Unknown, 1952 This 1952 poster by an unknown artist highlights the treatment of Stalin as an icon. A huge military portrait of Stalin is wreathed in fruit and flowers and appears to be part of a parade on a Soviet holiday. Red banners swirl behind the portrait and it appears that a sea of banner-bearing children is marching forward. Of the eight children in front of the portrait, seven are in a variety of national costumes of the republics of the USSR, while the young boy in the check shirt at front left is of uncertain origin, most likely African or African-American. Negro characters had appeared in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary literature, often as figures from an exotic continent where injustice and peril reign and, from 1920 onwards, dark-skinned people appeared in Moscow and Petrograd as delegates to the many congresses of the Comintern and Profintern, and as workers from the United States seeking employment during the Depression years. Stalinist literature and propaganda presented negroes as victims of poor conditions and of racism, with the USSR the champion of equality, with this intensifying after the Great Patriotic War as relations with America deteriorated.* The children in the poster crowd in front of the processional icon, posing informally and smiling for the camera. These children, relaxed and at leisure, are in marked contrast to those in the other posters of this time who are engaged in study or oath-taking ceremonies. Here, Stalin is a symbol of the opportunities for happiness and fulfilment offered by the Soviet Union, and a champion of racial equality on a global scale. Despite the casual atmosphere where children are involved, Stalin is even more remote and god-like than ever. The poster has no caption and was published in an edition of only 300, and its purpose is unclear. Propaganda posters that overtly thanked Stalin for a happy childhood operated on several levels in Stalin’s personality cult. On one level, they appealed to children and instructed them in appropriate behaviour and attitude towards the leader. By depicting Stalin increasingly as a mythical and iconic figure, children were further encouraged to an attitude of unquestioning obedience and spiritual faith that filled the vacuum left by the suppression of the Orthodox religion in Soviet society. After the Great Patriotic War and in the last few years of Stalin’s life, the emphasis in propaganda moved from depicting Stalin as an earthly father who was intimately concerned with the everyday problems of the citizenry, to a remote and god-like image of the leader in which he was the saviour of the USSR, the Eastern bloc and, ultimately, the whole world. He thus became a sort of spiritual father to whom one prayed and sent tribute from afar. *Bogdanov, K., (2015), ‘“Negroes” in the USSR. The Ethnography of an Imaginary Diaspora’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, Transl. by Cleminson, R., 11, 97-134
1 Comment
Gene
29/10/2017 18:10:54
And naturally the child who is presumably ethnic Russian (which of course Stalin himself was not) is at the center of the poster directly under the Great Helmsman, symbolizing the leading role of the great Russian people in the march toward world communism. Also, the Chinese girl to the Russian boy's left, leaning into him and looking at him in awe, would seem to symbolize the USSR's role as "big brother" to new communist China, whose revolution took place a mere three years earlier.
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Dr Anita PischAnita’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. Archives
April 2019
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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 |
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 |