Victoria Lomasko in BOMB Magazine

Tom Tomorrow Why do you call yourself “the last Soviet artist”?

Victoria Lomasko I call myself as such because I belong to the last generation that remembers life in the Soviet Union—the empire collapsed when I was a teenager. You can argue that there are thousands of other artists from the same generation, and many of them work on the subject of Soviet heritage, to feel nostalgic or criticize it. My distinction from them is that I don’t address the past. Instead, I use my Soviet identity as a tool to see the present and the future from a perspective that is dissimilar to the perspective of a Western author. This is the mentality of a person who has grown up not in a capitalist but in a socialist society, and also my artistic language, based on the traditions of Soviet book art. One of the goals of The Last Soviet Artist is to make visible the ordinary people from the post-Soviet space, a vast variety of communities that are almost not represented on the international scene. Another goal is to serve as a bridge between the generations fully formed during the Soviet era and the younger generations.

TT I’m fascinated by propaganda art and the seemingly inherent contradiction of creativity in subservience to state ideology.  I know your father was a reluctant Soviet propaganda artist. How did he deal with the creative dichotomy of turning out work he did not believe in? Did this influence your own path toward graphic journalism, in which you strive to tell the truth of people’s stories?

VL In my childhood, I believed that what my father was doing was political art. He always had to draw the same characters: Lenin, workers, pioneers, Soviet women, etc. My father had a sketchbook with portraits of Lenin in different styles: a realistic Lenin, a decorative Lenin, an expressionist Lenin, and one even with a hint of cubism. I thought it was one of the most boring jobs in the world, and that I wouldn’t be a political artist. I discover life through drawing the reality around me. Graphic reportages helped me to understand what post-Soviet society is like and to realize my position in it. As a person from the provinces, I know what it means to be invisible, and I wanted to give a voice and a place to ordinary people. Suddenly, it turned out that this was real political art. The first barriers were built not by the Putin regime but by Moscow liberals who didn’t want someone to represent the provincial intelligentsia and proletariat in the public space.

TT Tell me a little about what you envisioned that this book would be, before history got in the way and turned it into something else entirely.

VL The Last Soviet Artist was originally conceived as a continuation of my previous book Other Russias, but with a wider geographical coverage. I planned to work with familiar themes such as invisible vulnerable groups, gender rights, and grassroots initiatives, adding only one new subject: Soviet heritage and attitudes to it. The first part of the book, “Traces of Empire,” is dedicated to these subjects. I visited Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, and Dagestan and Ingushetia, which are part of Russia’s North Caucasus. In each of these places, I lived for about a month, deeply immersed in a new reality. There weren’t any media events, so my research resembled the work of a sociologist—I just described people’s daily lives. I also planned to visit the rest of the former Soviet republics, including the Baltic states and Ukraine. But when the pandemic began, it became obvious that the book’s structure must be changed. Soon, life provided the subjects for the second part of the book, which is called “The Last Soviet Artist Becomes Someone Else”: historical changes in Belarus and Russia.

TT During your travels for the first part of the book, how did people in more remote republics react to you, as a feminist but also as a person who was more widely traveled than they would probably ever be? What was the most surprising encounter for you? 

VL If I were a male artist, my routes and conversations with people would turn out very differently. All my trips were by invitation from feminist groups, who bought tickets and hosted me, and I conducted free workshops for them on feminist stencils and graphic reportage. They explained the structure of the local society, became my city guides, and introduced me to interesting characters who were also women. They shared stories with me that they would never tell men. As for the local men, they felt an intense emotional conflict in communicating with me. Depending on their political views, they believed that a person from Moscow, the center of the former empire, should be either an honored guest or a dangerous agent of Russian power. At the same time, as an unmarried woman travelling alone, I should have been at the bottom of the social hierarchy and deserved disdain. For example, one Uzbek teahouse owner, recognizing that I was from Moscow, gave me a luxurious free meal but didn’t want to speak directly with me. He asked questions through my assistant, who was young enough to be my son. 

Everywhere, I met people who had a strong desire to finally talk about how their lives were organized during the Soviet Union and their attitude to its collapse. This is because the sudden collapse of the USSR was followed by a profound crisis: the closing of state enterprises, massive job losses, widespread criminality, violent national conflicts. People could only think about physical survival and not about the meaning of the historical shifts. Many talked with me not as an independent artist but as a person who presents Russian society or is even responsible for the actions of the Soviet/Russian state. For example, one old Dagestani man walked across the village to meet me in heavy rain to tell me about the forced displacement of Dagestanis during Stalin’s time—he wanted this story to be included in Russian textbooks. Realizing that I couldn’t help with that and wouldn’t even be able to contact Putin, he was visibly disappointed. Another example: Georgians didn’t want to believe that I knew nothing about the crushing of their 1989 rally for the independence of Georgia, when Soviet soldiers killed several protesters, mostly women, with shovels. But we didn’t know it because any information about national resistance was carefully hidden, and people only heard about the unbreakable friendship between the fifteen Soviet republics. Not all memories of the Soviet experience were negative: many old people, comparing their lives under socialism and capitalism, feel they were much better protected under socialism.

TT You were in Belarus during the revolution. How did you get in and out, and what did you witness during your time there?

VL Participating in the Belarusian Revolution changed my mind. Before that, I participated in the Moscow protests in 2012, the only result of which was the beginning of repression. We thought it happened because not enough people took to the streets. Following the same logic, when the majority of the population took to the streets in Belarus in 2020, a victory was guaranteed for them. The border between Russia and Belarus was closed due to the pandemic, but I paid a private minibus driver. He hid me in a large shuttle bag and helped me illegally cross the border. Minsk, the capital of Belarus, was gripped by protest: rallies of thousands, feminist actions, strikes, and daily meetings of neighbours in “protest yards” decorated with revolutionary graffiti. Unfortunately, instead of the victory of the revolution, I caught the beginning of its defeat. Mass arrests began then; a lot of people were beaten, tortured, raped, and some of them were killed. I realized the absurdity of the idea that a dictator can be scared by people with posters and flags. When the Belarusians lost, the European media, which earlier glorified their struggle for democracy, immediately removed the subject from the agenda. The lives of many Belarusians were ruined, but they didn’t receive help. Russians, observing this story, made their conclusions. In 2022, when the European media started demanding that all Russians take to the streets against the war, I thought, Thanks for the idea. But no.

TT You fled Russia when Putin invaded Ukraine. What made you realize that it was simply no longer tenable to remain?

VL Even before the war in Ukraine, my situation was dangerous. Because of censorship in Russia, my art was not published or exhibited, so I couldn’t earn even the tiniest amount of money as an artist. I earned money by collaborating with Western museums, universities, and publishing houses. At the same time, there is a law in Russia under which any individual who influences public opinion and receives money from foreign organizations can be recognized as a foreign agent. It is great luck if a person identified as a foreign agent can escape from the country because the next step is a criminal case and prison. When the war began and the borders with Western countries were almost closed, a lot of people with oppositional views were trapped in a mousetrap. I immediately decided to leave Russia, but without a visa, I could only go to a few post-Soviet countries. During that time, a Belgian cinema company was shooting the documentary Tree of Violence about me. The movie’s producer helped me get a short tourist visa to France. Not everyone realized that they had to leave. Many of my acquaintances waited until the police came to search them. Today, ninety percent of my colleagues from the sphere of culture and art have had to flee Russia. New criminal cases are initiated every month, and someone else is forced to escape.

TT What is your current experience of life as an artist in exile? Have you been denied opportunities or faced other difficulties simply for being a Russian national, even as a dissident? How are you surviving, and what do you expect for the near future? 

VL I have been living in Germany for three years now. On the one hand, at the beginning of my exile, I received two fellowships here: first, a writer at risk, and then, an artist at risk. These programs helped me to survive, and I am grateful. However, on the other hand, most European institutions have decided not to work with any Russians during the war, so I am extremely limited in my ability to earn money. Meanwhile, my freelancer visa is tied to my income, and I have the right to work only as an artist. Now I need that miracle to happen because I don’t know how to extend my visa next year.  

TT You’ve said that Westerners often expect you to denounce your heritage, which is, despite your current statelessness, your very identity. What do you say to them in response?

VL It depends on who’s asking. For example, Americans have already stopped asking questions like, Why didn’t the Russians stop the Putin regime? Suddenly, it’s become clearer why. Europeans, I can compare to pampered flowers grown in a greenhouse. While they are judging China with a billion Chinese, Russia with a few million Russians, and now America, the glass of the greenhouse is already starting to crack.

TTHow do you see the role of the political artist now, after all you’ve experienced?

VL Political artists can create an agenda radically different from what the media offers. Instead of guilt, we should offer people dignity; instead of judging nations, we should talk about one humanity; and instead of fighting our enemies, we should look for new inspirational ideas that can fascinate even our opponents.

TT Finally, how is your cat adjusting to life as a feline in exile?

VL My cat Dwarf turned out to be so smart that he left his caprices at home. In exile, he managed to survive with me everywhere: in a tiny studio with one window, in a residence in the forest, in the homes of semi-strangers, and even in hotels where they didn’t know he existed. Some organisers invited me to come with Dwarf, so he has already travelled across Germany, Belgium, and Italy.