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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 72 (SPotW72)

25/3/2018

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Viktor Deni and Nikolai Dolgorukov, We’ve got a Metro!, 1935

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Viktor Deni and Nikolai Dolgorukov (Виктор Дени и Николай Долгоруков), We’ve got a Metro! (есть метро!), 1935

Following on from last week’s poster (SPotW71), this poster, once again by graphic duo Viktor Deni and Nikolai Dolgorukov, employs the same caption and addresses the same theme – the opening of the newly built Metro in Moscow.


The poster uses some of the same photographic components as the other poster on this theme, but here places more emphasis on the commuters than on images of the Metro itself.


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Lazar Kaganovich may have been the designer and chief engineer on the Metro project, but it is Stalin who must be thanked first

Stalin is brought down from the top of the poster and into the picture plane with Lazar Kaganovich, designer and chief builder of the Metro, and the other commuters. However, Stalin is pictured as larger than Kaganovich, and walks slightly ahead, indicating his preeminent place in the hierarchy of obligation.


Despite the fact that the building of the Metro had been achieved only through the almost superhuman efforts of the workers involved, including large numbers of volunteers, the Metro was presented as a gift to the people from the State, with Stalin presented as the ultimate benefactor of the Soviet population.


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The underground tunnels were an exceptional feat of Soviet engineering, executed with the help of volunteer labour.

The Metro stations were both a triumph of Soviet construction, and a form of cultural palace for the common people, bringing both convenience and beauty into everyday life.


Metro stations are large, lavish, and ornate, with marble walls, sculptures, mosaics, and enormous chandeliers.


The stations were designed to inspire awe, and to make tangible to the ordinary citizen the monumental achievements of the Soviet Union under Stalin.


As Kaganovich,  said in 1935, the Metro “went far beyond . . . the typical understanding of a technological construction. Our metropolitan is a symbol of the new socialist society being built.”


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Maiakovskii Metro Station. CC image by Szabolcs Vörös, Columns at Moscow metro’s Mayakovskaya station, 1 August 2014, 17:01:02

In ‘A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization’,* Andrew Jenks describes the overall effect of one of the most beautiful of the Metro stations, named for the poet Vladimir Maiakovskiĭ:

In 1938 the chief artist for Moscow’s Mayakovski metro station urged Muscovites, “Raise your head, citizens, and you will see the sky.” Forty meters below the surface, Soviets would find images “preparing them for labor and defense.” Nearly three dozen cupolas crowned the top of a 155-meter-long platform dressed in stainless steel, Stalin’s favorite material. Each tile mosaic showed idealized scenes from a day in Soviet life: blast furnaces belched flames and carbon gases into the night sky, Red Army planes rumbled in formation, lithe athletes leaped into action, a parachutist tumbled down toward the viewer. To see the mosaics a passenger had to stand directly underneath them and gaze skyward. Heads permanently cocked back and eyes fixed on a heaven of Soviet power: this was the preferred pose for a citizen in Stalinist society, a pose inscribed in the design of the Moscow metro.


The electrification of the system and stations, always highlighted in Soviet propaganda on industrialisation, was very technologically advanced for its time – “Soviet lighting would outshine London’s, 50 lux to 24 lux.”**


The stations were also designed to promote the socialist message through the creation of a sacred Soviet space that induced reverence. Jenks likens the atmosphere to that of a church: “Ornamental elements helped transform the first line’s thirteen stations into a working Bolshevik church of modernity, offering Soviet communion on every ride.”***



Although Metro stations were named after several deceased heroic figures, Stalin was the only living man in Soviet history to have a Metro station named after him.


*Andrew Jenks. ‘A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization.’ Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4, Oct., 2000, pp. 697-724, p.699.
**Andrew Jenks. ‘A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization.’ Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4, Oct., 2000, pp. 697-724, p.710.
***Andrew Jenks. ‘A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization.’ Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4, Oct., 2000, pp. 697-724, p.708.

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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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