ntly escaped from what he considered a bitter
affliction due to the Department of Proletarian Culture, who, in the
beginning, for the decoration of his trains, had delivered him bound
hand and foot to a number of Futurists. For that reason he wanted us to
see the "Lenin" first, in order that we might compare it with the result
of his emancipation, the "Red Cossack," painted when the artists "had
been brought under proper control." The "Lenin" had been painted a year
and a half ago, when, as fading hoarding in the streets of Moscow still
testify, revolutionary art was dominated by the Futurist movement. Every
carriage is decorated with most striking but not very comprehensible
pictures in the brightest colors, and the proletariat was called upon to
enjoy what the pre-revolutionary artistic public had for the most part
failed to understand. Its pictures are "art for art's sake," and cannot
have done more than astonish, and perhaps terrify, the peasants and
the workmen of the country towns who had the luck to see them. The "Red
Cossack" is quite different. As Burov put it with deep satisfaction,
"At first we were in the artists' hands, and now the artists are in
our hands," a sentence suggesting the most horrible possibilities of
official art under socialism, although, of course, bad art flourishes
pretty well even under other systems.

I inquired exactly how Burov and his friends kept the artists in the
right way, and received the fullest explanation. The political section
of the organization works out the main idea and aim for each picture,
which covers the whole side of a wagon. This idea is then submitted to a
"collective" of artists, who are jointly responsible for its realization
in paint. The artists compete with each other for a prize which is
awarded for the best design, the judges being the artists themselves. It
is the art of the poster, art with a purpose of the most definite kind.
The result is sometimes amusing, interesting, startling, but, whatever
else it does, hammers home a plain idea.

Thus the picture on the side of one wagon is divided into two sections.
On the left is a representation of the peasants and workmen of the
Soviet Republic. Under it are the words, "Let us not find ourselves
again..." and then, in gigantic lettering under the right-hand section
of the picture, "... in the HEAVEN OF THE WHITES." This heaven is shown
by an epauletted officer hitting a soldier in the face, as was done in