International Poster Gallery

Collecting Bolshevik Posters

The Bolshevik Revolution created the first Communist state, a government of workers and peasants. The poster played a key role in selling Lenin's vision of total cultural and political transformation to a largely illiterate population, and became the centerpiece of the first truly modern propaganda machine. In all, about 3,600 poster designs were created in roughly three years -- more than 20 per week.

The new government began by seizing control of the paper supply and all forms of printing. By mid-1918, it began to print and distribute posters. Alexander Apsit, the first great Bolshevik poster artist, developed many distinct Soviet symbols, such as the hammer and sickle and red star. Although his detailed, allegorical style was traditional, his imagery reflected the rhetoric of a new age.

As Civil War intensified in 1919, the Bolsheviks set up a new Literary-Publishing Department to coordinate propaganda. Its major weapons were Dimitri Moor and Viktor Deni, both cartoonists before the Revolution. Moor was a fervent Communist, whose views had been formed during the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905.

Bolshevik posters - early style

Moor's symbolic early style soon changed with the tenor of the times. His most famous poster, Have You Enrolled as a Volunteer?, was produced in a single night as recruitment needs grew critical. About 50,000 copies of this poster were distributed, and its bold and simple image of a Red Armyman inspired young men to sign up in droves.

Deni was above all a satirist, and his scathing caricatures of fat capitalists and priests were omnipresent during Civil War years. Along with the dynamic Nikolai Kochergin, he and Moor maintained remarkably high standards despite severe time constraints. By 1920, this became even more difficult as war broke out with Poland and her allies.

These years inspired another innovation in poster art: the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) windows, cartoon-like stenciled posters that summarized the news and were displayed in shop windows throughout Moscow. Created by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the artists Mikhail Cheremnykh and Ivan Malyutin, the ROSTA windows are extraordinary in their rarity, wit and effectiveness.

By mid-1920, the Bolsheviks had defeated the Whites and reached a stalemate with the Poles. This marked the end of the pioneering era in Bolshevik propaganda.

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