Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

Victory over the Sun of the Past

The most striking example of the Russian avant-

garde’s 

pars destruens 

is the futurist opera 

Pobeda 

nad solntsem

 [Victory over the Sun] [cat. 2, 3], dating 

from 1913. Four leading artists of the Russian avant-

garde participated in the opera: Aleksei Kruchenykh 

wrote a text preceded by a prologue by Velimir 

Khlebnikov, Mikhail Matiushin composed the musical 

score, and Kazimir Malevich created the set design.

34

“

Victory over the Sun

 is possibly the best 

known and most discussed 

tour de force

 of the 

Russian avant-garde.”

35

 Today, we would describe it 

as a multimedia spectacle.

36

 The opera premiered 

alongside the play 

Mayakovsky 

(by Vladimir Maya-

kovsky) at the Luna Park Theatre in Saint Petersburg 

in December 16, 1913. A brief yet weighty work writ-

ten in Kruchenykh’s diff icult “trans-rational” (

zaum’

) 

language, 

Victory over the Sun 

epitomizes extreme 

radicalism of the early avant-garde. Furthermore, 

it marks the beginning of Malevich’s suprematism, 

that the artist would develop in subsequent es-

says, including 

From Cubism and Futurism to Su-

prematism: The New Painterly Realism

, dating from 

1916 [cat. 5], and 

On New Systems in Art

, published 

in 1919

 

[cat. 18, 19] [fig. 5], and especially in his fa-

mous 

Black Square 

(1917), which descends directly 

from a drawing featured on the front cover of the 

libretto and his set designs for the opera [fig. 6].

37

The plot of the opera is the death of the Sun 

at the hands of the futurists; as observed by Aage 

Hansen-Löve the characters are “allegorical abbre-

viations emblematically condensed in their “ward-

robe,” designed by Malevich . . .”

38

 This “death of 

the sun” is, of course, a literary 

topos

. Evgeny 

Steiner notes that: 

The sun and the moon have been key motifs for poets 

of all nations down the ages. Thus, for Kruchenykh 

and his fellow futurist subvertors, these two sources 

of inspiration for all other poets became the main ob-

ject of dethronement.

39

In fact, the death of the sun represented in this 

opera followed Marinetti’s famous “Uccidiamo il 

chiaro di Luna” (included in the title of his Manifesto 

from 1909), a topic also present in the Russian liter-

ary repertoire. As Aleksei Kruchenykh wrote in his 

Biography of the Moon

, dating from 1916:  

FIG. 5. Kazimir Malevich 

Illustrations for his book 

On New Systems in Art. 

Statics and Speed, 1919 

Collection José María 

Lafuente and private 

collection [cat. 18 and 19]

FIG. 6. Kazimir Malevich 

Sketch for the set design of 

act 2, scene 5 of the opera 

Victory over the Sun, 1913 

Pencil on paper, 21.5 x 27.5 cm

State Museum of Theater and 

Music, Saint Petersburg

Fundación Juan March

38

The Moon, that antiquated enchantress, which illu-

minated Paris when he abducted Helen, and which 

made languorous our young grannies with a Tur-

genev opus in hands—that moon the new idolaters 

just cannot forget.

One thousand centuries of poetry look at us from the 

moon!

. . . 

The old liar, tricked them!

. . . 

Its days are counted and lo—it is now accomplished.

. . . 

The moon is pegged out—

And from now on it is rejected and scrapped from 

the poetic use as a useless thing, as a rubbed away 

toothbrush!

 40

In Russia, however, perhaps as a sign of Russian 

superior radicalism over Italian futurism, the King 

of the Sky had its turn before the Moon. Moreover, 

beyond a purely literary reading of the opera con-

sisting in imagining “that 

Victory over the Sun

 is 

the victory over 

the sun of Russian poetry

: Push-

kin,”

41

 it is obvious that “this solarophobia was more 

than just the attempt to get even with Pushkin.”

42

 

Henceforth, broader understanding of the opera is 

not only possible but necessary: The victory over 

the sun represents the victory over the natural or-

der of things, a victory that lies in the radical trans-

formation of reality, as advocated by the futurist 

avant-garde.  

In fact, there are hints throughout the libretto 

(which, as will be examined below, may even be 

interpreted as presages) that suggest the story-

line is far more ambitious than a simple symbolic 

incursion into a commonplace literary theme, for 

instance: “The procession of the Sun Carriers ap-

pears . . . declaring that they have uprooted the 

sun” and announcing the new laws of construction 

of the world and time. From that moment on time 

stops, ceases existing: “Be advised that the earth is 

not revolving,” the Sun Carriers announce.

43

And further into the text, we read the roots of 

the sun’s corpse “reek of arithmetic,” bringing to 

mind Nietzsche’s dictum—according to which God 

will not be killed so long as we continue to believe 

in grammar—which takes on a more radical tone. 

The sun’s death signifies the dawn of a newfound 

freedom, celebrated by the choir as a “liberation”: 

“We are loose / The crushed sun . . .  / Hail dark-

ness! / And black gods…”

44

As Evgeny Steiner points out, “this Fifth scene, 

and the last, the Sixth, represent another world: 

the one of the dead sun and the accomplished 

victory of the futuristic world of dead nature and 

jubilant technology.”

45

 A closer reading of the vic-

tory over the sun, over the energetic core the world 

revolves around, is not only viable but necessary: 

Does “crushing the sun” imply something other 

than overcoming the structure of time imposed by 

nature? The sun marks the day, the night and the 

seasons, thereby determining how human time is 

structured in the universe. Eradicating it is the first 

step towards the radical transformation of reality, 

to breaking nature’s connection to history and its 

power to determine human time. To crush the sun, 

to kill it—as represented at the end of the second 

scene—means to liquidate the natural order of 

things and bring on a new artificial era. A classic 

reading of dialectic materialism would suggest 

this victory inaugurates a time devoid of nature, in 

replaced the overthrown sun, and with it died the de-

feated Platonic world of appearances, the projection 

of the parable of the cave; all that is left are cavemen 

stripped of their own shadows, their illusions, their 

theater of ideas.

46

  

As Aage Hansen-Löve and Evgeny Steiner ob-

serve in their insightful commentaries to their edi-

tion of 

Pobeda nad Solntsem

:

The symbolists’ fixation with the sun and the moon, 

as well as their threat of Apocalypses . . . of the end 

of the century, had to be eradicated once and for all

. . . The myth, as classic as it was neo-mythological, of 

light—along with its inherent neo-Platonic theory of 

ideas and emanation—had to be emptied of meaning: 

aggressively with futurism and its electrical blinding, 

and, then, permanently with suprematism through a 

point zero, a tabula rasa (Malevich). Hence the, con-

siderably eff ective, blinding spotlight’s provocation 

and projection . . . that not only outlined the tense 

movements of the biped decorative pieces against 

the black background, but also illuminated the audi-

ence, which is precisely what irritated and frightened 

them most.

47

 

Room must be made for the future by freeing it 

from the past:

In order to clear a place under the sun for themselves, 

the young rebels of the future world had to denounce 

the authority of the old sun—personified in Pushkin . . . 

But shortly after the declaration of war, the re-appro-

priation of the fallen idol began.

48

And, in eff ect, the Soviet system was there to 

claim the fallen idol. But, following their material-

ist mindset, Soviet power was forced first to reduce 

natural sunlight—which the futurists had symbolically 

and theatrically annihilated—before replacing it with 

the crassest form of artificial light known: electricity. 

This beam of light materialized in the politics of So-

viet electrification and became socialism’s energetic 

basis. It lit the path from the symbolic victory over 

the sun of the 

budetlianes 

to its ubiquitous presence 

in the construction of real socialism during the Sta-

lin era and the forging of its iconography, which in-

cludes the work of Aleksandr Deineka.

The Conquest of the Sun of the Future

In an illustrative example of how Deineka’s visual 

strategies approached composition and pictorial 

space—remarkably diff erent from the straightfor-

ward style of other socialist realist artists—Christina 

Kiaer

49

 makes use of a photomontage by Gustavs 

Klucis. The subject matter (and title) of Klucis’s com-

position was ubiquitous in Soviet phraseology and 

iconography throughout the 1920s and 1930s: “elec-

trification of the entire country” [fig. 7].

The singular perspective and almost aerial ar-

rangement of space used in the photomontage are 

already visible in Deineka’s first pieces, including 

Football 

and 

Girl Sitting on a Chair

, both from 1924 

[cat. 43, 44]. Moreover, one might say that the Len-

in phrase which appears in Klucis’s composition 

shaped not only a large part of Deineka’s artistic 

practice but also a huge part of the cultural and 

ideological space of the 1920s and 1930s.

50

 It is as 

though the presages in 

Victory over the Sun 

had

 

come true, taking the shape of a raw materiality that 

would have been all the cruder if not for the enthu-

siasm and the festive, lyrical 

pathos 

of Stalinism.

which everything is history and therefore change-

able. A world without natural sunlight, where the 

only light possible is artificial. 

Indeed, in the opera, staged at night, artificial 

lighting played a pivotal role: 

The arch lights, similar to those used at the time at 

train stations, airports, warships . . . In 

Victory over 

the Sun, that cold and blinding light played a leading 

part in the development of the scene . . . The “solar 

cosmos” associated to the old world collapses, burns 

out, darkens; this is achieved thanks to the use of ar-

tificial stage lighting . . . The projector on the stage 

FIG. 7.  Gustavs Klucis 

Electrification of the Entire 

Country, 1920

Photomontage, 46 x 27.5 cm 

Collection Merrill C. Berman

Fundación Juan March

An antecedent of the October radical call to revo-

lution, the futurists’ victory over the sun seems to 

find continuity in Lenin’s phrase: “Communism is 

Soviet power plus electrification.”

The symbolic and artistic light radiated by the 

sun of symbolist poetry was put out by the avant-

garde and later replaced by the cold, artificial elec-

tric light of the theater stage. However, it found 

continuity in electricity as the 

conditio sine qua 

non 

of the

 

construction of a new post-revolution-

ary society and its ideological underpinning. Elec-

tricity was, in eff ect, considered to constitute “the 

energetic foundation of socialism” [cat. 61] and its 

presence in Soviet iconography became just as 

ubiquitous as the sun and moonlight had been in 

symbolist iconography and literature and its de-

struction in avant-garde poetry.  

This continuity is underpinned by doctrinal and 

visual, as well as technical and symbolic-ideologi-

cal principles. Electricity was 

de facto 

a condition 

required for the ideological transformation of the 

country and the great project of modernity set un-

derway with the Five-Year Plans, which were aimed 

at extending industrialization and collectivization. 

For this reason, the ideological justification of elec-

tricity was not only a reminder of the foundations 

of Soviet leadership, but also reminiscent of its 

ideological forefathers, Marx and Engels [cat. 59]. 

Indeed, the project for electrification began with 

Lenin: there are numerous examples of the iconog-

raphy of his persona coupled with electricity [cat. 

72]; particularly noteworthy is the anonymous na-

ture of some of these works, as the poster 

Lenin 

i elektrifikasiia

 (Lenin and Electrification, cat. 64], 

dating from 1925. 

Electric light embodied a kind of far-reaching 

precondition for everything: industrialization and 

the collectivization of agriculture were made pos-

sible [cat. 218],

51

 as well as the conquest of air and 

the cosmos by aircrafts and space vehicles, and 

the safeguarding of space from the enemy. And, 

more importantly, as a result of electrification—and 

radio broadcasting in particular—Soviet ideology 

extended over a territory of millions of square ki-

lometers permeating the everyday life of millions 

of citizens. 

The Soviets aspired to a massive space lit by 

electricity, like an endless reproduction of Arkadii 

Shaikhet’s photograph 

Electrified Fields

  [fig. 8]; a 

vast territory where towns and cities, industry and 

agriculture, were connected by train and the ra-

dio, which, in Lenin’s words, was “the condition on 

which socialism is based.”

The iconography of electrification was every-

where: in Mikhail Razulevich’s photomontages in-

corporating human and industrial landscapes to 

Lenin’s motto [cat. 62]; in Klucis’s [cat. 60] and Do-

brokovskii’s posters [cat. 67]; or in Roskin’s [cat. 65] 

and Rodchenko’s advertisements for electric light 

bulbs, the latter with an emphatic phrase coined by 

Mayakovsky [cat. 57]: “Have Sun at Night! Where to 

Find it? Buy it at GUM!”  

Electricity also appeared in writing: from Maya-

kovsky’s poetry [cat. 164] and Russian editions of 

the history of fire by Henri Barbusse [cat. 91–92] 

and Walter Hough [cat. 58]—featuring an illustra-

tive photomontage by Klucis on the front cover—to 

propagandistic texts [cat. 63] and magazine cov-

ers, as appreciated in 

Novyi lef 

[cat. 66] and the 

cover of 

Krasnyi student

 by

 

Natan Al’tman [cat. 24].

The 

Kremlevskaia lampa

, the Kremlin lamp [cat. 

73], was one of the most significant metaphors for 

URSS en construction 

no. 3, March 1934

Collection MJM, Madrid 

[cat. 72]

FIG.8  Arkadii Shaiket 

Electrified Fields, Moscow 

Region, 1936

Courtesy of Edition 

Stemmle, Zurich-New York

Kremlevskaia lampa

the Kremlin lamp, 1934 

Archivo España-Rusia 

[cat. 73]

Aleksandr Rodchenko and 

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Have Sun at Night! Where to 

Find it? Buy it at GUM! 1923 

Private collection [cat. 57]

Fundación Juan March

40

FIG. 9. Stills from the film by 

Michail Tschiaureli

The Oath, 1946

Courtesy Archivo 

España-Rusia

FIG. 10. Vasilii Iefanov

An Unforgettable Encounter 

1936–37. Oil on canvas

270 x 391 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery 

Moscow

FIG. 14. Illustrated page in 

L’URSS en construction

no. 8, August 1932

Fundación José María 

Castañé

FIG. 11, 12, 13. Illustrated 

pages in the book 

Stalin, 1939

Fundación José María 

Castañé [cat. 236]

electrification. Initially created to assist Stalin and 

other Soviet leaders in reading their speeches [cat. 

74], it became immensely popular and even played 

a leading role in paranormal scenes of Stalinist cin-

ema [fig. 9].

52

 The fact that the 

Kremlevskaia lampa

 

always seemed to appear within range of Stalin 

and other authorities is not haphazard. The lamp 

is present in well-known works [fig. 10] and several 

photographs: with Molotov [fig. 11] and other So-

viet leaders [fig. 12], or beside Stalin during radio 

broadcasts [fig. 13].

The iconographic and propagandistic display 

of images published in 

SSSR na stroike

, as well as 

various monographic issues dedicated to electri-

fication, deserve special attention. The magazine 

printed a detailed overview of the generating sta-

tions and electrical power plants in various Rus-

sian cities pinpointed across the empire [fig. 14], 

impressive illustrations of gigantic light bulbs [fig. 

15], and remarkable portraits of Lenin whose pro-

file was outlined in neon light [fig. 16]. 

The sixth issue of the 1936 edition is particularly 

noteworthy [cat. 59]. References to the GOELRO 

plan, implemented by Lenin in 1920 and later devel-

oped by Stalin, are mentioned throughout, along 

with illustrations of the new electrical power sta-

tions built across the Soviet Union. The magazine 

did not present the electric company as a mere 

hydroelectric project, but instead highlighted the 

mythological and theogonic aspects of electric-

ity: electricity was represented as earth and water 

transmuting into fire [fig. 17]; as water transformed 

into air, leading to the conquest of the sky through 

aviation, as read in the rubrics in French and Rus-

sian featured in several impressive photomontages 

[fig. 18]; as the force that could turn “polar night 

into day and a wild area into urbanized space” [fig. 

19]. Electricity was the 

houille blanche 

[white coal], 

the white star that penetrated the socialist fields 

[fig. 20] and increased their productivity as the 

“electrical stars” gradually lit the entire Land of the 

Soviets [fig. 21]. 

Electricity also enhanced the expansion of ra-

dio broadcasting [cat. 69], whose innovative and 

futuristic qualities were noted by none other than 

Velimir Khlebnikov in 

Radio budushchego

53

 

in 1921, 

nearly half a century before Marshall MacLuhan 

and one hundred years prior to the rise of an inter-

net society.    

The Radio of the Future—the central tree of our con-

sciousness—will inaugurate new ways to cope with 

our endless undertakings and will unite all mankind . 

. . From this point on Planet Earth, every day, like the 

flight of birds in springtime, a flock of news departs, 

news from the life of the spirit. In this stream of light-

ning birds the spirit will prevail over force, good coun-

sel over threats.

54

The radio, also linked to the iconography of 

Lenin and Stalin, made it possible “from the will of 

millions, to create a single will,” as seen in 

Lenin 

and the Radio

 (1925) by Iulian Shutskii [cat. 68]. 

Thanks to the radio, the time and space required 

for ideological instruction decreased dramatically. 

In this sense, a passage by Khlebnikov describing 

the radio of the future explicitly refers to the meta-

phor of continuity and light: “Radio is becoming 

the spiritual sun of the country, a great wizard and 

sorcerer.”

55

The contours of the magician are outlined 

against the city’s horizon [fig. 22]; the recipient 

Fundación Juan March

FIG. 15. Double-page 

spread in 

USSR im Bau

no. 3, 1930

Archivo España-Rusia 

[cat. 61]  

FIG. 16–21.  

Double-page spreads in 

URSS en construction

no. 6, June 1936

Collection MJM, Madrid 

[cat. 59]        

15

17

18

19

20

21

16

Fundación Juan March

42

is a mass-produced primary product that is rein-

terpreted and reproduced as a handicraft in the 

homemade, unique style of Russian constructivism 

[cat. 70]. The radio was also an important ally of 

sport: the front cover of 

SSSR na stroike

  [fig. 23] 

shows a sportsman broadcasting the exercises for 

a collectivist-like pilates to the entire country, or a 

citizen performing these exercises as he listens to 

the broadcast at home [cat. 200].

Aleksandr Deineka and Stalinist Visual Culture

The transformation of the avant-garde’s light into 

the Soviet system’s electricity is just one feature, 

albeit a fundamental one, of the logic behind the 

relation between avant-garde and socialist realism, 

which structurally defined both Stalinist visual cul-

ture and Deineka’s oeuvre.

Although Deineka did not often deal with the 

theme of electrification explicitly—that is, as pro-

paganda, i.e. as kitsch—there are several examples 

in his work. Deineka illustrated texts on the poetics 

of life and electricity, such as 

Kuter’ma (Zimniaia 

skazka) 

by Nikolai Aseev [cat. 97] on the subject 

of night lighting or 

Elektromonter

 by Boris Ural’skii