Stalin’s bureaucracy waged a campaign of hate against artists who defied their narrow doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’. Dmitri Shostakovich’s ‘Anti-formalist Rayok’ lambasts these cultural crimes, and defends the spirit of cultural freedom unleashed by the October Revolution.

Forged in the social upheavals during and after WWI, Dadaism was a radical school of art aimed at the capitalist establishment. Its initial inclination towards nonsensical absurdism developed into an open embrace of communism – reflecting an age of revolution.

Filmmaker David Lynch, who passed away last week, was a singular artist whose works were surreal and unsettling. Although not a ‘political person’, his films and TV shows explored alienation and the absurdity of everyday life under capitalism.