Slavic Review 76, no. 2 (Summer 2017) © 2017 Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies doi: 10.1017/slr.2017.82 “Vladimir Lenin in Smolnyi” by Isaak I. Brodskii: The History of a Twin Andrei Keller Der Verstand vermag nichts anzuschauen, und die Sinne nichts zu denken –Immanuel Kant 1 My uncle has most honest principles: When taken ill in earnest, He has made one respect him And nothing better could invent. – Aleksandr Pushkin 2 This article presents a biographical reconstruction of the life of the painter Isaak Izrailevich Brodskii (1884–1939) through the lens of his painting Vladimir Lenin in Smolnyi (1930). 3 Brodskii and his work are shown against the background of the terror of the 1930s, an ideological rupture in his artistic vision and his attainment of personal success. The diaries of Pavel N. Filonov (1883–1941) help us to see Brodskii from an unusual angle. Brodskii’s impulse to write articles was an impulse of “old art” (“Ars Nobilis”), collected in an exhibition that was held in the exhibition halls of Volkswagen in Berlin from October 18–27, 2002. Two portraits of Lenin by Brodksii were displayed there: Vladimir Lenin in Smolnyi and Lenin Reading Pravda (1930), from the private collection of Otto von Mitzlaf. We will come back to the irst verse of Eugene Onegin later, meanwhile, we should keep in mind that Isaak Brodskii’s self-portrait, which was 1. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunt, ed. Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg, 1956), 95. 2. Aleksandr Pushkin, “Eugene Onegin”: A Novel in Verse, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (Princeton, 1964), 95. This quote from Aleksandr Pushkin was chosen by Iosif Brodskii (1904–1980) for the inscription on the copy of his book about his uncle Isaak Izrailevich Brodskii (January 6, 1884–August 14, 1939) that he presented to Professor Boris V. Pavlovskii, the founder of the Department of Art Studies at the Ural State University in Ekaterinburg. 3. Isaak I. Brodskii was a painter and graphic artist. He was born into a merchant fam- ily in the village of Soievka, Tauride province. He studied at the Odessa Art School (1895– 1902), attending courses of L. D. Iorini, K. K. Kostandi, and G. A. Ladyzhenskii. Later, he attended the Art School of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg under the tutelage of Jan Ciągliński (1902–08) and Il΄ia E. Repin (from 1903). He was a member of the Union of Rus- sian Painters, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia from 1922–1932 (in 1928 it was renamed as the Association of Artists of the Revolution), and from 1932 a member of the Union of Soviet Painters. Between 1934 and 1939, he was the Director of the Russian Academy of Arts. In the later stages of his career, he held the awards and titles of honored artist of the RSFSR and professor (1932), honored painter of the RSFSR (1938), and doctor of art studies (1939). Research for this article was supported by Act 211 of the Government of the Russian Feder- ation, agreement № 02.A03.21.0006; I am grateful to Konstantin Bugrov, Nils Hilkenbach, Daria Kostina, Aleksandr Lakman, Gertrud Pickhan, Larisa Soboleva, Olga Startseva and James White for their critical remarks, which helped me as I worked on this text. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Ural Federal University, on 24 Jul 2017 at 04:44:34, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/slr.2017.82