Totalitarian art: In the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People's Republic of China

In this study of the art of Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the author describes the way the avant-garde and modernistic movements of the early 20th century which sought to create new artistic forms of mass appeal, were quickly expropriated by dictatorial regimes. In the Soviet Union, and later in Maoist China, theories of mass artistic appeal were used to export the Revolution. In Nazi Germany and Italy they reflected the putative grandeur of the epoch. All too often art became a means of oppression and the servant of the cult of personality. The author was born in Russia but left for the West in 1972. He has written a book on Hieronymus Bosch and co-written a study of Picasso.