ABSTRACT
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, images and rituals produced in the Stalinist period have been described, scrutinized and redescribed. Yet, so much remains to be asked regarding their social significance, and even more about how meaning was created in and through them. Explorations beg to be conducted on how Socialist Realist art mattered in the play and negotiation of hegemonic practices in the USSR. In order to do this, one needs to avoid searching for mechanistic reifications of the social sphere in the artistic production; moreover, one must escape the temptation of simply collapsing material culture into the ideology within which it is produced.
