Culture, science, literature and art in the USSR

Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

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Culture, science, literature and art

Here is presented material that come under the very loose heading of ‘culture’ during the Socialist period of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Science 

Proletarian Science? The case of Lysenko, Dominique Lecourt, with an introduction by Louis Althusser, New Left Books, London, 1977, 165 pages.

Heredity and its variability, T.D. Lysenko, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 122 pages.

J.B. Lamarck, a materialist biologist, I.I. Prezent, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 56 pages.

Soviet biology, a report to the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Moscow, 1948, T.D. Lysenko, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2023, 82 pages.

The revisionist theory of the ‘Liberation’ of science from ideology, M.D. Kammari, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa 2022, 51 pages.

Science for Peace and Socialism, J.D. Bernal and Maurice Cornforth, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa, 2023, (originally Birch Books, London, 1949), 144 pages.

Psychological warfare in the strategy of Imperialism, V.L. Artemov, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, Moscow 1983), 140 pages.

Poetry

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a poem, in both Russian and English, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, 208 pages.

Novels and short stories

Vasili Azhayev

Far From Moscow, Book 1, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 502 pages.

Far From Moscow, Book 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 462 pages.

Far From Moscow, Book 3, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 466 pages.

Konstantin Fedin

Early Joys, FLPH, Moscow, 1948, 503 pages.

No Ordinary Summer, Book 2, Progress, Moscow, 1950, 535 pages.

Dmitry Furmanov

Chapayev, FLPH, Moscow, 1955, 384 pages.

Alexei Fyodorov

The Underground R. C. carries on, Book 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 416 pages.

The Underground Committee carries on, Books 1 and 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 518 pages.

Maxim Gorki

Creatures that once were men, Modern Library Publishers, New York, 1918 (originally), digital version 1998, 180 pages.

Fragments from my diary, McBride, New York, 1924, 320 pages.

Days with Lenin, Martin Lawrence, London, n.d., early 1930s?, 64 pages.

My childhood, Appleton-Century, New York, 1936, 374 pages.

And the others – a play, Unity Theatre Workshop, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1941, 34 pages.

Lenin and Gorky, letters, reminiscences, articles, Progress, Moscow, 1973, 429 pages.

The city of the yellow devil, pamphlets, articles and letters about America (1906), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, 151 pages.

The Artamonovs, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 8, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 336 pages.

Literary Portraits, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 9, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 390 pages.

On Literature, collected works in ten volumes, Volume 10, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 455 pages.

The collected short stories of Maxim Gorky, edited by Avrham Yarmolinsky and Baroness Moura Budberg, Citadel Press, Secaucus, 1988, 403 pages.

Autobiography of Maxim Gorky (My Childhood, In the World, My Universities), n.p., n.d., 614 pages.

Maxim Gorky – a political biography, Tovah Yedlin, Praeger, Westport, 1999, 260 pages.

Culture and the people, November 8th Publishing House, Ottawa, 2023, 229 pages.

Twenty six men and a girl, n.p., n.d., 11 pages.

Elmar Green

Wind from the South, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 292 pages.

Vassili Grossman

The Years of War, 1941-1945, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally FLPH, Moscow, 1946), 575 pages.

Nikolai Ostrovsky

How the steel was tempered – Part 1, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 312 pages.

How the steel was tempered – Part 2, FLPH, Moscow, 1952, 351 pages.

How the steel was tempered, Communist Party of Australia, Sydney, 2002, 312 pages.

How the steel was tempered, Progress, Moscow, n.d., 321 pages.

How the steel was tempered, picture book, Novosti, Moscow, 1983, 52 pages.

Vera Panova

Looking ahead, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 294 pages.

Konstantin Paustovsky

The Golden Rose – thoughts on the making of literature, FLPH, Moscow, 1950?, 285 pages.

Boris Pelovoi

A story about a real man, Progress, Moscow, 1973, 344 pages.

Alexander Serafimovich

The Iron Flood, International, New York, 1935, 248 pages. 

Mikhail Sholokhov

Virgin Soil Upturned, the third volume in the Don Trilogy, Putman, London, 1937, 488 pages.

Mikhailo Stelmakh

Let the blood of man not flow, Progress, Moscow, 1975, 271 pages.

Alexei Tolstoy

Road to Calvary, Stalin Prize Novel, Hutchinson, London, 1941, 680 pages.

Aelita, FLPH, Moscow, nd.,167 pages.

Andrejs Upits

Outside Paradise and other stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1955, 363 pages.

Nikolai Virta

Alone – a novel, FLPH, Moscow, 1950, 452 pages.

Various authors

Soviet Short Stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1947, 471 pages.

30 short stories, 1917-1967, Soviet Literature, No. 4, 1967, 224 pages.

Theatre

And the others – a play, Maxim Gorky, Unity Theatre Workshop, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1941, 34 pages.

Art

VI Lenin badge picture gallery

Russian art of the avant-garde theory and criticism, 1902-1934, ed John E. Bowlt, Viking, New York, 1976, 360 pages. [A lot of scribblings throughout but the text, in the main, remains legible.]

Art of the Avant Garde in Russia, selections from the George Costakis Collection, Margit Rowell and Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1981, 320 pages.

The Russian avant-garde book 1910-1934, ed. Margit Rowell and Deborah Wye, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, 304 pages.

The Russian avant-garde and radical modernism, an introductory reader, ed. Dennis Ioffe and Frederick White, Boston, 2012, 486 pages.

Museums and Art Galleries

The Central Lenin Museum, Moscow – a guide. (Moscow, Raduga, 1986), 160 pages. A guide to the now destroyed Museum dedicated to the life and work of VI Lenin.

The Stalin Museum in his birthplace of Gori, in the centre of Georgia, is one of the few places in the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) where you will see any reference (let alone a positive reference) to the leader of the world’s first socialist state.

The SM Kirov museum is located in the famous ‘House of Three Benois’ on the second entrance of the house number 26/28 on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, on the 4th and 5th floors, in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg).

Probably the largest and most extensive art gallery in the world is that which spans the whole of the central area of Moscow. This art gallery doesn’t have just one entrance but dozens and although you have to pay it’s also one of the cheapest in Europe. This art gallery can be crowded, very crowded, at certain times of the day but the arrival of people comes in waves so not a total inconvenience. It’s also the world’s biggest gallery of Soviet Socialist Realist Art – the name of this gallery is the Moscow Metro.

The Park of the Fallen/Muzeon Art Park, in Moscow is the collection of monuments and statues of the Socialist period that used to be found throughout the city.

Park Pobeda – Victory Park – exhibition and museum, Moscow.

Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh) – Moscow. A huge park on the outskirts of the city which originally provided an opportunity for visitors to understand the successes of Socialism throughout the whole of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Socialist Realist Art in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Art galleries in the Central Asian former Soviet Republics.

Frunze Museum – Bishkek – Kyrgyzstan. The Frunze museum was originally opened in December 1925, centred on the small house where he was born. This house is now a feature on the ground floor of the modern building.

JV Stalin Museum – Mamayev Kurgan – Stalingrad. This is a very strange museum – not to what it is dedicated – but for its location and very existence. Mamyev Kurgan is probably the most revered war memorial in the whole of the Soviet Union/Russia – and that would include those Republics which broke away amidst the chaos of the early 1990s. And yet just a few hundred metres behind the mammoth statue is a private hotel and restaurant which just happens to have a small, three room museum to JV Stalin in the basement.

Tashkent Metro – Uzbekistan. The Tashkent Metro was a relatively late addition to the Soviet Union’s mass transit system being the seventh to be completed in 1977. The system followed many of the conventions established since 1935 in Moscow; the design of the station platforms; the style (if not the content) of the decoration; the use of light to give the impression of not being underground; the use of the finest materials; and the method in moving people through the system as fast as possible

Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR/Central Armed Forces Museum – Moscow. The main reason I wanted to go to the Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR/Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow was because I had learnt that it was there that the Nazi banners that had been thrown into the mud at the base of the Lenin Mausoleum (with Comrade Stalin accepting them on behalf of the Soviet people) on the first Victory Day on May 9th, 1945, were presently on display.

Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh. The principal pavilion in the VDNKh park has undergone a major renovation and it has been brought back (almost) to what it was like when it opened in 1954. Some of the original works have been ‘lost’ – perhaps only mislaid as a number of art works considered ‘lost’ have subsequently been found – but a number that had been distributed to other galleries have been returned.

VI Lenin Exhibition at the State History Museum, Moscow. At the moment there’s a special exhibition attached to State History Museum, one which documents some of the life and work of VI Lenin. However, there’s only a fraction on display here of what used to be on show in the now closed Central Lenin Museum (which used to be housed in what is now the War of 1812 Museum).

Architecture

Moscow – Architecture and Monuments, M Ilyin, Progress, Moscow, 1968, 253 pages.

Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes – Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938, Danilo Udovicki-Selb, Bloomsbury, London, 2020, 360 pages.

Moscow Monumental – Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital, Katherine Zubovich, Princetown University Press, Princetown, 2021, 428 pages.

Art in everyday circumstances

Soviet Advertising Posters 1917-1932, Moscow, 1972, 127 pages.

The debate on Soviet Culture

VOKS Bulletin, No 63, USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Moscow, 1950, 96 pages.

On literature, music and philosophy, AA Zhadanov, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1950, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2022, 112 pages.

‘Mass culture’ in the USA and the problem of the individual, E.N. Kartseva, November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2025, (originally Nauka Publishing House, Moscow 1974), 233 pages.

More on the USSR

VI Lenin badge picture gallery

VI Lenin

VI Lenin

More on the USSR

VI Lenin badge picture gallery

I don’t really know when the wearing of badges with the image of VI Lenin started to become common place in the Soviet Union.

Images of the first Bolshevik leader were used soon after his death, especially in photo-montages, for example, promoting the scheme of the ‘Electrification of the whole country’. The Soviets had long understood that in a (at that time but quickly diminishing as literacy campaigns took root) predominantly peasant country with high levels of illiteracy that the visual image – especially in the form of cheap to produce posters – were an effective weapon to get over the government’s message. This was later stepped up during the 1930s with the programmes of collectivisation of agriculture and the industrialisation of the country in the Five Year Plans.

Yes, this was propaganda – but which society before or since hasn’t used all the methods to hand to get across their message?

Also, in the 1920s images of Vladimir Ilyich would have been common in state and public buildings. (This happens in the present day in the USA where there’s always an image of the present President in public buildings down to and including post offices – so not a uniquely Soviet phenomenon.) However, I don’t know to what extent this practice would have developed in private houses.

(In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea you will find the image of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in virtually every home – normally the two of them side by side. However, I have never seen an example where the image of the present leader (Kim Jong Un) is on display in either a public or private forum. It is almost virtually impossible for foreigners to acquire a badge similar to those which every citizen wears in public.)

Returning to the Soviet Union I have not come across any badges with the image of Soviet leaders (and here I’m talking principally about VI Lenin, JV Stalin and FE Dzerzhinsky – the only three I have seen personally depicted on a badge – I’m ignoring here the traitorous Gorbachev and the vodka sodden idiot Yeltsin) prior to the 1970s. If there have been personal badges earlier they tended to be of a Red Star or a Hammer and Sickle – and from the early days the Hammer and Plough. But nothing of the leadership.

1970 saw the hundredth anniversary of the birth of VI Lenin – and many of the badges produced made direct reference to that anniversary. My assumption is that in an effort to boost their credibility (and to piggy-back on the admiration the people of the Soviet Union had for the first Bolshevik leader) the then Revisionist leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union instigated the wearing of a small badge with Lenin’s image. It must be remembered that this was only a few years after the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China which included the wearing of a badge with the image of Chairman Mao.

Whenever the mass production of these badges started – and for whatever reason – there may be many readers who haven’t had the opportunity to see examples of these images of VI Lenin. Hence, the slide show below to rectify that omission.

Also included are a few examples of badges with the image of JV Stalin. These have been produced in very recent years and, to the best of my knowledge, none were ever produced in the erstwhile Soviet Union.

More on the USSR

Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh – Moscow

Pavilion No 1 and Lenin statue

Pavilion No 1 and Lenin statue

More on the USSR

Central Pavilion – Tretyakov Gallery Exhibition – VDNKh

The principal pavilion in the VDNKh park has undergone a major renovation and it has been brought back (almost) to what it was like when it opened in 1954. Some of the original works have been ‘lost’ – perhaps only mislaid as a number of art works considered ‘lost’ have subsequently been found – but a number that had been distributed to other galleries have been returned.

Although it has received a fine renovation it will never be the building as it was designed. The internal decoration, and even the naming of the various halls, was all connected to the success of the October Revolution and the construction of Socialism. That has not been created with the renovation and, in many ways, feels sterile. It is, not as it was originally, a celebration of the achievements of the Soviet people, now just an art gallery providing a few reminders of what once was.

The two slide shows at the end of the post will, it is hoped, provide some idea of what it is like to be in the building. The first is of the structure and the artistic items in the building. The second is of the high relief composition created by Yevgeny Vuchetich, who also created, amongst many more, the statue of The Motherland Calls! (in Stalingrad), ‘Let us beat swords into ploughshares’ (a version of which is outside the main entrance to the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), and the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (which used to stand in the square outside the Lubyanka Building and now is on display in Park Muzeon, alongside the New Tretyakov Gallery).

Text below from ‘Legendary pavilion and birthday arches. Exploring iconic VDNKh attractions to mark exhibition’s 85th anniversary’

This year (2024), Pavilion No. 1 Central, one of the most monumental exhibition buildings, is also celebrating its 70th anniversary. It rises 97 meters above the ground and immediately amazes visitors with its grandeur.

Designed by architects Georgy Shchuko and Evgeny Stolyarov, the building was erected in 1950–1954 to replace the previous wooden structure. It did not fit into the new VDNKh architectural composition in the 1950s, so it was redesigned. Inspired by the Stalinist architecture, the new pavilion has got a spire with a star on top and the USSR coat of arms and 16 medallions featuring the coats of arms of the union republics on the façades on each side. Until 1963, the pavilion was called the Main Pavilion.

Its history lives in the building’s exterior and interior. The pavilion has nine thematic halls: one central hall and eight exhibition halls connected to it. During construction, all rooms were covered with artificial marble and decorated with pieces of art. The October Revolution Hall features ‘The Storming of the Winter Palace’ (1950s) by the artist Pavel Sokolov-Skalya, while the Constitution Hall houses four panels by different artists dedicated to the happy life of Soviet citizens. Only two of the four paintings have survived to this day.

The Storming of the Winter Palace

The Storming of the Winter Palace

In the 1990s, the exhibition halls were divided into two floors by mezzanines, and the entire pavilion space was packed with kiosks. In 2000, they opened a cultural centre, the House of the Peoples of Russia, with a museum. The exhibitions were housed in the building until 2014. In the same year, the pavilion kiosks were being removed. At that time, the experts discovered a plaster high relief ‘Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace, the Soviet People!’, a great work by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, on the wall in the Hall of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. The work had been considered irretrievably lost for 40 years. It took about a year to restore it to its former grandeur. The lost fragments have been recreated using old photographs. The 90 square meter high relief depicts more than 1,500 people, life-size figures of workers, scientists and pioneers.

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace, the Soviet People!

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace, the Soviet People!

In September 2014, experts made another discovery. On the basement floor of the building, experts discovered a painting entitled ‘The Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers and Shock Workers of 1935’, which was also considered lost. It is another monumental work: the canvas size is 6.75 X 11 meters. The painting was created by a group of artists led by Aleksandr Gerasimov in 1953. Other discoveries include a 1958 fresco depicting agricultural work.

In 2017, the work started to restore Pavilion No. 1 Central. The specialists have repaired the spire and the golden star crowning it, tinted the capitals, the coats of arms and ribbons on the façade to make them look like gold, and restored the original doors. They have also carried out a large-scale work inside the pavilion. In the central hall, they have discovered and cleared decorative semicircular arches hidden under a layer of plaster for more than 40 years. The experts have restored the ceiling lights, the columns made of scagliola and the parquet floors.

Text below from ‘The unknown Tsentralny: secrets of VDNKh Pavilion No.1’

On the right side of the October Revolution Hall, there is another painting by Pavel Sokolov-Skalya. It is called ‘Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power at the 2nd Congress of the Soviets’. It also returned to its original spot. The painting shows factory workers listening intently to the Soviet leader. Some of them applaud, others look up in surprise, as if asking, ‘Could that all be true?’ Lenin is not in the centre of the painting, but everyone is looking at him. That was the painter’s way of showing that Lenin was indeed the main person there.

Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power at the 2nd Congress of the Soviets

Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power at the 2nd Congress of the Soviets

……

We move to the Stalin’s Constitution Hall made in pastel colors: cream and blue. It has a caisson-embossed dome with a gold star in the middle. The hall is dedicated to the happy future that revolutionaries were fighting for and that is already here.

Under the dome, along it circumference, the first lines of the Soviet anthem are written in gold: ‘United forever in friendship and labour, Our mighty republics will ever endure’. Below it are coats of arms of the 16 Soviet republics, including the Karelo-Finnish republic that still existed in 1950s.

There used to be painted panels depicting happy lives of Soviet citizens at the four sides of the hall. Only two of them survived. The first one, made by artists’ collective led by Alexander Gerasimov, shows students of all nationalities leaving Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) at Leninskiye (now Vorobyovy) Gory with books and briefcases and walking as if toward the audience, engaged in lively discussion among themselves. The high-rise University building was finished in 1953, one year before Pavilion No.1 opened to the public, and was instantly captured on the painting. It is like the people on it are alive and about to step down from the wall.

Moscow University

Moscow University

On the second panel by Sergey Otroshchenko smiling girls in colorful dresses and men in white linen or striped beach suits (fashionable at the time) are strolling along the Black Sea shore, among cypress trees and palaces with white colonnades.

On the Black Sea

On the Black Sea

The paintings explain the rights that Stalin’s Constitution of 1936 granted to Soviet citizens. It was considered the most progressive one in the world. It established rights to work, rest, education, etc.

Copies of the two panels that have been lost can be found on information displays. One of them, by Alexander Gerasimov, shows the launch of the Volga-Don canal: Soviet workers greet the first boat passing under the Triumph Arch surrounded by boundless fields that have to be tended and sowed. The other one, by Stepan Kirichenko, is called The Supreme Soviet Deputies in the Kremlin. On it, a crowd of men and women talk solemnly to each other while the background shows Ivan the Great’s bell tower and a Stalin era high-rise: symbols of the past and the present.

Next in our tour is the hall dedicated to Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War and the struggle for peace. There, we come to a high-relief sculpture group made of gypsum and painted bronze: Glory to the Soviet People, Flag-Bearer of Peace! It was made by Evgeny Vuchetich and his team of sculptors. It was covered by a faux wall in the 1960s, and simply bricked over later.

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace

Glory to the Standard Bearer of Peace

So restoration architects got a surprise. Life-sized figures: workers, scientists, young pioneers, seem to descend to the audience from a Stalin-era high-rise building, a water power station, the Shukhov tower, main landmarks of that time.

When they found it, sculptures were in a sad state, many pieces had been damaged. They had to be recreated based on old photographs. We think now that those characters were modelled after real people. For instance, the Uzbek man on the right, wearing a national robe and a skullcap is Nazarali Niyazov, Hero of Socialist Labour. He invented a new cotton field irrigation method. Vuchetich had made a chest-high sculpture of him before the high relief project commenced and later used that as a base for a full-height sculpture.

This version of the sculpture is different from the one created in 1954. Back then, there used to be portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels on the flag; after the de-Stalinization, however, only Lenin’s profile was left. The man and the woman up front used to hold the USSR coat of arms which was later replaced by a baby holding a dove, the symbol of peace. Specialists decided to restore the later variant.

……

In the hall known as Collective Farms, Soviet Farms — MTS, restoration artists were able to uncover a painting niche framed in creamy-white bas-reliefs: cabbages, corncobs, apples, bunches of grapes, apricots, other vegetables and fruits around the edges with cows, horses and sheep in the middle and farming machinery on top. Such bas-reliefs, probably used to decorate other walls as well, but were lost.

Dairy and Meat Farming in the USSR, a painting by Boris Shcherbakov, returned to that room after being restored. The oil-on-canvas painting depicts a herd of cattle grazing by the river, surrounded by milkmaids and farmers, barns and power lines. On top of it, there is now a recreated slogan that used to be there in 1958: ‘We will catch up to the USA in per capita production of meat, milk and butter in the coming years’.

Dairy and Meat Farming in the USSR

Dairy and Meat Farming in the USSR

Shcherbakov painted it for the Tsentralny Pavilion, but it was moved to the Equestrian Manege Pavilion in the 1960s’.

There is another farming-themed panel by unknown painter on the wall there. It is a map of the USSR machine and tractor stations (MTSs) with landscapes, fields and combine harvesters in the corners.

Machine and tractor station

Machine and tractor station

The map was later replaced with a more modern electronic one where lights were going on.

The electronic parts of the map were lost, so they just left the outline of the USSR on the panel.

The initial plan was to put the giant painting by Alexander Gerasimov, called ‘Stalin Pronounces the Union-Wide Agricultural Exhibition Open at the 2nd Congress of Kolkhoz Workers and Exceptional Employees’, up there. The painting is currently being restored.

That painting is important for our history. The Union-Wide Agricultural Exhibition was established after the Congress, in 1939, and new pavilions were built. But the audience has never seen the painting because it was removed right after Stalin’s death, before the pavilion opened. People believed it was lost. But in 2014, it was discovered in the basement, wrapped around a roller. Now it is undergoing a restoration’

Tretyakov Gallery – Pavilion 1 – VDNH – the official leaflet for the exhibition (in Russian)

Tretyakov Gallery. The art of the XX-XXI centuries – English translation.

Location;

In the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh)

GPS;

55.82895 N

37.63349 E

How to get there;

The easiest way to get to the park is via the Metro, to the VDNKh station on Line 6. The Central Pavilion is the highest structure in the park and is the first (permanent) building you see once you walk through the main arch.

Cost;

500 roubles

More on the USSR

The interior of the Central Pavilion

‘Glory to the standard bearer of peace’