About the book: 2017 / The book represents the first attempt to reconstruct and comprehend the relationship of Marc Chagall with his native Vitebsk. How were the artist’s experiments in decorating the city for the first anniversary of the October Revolution perceived? Why did he really leave there? How did it happen that the master’s paintings turned out to be painted over by his own students? Where did Chagall's legacy go from the museum he created? But the main question that the author asks is: how did the experience gained in Vitebsk influence the formation of the artist’s new language? For the first time, the study brings together into a single narrative Chagall’s experiences in Vitebsk in 1918–1920 and the late Soviet politics of memory that tried to consign his name to oblivion. This is a story about how the homeland contributes to the development of a unique artist, and then forgets him and severely punishes those who resist such oblivion. V. Martinovich – art historian, writer, teacher at the European Humanities University in Vilnius.