people unwanted by the regime, which was subsequently followed by the erasure of their memory in the archives. At the moment of this photograph’s publication, the montage of history and adjustment of facts became obvious.
Diana Machulina. Labor. 2008. Oil on canvas, 163×400 cm, 2008 (two parts, each 163×200 cm)
Here, photomontage was used on aesthetic grounds: the General Secretary turned out to be in a place unbefitting his rank, to the left and below the composition’s center. The photo editor gave instructions that the figure should be moved to its appropriate place. Due an oversight, a part of Gorbachev’s head remained in its old place, lying as a «duplicate of precious cargo» on Tereshkova’s table.
Retrieved from the archive, the photograph amazes by the archaic quality of its composition, regimented no less strictly than the murals in ancient Egyptian tombs. At the bottom — that much background, so as not to crop the state emblem; at the top — a bit of space left above the gigantic bust of Lenin; at right — enough space so as not to cut out the enormous metallic numbers on the wall marking the anniversary of Victory Day. The fold of the newspaper page must not touch the leader of the world’s proletariat. From one edge to the other, members of the party fill the span. Cropping or accentuating is impossible: a reporter’s original point of view is an asset that comes with democracy. It is precisely within such a rigid cannon that the visual shift looks particularly terrifying, similar to the verbal displacements in the work of writer Vladimir Sorokin, where official language reaches the point of decay and schizophrenia. And, indeed, that point did mark the disintegration of the Soviet empire.
Text translated by Kseniya Gurshtein
