Collective Pride
These paintings are highly similar in their subject as well as their value as Socialist Realist artworks. Tatyana Yablonskaya’s Sacking Grain focuses on a young woman pausing to roll her sleeves up as she smiles looking at the scene around her. A farming collective is processing and shipping off its crop. This working class group is not suppressed, but doing their duty in a heroic fashion. The central figure appears monumental, stretching over more than half the height of the canvas. Warm sunlight highlights each stage of the process creating a scene of collective productivity and achievement.
While Andrei Mylnikov’s In Peaceful Fields lacks in the typical level of realism, its quality as a Socialist Realist work is not lost on the subject. Once again, warm sunlight baths the image imbuing prosperity and pride among the working class. The viewer is placed at an angle below the field workers giving them a monumental presence against a blue sky; they appear as titans with their implements. The woman to the left and the central figure especially are not simply walking but strutting or lumbering in an advance toward the viewer. Their heroic presence is inescapable and dominates the image; they are the ideal visage of Soviet women.
