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A Soviet Poster A Day

A Soviet Poster A Day
A Soviet Poster a Day Blog does what it says. Every day I publish a soviet classic poster with a description, historical references and insight required for understanding the meaning.

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Articles: 1, 2

Articles

We bring fear to the bourgeoisie!
2007-11-19 21:19:00
Worker and peasant women – all should go to the polls!N. Valerianov, 1925 The poster says: Worker and peasant women – all should go to the polls!Gather under the Red Banner along with men,We bring fear to the bourgeoisie! Women in traditional peasant sarafans and workers blouses march in passionate pace crushing and throwing back the landlord or factory owner. This poster from the twenties shows the typical image of a fat capitalist in waistcoat, top hat and chain-watch. Later it will be reproduced many times in children books, on posters and in other various types of propaganda. The election system of the Soviet times looked democratic, but of course was far from it. People were electing Working People’s Deputies on all levels – including the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot. But the elections were formal and non-competitive, all the candidates were previously approved by their superiors in the Part...
More About: Fear

Everything for the Victory
2007-11-15 17:08:00
Everything for the Victory Women of USSR for the FrontA. Kokorekin, 1942It were not only the Soviet Soldiers who were the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. 15 mln of Soviet women were accomplishing a great labor feat on the home front. The evacuation which implied moving of 500 of factories and works from Moscow alone required a tremendous amount of labor force. As all the males were joining the Red Army women and children were operating machines on the factories. More than 374 thousand of housewives returned to the industry. By October 1941 45% of all workers in the Soviet Union were women. The poster shows a determined woman in workers’ coveralls with a slide gauge in her pocket. Her hand leans on a general purpose aircraft bomb FAB-250 (250 is its mass in kg). The background has rows of smaller bombs FAB-100 ready for dispatch to the front. The aircraft bomb has a red star painted on – this goes back to the war tradition, when the workers painted encouraging notes for the sol...

It’s the Hero’s heart who fights the fight
2007-11-14 22:52:00
Glory to heroes of Brest FortressO. Savostjuk, B. Uspenskiy, 1969 This is a poster created to commemorate the great defense of Brest, performed by Soviet soldiers in 1941. The poster shows a soldier holding a RPG-40 antitank grenade ready to make a throw. The contrast red and black image along with the slogans form the Red Star. The slogans go clockwise starting from 9 o’clock: “I swear”, “Viva Motherland”, “No step backward”, “Never retreat from the fortress” and finally “Death to fascism”. Brest Fortress was actually attacked two times – in 1939, being a Polish fortress, it was assaulted by German general Guderian, who according to the secret protocols of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union was partitioning Poland. Later that year, Brest Fortress was given to Soviet Union according to that pact. On June 22, 1941 the fortress and the city of Brest was attacked by Nazi Germany at the beginning of the surprise war – this was...
More About: Fights , Fight , Heart

I'm so crazy I don't know this isn't possible
2007-11-13 22:11:00
Let's conquer the virgin blue!V. Gorlenko, 1964 Sometimes the ideas for Soviet Posters seem to be quite hilarious. Take this one from the sixties. It shows a great number of ducklings, who carry slogans which say: “Let’s conquer the virgin blue!” They are proceeding from a giant egg, moving in a horde like soviet workers at an October demonstration. Their main goal according to the slogans is to live and increase its weight on the water. In reality lots of soviet young people were cultivating the virgin soils which were considered to be the main source of extensive development of agriculture. At that time lots of “advanced” means were tested like planting of maize corn everywhere including areas near the polar circle, general breeding of rabbits or in this very case the duck farms building, which was considered to be a perfect way of getting plenty of cheap meat for the people. Needless to say that all the efforts were in vain: the corn didn’t seem to grow accord...
More About: Crazy

Long Live the World October
2007-11-12 21:26:00
Long Live the World October G. Klutsis, 1933 The International Communist Revolution was an idea by Karl Marx mentioned in his Communist Manifesto. He thought that the class struggle would wipe the borders and all workers and peasants would finally live happily in a classless communist society. The idea of Revolutionary War, which would lead to International Communist Revolution, was based on the assumption that the communists of Russia would be helping their mates abroad to start the fight with world imperialism. At first the plan was as follows: Soviets were suggesting the democratic peace treaty which would end the WW1 to all the parties, and in case it had been turned down the war would have to become Revolutionary War, leading to establishing of communist regimes in Europe. However, when the peace treaty proposal was rejected by every country except Germany (it agreed to start negotiations), Lenin was to start the War. But he didn't as the army was in poor shape and the econo...
More About: The World , Long

Long Live the World October
2007-11-12 21:26:00
Long Live the World OctoberG. Klutsis, 1933 The International Communist Revolution was an idea by Karl Marx mentioned in his Communist Manifesto. He thought that the class struggle would wipe the borders and all workers and peasants would finally live happily in a classless communist society. The idea of Revolutionary War, which would lead to International Communist Revolution, was based on the assumption that the communists of Russia would be helping their mates abroad to start the fight with world imperialism. At first the plan was as follows: Soviets were suggesting the democratic peace treaty which would end the WW1 to all the parties, and in case it had been turned down the war would have to become Revolutionary War, leading to establishing of communist regimes in Europe. However, when the peace treaty proposal was rejected by every country except Germany (it agreed to start negotiations), Lenin was to start the War. But he didn't as the army was in poor shape and the econo...
More About: The World , Long

From Russia with Love
2007-11-10 19:13:00
Intourist. Transsiberian expressM. Litvak, 1930 Here is a great example of the advertising posters of the thirties. This one is aimed at foreign audience as it is promoting the Transsiberian Express journey. The poster shows a curved surface of the Earth with symbols of Moscow and Beijing shown: to the left there are Kremlin towers and a dome of Saint Basil's Cathedral. Moscow is the starting point of the Transsiberian Railway. Its four routes nowadays lead to Vladivostok – the largest of the Eastern Russia n Cities (6430 km from Moscow), to North Korea, Mongolia and China arriving at Beijing. On the poster this is signified by the Chinese pagoda and Shinto shrine gate – torii, meaning that this is also an easy way to get to Japan. The poster is very dynamic – the train is moving fast through the red star gate, gate to the communist Russia. The header sais: “Transsiberian Express! The shortest way from Europe to the Far East”. The footer goes: “Intourist. Mosc...
More About: Love

The way machine sees us
2007-11-08 21:25:00
The EleventhV. Stenberg, A. Stenberg, 1928 Laughing Man: You could put it like that, I suppose. "I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only I alone am able to see it" Motoko: Dziga Vertov. He was a Russian film maker, wasn't he? Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Japanese cyberpunk anime television show This a movie poster, which announces the famous documentary by Dziga Vertov. His actual name was Denis Kaufman, and he was one of the founders and main theorists of news-reel and documentary shooting. This documentary was released in 1928, and was called “The Eleventh”, meaning the eleventh year after the October Revolution. Its main idea was to show the progress the young soviet state had achieved. The man on the poster is a grotesque image of Dziga Vertov himself. His eyeglasses reflect the agricultural and industrial machinery. This is an illustration of one of his main theories – that a true documentary is not about mere snap-shooting of li...
More About: Machine , Sees , Mach

You say you wanna revolution
2007-11-07 17:21:00
90th Anniversary of the October Revolution Bukheevy, 2007 Don't you know it's gonna be all rightall right, all rightRevolution by John Lennon, The Beatles Today is the 90th Anniversary of the October Revolution. This was a milestone event in the history of Russia, and of course there were hundreds of posters created to commemorate and outline its features and consequences. Later I’ll be featuring them here. But today I would like to show a poster which is definitely not a Soviet artwork. The style is different, and the release date also speaks for itself – this is a modern poster of the year 2007. This poster is almost unartful, it has got very simple typographics, but, boy, has it got the idea! The background is a modern Flag of Russia. It consists of three color fields – the white, the blue and the red. According to Wikipedia there are several meanings of these colors. The Flag may reflect the Russian social system under the monarchy: white represents God...

From the craddle
2007-11-06 19:36:00
“Soviet Posters in France” Art ExhibitionA. Yakushin, 1974 In Russian a poster is called “плакат”, or placard. The word itself originates from the verb “plaquer” – to stick, or to glue in French. France played the main role in development of poster styles in the 19th century. Such outstanding artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were creating posters which had much more art than advertising, ideology or communication in them. In the Soviet Union this high-quality approach to posters was brought to the new level. The posters were on the forefront of official art. And of course the Government was using them to promote communism values and Soviet style abroad. The poster above is announcing the Exhibition of Soviet Posters, which took place in Paris, France in November 1974-January 1975. The venue was the biggest art gallery and museum in the world – The Louvre. The poster which promotes poster exhibition should have been of the highest graphical qual...

The people's Army
2007-11-02 18:28:00
Workers' and Peasants' Red Army 15 anniversary Art ExhibitionA. Deyneka, 1933 From wild forest to the British seas - Red Army is the mightiest!"One of the famous revolutionary marches of the Civil War This is an art exhibition poster devoted to the Soviet Red Army. The exhibits included paintings, graphics, sculpture, textile works related to the events the Red Army took part into – the Civil War, World War 1, Soviet-Polish War. The Council of People's Commissars set up the Red Army by a Decree on January 28, 1918. In the 1918 the Red Army was quite democratic. The Army was based on the Red Guards which consisted of workers. At that time anybody could enlist, so the army contingent soon got very diverse. The discipline was weak and the orders were carried out according to its “Revolutionary significance”. The very idea of army hierarchy and strict obedience was considered to be bourgeois, and therefore contradicted with Communism. All this did not help to fight the e...

Monumental Power!
2007-10-31 21:36:00
Moscow is the capital of the USSREl Lissitzky, 1940 What an absolutely brilliant poster it is! It was created by El Lissitzky, who was one of the originators of Suprematism movement along with Kazimir Malevich. Lissitzky’s genius was versatile, as during his life time he managed to work and explore the boundaries of art in graphics design, photography, architecture, typographics using a wide range of techniques and methods. Here is his “Beat the Whites with Red Wedge” masterpiece. This very poster has a quotation of Vyacheslav Molotov – one of the leading soviet politicians and diplomats of the Stalin era. He managed to live through repressions of the thirties, late forties and fifties and was dismissed from Politburo only in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death. He is most known for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Soviet Union and Germany in 1939, which not only declared non-aggression between the two countries, but also contained the secret protocols, wh...
More About: Power , Monumental , Monument

Nowhere but in Mosselprom!
2007-10-30 19:51:00
Nowhere but in MosselpromA. Rodchenko, V. Mayakovsky, 1925 This is one of the most significant Soviet advertising posters ever. This is a result of a collaboration between Vladimir Maykovsky – who was the most noted poet of the twenties, and Alexander Rodchenko – one of the founders of Constructivism movement. Together they created many works for Mosselprom, including not only graphics and slogans, but also advertising concepts along with promotion techniques unique for the time. Mosselprom was a huge trust, which united flour-grinding, confectionary, chocolate, beer and tobacco factories. It was situated in a big house (pictured on the poster), which was one of the highest buildings in Moscow. The eleven-storey building was constructed before the revolution, but a part of it collapsed in 1913 due to flaws in building technology. The Bolsheviks restored it completely and gave it to Mosselprom. The administration of the trust occupied the upper floors, and the warehouses too...

Keep in revolutionary step!
2007-10-29 19:30:00
Keep in revolutionary step!V. Zhabsky, 1975 This is a poster from the seventies – and to my mind this is not the best graphical work of soviet poster heritage. But it is certainly worth mentioning because of its distinctive style. The slogan says: “Keep in revolutionary step!” This is a quote from The Twelve (1918) poem by Alexander Blok (1880-1921) – one of the best poets of Russia, known by his outstanding talent and innovative poetic styles. The poem continues: Keep in revolutionary step!The restless enemy in on alert!Comrade, hold the rifle tight, don’t fear!Let’s send a bullet in the Saint Russia!Moth-eaten, backward, fatassed! The poem was one of the first poetic responses to the October Revolution of 1917. Here is an extract from Wikipedia: “The poem describes the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The mood of the...
More About: Step , Revolutionary

Heavy washing
2007-10-26 16:42:00
Go to banya after working hoursUnknown artist, 1932 Bid them wash their faces,And keep their teeth clean. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Coriolanus Russians always liked bathing in banyas, which is a traditional Russian steam bath. It is quite similar to Finnish sauna, but not as hot. Usually it has three rooms – a steam room, a washing room and a lounge. In the steam room people not only perspire heavily in hot temperature and high humidity, they also slap each other with tied branches of white birch, which massages the body, increases blood circulation and therefore is quite pleasing. But banyas were not only about personal hygiene. The lounge place in banyas was usually a club, where men were chatting, drinking light beverages and resting - much like in the Roman Empire. In the Soviet times banyas remained but the quality of bathing services was significantly decreased – now they were mainly about washing oneself. This poster is a social artwork, which...
More About: Heavy , Washing

I broke the traffic code
2007-10-25 16:33:00
I broke the traffic codeUnknown artist, 1939 The poster shows a man with an inscribed red Russian letter “Я”, meaning personal pronoun “I” in Russian. The man is on crutches as his leg is lacking. This is why the letter “Я” doesn’t have a lower stroke, symbolizing that the man’s body is incomplete as well as his “self”. Obviously this is due to a traffic accident caused by violation of the traffic code. Actually the man should be happy because in this traffic accident no one was killed or seriously injured except for himself. The traffic code in Soviet times was always quite strict so in case of life losses the liability of the culprit was easily changed from administrative to criminal, with a high chance of imprisonment after investigation and trial.Buy vintage car posters at allposters:Buy Posters at AllPosters.com
More About: Traffic , Code

Better to feed one cat, than many mice
2007-10-24 19:36:00
Bread for Motherland!V. Kononov, 1978 In 1970 the new Five Year was being drafted in the same manner as the previous ones. But the worker’s riots at Gdansk Shipyard made the Soviet Government change its plans. The Prague Spring events and their dreadful political consequences when Soviet tanks suppress the anti-Soviet movements in Czechoslovakia were still fresh in the memory. To prevent the possible social distress Brezhnev decided to increase the production of consumer goods and foodstuff. Where to find the money to fund the undeveloped consumer goods industry and agriculture? The budget was dominated by huge military expenses, heavy industry investments and aid for the third world countries. These were the items no one dared cutting, although they were killing the economy. So the export of raw materials like oil and diamonds was increased. The money was being spent on direct purchasing of grain and other products abroad, but not for development of domestic agriculture. The m...
More About: Mice , Feed

More articles from this author:
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