— With an outsize extravaganza that reached deep into the repertory of classical music and ballet, traversed the sights and sounds of the world’s largest geopolitical expanse, soared into outer space and swept across millenniums of history in a celebration of everything from czarist military might to Soviet monumentalism, a swaggering, resurgent Russia turned its Winter Olympic aspirations into reality on Friday night.
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Notably, Mr. Ernst designed a show that, like Mr. Putin, was not shy about embracing certain aspects of the Soviet past. Some of the most striking sketches involved an artistic view of the 20th century, glossing over some of Russia’s darkest times, with a focus instead on industrialism and the avant-garde.
The sketches illustrated the period with huge mechanical cogs and gears, spinning and churning, as well as with images of the Stalinist skyscrapers that are among the most recognizable buildings in Moscow, and perhaps most dramatically, with an image of Vera I. Mukhina’s iconic sculpture “Worker and Peasant Woman.”
Whatever the Soviet Union’s ideological failings, the ceremony reflected a view, clearly shared by Mr. Putin, that its sheer bigness — especially its unification of Russia’s multitude of ethnicities — should be admired.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/sports/olympics/russia-opens-sochi-games-with-pageantry-and-pride.html?_r=0
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