Culture

Ukraine's Dizzying, Hyper-Intricate Mosaics

Through Soviet-era propaganda art, vestiges of communism still remain.

Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union more than 25 years ago, but vestiges of communism remain. On streets across the country, the faces of industrious peasants, inventive engineers, and pioneering astronauts still beam from propaganda mosaics.

  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    01
    Yevgen Nikiforov documents more than 1,000 mosaics and other monumental public artworks in his book *Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics*. The photographs depict an idealized, futuristic vision of Soviet life that mesmerizes Nikiforov—no matter how short it falls from reality.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    02
    Artists in Soviet-era Ukraine had trouble earning a living unless they joined the Union of Artists, a state-mandated organization established in 1957. It pushed work promoting communist ideology, depicting Soviet citizens as physically fit workers who raised families, forged steel, and even mastered atoms.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    03
    Artists who complied were handsomely rewarded, earning as much as 1,000 Soviet rubles for a bus stop mosaic made of tiny pieces of ceramic and glass—a fortune when many Ukrainians made less than 100 rubles a month—or 6,000 for a large panel.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    04
    Some might dismiss these works as propaganda, but Nikiforov points to mosaicists like Valeriy Lamakh and Alexander Dubovik, who incorporated subversive, abstract elements from their private painting into public projects.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    05
    "The strongest monumentalist artists did not merely illustrate what the party told them in these mosaics," he says. "They communicate basic ideas that outgrow the propaganda, and that’s why they are still interesting."
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    06
    Nikiforov spent three years traveling some 22,000 miles through Ukraine by car, train, and bus to document as many mosaics as he could. Most had been created between Stalin's death in 1953 and the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, and had since fallen into disrepair.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    07
    The photographs raise deeper questions about how to deal with the controversial artistic heritage of the past: When does propaganda become art? If it is art, is it worth protecting? And is public space really the best place to display it?
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    08
    It seems some Ukrainians think the answer is no: Nearly 50 mosaics and other works, some featuring Soviet iconography like red stars or hammers and sickles, have been removed or destroyed since Nikiforov photographed them.
  • Yevgen Nikiforov
    09
    But hundreds more remain—public reminders of a troubling era that ended more than a quarter-century ago.
Laura Mallonee is a writer for WIRED covering photography. ... Read more
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