The four essays that make up this collection by art historian Ekaterina Andreeva offer four successive perspectives on the history of Soviet art from the early 1930s through the 1960s. The first essay examines how, amidst the constant polemics of the 1930s, the concept of a "new Soviet art" evolved—mutating under the influence of competing, quasi-religious cults within Soviet ideology. The second essay analyzes *The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food* as a "surreal" sacred object—a totem of the cult of abundance. The third essay explores the transition in the 1940s from an era of "storm and stress" to a bureaucratic "salon" culture (centered on a cult of leisure), and discusses how, during the Thaw, an attempt to revive the original Soviet cult—the cult of labor—ultimately failed. The final text investigates the possibility of interpreting art outside the Soviet framework, drawing on examples from the architecture, sculpture, and cinema of Leningrad.