Alek­san­dra Shatskikh, art his­to­ri­an, stud­ied untouched archives for this book about Viteb­sk, a large­ly Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, tri­an­gu­lat­ed by Moscow, War­saw, and Riga. It had an extra­or­di­nary life of art. Known as Chagall’s birth­place and focus of his work, it was cen­tral in the cre­ation, expo­si­tion, and dif­fu­sion of avant-garde expres­sion in Rus­sia from 1917 to 1922. 

Czar-free in 1917, Viteb­sk became a mag­net where all artis­tic direc­tions were pos­si­ble— flam­ing tal­ents envi­sioned not only new, but lim­it­less, hori­zons. Painters, sculp­tors, per­form­ers, and writer-philoso­phers cre­at­ed and embraced their own nomen­cla­ture— Uno­vis, Prouns, archi­tec­tons, supre­ma­tism, futur­ism—to express their zeal for new ideals, in gov­ern­ment-sanc­tioned and sup­port­ed academies/​institutes/​schools for all ages. 

Translit­er­a­tion deals with typ­i­cal bar­ri­ers of Russ­ian to Eng­lish: a lot of con­so­nants; but the trans­la­tion allows steady read­ing. Replete with clear illus­tra­tions and plates, and well-for­mat­ted text, Viteb­sk dis­cuss­es near­ly 150 peo­ple — Cha­gall, K. Male­vich, El Lis­sit­sky, Y. Pen, N. Malko, and Bakhtim, most prominently. 

Then, dis­ci­pline by dis­ci­pline, Shatskikh records 1922, when sovi­eti­za­tion began to solid­i­fy, fund­ing end­ed, fol­lowed by years of dis­ease, dis­per­sion, demo­niz­ing, depor­ta­tion, and death for many of its artists. ​“Cit­i­zens of Viteb­sk have cre­at­ed a mon­u­ment to their provin­cial city; the nature of this mon­u­ment con­sti­tutes the main theme of this book,” she con­cludes. Sober­ing and edi­fy­ing, it’s a remark­able read­ing expe­ri­ence. Abbre­vi­a­tions, appen­dices, bib­li­og­ra­phy, glos­sary, illus­tra­tions, index, maps, notes, plates.