Following the terrible four year strain and sacrifice of the Second World War, the Russian people gleefully anticipated some rest and relaxation - they didn't get it and they weren't very happy about it.
"The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life... Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship - a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian."
Posted above is "Worker", a 1970 painting by Igor Razdrogin. It was rendered in a manner that has come to be known as the "severe style" in Soviet era art; a style in which the figures were depicted as isolated and alone.
Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.
