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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Down with scamps, who harass women!

Down with scamps, who harass women!
K. Rotov, 1930

Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labor camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial.
Barbara Amiel

In the thirties industrialization required lots of labor force. Women were working with men side by side at heavy industry factories and works, where they could rarely be seen before the Revolution. There morals and manners were rough, so harassment of women at work became frequent.

The verse for this poster was written by Vladimir Mayakovsky:

Down with scamps, who harass women!
We will tighten up these studs with discipline!

This poster shows a bunch of hooligans who attacks a communist woman. She is pictured red (signifying here positiveness) as well as the giant hand, which protects her by squeezing the attackers in giant tongs of discipline. This is an illustration that it was the hard work that was not only building industry in the country, but also making people equal.

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I call architecture frozen music

The advertisement of GUM
V. Mayakovskiy, A. Rodchenko, 1923

Another classic constructivist poster. Again Mayakovsky wrote the rhymed text and Rodchenko did the graphics. The poster says: “Guests from cities, towns and villages, do not waste your soles on searching – go to GUM, where you’ll find everything – fast, neatly and cheap!”

This poster advertizes the GUM (Gosudarstvenniy Universalniy Magazin) – the State Universal Store in Moscow. GUM was a common name for the biggest department stores in the Soviet Union. The GUM in Moscow is actually a shopping mall with unique architecture.

Before the revolution the GUM building was known as the Upper Trading Rows. They were built in 1893 by Alexander Pomerantsev (responsible for architecture) and Vladimir Shukhov (responsible for engineering). Shukhov was an engineering genius – some compare him to Edison and Eifel. He developed practical calculations of stresses and deformations of beams, shells and membranes on elastic foundation, which allowed him to build the first Russian oil pipeline, various oil tanks and refineries. But he was most famous for his architectural projects including about 200 original towers (hyperboloid towers) all over the world, the most famous being the 160-meter-high Shukhov Tower in Moscow (1922); about 500 bridges; the Kievskiy Railway Station in Moscow (1912-17); several constructivist projects, designed in collaboration with another world-renown architect Konstantin Melnikov, notably the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage (1926-28) and Novo-Ryazanskaya Street Garage (1926-29).

The Upper Trading Rows received Sukhov’s trade-mark feature – the giant glass-roof. This is a firm construction made of over 819 tons of metal with a diameter of over 14 meters. Illumination is provided by huge arched skylights of iron and glass, each weighing some 820 tons and containing in excess of 20,000 panes of glass.

In 1928 Stalin turned the store into office building but right after his death in 1953 the building’s original function was restored. During the soviet times it was one of the main sources for consumer goods with queues long enough to quit the building and reach the Red Square. All visitors from all over the country had the same list of Moscow places of interest – the Mausoleum, the Bolshoi (the big) Theatre and the GUM.

This is my rifle

Work is essential, the rifle is near.
V. Lebedev, 1920

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist.

“Okna ROSTA” – “Satirical ROSTA Windows” is a series of posters created in 1919-1921 by a group of soviet artists, who worked for ROSTA or Russian Telegraph Agency, which was the first state news agency in the young soviet republic. In Russian ROSTA is not only an abbreviation but the word has a meaning of its own – ROSTA means growth, giving group’s name a forward-motion flavor.

Working for a news agency implies rapid reaction on the pressing issues on the telegraph tape, so ROSTA posters were always bright, satirical and topical. Often they were done in comics’ manner. The series of posters were created by hand, later replaced with stencil technique, hence 2-3 color scheme and clear-cut images. Stencil allowed the agency to print small quantities of posters (typical circulation was about 150) without publishing houses and additional expenses. After printing the fresh posters were displayed in shop-windows across Saint-Petersburg. That’s why the group had “Windows” in its name. This was a great means of communication and propaganda – few could read and afford newspapers at the same time, and due to the shortages everybody had to spend hours standing in shop-queues.

Okna ROSTA group housed a lot of talented and revolutionary artists and poets like Kazimir Malevich - the pioneer of geometric abstract art, Aristarkh Lentulov - a major avant-garde artist, Ilya Mashkov, Dmitry (Moor) Orlov, Alexander Rodchenko - one of the founders of constructivism movement. The variety of artists resulted in wide scope of techniques used.

The author of the cubist poster above is Vladimir Lebedev (1891—1967) – a famous soviet graphical artist. He was one of the founders of Okna ROSTA group, where he created about 500 posters. Vladimir Mayakovsky – the futurist poet of the Revolution wrote a rhythmic and energetic text: “Work is essential, the rifle is near”. The poster has two meanings: the worker should work hard now, but in case of emergency, he is ready to fight. And another one is that those soldiers who were making the Revolution, were to start working and put their rifles aside.

That's the way to advertise!

Read “Young Guard” Magazine
A. Rodchenko, V. Mayakovsky, 1924

This is another work by constructivist classic Alexander Rodchenko and soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. This is an advertisement which promotes “Young Guard” literary magazine. Russia was always a country where literary magazines (or “thick magazines”) were extremely popular due to fast publishing cycle, as some times it took years for a book to hit the stores.
Besides even the most remote libraries always had those magazines available.

In the early twenties “Young Guard” magazine was formed by members of “Young Guard” literary society. Its members were writing revolutionary articles and books as well as speaking in public promoting education and revolutionary values.

In the sixties and seventies the magazine was a symbol of stagnation, publishing conservative socialist-realism fiction and bad science-fiction stories.

But the name “Molodaya Gvardia” – “Young Guard” became well known in Russia because of the WW2, and it was not the magazine, which had set the stone rolling. During the war "Young Guard" - an underground anti-fascist organization formed by young Komsomol members from Ukrainian town Krasnodon were performing guerilla actions against occupation forces of Nazi Germany. They were betrayed, tortured and finally executed. After the war revolutionary writer Alexander Fadeyev wrote an exciting fiction book based on the event. The film followed. And finally the “Young Guard” heroic myth was born. A publishing house, a huge bookstore, a pioneer camp and numerous other facilities, goods and things were named “Young Guard”.

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Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Exhibition of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Works
Alexei Gan, 1931

I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
forever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!

An Extraordinary Adventure by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (pictured on the poster) is one of the most notable Russian poets of the yearly 20th century. He was a member of Russian Futurism movement and was constantly exploring the boundaries of poetry. His famous works include “Listen!”, “A Cloud in Trousers”, “My Soviet Passport”, “Left March!”, "Conversation with Comrade Lenin", “But could you?”.

The October revolution brought new trends not only in politics but also in art. Many artists worshiped Communism ideology, as it was so fresh and new, compared to contemporary art of the past. Very soon Mayakovsky became the poet of the revolution. His distinctive style was based on brisk and energetic verses which were ideal for propaganda.

In the twenties Mayakovsky was one of the few soviet artists who were allowed to travel freely, so his voyage across the world, including a trip to the USA, was a great inspiration for him. However in the late twenties Mayakovsky’s disappointment grew as the avant-garde movements in art were moved aside by socialist realism and Joseph Stalin’s cult of personality. The revolutionary values got buried under bureaucracy and formalism. All this along with a series of failures in his personal life led him to shooting himself in 1930. Later speculations arised that Mayakovsky was in fact murdered by Stalin’s order.

Mayakovsky’s poems were full of catch phrases which quickly became widely used. Even now almost 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union everybody recognizes his: “Say your word, comrade Mauser” (meaning shooting of a mauser gun) and “I pull out of my wide trouser-pockets duplicate of a priceless cargo. You know: read this and envy, I'm a citizen of the Soviet Union!” (people always modify the first verse like “I pull out something resembling a long cannon barrel.”)

During the soviet times popularity of Mayakovsky’s works was skyrocketing. In 1935 Stalin said: “Mayakovsky has always been the best, the most talented poet of the soviet era. It’s the indifference to his works and heritage, which is a crime.” This canonized Mayakovsky, entering his poems in all the school books of the country. And children still study his poems, because despite the communist propaganda, Mayakovsky’s works are bursting with energy and life.

This poster was created by Alexei Gan, a close friend of constructivism classic Alexander Rodchenko. In fact Alexei Gan was the man who introduced the term itself by publishing his book “Constructivism” in 1922. Gan’s life turned out to be as tragic as Mayakovsky’s. Although he was not subjected to Stalin’s repressions, the drinking habits which he desperately fought during his lifetime, finally undermined his health and brought him to the grave in 1940.

Dummies for all ages!

Never ever better dummies one can hold
Gonna suck them till I’m old.

Sold everywhere.
Resintrust.

Mayakovsky V. V., Rodchenko A. M., 1923

This is one of the masterpieces of the era – The Dummies Poster. It was created by Alexander Rodchenko, a brilliant photographer and graphic designer. He is most famous for being one of the founders and apologists of constructivism – an avant-garde art and architecture movement, which denies art for art’s sake and proclaims manufacturing practicability as the basis for creation.

The text was written by Vladimir Mayakovsky – a talented Russian poet, who was one of the most notable representatives of early Futurism. Futurism is all about future – denying past and present, worshiping shoots of aftertime in our lives. Futurists of the early 20^th century were discovering new means of self-expression, new techniques and methods to impress, to strike, to startle. In Russian the verse on the poster sounds vigorously and brisk – an unusual way to advertise baby products.

Those two talents worked together in 1923-1928 when Soviet Republic was recovering from WW1 and the Civil War. That period of history was very unstable as the Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921 and other global resistance actions by workers and peasants, provoked by rough communist regime, were destabilizing the country. Famine and shortages were everywhere, unemployment was severe, those who were lucky to have jobs did not care about their duties as it was impossible to convert the pay into goods.

The Communist Party and Vladimir Lenin were forced to give the people a break. The communist ideology remained but small businesses were allowed under control of the state. Farmers could save and trade part of their yield, which was a substantial advantage over War Communism years, when they were forced to give away every single grain – leaving no reserve for seeding. This was the beginning of New Economic Policy (NEP).

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