“The fate of icons in the Land of Soviets”: money-icons-money

Soviet history is full of paradoxes, and this one is one of the most revealing. Surprisingly, it was not the Russian Empire, but precisely the atheistic state of the Bolsheviks, that made a decisive contribution to the popularization of ancient Russian icons abroad. However, the motives of the authorities were far from purely educational. The campaign to promote the icons had a very specific advertising goal – to loudly announce the product and find buyers.

The Stalinist industrialization, which began in 1929, was in dire need of currency, which was mined in all possible ways, including through the mass sale of cultural property. The country of the socialist “non-market” economy took an active part in the formation of the world market of icon art.