The international exhibition Alla Gloria Militar was conceived and organised by energetic and competent cultural professionals of the Artists’ Union of Russia, namely I. Kolesnikov, S. Denisov and their assistants. 

It couldn’t be expected that these supervisors would give a servile response to the official celebrations of the Great Victory in our 2010. They responded to the event in a very human, manlike, and quite artistic way. The cover and endpaper of the catalogue have colours of steel and blood, and the three bullet holes, going through the entire book, suggest that here we won’t be regaled with beautiful fabrications. Having touched this cover, one can immediately understand that there is a shooting here. But in what sense?

Artists from different countries (besides, from those countries that fought next to each other and against each other in World War II) have been offered a topic, which included a notion of “military glory”. The expression Alla Gloria Militar is understood by not only the Mediterranean people and other speakers of the Romanic language group, but almost by all Europeans, because these words, one way or another, are present in the culture of all European countries. Normally people react to such words in a similar manner.   They mourn the victims and honour the fallen, and they pay a tribute of love and respect to veterans, trying to figure out how all this great, glorious and shameful nightmare happened, who and how were arranged the bloodiest hecatombs in history ( not glorious at all), and who defended humankind against monsters. And what happened next.

This causes a delicate situation.  People do not always want to deal with dangerous speculations and sharp unresolved issues, for they cause a headache and bring a confusion, bewilderment and irritation.  Thinkers, writers and artists, with their usual uncontrollability and creative looseness, allow themselves to talk about difficult issues and dangerous truths. (Truths can be safe too, but then they are as little productive as safe sex.)

Humanity was protected from the fascist monster by our brave protectors and saviours, and the price of their blood earned everlasting gratitude to them. If to be specific, the Europeans own their happy chance to live, to two historical forces. The first squad - these were knights of the large and predatory Anglo-American capital. Another squad - these were soldiers of the carnivore totalitarian regime of Stalin. The two forces swooped down on the enemy from all sides. They fought, frankly speaking, for their domestic dragons against the foreign dragon, and they did everything right. More precisely, there was no other choice. The foreign beast was more dangerous than their own (although the latter was a trouble too).  

They killed the foreign dragon, trampled on the swastika, hung a couple of the most shameless scoundrels, and staged a denazification, although a not too radical and not too painful one, so as not to bring themselves any political problems. So did the knights of the West.  Soviet wonder-warriors hurriedly and hastily replaced former racists and butchers of one part of Germany for their own people (and sometimes it was not possible to find a difference) and survived the post-war whacking and oppression in their own country. What happened next as a result of the Great Victory, we all generally know, and so I won’t describe much. I personally guess that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a distant and unforeseen consequence of the glorious Victory, which on one hand saved the country, but on the other hand turned our inner dragon loose; and he’d completely ruined the economy, society, ethnic relations, and other foundations of life. History is a very ironic person. Still, there is no doubt that the winners have gained themselves military glory, while the outcomes of the Victory were different, and we still live with painful thorns in our minds. Hence the ideological hysteria about the war history that we, medics of spirit, now observe in Russia. 

Contemporary artists, as quite thinking (and not just mindlessly singing their song) beings, with each passing year were more and more certain in existence of the mystery of the historical Sphinx. Glory to the winners! In the name of what they won, what the results were, how it all finished, and what we are supposed to think about this victory of Ours over Aliens - this is a different question. The artists of our exhibitions give some responses to the challenge. A dangerous guess, a secret of the post-war collective psychology, concealed from ourselves, has led to gaps and conflicts, quirks and antics, searches and disagreements that can be clearly seen in the panorama of the exhibition. 

The first wound - is a bitterness and resentment. The past mocks our common sense and moral instinct.  That is the best description of the monumental photograph, taken by I. Kolesnikov and S. Denisov, where some person, resembling Stalin, shows his red tongue to the humanity, just like a vampire, sated with people’s blood.