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| "Zhertva" Galina Solotonina, 1973 (Picture I) |
Kimmo Huosionmaa
The Soviet painting "Zhertva" ("Sacrifice") by Galina Solotonina from the year 1973 is one very interesting picture because even if it the artist's self-portrait, there is painted the character, what can be woman or man, and that character seems to play chess in the candlelight, and character is portrayed in the point of view of the opponent player. This painting is a typical Soviet art, and that means it's technically very impressive, and the thing, what this painting would want to say, is something, what we cannot expect. That painting has the very strong message, and it's that ever underestimate your opponents. The person who might sit next to you can be actually something, what you cannot ever think about.
Even if you would see the old lady, who have ever played chess before, there could be the trap, because the gaming situation can be under the surveillance, and that person can follow the orders, what is given for that person by using radio-transmitters, and the game can be followed by cameras. Then that real player who would tell, how to move chess pieces. Or there could be all the team of those chess players for giving support for that player. Also is possible that this woman is secretly the Chessmaster. Maybe she has played before acting male player.
Or she has been trained by the Soviet chess organization secretly and then put to some big game for humiliating other players. In those cases, the plan would be that the propaganda officials would want to show, that Western players cannot win even the beginner. And that's why this lady has been brought to that chess game. If that planning would work, the other side would seem like idiota, because the lady, who have ever played chess before can win those other players. The message of this picture is that people must play their game until it ends, and nothing has been won until the other side king have been fallen.
In this painting have been captured the purpose of the Soviet people. They should serve the government. And in that country, the thing, what people must remember, was that everybody can be secret police official. Everything in the world may have purposes, what people don't even think, that they could have. In the Soviet Union.
Everything had political purposes, that meant, that there could be strange events in the most common things and one of the most remarkable things in that kind of political system is, that if some person would cause disappointment could send that person straight to prison. Chess was one thing what was important in the Soviet propaganda.
The system used also in the choosing the persons, who have the good strategical angle of view in the military command system. And once one man, named Ilya Ivanov created the idea of eugenics. In that program, the chess system would be used to making pairs with the top level chess players, who could also be very intelligent. This man had the dubious publicity by cutting dogs heads off and keeping the head alive by using cardiac lung machine, what helped to increase the lifetime of those removed heads. And this man could create the idea, that the chess system would be used for choosing extreme intelligent for the parents of the elite Soviet youngsters. But this is only the thinking about this kind of things, what might have a big role in somebody's life.
Picture I
https://www.russianartandbooks.com/cgi-bin/russianart/Ar00574.html
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