Lebedev’s art was always political, and he is properly considered one of the creators and masters of the Soviet political poster. But by the early 1920s he had also become a social critic, doing several series of satiric sketches of contemporary life, depicting nouveaux riches, their vulgar girlfriends, and colorful urban toughs. Lebedev’s works revealed a different world; it seemed that after the long hegemony of
But Lebedev was not cut out for leadership. He called himself a lone wolf, and his favorite poet was Kipling. Shvarts, who knew the artist well, said of Lebedev, “He was impressed not by fame, but power. Like Shklovsky and Mayakovsky, he believed that the times were always right.”58 Lebedev did not wish to fight the times. Having already renounced nonfigurativism, he preferred now to abjure social satire. He moved to children’s books, where his collaboration with Marshak caused a sensation.
In the 1920s Marshak and Lebedev produced a series of illustrated children’s books that became classics of the genre. These books had a seemingly utilitarian goal: to introduce the small child into the adult world, to explain how things worked—a repair shop, the plumbing, the circus, a typewriter, or an electric light bulb. But these editions were also works of art in which the combination of Marshak’s polished verse and Lebedev’s vivid drawings created an original whole.
Each subsequent Marshak-Lebedev book was a treat for young and old, reprinted over and over. A “Marshak school” and a “Lebedev school” sprang up in Leningrad: talented writers and artists working in the style of the masters.
Lebedev’s loyal cohorts could be seen daily at the Leningrad printing house Pechatny Dvor, which published the best children’s books. The Lebedevites were there round the clock, creating dummies, selecting fonts, setting type, and running off copies, as well as doing the actual drawing. Some artists, like Yevgeny Charushin or Alexander Samokhvalov, also wrote texts for their illustrations.
Many members of the Lebedev group had no competition in their field: Valentin Kurdov was celebrated for his depictions of horses, and Yuri Vasnetsov for his variations on the imagery from old Russian folk pictures. Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, who produced the book
A bit apart from Lebedev’s young artists were the old Petersburgers Dmitri Mitrokhin and Nikolai Tyrsa, whose illustrations added elegance to Leningrad book production. In sum, Leningrad literature for children was done by highly qualified professionals for whom quality and artistic worth were more important than ideological imperatives.
This led to an immediate attack by the Moscow press on the “harmful literary practice of the Leningrad group,” which allegedly juxtaposed “aristocratic form” and “crude content.” The attack against the “Marshak-Lebedev group” was not limited to words: in 1931 a number of Leningrad writers and artists for children were arrested on false charges of “organizing on the basis of their counterrevolutionary convictions” an underground anti-Soviet cell. Among the arrested was the artist Vera Ermolaeva, one of Malevich’s closest colleagues, who was working with Marshak and the Oberiuts.
Ermolaeva always said, “Leningrad is the last citadel of new art in Russia.” Always on crutches (her legs were paralyzed after a childhood fall from a horse), Ermolaeva was surrounded by loyal students. Her achievements in children’s literature rivaled those of Lebedev.
Released after her first arrest, Ermolaeva was detained once again and sent to a camp in Kazakhstan in 1934, when a new wave of arrests and and sanctions rolled over Leningrad in the wake of the murder of Sergei Kirov. Sterligov, who was taken to the camps in the same group as Ermolaeva, recalled how the convoy soldiers mocked the handicapped artist, ordering her around at the daily roll call: “Stand up!” “Lie down!” “Stand up!”
After several years in the camps, where Ermolaeva’s legs were amputated, she was given an automatic second term. Finally, she and other inmates were loaded onto a barge and sent onto the Aral Sea (Sterligov witnessed the event). All the prisoners were left on a desert island. No one ever heard from Ermolaeva again. All that was left of her in Leningrad were a few works and some photographs and letters.
