Authors

Discussion

My postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh began with the intention of exploring the artistic movements of Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and Ukraine — three countries whose cultural development was significantly shaped and constrained by Russian and later Soviet imperial rule. What these regions share is not only a history of colonial domination but also a striking absence in global art historical discourse, as well as most of the post-Soviet countries' cultures.

What emerged early in my research is the asymmetry of knowledge: while art from these post-Soviet regions remains still underrepresented in the global context, the Russian avant-garde, a part of Soviet legacy,  is celebrated in nearly every major museum and art history curriculum worldwide. Yet this internationally recognised movement — often romanticised and treated as universally progressive — has never been systematically examined from a decolonial perspective, but perhaps should? 

The decolonisation of this phenomenon entails several challenges. Foremost is the necessity of revising two interrelated legacies: the Russian knowledge system and Western academic discourse, which integrated the Russian gaze into their epistemic structures, and still overlooks Russian imperialism within their academic discourse. This neglect is partly rooted in the perception of the Soviet Union as the outcome of an anti-colonial project — the dissolution of the Russian Empire associated with ideals of equality, socialism, and feminism. Such representations have often obscured the coercive mechanisms of territorial incorporation, political repression, and state-induced famines, as well as the systematic suppression of local identities. As Nancy Condee has observed, the Soviet Union was “internally imperialist but (in its declared animosity to First World predation) externally anti-imperialist.”

This research, therefore, faces multiple requirements — not only the reconstruction of the interpretive framework surrounding the so-called Russian avant-garde, but also, through this process, the demonstration of the mechanisms by which Russian imperialism has operated. The very category of Russian avant-garde was presented and popularised in the mid-20th century by British author Camilla Gray, and became foundational for global narratives of modernism. However, it is rooted in an imperial framework that ignored or absorbed the artistic contributions of non-Russian artists within the empire.

My research applies decolonial methodologies to this canonised movement: critically revisiting Gray’s influential work and tracing how its assumptions persist in contemporary scholarship. What happens when we reconsider the so-called Russian avant-garde not as a neutral artistic category, but as a product of empire? What new art histories emerge when we reframe the conversation through the lens of decoloniality?