Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 review – when anything was possible

Royal Academy, London
From singing peasants to Soviet mugshots, history shapes everything in this momentous showLenin, dead at 53, appears in monumental close-up in an open red coffin. The queuing mourners, also painted on the spot, are diminutive by comparison. Six years later, in 1930, he is revived as a lifesize portrait of intellectual power, working on his writings (the chair opposite significantly empty, as if inviting the passing worker to join the dialectic).Lenin grows into a bronze col