Propaganda Study Series: The Soviet Union

Welcome back to my Propaganda Study series! Today I’m diving into the riveting history of a once powerhouse of a country: the Soviet Union. While being mainly known for stark geometry and the use of authoritative tone, Soviet propaganda gave major influence in shaping the design landscape, particularly the Bauhaus era. Even though in the modern age is not as obvious, the rigidity shown in this time period demonstrated a great feat of color theory, where emphasis took the stage in how unified the country's image became as a result (my main point being in how red was used across posters, similar to China during the Cultural Revolution).

Our story first begins in 1917, where literacy rates in the Soviet state sat at a measly 38%. Recognizing this widespread issue, the Chairman at the time, Vladimir Lenin, tried to come up with a plan to spread propoganda more efficently. This solution came forward in decreeing to remove Tsarist (the previous government before Lenin) monuments, replacing them with art and slogans that spread Communist ideals, simplifying the messages into a simple call to action. Founded in 1918 was the Russian Telegraph Agency, or ROSTA for short, which served as the hub for poster production, factories growing in numbers that led to the creation of the Constructivism aesthetic.

(left) Have You Volunteered?, by Dmitry Moor (1920) / (right) Capital, Viktor Deni (1919)

Defined by its use of stark geometric patterns, this aesthetic came to define Soviet poster art as a whole, one artist of note being Wassily Kadinsky, who I was largely suprised of learning his background, I had learned about only the abstract style he helped pioneer in art classes when I was younger, and his artwork mainly rose to prominence during this time. Take note of slab lettering across these posters, and you can see how these laid the blueprints for later artistic movements, most notably Bauhaus and De Stilji in the Netherlands.

As the end time for the USSR drew near, its typefaces began to shift across the country, as being founded in mainly decorative Cyrillic text, a more uniform type began to take ahold of advertisements, being so straightforward in order to get the text across more simply as literacy was in the downfall. With this post being a short one, there is not much to say about the text itself, but moreso focused on the graphics throughout the posters, drawing attention to the enemy lines during WWII and so on. That's all for this one, thanks!