We cannot celebrate revolutionary Russian art – it is brutal propaganda

The Royal Academy is showcasing Russian art from the age of Lenin – but we must not overlook that his regime’s totalitarian violence rivalled nazismIt was a bizarre moment. I was visiting New York’s Museum of Modern Art for the first time, revelling in Duchamp and Brancusi, Cezanne and Schwitters. Then I came across a room that felt like a pious shrine, a white reliquary containing models of unbuilt architecture, posters for a failed utopia. This was MoMA’s homage to the