1 Dec 1962
First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev gave Moscow avant-garde artists a dressing down.
What kind of faces are these? Can't you draw? My grandson could draw better!.. What is this? Are you men or damned faggots? How can you paint like that? Do you have any conscience?
The brewing scandal became clear even on the first floor of Moscow's Manege. After examining the paintings hanging there, Khrushchev offered to buy the artists "tickets to the border." He was unfazed by the fact that these were works by deceased or executed avant-garde masters—Robert Falk, Vladimir Tatlin, and others.
We need to restore order. Are we going to communism with this scribbled mess?
After this, the General Secretary went up to the second floor, where modern expressionists were exhibiting: just a month before, they had created a sensation in the West.
First, Khrushchev ran around the room three times. He dashed from one painting to the next, then backed away. The entourage surrounding him obligingly backed away, stepping on each other's toes. They began shouting: "Arrest them! Destroy them! Shoot them! Strangle them!"
13 artists listened to the head of state's abuse, calling their works "shit" and "daub."
Khrushchev proposed sending artists "to the logging camps" to recoup the state's expenses on their education. He also ordered the expulsion of everyone from the Party and the Artists' Union. However, this was impossible: almost no one belonged to either the Party or the Union.
Ban it! Ban everything! Stop this outrage! Root out all its fans on radio, television, and in the press!
The next day, the newspaper Pravda published a devastating article.
The artists expected arrests, but none came to pass. Two years later, in retirement, Khrushchev personally apologized to them. He claimed that a Politburo member had "pumped him up" before the exhibition. Suslov.
Seven years later, Khrushchev died. The monument on his grave was made Ernst Unknown — a sculptor whom he threatened to bring to court for embezzlement of copper at that very exhibition, and whose works he called “nauseating daub.”
