From Russia with Love

Intourist. Transsiberian express
M. Litvak, 1930

Here is a great example of the advertising posters of the thirties. This one is aimed at foreign audience as it is promoting the Transsiberian Express journey.

The poster shows a curved surface of the Earth with symbols of Moscow and Beijing shown: to the left there are Kremlin towers and a dome of Saint Basil's Cathedral. Moscow is the starting point of the Transsiberian Railway. Its four routes nowadays lead to Vladivostok – the largest of the Eastern Russian Cities (6430 km from Moscow), to North Korea, Mongolia and China arriving at Beijing. On the poster this is signified by the Chinese pagoda and Shinto shrine gate – torii, meaning that this is also an easy way to get to Japan.

The poster is very dynamic – the train is moving fast through the red star gate, gate to the communist Russia. The header sais: “Transsiberian Express! The shortest way from Europe to the Far East”. The footer goes: “Intourist. Moscow. Hotel Metropol. The tickets in all major travelling agencies of the West”. Intourist was the official state travel agency of Soviet Union, founded in 1929, after the Soviet Union had been recognized by the majority of the Western States.

The cars have signs, which prove the high class of the long journey – the train has sleeping cars and dining cars as well. Below the train there are the names of the cities like Berlin, Moscow and finally Beijing. The Earth also has the price tag displayed. The first class 12 day journey costs 250 USD – which was quite a reasonable price bearing in mind the Great Depression of 1929.

But why German is the language of the poster? The thing was that according to the Treaty of Versailles Germany’s rights had been significantly derogated, especially in terms of weapons development and manufacturing. So Germany was looking for partners who could help it restore its military potential after the loss of WW1. In contravention to the Treaty Junkers (a German aircraft builder) was assembling its plains near Moscow and Krupp was building artillery works in the Central Asia. By 1929 Soviet Union had agreements with 27 German companies.

And in return the young Soviet Union, who was in bad need for modern technologies on its way to becoming an industrial power, received perfect training for its specialists. German professionals could have ample wages if travelled to Russia and shared their experience.

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The way machine sees us

The Eleventh
V. Stenberg, A. Stenberg, 1928

Laughing Man: You could put it like that, I suppose. "I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only I alone am able to see it"

Motoko: Dziga Vertov. He was a Russian film maker, wasn't he?

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Japanese cyberpunk anime television show

This a movie poster, which announces the famous documentary by Dziga Vertov. His actual name was Denis Kaufman, and he was one of the founders and main theorists of news-reel and documentary shooting.

This documentary was released in 1928, and was called “The Eleventh”, meaning the eleventh year after the October Revolution. Its main idea was to show the progress the young soviet state had achieved. The man on the poster is a grotesque image of Dziga Vertov himself. His eyeglasses reflect the agricultural and industrial machinery. This is an illustration of one of his main theories – that a true documentary is not about mere snap-shooting of life, but instead it is about life, run through the eyes of the observer, whoever he is - or whatever it is. Unlike other documentaries of that time this principle implied the distinctive presence of the protagonist in the movie, although he might not be shown directly or it might not be human at all.

This was a silent black and white documentary. But the cut was done in a way that illustrated the sounds of the machinery and other things shown. This was a staggering technique for the twenties and it did earn Dziga Vertov a wide international acclaim.

This constructivist poster done by Stenberg brothers is a masterpiece itself. The bold type on the left side says the name of the film: “The Eleventh”. Every eyeglass has also this name inscribed in. To the right there are the credits: “Author-Director Dziga Vertov Chief Cameraman Kaufman”. The Chief Cameraman Kaufman was Dziga Vertov’s brother – Mikhail, who was also a noted film maker. There was also another brilliant cinematographer in this family: the third brother Boris, together with parents, moved to Poland after the Revolution. In 1954 he won Oscar and Golden Globe for the first American feature film On the Waterfront, but he never had a chance to meet his brothers after 1917.

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You say you wanna revolution

90^th Anniversary of the October Revolution
Bukheevy, 2007

Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
Revolution by John Lennon, The Beatles

Today is the 90th Anniversary of the October Revolution. This was a milestone event in the history of Russia, and of course there were hundreds of posters created to commemorate and outline its features and consequences. Later I’ll be featuring them here.

But today I would like to show a poster which is definitely not a Soviet artwork. The style is different, and the release date also speaks for itself – this is a modern poster of the year 2007.

This poster is almost unartful, it has got very simple typographics, but, boy, has it got the idea!

The background is a modern Flag of Russia. It consists of three color fields – the white, the blue and the red. According to Wikipedia there are several meanings of these colors. The Flag may reflect the Russian social system under the monarchy: white represents God, blue the Tsar and red the peasants. Another very common interpretation is the association of colors with the main parts of the Russian Empire: white thus represents Belarus ("White Russia"), blue Ukraine (or Malorossia, "Little Russia"), and red "Great Russia". Note that Belarus and Ukraine are independent countries now (Before the Revolution they were part of the Russian Empire and later part of the Soviet Union). Back to the Flag. A different interpretation associates white with the bright future (where the color itself is associated with brightness, while its placement at the top - with future); blue with clouded present, and red with bloody past. These versions are not commonly known to everybody nowadays, and it is only the association between the red color and the Soviet Red Flag, which is recognized by majority of Russians.

So the authors add Hammer and Sickle to the red field turning it into a small Red Flag of the Soviet Union, symbolizing that although modern Russia does not resemble the old times, it still has the the 74 soviet years embedded into its history. The foundation of the economy, the superpower heritage (although acquired through numerous losses and hardships), the great Victory – and most importantly the lives of fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers – all this goes back to the Soviet times. Which were originated from the October Revolution of 1917.

From the craddle

“Soviet Posters in France” Art Exhibition
A. Yakushin, 1974

In Russian a poster is called “плакат”, or placard. The word itself originates from the verb “plaquer” – to stick, or to glue in French.

France played the main role in development of poster styles in the 19th century. Such outstanding artists as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were creating posters which had much more art than advertising, ideology or communication in them.

In the Soviet Union this high-quality approach to posters was brought to the new level. The posters were on the forefront of official art. And of course the Government was using them to promote communism values and Soviet style abroad.

The poster above is announcing the Exhibition of Soviet Posters, which took place in Paris, France in November 1974-January 1975. The venue was the biggest art gallery and museum in the world – The Louvre.

The poster which promotes poster exhibition should have been of the highest graphical quality. And it was indeed. The graphics are laconic, symbolical and brilliant: the Red Star forms the flat background, blending together with a three dimensional image of Hammer and Sickle. Hammer and Sickle is aimed upward as if being held by The Worker and Kolhoz Woman sculpture, thus adding emotion and movement to the artwork. Note the hatching and the shades of the Hammer and Sickle – they are in perfect line with the geometrical simplicity of the red pentagram.

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The people's Army

Workers' and Peasants' Red Army
15 anniversary Art Exhibition
A. Deyneka, 1933

From wild forest to the British seas - Red Army is the mightiest!"
One of the famous revolutionary marches of the Civil War

This is an art exhibition poster devoted to the Soviet Red Army. The exhibits included paintings, graphics, sculpture, textile works related to the events the Red Army took part into – the Civil War, World War 1, Soviet-Polish War.

The Council of People's Commissars set up the Red Army by a Decree on January 28, 1918. In the 1918 the Red Army was quite democratic. The Army was based on the Red Guards which consisted of workers. At that time anybody could enlist, so the army contingent soon got very diverse. The discipline was weak and the orders were carried out according to its “Revolutionary significance”. The very idea of army hierarchy and strict obedience was considered to be bourgeois, and therefore contradicted with Communism.

All this did not help to fight the enemies of the Soviet Union, so in short time the original tsar’s army system was restored. Many of the pre-revolution military specialists were drafted to make the Russian Army a professional and effective force.

After coping with the most acute problems like intervention of Entente and offensives of the Whites, the ranks were combed-out thoroughly, leaving only the representatives of Workers’ and Peasants’ classes in the Red Army. Being a military man signified one’s political loyalty and devotion to communist ideals. The Soviet Union was a state of Workers and Peasants, so the Red Army was the people’s army.

The poster above was created by Alexander Deyneka – a brilliant and impressive artist. He was famous of his patriotic and battle-paintings. Here is one of his masterpieces named “Defense of Sevastopol”.

On this Red Army poster he pictured two soldier’s heads in helmets. The style is simple, and the face expressions are plain. They are determined and open, truly men of the people.

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Monumental Power!

Moscow is the capital of the USSR
El Lissitzky, 1940

What an absolutely brilliant poster it is! It was created by El Lissitzky, who was one of the originators of Suprematism movement along with Kazimir Malevich. Lissitzky’s genius was versatile, as during his life time he managed to work and explore the boundaries of art in graphics design, photography, architecture, typographics using a wide range of techniques and methods. Here is his “Beat the Whites with Red Wedge” masterpiece.

This very poster has a quotation of Vyacheslav Molotov – one of the leading soviet politicians and diplomats of the Stalin era. He managed to live through repressions of the thirties, late forties and fifties and was dismissed from Politburo only in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death. He is most known for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Soviet Union and Germany in 1939, which not only declared non-aggression between the two countries, but also contained the secret protocols, which stipulated division of several independent countries of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania between Soviet Union and Germany.

Despite the Pact, Soviet Union was quite aware of the Nazi Germany’s plans to invade the country – after crushing France and invading Denmark and Norway the attack on the Soviets was obvious.

So the quote says: “Look how peacefully the five point stars of Kremlin glow! Look how far its clear light shines!
…But in case of armed assault on the Soviet Union the offender will experience not only all the iron might of our self-defense but also the power of ruby stars, which glare well beyond the boundaries of our Motherland”.

The photomontage poster shows a Kremlin panorama with the accented Red Stars on its towers. The perspective has nothing to do with the real map of Moscow. Marching people are holding red stars and Stalin’s pictures. The foreground is occupied by a giant statue of a man holding a red star in a heroic gesture.

This is a statue from the Soviet Union’s exposition at the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940. Russian pavilion and the statue at the entrance was designed by Boris Iofan – a Soviet architect, who was most known for his project of Palace of Soviets – an enormous building, which was to be erected at the place of Cathedral of Christ the Savior, demolished by Bolsheviks.

All the symbols on the poster make sense – the Red stars, being the symbol of Communism, are embedded into the heart of Soviet Union, which is Moscow. They belong here, but the proud Soviets are carrying their light abroad – and the statue, which for two years had been displayed in New York at the Fair, signifies it. All celebrates the greatness of the Soviet Union.

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Nowhere but in Mosselprom!

Nowhere but in Mosselprom
A. Rodchenko, V. Mayakovsky, 1925

This is one of the most significant Soviet advertising posters ever. This is a result of a collaboration between Vladimir Maykovsky – who was the most noted poet of the twenties, and Alexander Rodchenko – one of the founders of Constructivism movement. Together they created many works for Mosselprom, including not only graphics and slogans, but also advertising concepts along with promotion techniques unique for the time.

Mosselprom was a huge trust, which united flour-grinding, confectionary, chocolate, beer and tobacco factories. It was situated in a big house (pictured on the poster), which was one of the highest buildings in Moscow. The eleven-storey building was constructed before the revolution, but a part of it collapsed in 1913 due to flaws in building technology. The Bolsheviks restored it completely and gave it to Mosselprom. The administration of the trust occupied the upper floors, and the warehouses took the basement and the lower floors. The entrance to the wholesale warehouses was at the back.

By 1925 Mayakovsky was writing slogans for a great deal of Mosselprom’s products and Mosselprom itself. “Nowhere but in Mosselprom” phrase was brilliant, as many products were scare, so every customer knew where to look for in the first place. Mayakovsky and Rodchenko didn’t stop with that. They created the design for the Mosselprom building. This was a great idea, because all the shop owners were coming to wholesale depot in the building and saw the impressive artwork there. This was not an ordinary building graphics – the slogans and the color patterns were functional and attractive at the same time utilizing the building structure to make the impression. The products were grouped to form catchphrases thus making them better for memorizing like: “Beer-water” (meaning soda water), “Yeast-cigarettes”, “With Yeast – growing by leaps and bounds”, “Cigarettes – light smoke”, “Milk and beer “Stomach friend” and some others. The bright building remained for the next 10 years. Mosselprom was dismissed in 1937 and the building became an ordinary block-of-flats. Amazingly, in 1997 the original graphics were completely restored. Here are a couple of pictures: the front, the back – one and two.

The conception of making an advertising campaign which was absolutely functional on the one hand, and implied as many means of advertising as available on the other, was mind-blowing. Every part of it was carefully thought of, which was a great difference from the common advertising practice of the time. The result is evident: a great many of the Mosselprom slogans are well known ever since although Mosselprom and its brands vanished long ago.

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