The C.P.S.U. — the vanguard of the perestroika
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling political party in the Soviet Union. It emerged in 1912 as the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. C.P.S.U. started the October Revolution, which led to the establishment of a communist state in Russia. The party was dissolved in 1991, at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union.
This poster was designed in the 80s. It welcomes the decisions made during the 27th C.P.S.U. convention. The history of Russia was spinning rapidly at that time, probably being tired of 18 very quiet years of Brezhnev’s ruling called “Stagnation”. In 1982 the General Secretary of the Party - Leonid Brezhnev died at the age of 76. He was replaced by Yuri Andropov, who passed away only after 15 months of being the head of C.P.S.U. Then Konstantin Chernenko came to power, but also died soon – after 13 months. All those deaths were not deliberate. The government officials were just too old – Chernenko 73, Andropov 70.
In 1985 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was elected – he was considered to be a «young» politician, being only 55. In 1986 the 27th C.P.S.U. convention was opened. During this event Gorbachev announced several paramount decisions. One of them was that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. This was called “perestroika” – “restructuring”, and was enthusiastically welcomed by the people. However the economical measures taken involved complete destruction of old economical relations, illegal privatizing of state property and waves of corruption and crime. It took more than 15 years for the country to cure itself.
4 comments:
Such a great typography. And the bold red/white colour scheme makes it extremely powerful.
Interesting blog you've got here - great job!
inspirationbit
Thanks, the topic is very tempting indeed. I've got stacks of soviet poster masterpieces to contemplate, so i guess it's going to be even better soon. ;)
I am most interested in the "cut along the dotted lines" theme -- there are even some otherwise unmotivated decorative borders in the lower right. Is there thematic justification for this, or it it just a case of a bored graphic designer?
I tried to investigate the matter, while writing the article, but of no avail.
This could be two options, i suppose:
This is a page from an illustrated magazine, and many soviet citizens were decorating their houses with press-cuttings like these. So, the dotted lines with scissors were to mark the cutting lines, in case the free space was insufficient.
Or it could be a poster printed in large quantities and sent to party offices for hanging in official places. Could be but unlikely, as usually it was the uniformity which rulled the official propaganda: the layout was approved by party officials, all alterations prohibited.
So, i think this was a magazine print after all.
Post a Comment