What was Russia like?
The Russian study trip inspired me to investigate revolution in the context of the Soviet Union. With an abundance of manners to investigate revolutions of the Soviet era I decided to choose an artifact I found during my groups Moscow Metro tour. This artifact depicting a Russian Man and a Russian Women holding the iconic Soviet Hammer and Sickle can be found in a Moscow subway station. This artifact is revolutionary in that it represents the permanence required of an event to be considered a revolution. The symbolism of the artifact belongs to the Bolshevik and Soviet era of Russian history and the revolution that brought that era about. Therefore its presence in a Moscow subway station almost thirty years after the fall of the USSR demonstrates the lasting effect that the Communist revolution and era had upon Russia. This asserts the revolutionary nature of the artifact in that the artifact demonstrates how permanent an event must be to be considered a revolution. Long after the era of the revolution and the era of the revolution’s result, physical manifestations of said revolution live on as both a reminder that the revolution occurred and that the revolution shapes all of the lives that occupy the space of that artifact. Therefore displaying that the revolution’s effects are not incapacitated by the passage of time.
Reference Image
This image was captured by Matthew Schnizer’s photography in the Moscow Metro
