Rimma Nikolaeva
Rimma Nikolaeva was an artist, sculptor, illustrator of Persian myths and poetry, and a member of a mystical organization active in Tashkent and Leningrad in the 1920s and 1930s.
The only source of information about her life discovered to date is the criminal case in the Federal Security Service (FSB) archive in St. Petersburg,1 however it sheds no light on the first thirty years of her life. We do not know where and with whom she grew up, nor where she studied. The only thing we do know is that before the early 1930s she lived in Batum (currently Batumi, Georgia).
The earliest known episode in Nikolaeva’s life, as recounted in the criminal case, involves her visits to Tashkent. She went to see her friend Elisaveta Dmitrieva (married name Vasilieva, also known by the pseudonym Cherubina de Gabriak), who was exiled to Tashkent in 1927 for her involvement in anthroposophy (“for her belief in the immortality of human spirit”2).
In Tashkent, through their shared interest in anthroposophy, Nikolaeva met translator and East Asia scholar Julian Shutsky. From 1935 to 1936 she lived with Shutsky and his family at their apartment in Leningrad. She worked at the Oriental Studies Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences as a sculptor and illustrator specializing in Persian myths and poetry, took commissions from the Leningrad Porcelain Factory, and participated in several group exhibitions.
In May 1937, after Nikolaeva chose not to deny her interest in anthroposophy during a number of interrogations, her apartment was searched and the discovery of religious and philosophical books led to her arrest. She was charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and counter-revolutionary activities, a common formula that the Soviet regime used against people involved in mysticism and spiritual practices (including Julian Shutsky, Iranologist Fyodor Rostopchin, artist Andrei Sparionapte, and poet and archeologist Boris Zubakin). On October 5, 1937, the NKVD troika3 for Leningrad Oblast sentenced Rimma Nikolaeva to death. She was shot four days later, on October 9. The only artefacts that constitute her legacy today are two small, porcelain sculptural groups (Rostam (1936) and Rostam (1937)) in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. The exhibition features one of these sculptures, painted by Alexei Vorobievsky in 1937, which was most likely produced for the Paris World’s Fair of the same year.
Rostam is the protagonist of The Shahnameh, an epic poem by the Persian poet Ferdowsi. Nikolaeva sculpted him next to his stallion, Rakhsh. Ferdowsi described the color of Rakhsh’s coat as “rose petals scattered on a saffron ground,” and Vorobievsky followed this description when painting the sculpture.
Daria Bobrenko
1. FSB Archive for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, case no. П-70808.
2. From the introduction to Cherubina de Gabriak’s collection of poems Under the Pear Tree (Tashkent, 1927).
3. Translator’s note: In the Soviet Union, troikas of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were commissions of three people created across the country as an instrument of political repression during the Great Purge. They issued sentences without a public trial and were active from 1937 to 1938.