The painting “The Great Experiment” is a cruel and ruthless sentence for those who conducted a ruthless experience of building a “new world”, according to the Marxist-Leninist theory, which made the bloody specter of communism long roaming Europe.
It is no mere chance that in Glazunov’s “Great Experiment” a five-pointed Masonic star occupies such a large place, as if reviving the actions of the characters in it. We see the first regicide Cromwell, the bloody leaders of the French Revolution, who proclaimed “freedom, equality and brotherhood”, the figures of the famous sealed carriage that arrived in Russia together with Ulyanov-Lenin. Recognized in their cruelty and fanatical willingness to destroy to the foundations of the whole world the figures of the world Comintern… The left side of the picture reminds us of the great, free and richest country in the world – monarchical Orthodox Russia.
In the bloody haze we recognize the figures of fratricidal civil war, both white and red… And below, as if enveloped in a universal fire, the family of the last Russian autocrat Nicholas II, doomed to murder and desecration. Above them, like a scattered deck of maps, photos of state criminals of tsarist Russia: Ulyanov, Dzhugashvili…
On the right side – not far from the deadly star – the head of Christ carrying the heavy burden of the cross, on which he was crucified by the universal evil. Here they are, the God-fighters: on the Mausoleum are the famous members of the Politburo. One can look long and thoughtfully at the picture of this same peculiar mystery, as always, beautiful in form and color and very clear in the ruthlessness of its historical verdict. And here, as always, Ilya Sergeyevich Glazunov is deprived of the prosecutor’s tone, straightforward rhetoric – he simply expresses his point of view, expressing it in images that are understandable and accessible to all.
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