Steele called Socialist Realism "inherently truthful." That made the difference between "great art and shlock," he said.

However, other panelists disagreed, saying that the perception of reality and truth are not always the same.

Steele defined great art as art that continues to communicate after the fashion has passed.

"Great art speaks great truth of humanity," he said during a breakout session on collecting the art following the panel discussion.

The Soviet view was that communism would bring an utopian society, but in the 1970s and 1980s reality banished those fantasies, leaving Russian artists disillusioned, Swanson said, and ending controlled Socialist Realism expression. "They no longer believed in the system," he said.

Other breakout sessions included Konecny leading a discussion on how Socialist Realism wasn't real but an illusion, and Purves leading a discussion on the perception of the hero worker in the Soviet setting.

Swanson has been collecting Soviet art for years, with the first exhibitions in 1990. Today the museum has more than 125 of the period's paintings, sculptures and woodcuts and some 300 works it can get on loan.

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E-mail: rodger@desnews.com