Sovietization through Media

Spread Marxist-Leninist PrinciplesSpread Stalinist PropagandaCultural homogeneityCreate an entirely new kind of human beingSupport and Mobilization for Great Patriotic WarAnti-WesternControl of the flow of information

"Without books there is no knowledge, without knowledge there is no communism.

Acquire knowledge!"

Dmitrii Debabov: Construction of Magnitogorsk (1930)

Pravda = Truth• Leading newspaper

(1912-1991)– Restarted in 1997

• Voice of communist state

• conduit for announcing official policy & policy changes

• http://english.pravda.ru/

This "collective" work by the artists of AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), the artistic equivalent of RAPP, satisfied the imperative that art must serve the interests of industrialization and the worker state. Circa 1927

Minor disagreements in the communal kitchen associated with the disappearance of a needle used for cleaning the primus stove.

Konstantin Rotov: Communal Kitchen (1927)

Female Workers and Peasants: Fight with the Leftovers of the

Old Life circa 1929

Source: FUNET Image Archive. 1997.

Brigade KGK: Female Delegate, Stand Forward! (1931)

Poster directed at women farmers, delegates to the meeting of 'the crack brigade of forewomen of Sots-Stroitelstva'

[something like 'the construction of socialism'], where discussions are to be held concerning 'the realization of full collectivization and the liquidation of the kulaks

Kulak Cunning (1928)Kill the first, buy the second,

get the third drunk, then reign in the village soviet.

Source: I. P. Abramskii: Vragi i druz'ia v zerkale Krokodila, 1922-1972. Moscow: Pravda. 1972.

Smite the Kulak (1930)We will smite the kulak

who agitates for reducing cultivated acreage

Source: Peter ParetPersuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from the Hoover Institution Archives.

Maria Voron: Shock-brigade Reaping for a Bolshevik Harvest (1934)

This poster promotes mechanization of agriculture on large collective farms,to increase productivity.

The poster visualizes an ideal of disciplined workers in ordered fertile fields. The robust figures give no hint of the actual crop failures and famine in 1931-32 that resulted from forced collectivization.

Two years + two years+ enthusiasm of workers

= Five-Year Plan.

Counter-plans were plans submitted by workers ostensibly on their own initiative that had more stringent targets than the official plans.

Free Working Hands of the Collective Farms - to Industry! (1931)This poster shows a hand writing "dogovor" (contract) and photographs of peasants holding various tools and lining up to work in a factory. Peasants were recruited by the millions to build and work at the factories of Stalin's first Five Year Plan.Source: Hoover Political Poster Database. 2007.

Workers' Contract with the Peasants (1929) - In this agreement celebrating socialist competitionthe workers of Ivanovo-Voznesensk Textile Factory No. 2 promise to improve their productivity, produce fewer defective goods and stop work absences. In return the peasants of the village of Sel'tso (Kostroma Province) promise to increase their harvest, and improve the quality of flax that the textile workers will use to produce linen.

Gustav Klucis: (1936) Long Live the Stalinist Order of Heroes and Stakhanovites!Source: Dawn Ades, Tim Benton, David Elliot, Iain Boyd Whyte, eds.: Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators

1930-45. London: The South Bank Centre. 1995.

Dmitrii Moor: Tractors (1934)We were a country of the plough, now we are a country of the tractor.

Source: Leah Dickerman, ed.: Building the Collective: Soviet graphic

Benefit Party to Vermont Marble Workers, Russia, July 10, 1936 by Margaret Bourke-White