In my book Vladimir’s Night, the artist Maxim Komar-Myshkin writes a history of Russia as a series of jokes. In the joke “1936 – Persecutions by Stalin,” a Jewish doctor sentenced to death prays for a miracle – and his prayer is answered: “At that very instant an elephant with two trunks was born in Senegal.” The image here (sic) is from an album designed by Alexander Rodchenko to celebrate Uzbek-Bolshevik leaders. During Stalin’s purges, Rodchenko defaced their visages in his personal copy so as not to appear a sympathizer, turning them into painterly abstractions.
