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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 39 (SPotW39)

6/8/2017

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Unidentified artist, we won. Under the name of Stalin we will win!, 1941

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Unidentified artist, we won. Under the name of Stalin we will win! (с именеи Сталина мы побеждали. с именеи Сталина мы победии!), 1941
It was relatively uncommon for Stalin to be depicted in propaganda posters with any form of enemy, and even more uncommon for him to be pictured alongside any kind of brutality.


The Great Patriotic War (Second World War) was cruel and the Soviet people suffered harshly under German occupation. The propaganda of the preceding decades, which emphasised the unity of the working classes around the world and their shared goals and interests, had been largely successful, and some of the Russian soldiers saw the war as an opportunity to reach out to the working classes of other less fortunate nations.


Well-known Russian writer Ilia Ehrenburg* recalled that the Russian people did not initially have any hatred for the German soldiers:

‘The men defending Smolensk or Briansk repeated what they had heard first at school and later at political meetings, or read in the newspapers: in Germany the working class was strong, it was a leading industrial country; true, the fascists, supported by the Ruhr magnates and the social-traitors, had seized power, but the German people were in opposition and were carrying on the struggle. “Naturally,” the Red Army men said, “the officers are fascists, and of course there must be misguided men among the rank and file, but millions of soldiers advance only because otherwise they’d be shot”.’
Ehrenburg recalls feeling enraged when gunners on the front line refused to shell a highway when commanded to do so. One of the gunners explained:
‘“We can’t just shell the road and then retreat. We must let the Germans approach and try to explain to them it’s time for them to come to their senses and rise against Hitler, and that we’ll help them to do it”. The others feelingly supported him. A young and intelligent looking artillery man said: “Who are we shooting? Workers and peasants. They think we’re against them, we don’t leave them any choice”.’
Terrible atrocities committed by German troops on Russian soil, a series of punishing defeats, and a concerted propaganda campaign with highly emotive images that highlighted the risk to women and children under German occupation, turned this pacifist attitude on its head, and troops were encouraged to fight savagely in order to win the war.


Many of the posters of the time (in which Stalin’s image does not appear) focus on fear, brutality and German atrocities, as well as depicting the enemy as subhuman or vermin.


In these most desperate years of the war, a few posters contained both an image of Stalin and an image of the hated enemy.

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A silhouette of Stalin on a red banner motivates and protects the troops as they go into war.
A simple war poster of 1941 by an unidentified artist, published in Leningrad in an edition of 25,000, is dominated by a large diagonal banner on which Stalin’s profile appears only in white outline silhouette.


Beneath Stalin’s head, the words ‘Under the name of Stalin we won. Under the name of Stalin we will win!’ separate his faint image from the battle scene below. This caption refers to Stalin’s earlier victory at Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad) in the Civil War in order to legitimate his leadership and rally the troops in the current conflict.

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Aircraft accompany a large Soviet tank that crushes the verminous Nazi enemy during the Great Patriotic War.
The crude graphic shows two aircraft above a Soviet tank that is crushing the enemy beneath it. The enemy is depicted in cartoon fashion as a skull in a helmet with long sharp-clawed paws protruding from the sleeves of its Nazi uniform — in both the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War, the enemy was often depicted with animal characteristics so as to highlight either the danger posed by the enemy, or its vermin-like, subhuman qualities. Alternately, the enemy could also be depicted in cartoon-fashion as cowardly and ridiculous.


*Men, years — life, vol. 5, The war: 1941–45, Tatiana Shebunina & Yvonne Kapp (trans.), London, MacGibbon and Kee, 1964, pp. 26-28.

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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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