The permanent exhibition of the Kumu Art Museum in the A-wing of the 4th floor was the most extensive project undertaken by Kumu to celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2016. The exhibition tries to map the developments and diversity of Soviet art, without pretending to present a strictly art-historical overview. In addition to actual works of art, the exposition includes abundant documentary material providing background information for those who have a deeper interest in a particular piece of art or a particular phenomenon.



This book has been compiled along the lines of the permanent exhibition's main and side topics. For the sake of fluent reading, the book follows a more strict chronology than the exhibition, where certain spatial requirements have caused minor interruptions in the linear time axis, and some topics have been combined with one another, while others spread across several exhibition halls. In each subdivision, the most characteristic, interesting or intriguing works have been highlighted, and their contents and backgrounds have been explicated in more detail. The fact that the book has seven authors, and hence different types of texts, does make the overall impression somewhat fragmented, but it also highlights the fact that there are numerous ways of looking at and speaking of Soviet art.