La pulce ferrata non ballava: il nazionalismo russo come problema di rappresentazione

Abstract

The war propaganda prints pubed as objects of representation; in the Segodniashnii lubok period, the same artists apparently attempted to use the language of folk art directly in order to speak to the common folk. The discussion aroundlished by Segodniashnii lubok in the fall of 1914 have often been analyzed as the logical development of their authors' – such champions of the avant-garde as Maiakovskii, Malevich, and Larionov – interest for primitive art. It should, however, be reminded that, in Russia, primitivists used national rather than exotic models – the Russian people was for them just as exotic as Tahitians were for Gauguin. Folk modes were thus treat Nikolai Leskov's tales, however, should remind us that the use of an alien language implies a fundamental ambiguity about the identity of the speaker; this ambiguity is probably the reason why the Soviet propaganda system did not follow the path traced by Segodniashnii lubok.