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Red Merchants: Soviet Industrialization and the Founding of the World Market in Russian Religious Art

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Elena A. Osokina

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Osokina, E. A., (2019). Red merchants: Soviet industrialization and the founding of the world market in russian religious art. In SAGE Business Cases. 2019. 10.4135/9781526496591

Osokina, Elena A. "Red Merchants: Soviet Industrialization and the Founding of the World Market in Russian Religious Art." In SAGE Business Cases. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2019. 10.4135/9781526496591.

Osokina, E A 2019. Red Merchants: Soviet Industrialization and the Founding of the World Market in Russian Religious Art, In SAGE Business Cases, SAGE Publications Ltd., viewed 12/5/2019, 10.4135/9781526496591.

Osokina, Elena A. "Red Merchants: Soviet Industrialization and the Founding of the World Market in Russian Religious Art." SAGE Business Cases. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2019. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 12/5/2019.

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    In the 1930s, the Soviet government offered for sale thousands of icons from destroyed churches and nationalized collections. This case explores the Soviet export of religious images. It is not, however, merely a study of one more Machiavellian dimension of Stalinism that placed the objects of a repressed church at the service of the godless state. By exploring the marketing strategies employed by Stalin’s red merchants to promote a new art commodity in the world market, this case challenges the stereotypical view of Stalinism as “marketless.” It adds to our understanding of the economy of Soviet socialism and its contribution to the development of the world art market. This study also encourages readers to think about extraordinary ways in which the government can make money to finance its ambitious projects and the implications of such state strategies for the national cultural heritage and international cultural exchange.

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  • Author Bio

    Elena A. Osokina is a Professor of Russian History at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, United States). She received her PhD from the Department of History at Moscow University, Russia. Author of The Heavenly Blue of Angels’ Vestments: Soviet Export of Religious Art, 1920–1930s (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2018, In Russian); Gold for Industrialization: Torgsin (Moscow: Rosspen, 2009, in Russian; also forthcoming in Chinese); Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin’s Russia, 1927–1941 (Armonk, New York & London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 2001; also available in Russian and forthcoming in Italian), Hierarchy of Consumption. Life under the Stalinist Rationing System. 1928–1935. (Moscow: MGOU, 1993, in Russian), and numerous articles on Russian and Soviet history published in Russia, the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany, and France. Elena Osokina is a recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (Washington, D.C., USA), National Endowment for the Humanities (United States), Fulbright (United States), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Hoover Institution (Stanford, United States), La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris, France), Davis Center for Russian Studies (Harvard University, USA), Aleksanteri Institute (Helsinki, Finland), and others. Elena Osokina taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Oberlin College, and Missouri State University, and internationally at the Donaueschingen Academy (on the invitation of the Council of Europe) and Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg (both in Germany).

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