There had been a smaller Capitalist revolution in February that year but the October Revolution completely usurped it. After the October Revolution both Tatlin and Malevich opened up art schools. Malevich's Suprematist school was similar in style but not ideology to the De Stijl movement in Holland, while the Constructivist school of Tatlin's had links to the German Bauhaus. The October revolution had been a primarily proletariat revolution and proletarians have proven to be somewhat negative in their attitude to new, radical confronting art styles and this was no exception. Both schools realised they had to prove their worth, so to speak. The new communist government saw artists as elite. A few things transpired to change the soviet government's ideas about these artists.
Rodchenko was proud of the fact that the leftist artists had been the first to come to work with the Bolshevik comrades. There was a Constructivist manifesto released in 1922,( when Constructivism had reached its Zenith and had started ever so slowly to decline,) stating that the movement as a whole was "trying to build the intellectual material production of Communist culture". The general mood among the Avant Garde was one of completely embracing the Bolshevik ideal. Perhaps this is why they were given so much freedom. From all accounts, the leftist artists felt very supported by the government. According to a letter written at the time by a friend of several of the artists, all of the young artists, no matter how innovative or experimental were taken seriously. They spoke about being able to realise their dreams, and they were grateful that neither politics nor power intruded into their work. They felt it was the first time most of them had been given the opportunity to do everything they wanted in their own field. A boyish dream, perhaps, but it must have been extremely liberating. They ran with their new ideas for a while and then got down to the work of helping the revolution through art.
