The avant-garde way of life prospered in Russia directly following the Revolution of 1917, generating one of the most awe-inspiring art movements of the twentieth century. Assembling an entirely new government, the Bolsheviks gave free reign to the Russian avant-garde to create a new culture and thus a new society through art. For this brief time, the culture of the avant-garde was synonymous with official cultural policy of the Soviets. Its leaders were empowered to establish government-sponsored art schools, and an entire system that espoused some of the newest tradition breaking, utopian concepts. Never before and never since has the avant-garde been so allied with a reigning government. Yet after being embraced by Lenin and his plan for Monumental Propaganda, the avant-garde fail victim to the very monster they helped to construct. .
In October 1917, the Red Army joined the Revolutionists and put down once and for all the Tsarist Régime that had reigned over Russian since the fifteenth century. The streets were filled with joy, as all through Russia artists embraced the Revolution, calling for a change. Published in the AkhRR Exhibition of Studies, Sketches, Drawings, and Graphics from the Life and Customs of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, a cohesive feeling of the avant-garde can be concede when it stated:.
The Great October Revolution has aroused the conscience of the masses and the artist Our civic duty before mankind is to set down, artistically the revolutionary impulse of this great moment in history. We will provide a true picture of events and not abstract concoctions discrediting our Revolution in the face of the proletariat. The old art groups existing before the Revolution have lost their meaning The day of revolution, the moment of revolution, is the day of heroism, the moment of heroism-and now we must reveal our artistic experiences in the monumental forms of the style of heroic realism (Bowlt 266-267).
