Three months ago, an exhibit on Soviet political posters and cartoons might have (to the detriment of all) come to Brown and left without much ado or notice. As a Slavic Studies concentrator and political cartoon enthusiast, I thank Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev for returning international attention to where it belongs: the former Soviet Union and the current Russia.
Between September 6th and October 19th, The David Winton Bell Gallery in the List Art Center and the John Hay Library Gallery have played host to a fantastically-curated arrangement of original copies of 20th century propaganda pieces, primarily from Russia but also a few notable examples from Czech artists. Arranged partially by period and partially by artist, the main exhibit in List was remarkably easy to follow and carefully brought the eye through an amazing evolution in style, discourse and genre across history.
To be sure, the exhibit had its fair share of the standard propaganda messages that Americans have come to associate with the Soviet regime. Some dealt with the need for communal labor in industry and agriculture, using mechanical and block looking figures to represent the masses. Others utilized what I would consider the genre of the Aryan homoerotic male as the hero of Communism and the proletariat, such as in Valentina Kulagina or Vstrachov’s work. The patriotic soldier surrounded by modern armaments certainly appeared, as one would expect from a country dedicated to its military prowess.
Despite the staunch and sturdy messages these posters sound, the stereotypical Soviet propaganda is not what set this exhibit apart. What surprised and astonished me about the diversity of the art was two-fold: firstly how similar some of the comedic styles were to American propaganda and cartoons of that period, and secondly how amazingly accurate some of the social criticism of the United States was, even just through the presentation of an image.
Many of the comical posters included in the exhibit were produced during World War Two, and perhaps for that reason an American audience might be more inclined to see the humor in these fantastic drawings as they are not directed against the United States, rather than fixate on Hitler. The Kukryniksy (a pseudonym for three artists who operated throughout the Soviet era) constructed fantastical images on par with Theodore Seuss Geisel’s (“Dr. Seuss”) facetious political cartoons of the same period. Both the Russian and American artists used caricatures to deface the enemy, and use subtle symbolism to reinforce their point rather than strong and straightforward images.
In one such painting, the arms of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR strangle Hitler while the superscript reads, “This evil enemy won’t get out of the knot we’ve got him in!” The pun, reinforced by the illustration, gets to the heart of a political culture with a deep interest in a higher plane of rhetoric beyond the bombardment of images that the Soviet government preferred. Not only is the destabilized Hitler in a pool of blood together with his tanks, a pile of bloodless carnage frames the other side of the poster, which seems not only to depict the German losses but also to hint at the Allied losses as well.
Beyond the caricatures, the more horrifying and revealing images in this exhibit proved to be the most fascinating while also equally gut-wrenching. The singularly most powerful image to my mind was Viktor Koretsky’s poster depicting “the shame of America.” Superimposed on a view of New York City is a gigantic bloodstain surrounding the body of a dead (presumably) American black man. While this is on one level a demonstration of Russia’s superiority over the United States due to its communist promise of equality for all (however true that proved to be), Koretsky forces a very uncomfortable point on Americans viewing this piece. America, at this point during its history, does not live up to its promise, and not only is this an embarrassment to itself but it is a point of shame for all who witness it. This theme of superimposing a positive image of the Soviets on a particularly negative image of its adversaries recurs throughout the exhibit, and throughout this genre.
In viewing this exhibit, the crucial issue brought to the foreground is how we as people, dislocated in time and geography, can view this art. What is apparent to me is that it isn’t necessarily important to see these propaganda pieces as isolated in time, or only applicable to former Soviet citizens. These images shaped a culture that is still alive to this day, and they molded a nation’s self-image and imagination of the rest of the world.
As university students in the United States almost 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we view these images without the same biases of our parents, but with our own set of presuppositions. Rather than remembering the nuclear attack drills that our parents might have experienced, we see a world with more major players in it than just Russia. Without the old spheres of influence, we’ve seen race conflicts in South Africa, drug conflicts in South America, wars in southern Europe and the Middle East, genocide in Darfur, economic worries about China, and terrorism throughout the world.
Conflict did not end with the fall of the Cold War. As students today, we see the world without the ‘one conflict’ of the past. We are more incredulous as to the images we see on television or in the newspapers. It is harder for us to comprehend a completely-controlled media, and the idea that these posters may have comprised a great portion of political rhetoric. So for us it may only be possible to look at what these posters reflect on our own history: as Americans, what does the fact that many of these posters offer social criticism on our own country? As Europeans, what does Russia’s depiction of a previously divided Europe do to counter the contemporary view of a united Europe?
Perhaps it is better for us to view these images with our current views rather than try to put ourselves in the past. We avoid anachronisms, and we don’t view these object as obsolete due to their age. We make the past relevant by contemporizing history.
