Sunday, August 26, 2007

All men are created equal...

Say “No to Fascism!”
V. Koretsky, Year Unknown

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.

Abraham Lincoln
Letter to longtime friend Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)

The topic of fascism was frequently taken up in the soviet poster art after WW2. No surprise, the victorious Soviet Union could not tolerate this ideology based on suppressing ethnical and racial social groups. But unfortunately some of the actions of the soviet political leaders could be considered fascist in essence. Lenin being a revolutionary idealist of some sort did think that the leaders of national minorities should be picked out in their communities, as they really understood the needs of their fellow citizens. Stalin on the contrary thought that the power should be consolidated in his own hands, so all the officials had to obey his orders only.

After the war great many people from the occupied territories were deported to new places so that no nationalist and separatist movements could show up. These were thousands of Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, Ukrainians, Chechens, Kalmyks, Volga Germans, Tatars, Ingushes and Russians as well.

During the War Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up. It was organizing political and material support for the Soviet fight against Nazis and played significant role in forging of victory. After the war JAFC became the center of national unification and put forward the idea to create a Jewish autonomy in Crimea or on Volga. Immediately JAFC was called a “Jewish proamerican conspiracy” and very soon its leader Solomon Mikhoels – a famous Soviet Jewish actor, died in car crash framed up by the MGB (a predecessor of the KGB). Other members of the Committee were arrested and convicted. This started the anti-Semitic policy in the Soviet Union.

5 comments:

sofia martina said...

Los afiches son maravillosos felicitaciones por la idea de recopilarlos y compartirlos.

Sofía
Buenos Aires
Argentina

Wonderfull tanks for share them with us. Congratulations!

Anonymous said...

Is there a higher resolution version of this poster? Can prints be ordered somewhere?

Alexander Zakharov said...

Konstantin, yes a great deal of those posters will be available though my web-store in quality prints. This will be in about a month, i suppose. Meanwhile you can check the e-bay banner on the main page.

Thanks for coming!

Anonymous said...

Is there any progress on the poster store? I couldn't find that poster on any poster shop in the internet, not even at russian websites (plakat.ru, for example).

Alexander Zakharov said...

Dear Konstantin!

To my greatest disappoitment this very poster is not available in any of the poster stores i know.

As for my own online-store, it takes quite a time to recieve Merchant account since Paypal does not work with Russia. So i can hardly tell when it will be online. I am negotiating with several galleries, which could handle payments and shipping. But it takes time ;)

So for now, the best option is to check allposter.com on the main page of my blog and browse through their selection of Soviet posters.

Sorry, i didn't help you in this. And thanks for coming!