Gareth Jones

[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]

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Political Propaganda Posters

from

The Soviet Union

purchased Autumn 1931

from the Gareth Jones Collection

'Enemies of the 5-Year Plan' 

Art by Viktor Deni 1931.  
Poem by Demyan Bedny. 

The Landowner glares like a ferocious watchdog

The Kulak [rich peasant] snorts through his bulbous nose

The habitual drunk boozes his woes away

The [village] priest frantically whoops and and wails.

 

The corrupt journalist spits and hisses

The capitalist sharpens his tusks

The Menshevik rages like a madman

The White Soldier effs and blinds.

 

These dogs that have not been thrown into jail -

Everyone defending the bad old ways -

Put an evil curse on the Five-Year Plan

And declare war on it.

They threaten its disruption, realising

That it spells their utter ruination.

 

[Poem translation kindly supplied by Alan Leigh-Richards, Newark.]

This poster from 1929 attacks eight groups that were frequently scapegoated (clockwise from top left): landlords, kulaks, journalists, capitalists, White Russians, Mensheviks, priests, and drunkards. (Mensheviks were the moderate wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party; they split from Lenin’s Bolshevik wing early in the century.) The poem at the bottom of the poster was written by Demyan Bedny, one of Stalin’s favorite poets. The poem harshly ridicules these members of the “old order,” describing them as “hounds that have not yet been caged.” The group is condemned for “declaring war” on the Five-Year Plan because “they understand that it will bring about their final destruction.” 

(Text courtesy of the Hoover Digest 1998 No.3 - http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/983/hahn.html.)

Click on photo above  for a printable 700kb jpg.

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