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stalin poster of the week

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This blog was first published on the properganderpress website https://properganderpressblog.wordpress.com/category/stalin-poster-of-the-week/

Stalin poster of the week 17 (SPotW17)

26/3/2017

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Marina Volkova and Natalia Pinus, Long Live the Equal-Rights Woman in the USSR, an Active Participant in the Administration of the Nation’s State, Economic, and Cultural Affairs!, 1938

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Marina Volkova and Natalia Pinus (Марина Волкова и Наталья Пинус), Long Live the Equal-Rights Woman in the USSR, an Active Participant in the Administration of the Nation’s State, Economic, and Cultural Affairs! (да здравствует равноправная женщина СССР! активная участница в управлении государством, хозяйствеными, и культурными делами страны!) ,1938
The 1938 poster, ‘Long live the equal-rights woman in the USSR, an active participant in the administration of the nation’s state, economic, and cultural affairs!’ was created by two well-established female poster artists, Marina Volkova and Natalia Pinus.


Although the subject of the poster is the new equality of women, as evidenced by high-flying women achievers in state, economic and cultural affairs, it is the figure of Stalin that dominates the poster, occupying two-thirds of the space, engulfed in a sea of holy and revolutionary red.

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Although this poster is about Soviet women, Stalin occupies two-thirds of the picture plane
The colour red is specifically associated with icons, where it often forms a background colour and represents youth, beauty and eternal life and, in posters, it imbues the figures it surrounds with an aura of sacrality.


The ‘woman delegate’ became something of an archetype in Soviet painting during the mid-1930s. Almost all Soviet delegates were women, and this was part of a trend in which the image of the female came increasingly to represent the stereotypic ‘Soviet citizen’ in visual culture and women were depicted in propaganda and the media submitting to authority figures, learning, and expressing gratitude.


The colour palette of the poster, the use of tone and the flat, stylised image of Stalin, all echo the Russian Orthodox icon. Like a holy personage, Stalin is the source of light in the poster. Dressed in white, with gold tones, he casts a golden hue over the entire poster, including the faces of the young women.

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The young female delegates are bathed in Stalin’s golden light
The familiar shape of the Spassky tower of the Moscow Kremlin is silhouetted in Stalin’s golden light, rising into empty space to his right, the spire topped with a red star echoes his upraised arm and gesturing golden hand and forms a sort of Soviet house of worship or sacred site.


This poster is manifestly about the new order and the new creation. The new order is symbolised by the sea of red flags on either side of the women, and also by the Kremlin.

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This serious young parachutist does not engage the viewer, looking instead to the imminent utopian future
It is particularly manifest in the army of modern, professional young women, their ranks receding into the background. Though slim and attractive, there is nothing coy or frivolous about these women. They are allowed, at best, an ambiguous half-smile, and the focus is on their eyes, which do not engage the viewer, but look out of the picture and around the viewer, to the imminent future.


The woman in blue is a parachutist, literally accessing the heavens under the new order. Stalin points upward and out of the picture frame, to the heaven-on-earth of the communist utopia.


This poster visually references the colour, tonal qualities and stylised imagery of the Russian Orthodox icon, a visual language with which the Soviet population were familiar, and encourages a subconscious spiritual response to the poster.

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    Dr Anita Pisch

    Anita’s new, fully illustrated book, The personality cult of Stalin in Soviet posters, 1929 -1953, published by ANU Press, is available for free download here, and can also be purchased in hard copy from ANU Press.

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BLOG ARCHIVE - STALIN POSTER OF THE WEEK
SPotW1 Toidze 1947
SPotW2 Klutsis 1930
SPotW3 Chronicle 1938
SPotW4 Podobedov 1940
SPotW5
Deni 1930
SPotW6 Klutsis 1933
SPotW7 Efimov 1933
SPotW8 Govorkov 1936
SPotW9 Koretskii 1949
SPotW10
Foreign policy 1940
SPotW11 Pravdin 1950
SPotW12 Karpovskii 1948
SPotW13 Mizin 1934
SPotW14 Klutsis 1931
SPotW15
Koretskii 1943
SPotW16 I.V. Stalin 1930
SPotW17 Volkova/Pinus 1938
SPotW18 Toidze 1941
SPotW19 Stalin's affection 1949
SPotW20 Berezovskii 1947


SPotW21 50 Years 1929
SPotW22 Petrov 1948
SPotW23 Arakelov 1939
SPotW24 Ivanov 1952
SPotW25 Solomyanii 1952


SPotW26 Belopol'skii 1952
SPotW27 Kaidalov 1940
SPotW28 Mytnikov 1950
SPotW29 Yang 1938
SPotW30 Golub' 1950


SPotW31 Vorontsov 1951
SPotW32 Belopol'skii, 1951
SPotW33 Deni 1931
SPotW34 Madorskii 1938
SPotW35 Leader, teacher, friend 1941


SPotW36 Al'menov 1951
SPotW37 Deni 1937
SPotW38 Cheprakov 1941
SPotW39 Enemy, 1941
SPotW40 Zotov, 1934

SPotW41 Grinets 1937
SPotW42 Vatolina 1939
SPot
W43  Zhukov 1940
SPotW44 Fedotov 1943
SPotW45 Golub' 1949

SPotW46 Vatolina 1950
SPotW47 Solov'ev 1950
SPotW48 Mel'nikova 1951
SPotW49 Kokorekin 1951
SPotW50 Ivanov El'tsufen 1952

SPotW51 Unknown 1952
SPotW52 Klutsis 1932
SPotW53 Printing 1950
SPotW54 Lukhtein 1951
SPotW55 Toidze 1946

SPotW56 Litvinov 1949
SPotW57 Serov 1942
SPotW58 Pinchuk 1943
SPotW59 Petrov 1952
SPotW60 Podobedov 1939

SPotW61 Babitskii 1944
SPotW62 Pen Varlen 1942
SPotW63 Bayuskin 1942
SPotW64 Belopol'skii 1950
SPotW65 Belopol'skii 1952

SPotW 81 Koretskii 1950
SPotW 82 Pravdin 1950
SPotW83 Vatolina 1938
SPotW 84 Deni 1938
SPotW85 
Koretskii 1945


SPotW66 Dlugach 1933
SPotW67 Zhitomirskii 1942
SPotW68 Toidze 1949
SPotW69 Mikhailov 1937
SPotW70 Cheprakov 1939

SPotW 86 Kazantsev 1944
SPotW 87 Civil War 1938

SPotW 88 Kun 1937
SPotW 89 Spirit 1941
SPotW 90 Ryvkin 1939

SPotW71 Deni 1935
SPotW72 Deni 1935
SPotW73 Defence 1938
SPotW74 Elkin 1939
SPotW75 Zarnitskii

SPotW 91 Moor 1938
SPotW 92 Ivanov 1948
SPotW 93 Govorkov 1951
SPotW 94 Denisov 1941
SPotW 95 Ledby 1942

SPotW76 Toidze 1943
SPotW77 Futerfas 1936
SPotW78 Mukhin 1945
SPotW79 Golub' 1948
SPotW80 Karpovskii 1948

SPotW 96
SPotW 97
SPotW 98
SPotW 99
SPotW 100

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