Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics

The book presents the first comprehensive study of Soviet monumental mosaics, outstanding artifacts of the cultural heritage of the era. Photographer Yevgen Nikiforov spent three years traveling all around Ukraine (including the presently occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts) in search of the most interesting art pieces of the 1950s–1980s within the context of Soviet Modernism. He covered 35,000 km of Ukrainian roads and visited 109 cities and villages to discover more than 1,000 surviving mosaics. The book includes approximately 200 unique photographs of monumental panels: officially sanctioned gigantic images of workers, farmers, astronauts and athletes of colored smalto or ceramics illustrate Soviet life as it was meant to be represented, drawing parallels to the overarching themes inherent within a more widely known Soviet architectural project, namely the Moscow metro. Some of the pieces featured here were demolished shortly after the photographs were taken: they fell afoul of the so-called decommunization laws that ban communist symbols and slogans. Though the content of Soviet art was meticulously controlled by state propaganda, Ukrainian artists managed to develop a visual language that transcends the Socialist Realist canon. Today these works serve as historical testimony, and show a new important page in 20th-century art history.