One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

Glory to the explorers of space!
A. Leonov, A. Sokolov, 1971

This is a remarkable poster, a result of collaboration between an artist Andrey Sokolov and a Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, who did the painting for this poster.

In 1965 he and Pavel Belyaev were launched on board of Voskhod-2 spaceship. During the flight Leonov became the first person to walk in space. The whole event took 12 minutes of being in open space, and was followed by an accident as due to spacesuit inflation Leonov couldn’t get into the airlock. He managed to keep cool and opened a valve, which drained some of the pressure, allowing him to get inside. Another accident happened at the landing – an automatic space orientation system failed, so they had to get back on manual controls. The landing was safe enough, although the touchdown happened in a far and uninhabited place in taiga - 180 km north of Perm. Due to severe weather conditions the cosmonauts had to spend two days there before being rescued. After this flight Leonov and Belyaev received the highest Soviet award – Hero of the Soviet Union for their personal courage.

Later in 1975 Leonov became the commander of the first joint flight of the US and Soviet Space Programs – the Apollo-Soyuz test project.

The space ship on the painting looks like a Soyuz 7K-OK spaceship. It is flying towards the space station, orbiting the Earth. The painting depicts the romantic intention popular among the soviet people – that all the promising results and space records combined with the very advanced socialist system would very soon pave wave to space for everybody. Why wouldn’t there be apple trees on Mars by 2015?

The Anniversary post!

This is the hundredth soviet poster covered in the blog so far. A kind of a small anniversary, it is. Four and a half month ago on July 12 I published the first poster “We strike the false shockworkers”. Since then many things happened: A Soviet Poster a Day was featured in “Beyond the Beyond” blog by Bruce Sterling on Wired, “The Daily Dish” by Andrew Sullivan, BoingBoing, “Blogs of Note” here on Blogger. I gave interviews to Yahoo.picks and Le Monde – one of the biggest newspapers in France. The blog turned out to be the second most popular English-speaking blog in Top-100 blogs about Russia with a Technorati rating of 534 (so far). Hurray!

I would like to say thanks for coming to everybody, I really appreciate your interest in Soviet art, your valuable comments and support. Thanks again! And there are hundreds of beautiful Soviet posters yet to cover. So it’s going to be fun! ;)

Check the astonishingly beautiful space images at allposters!

Man's power

Man’s power – to help the woman!
A . Rudkovich, 1970

Carrying on with the woman’s subject. Here is a nice social poster of the seventies devoted to elimination of spongers and parasites not only in the economy, but in private life of Soviet people as well. The forefront of the poster is occupied by a shadow image of a tiny woman bent under the housekeeping workload: the perambulator and a big bag with some food and goods in it. Actually, the times of deficit were never far away, and in the seventies Soviet people had to spend lots of time standing in queues after work. So working full time, nursing a baby and getting food for the family all in one day was a hard occupation indeed.

On the contrast the background shows a healthy and strong hand of a man, who is holding nothing but a standard domino bone, which is apparently very light. In the Soviet times dominoes were extremely popular – it was a game of ordinary working folk. The chess were too complicated, cards were usually gambling, and therefore played on bets giving it a criminal flavor, backgammon was played mainly by the Easterners – so dominoes ruled the yards near the newly built Khruschev’s blocks-of-flats, later named Khruscheby (“Khruschev” and “truschebi” (slums) merged together), factories at lunch times, and all other places, where Soviet men could cease working without aftermath. Homes were such places as well, so a great majority of women were heavily overworked compared to men. Obvious inequality, it is. And the socialism was declaring that both men and women were equal. Hence this poster.

Check these beautiful woman photos:

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.

Buy these vintage French posters at allposters here!

Keep in revolutionary step!

Keep in revolutionary step!
V. Zhabsky, 1975

This is a poster from the seventies – and to my mind this is not the best graphical work of soviet poster heritage. But it is certainly worth mentioning because of its distinctive style.

The slogan says: “Keep in revolutionary step!” This is a quote from The Twelve (1918) poem by Alexander Blok (1880-1921) – one of the best poets of Russia, known by his outstanding talent and innovative poetic styles. The poem continues:

Keep in revolutionary step!
The restless enemy in on alert!
Comrade, hold the rifle tight, don’t fear!
Let’s send a bullet in the Saint Russia!
Moth-eaten, backward, fatassed!

The poem was one of the first poetic responses to the October Revolution of 1917. Here is an extract from Wikipedia: “The poem describes the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The mood of the Twelve as conveyed by the poem oscillates from base and even sadistic aggression towards everything perceived bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, to strict discipline and sense of "revolutionary duty" [] In the last stanza of the poem, most controversially, a figure of Christ is seen in the snowstorm, heading the march of the Twelve.

The Twelve, with its "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language" (as the Encyclopedia Britannica termed it), promptly alienated Blok from a mass of his admirers. Accusations ranged from appallingly bad taste to servility before the new Bolshevik authorities and betraying his former ideals. On the other hand, most Bolsheviks scorned Blok's mysticism and asceticism and especially the mention of Christ”.

Indeed the poem was a shock when published. Although it did depict the revolutionary mood of the 1917 perfectly well, the Bolsheviks forced the author to replace the word Christ with a similar sounding Russian “Sailor” – thus killing the undertones. Nevertheless many of the words from The Twelve became popular catchphrases – like the one on this poster.

Another reference to the poem is the mosaic on the poster which is inlayed with an image of a Russian sailor with a Kalashnikov in his hands. The background has three revolutionary symbols – the Red Star, Hammer and Sickle and cruiser Aurora, which gave signal to the successful assault on the Winter Palace (residence of the Russian tsars), which was to be the last episode of the October Revolution.

Buy battle cruiser posters at allposters.com:

Better to feed one cat, than many mice

Bread for Motherland!
V. Kononov, 1978

In 1970 the new Five Year was being drafted in the same manner as the previous ones. But the worker’s riots at Gdansk Shipyard made the Soviet Government change its plans. The Prague Spring events and their dreadful political consequences when Soviet tanks suppress the anti-Soviet movements in Czechoslovakia were still fresh in the memory. To prevent the possible social distress Brezhnev decided to increase the production of consumer goods and foodstuff. Where to find the money to fund the undeveloped consumer goods industry and agriculture? The budget was dominated by huge military expenses, heavy industry investments and aid for the third world countries. These were the items no one dared cutting, although they were killing the economy.

So the export of raw materials like oil and diamonds was increased. The money was being spent on direct purchasing of grain and other products abroad, but not for development of domestic agriculture. The move may seem to be unreasonable, but it was not. Rather it has to be called short-sighted. The thing was that in the seventies return of investments in agriculture was negative due to the stagnated planning system. The diamond money would have sunk with no significant return.

So, the poster is ironic indeed: the artist was picturing a merry Soviet kolkhoznik, who was feeding the Motherland and got a sailor with a ship full of grain from the USA instead.

Buy beautiful grain posters at allposters:

Telling fish stories

Purity – to Seas!
V. Karakashev, L. Levshunova, 1973

Only the gamefish swims upstream,
But the sensible fish swims down.

Ogden Nash, When You Say That, Smile

Here is a social poster which relates to the United Nations Conference held in London in 1973. During the conference the New Directions in the Law of the Sea were introduced. They were to prevent the pollution of the seas by ships. From now on every ship no mater the home port, should have had a certificate, which proved that no mechanics, hull or anything else could pollute or harm the sea or its inhabitants. Before that tankers were just dumping hundreds of tons of waste and oil right into the neutral waters. Other major pollutants were the sea-based oil derricks.

The poster shows pink salmon or humpback salmon which is a species of anadromous fish in the salmon family. It is the smallest and most abundant of the Pacific salmon – making it quite popular in Russia because of its relative affordability. It is very sensitive to the quality of water it lives in. The interesting thing about pink salmon is that during the life time it lives in the salty water of seas and then comes to fresh river water for spawning. As most of the rivers flow into seas and may cause the pollution if poisoned, the choice of a poster symbol, which is familiar with both saltwater and freshwater habitats is quite smart. Another interesting thing is that during the migration in quest for the right place for spawning, pink salmon cover tens of miles upstream often jumping out of the water. This is why the fish is flying high on this poster.

Buy the Salmon posters at allposters!

Good Morning, Vietnam!

Vietnam Lives, Fights and Will Finally Win!
Suryaninov R., 1970

According to Geneva Accords which granted Indochina independence from France in 1954, Vietnam was partitioned into two states – the North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the South Vietnam. The Northern part has got the communists in power, and the Southern, which was to remain under temporary protectorate of France, was governed by political forces supported by the USA. The situation in the split country was far from peace and quiet. Between 1963 and 1967, South Vietnam was extremely unstable as no government could keep power for long. So in 1965, the USA with its president Lyndon Johnson made a fatal mistake of sending troops to South Vietnam to secure the country from the communist influence. The USA generals had very limited experience of guerrilla warfare in the jungle. Also the North Vietnamese partisans were armed with latest arms provided by Soviet Union and China, like loads of sturdy AK’s-47 and soviet aces on MIG-21 “Fishbed” jet fighters. In 1975 the South Vietnam regime fell and the country was united under the communist government. Of course in Russia this was considered to be the victory of Soviet arms over the Evil Empire of the USA.

The poster above celebrates the 25 anniversary of Democratic Republic of Vietnam proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in on September 2, 1945.

PS. I have just started another blog, which may be of some interest for you. It is totally devoted to Videos of Unusual Musical Instruments - like strange bongs, giant saxophones and every other thing which can sound in skillful hands. Hope you'll like it. ;)

Everybody goes to BAM!

Baikal-Amur Mainline is the construction project of the century!
1977, Babin N. S., Ovasapov I. T., Jakushin A. B.

The Baikal-Amur Mainline (unofficial website) is the second largest railroad in Russia, with a length of 4,234 km (2,305 mile). BAM traverses Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East and runs about 600 km (450 miles) north of and parallel to the Trans-Siberian railway (the largest railroad in the world, covering over 1/3 of the circumference of the Earth with its 10,000 km (6 000 miles) tracks).

BAM was built in the course of 20^th century as an alternative to the Trans-Siberian Railway, especially along the vulnerable sections close to the border with China. It has special durable tracks which are capable of supporting soviet rocket trains, equipped with nuclear warheads, which were designed to be a Soviet response to SDI.

BAM construction started in the thirties by Bamlag – a corrective labor camp and a part of notorious Gulag. During WW2 some of the BAM’s partly built tracks were disassembled to form strategic route to Stalingrad, where the biggest and the bloodiest battle in the history of human kind took place – the Battle of Stalingrad.

After Stalin’s death in 1953 the works on BAM stopped as there were no more Gulags with its free labor force and the project turned out to be too expensive. Only in 1974 when the Cold War was in full swing and there was increasing tension between China and the Soviet Union, the project was given a green light.

Huge funding was provided for BAM. It was called the “komsomol construction project of the century”, with numerous young komsomol members sent there to work for decent wages. The poster above was a part of BAM recruitment campaign.

The main part of the BAM was declared open in 1984, with some of the areas (like the ending bridge and the station in Yakutsk) are still being built.

BAM is a fantastic engineering project. It traverses 11 major rivers and seven mountain ridges. There were 8 big tunnels cut through the mountains. One of them is the Severomuyskiy tunnel (15 km), which is the longest tunnel in Russia (18^th longest in the world). Also check picture of the “Chertov bridge” (Devil’s bridge), which shows the scale of the obstacles had to be overcome during the construction.

I sell guns to every army but the Salvation Army!

A still of the Soviet trade and industry exhibition in Colombo Litvinov N. K., 1972

In the Seventies Russia was not only providing financial and technical help for countries, loyal to communist ideology (like Cuba, Yemen, Vietnam, etc), but was also entering world industry markets with the products and machines, which were sometimes based on the technologies from the defense industry. These were new alloys, precision machinery, high-tech materials. But the competition was fierce and the main source of hard currency income has always been and still is the raw stuff – like oil, gas and timber.

On May 22 1972 Ceylon was declared the Sri Lanka Republic. The country being a British colony for a long time had always been economically dependent and now was seeking new markets and trends. The soviet officials well realized that Sri Lanka had a perfect strategic position in the East-West and could become an outpost of communism in the region. So the new trade preferences were opened for Sri Lanka: now there was excellent Ceylon tea present on the shelves of every soviet store and there it matched well the cigars imported from Cuba due to the USA embargo.

Another thing was organizing an international Trade and Industrial Exhibition in Colombo in November 1972, right after the Sri Lanka Republic was established. The event was to show all the advances (military and industrial) which Sri Lanka could get if it only stuck to socialism and communism. To Sri Lanka’s credit they got the most of the situation: without making firm commitments on ideology they purchased some of the soviet arms and established very profitable trade relations.

So hard to break apart

People and the party are undivided.
Luk'janov M. V., Karakashev V. S., 1978

“People and the party are undivided” – this is a famous soviet slogan. It appeared in “Pravda” on the 8th of March, 1953, 3 days after Joseph Stalin’s death. Later it was widely used in propaganda. This is probably the most creative illustration of this phrase. The face of Lenin shows through the rows of banners, carried by soviet citizens who take part in a march or a parade. No matter what you do, Lenin’s maxims and ideology exert influence on you.

But this poster was created in 1978, when stagnation was in every part of the soviet life. Brezhnev’s was 73 already and not in best shape, planned economy exhausted itself, the iron curtain was preventing information exchange with the western countries.

So, common folk used to joke like “People and the party are undivided indeed, except for the things they eat” implying that many goods were in shortage and the party officials could get them in special stores without problems.

Check these vintage posters at Allposters.com!

Here comes the Red Army!

Glory! Glory! Glory to the Soviet Armed Forces!

Belskij L, Potapov V, 1977

This is a nice poster, created and printed to commemorate the 60 anniversary of Soviet Armed Forces, which were originated as the Red Army in 1917 by the special decree of Vladimir Lenin. The Red Army’s main task was to stop Russian participation in WW1 as this conflict was too much of a burden for the young Soviet republic. Another objective was to fight the opposing White forces which stood for restoration of monarchy. Also domestic affairs were far from quiet, so preservation of order in the country was essential.

All those things were not easy to do, and I should admit, that not all the missions were accomplished properly. Nevertheless, after WW1 the Red Army was getting new ammunition and proper training, its ranks being reinforced with universal conscription.

During the pre-war years Joseph Stalin was executing his brothers-in-arms of the revolution period on suspicion that those talented and popular figures could rival his power. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky was one of those victims.

During the World War Two Russian Army showed its courage and self-sacrifice leaving more than 7 mln. of soldiers on battlefields. Nevertheless, the victory was won, albeit at a price too high.

During Cold War Red Army (also named Soviet Army by that time) was used to strengthen Soviet presence in the world, by taking part in Hungarian Revolution, Czechoslovakia invasion, Vietnam and Cambodia’s wars and finally the Afghanistan conflict.

Also after the WW2 new weaponry was entering service, including nuclear weapons, supersonic jetfighters and transcontinental missiles, calling for highly trained specialists. Before the collapse of Soviet Union military service was comfortable and prestige occupation in the Soviet Union.

Things changed, when old ideology died, leaving the empty space in minds and no change in pockets. And it took years to replace skilled specialists, who left the service for better living. This reconstruction process goes ever since.

Russian Cosmonautics - hippie-style!

12 April — the day of cosmonautics
Fekljaev V. N.

Note this nice poster, devoted to the Soviet Cosmonautics day – the April 12, which goes back to 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space. This event was a result of Russian technological leap, partly caused by the Cold War confrontation and the intention of Soviet people to become the most technologically advanced country in the world. Not only numerous resources were invested in the Soviet Cosmic project, but also the best minds well brought up with help of free higher education.

The poster approximately dates back to late seventies. This is a fine example of Soviet idea adaptation. Despite censorship, new trends managed to leak out and reach soviet artists minds: here we can see the influence of pop-art pioneer Andy Warhal and the palette derived from 60s-hippie style and early Beatles record covers.

We welcome the Day of the Soviet Railworker! 1957, image from Princeton University Library.

Railroads are everything for a country as big as Russia. Currently Russian Federation has an area of 17 mln. square km. This is almost twice as big as Canada or China or the USA. So, advanced means of transportation , which are capable of transporting large quantities of goods between 85 federal subjects (states) and 14 neighboring countries were absolutely essential both now and always.

In the nineteenth century Russia being an agricultural country managed to create its first steam locomotive only in the thirties – almost thirty years later than England. The first commercial railway line took off in 1851, it linked two major Russian cities – imperial capital Saint-Petersburg and Moscow, covering 800 hundred km.

Later Russian railroad development was carried out at fast pace as the monarchy considered railroads to be a perfect way of increasing the defense potential of the country. During the First and Second world wars Russian railways suffered great losses of more than 60% of its rail network.

After the WWII the tracks were rebuilt and reached 150 000 km. of length. Now Russian railroad network is approximately 87 000 km. being the second largest in the world after the USA with its 250 000 km of tracks in operation. This double cut in length was caused by the soviet republics declaring independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and privatizing rails on their land.

In the Soviet times railways were the main means of transportation, with thousands of people working in the industry. And they had their own professional holiday – the Soviet Railworker's day. The poster above dates 1957 and commemorates the valuable contribution of Russian railworkers to the economical and social raise of the country after the war.

We make friends, we create!
And we maintain peace in space!

On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel to space and the first to orbit the Earth. This was a major breakthrough for the human kind and significant achievement for the Soviet Union, which managed to create such an advanced technological and industrial project in only 15 years after the devastating World War II.

In the seventies the Cold War was in full swing, with Soviet Union and United States of America investing numerous resources in their space programs. We all owe something to that confrontation, because fundamental research and experimental works of the decade finally resulted in development of civil microelectronics, supersonic avionics, polymeric chemistry and other scientific fields. Amazing, but even the Cold War has advantages…

This space race was not only about world prestige and scientific discoveries. Both Soviet and American military authorities were dreaming about space domination. Nuclear Deterrence Theory was preventing the strike and space could give key advantage over potential adversary. In 1983 Ronald Reagan proposed Strategic Defense Initiative project, which implied deployment of ground and space-based stations, with a purpose of protection in case of a nuclear missile attack. The project was soon nicknamed “Star Wars” because of its futuristic elements, including space lasers, rail guns and kinetic warheads – things technologically improbable even in the modern times. But SDI's main design flaw was its intricacy, which resulted in certain unreliability. Nevertheless the surveillance part of the project proved to be quite useful and despite the overall flop of the SDI, is now being implemented as a part of National Missile Defense Program.

By that time Soviet Union was developing its own space defense system, with more than 20 small space stations equipped with surveillance equipment and counter strike missiles. The information about is highly classified, reportedly this system is still operational.

The poster above proclaims the official Soviet attitude to SDI – Soviet Union stands for Peace and United States calls for war. The idea is being illustrated with Yuri Gagarin and white dove – an international peace symbol. Its wings are covered with flags of Eastern Block Countries - the allies of Soviet Union. These countries were either annexed after WWII or were supported economically in exchange for loyalty and adherence to communist ideology. Eastern Block collapsed in the nineties due to disintegration processes in the Soviet Union and its defeat in Cold War.