The artists of the revolutionary avant-garde are among the first victims of Stalinist repressions. These persecutions are legitimized by an aesthetic theory, whose origins and development are as paradoxical as little investigated. Coming from a nineteenth-century vision of the role of art, for decades the Soviet criticism adapts to the changing situation of power, outlawing creators of all kinds of trends. The article reviews the key contributions of Marxist art theory and art criticism since the early twentieth century until the early eighties, inseparable from the paradigms of Soviet art history, focusing on the work of Anatoli Lunacharsky, Vladimir Kemenov, Grigory Sternin and Vladislav Zimenko. Their writings are analysed in relation to significant cultural events and contrasted with present ideas of Russian scholars, about the antagonism between the official aesthetic model and pursued alternatives. An element of particular interest is the role of the academic institution, as a producer of aesthetic and historiographical concepts, designed to justify or to mitigate the repressive discourse.