First Decree On Peace
Artist
Volodymyr Fedorchenko
(born 1948)
Date1985
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions54 in x 59 in
ClassificationsVISUAL WORKS
Credit LineGift of the Jurii Maniichuk and Rose Brady Collection
Object number2019.12.068
Description"First Decree on Peace" takes us back to the events of the Bolshevik Revolution. On the second day of the Revolution, Lenin's Bolshevik Party held a Congress of Soviets in Simony, Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and issued a decree on peace proposing “to all warring peoples and their governments to begin at once negotiations leading to a just democratic peace.” These are the words Fedorchenko’s soldiers are reading, published in the Izvestiya newspaper of October 27, 1917. Cutting across the middle of this canvas are the slogans: “Down with War!” and “Peace to Nations!” The steam locomotive in the background brings to mind one of the most famous revolutionary songs: “Our Locomotive, fly forward! Our next stop is Communism!” The song is the underlying broader theme of the painting, adding a confident vision of the Communist future, well in accord with the tenets of Socialist Realist style.On View
Not on view
