Sculptor Nikolai Shalimov and painter Vassily Khvostenko, artists of the 1st Army of the Eastern (Turkestan) Front, 1919–1921

The activities of Nikolai Shalimov and Vassily Khvostenko are specified on the basis of comparison of a number of archival sources. The artists were military decorators of “The Red East” Train and creators of an agitprop puppet theatre. The Orenburg period of their creative work is reconstructed and their biographical data are also ascertained. Photographic documents are published as well as extracts from correspondence and diaries of painter Sergei Kalmikov which concern the creative life in Orenburg in the Civil War period. Ornamental paintings and marionette-puppets of Shalimov and Khvostenko are commented as significant memorials of agitprop art of the first post-revolutionary years.