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The People and the Poster: Theorizing the Soviet Viewer, 1920–1931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2019

Mollie Arbuthnot
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Abstract

The relationship between political posters and their intended viewers was the focus of numerous texts in the 1920s; this article analyzes the ways in which Soviet theorists sought to understand this relationship. They operated in an intellectual context that tried to conceive the modern subject as an active consumer and co-creator, rather than a passive audience. Their study of the contexts of viewing, of display practices and of the role of the viewer as an active participant in the creation of meaning, caused concern about the risk of misunderstandings and led to calls for images to address specific audiences with greater clarity. Many imagined that audiences and producers of images were in dialogue with one another, negotiating over the content, form, and function of political art. The image would thus mediate the relationship between individual and state, integrating political messages into everyday life, and aiming to integrate the individual into the process and practice of propaganda.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 717 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Prof. Vera Tolz, Dr. Charlie Miller, and Dr. Rachel Platonov for their comments on this article. The research for this paper was generously supported by the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS), to whom I also express my thanks.

References

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2. Tarabukin, 66. Tarabukin did not use plakat, the standard Russian term for poster, but lubok, often translated as “folk print” or “broadsheet.” However, lithography had long surpassed the woodcut lubok, and in any case they were banned in April 1919: Tarabukin is referring here to a mass-produced lithograph for wall display, i.e. a poster, albeit perhaps in the style of a lubok. This justifies the unconventional translation of lubok as “poster.”

3. The Russian terms “propaganda” (propaganda) and “agitation” (agitatsiia) did not in this period carry the same negative connotations of deceit or manipulation that they do in English today. The Bolsheviks saw no distinction between propagating enlightenment and their own political ideology. This is less a reflection on their particular ideological approach than on contemporary usage of the term propaganda in Russian: it did not specifically connote the spreading of political messages, but rather an attempt to disseminate any information. Vladimir Dal΄’s dictionary defines propaganda simply as “the dissemination of any ideas or teaching; efforts to this end.” See Dal΄, Vladimir, Tolkovyi slovar΄ zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1882), 519Google Scholar. This is the sense in which the texts of this period use the term propaganda. A working definition of propaganda for the present article is taken from The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies: “publicly disseminated information that serves to influence others in belief and/or action,” with the addition that “the manner in which propaganda spreads and circulates is just as significant as the information that it imparts. The content of propaganda does not exist apart from its modes of transmission.” This qualification allows us to understand propaganda as both product and process: both the articulation of an idea and the act of disseminating it with the purpose of influencing an audience. Auerbach, Jonathan and Castronovo, Russ, “Introduction: Thirteen Propositions about Propaganda,” in Auerbach, J. and Castronovo, R., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies (New York, 2013), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 6–8.

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17. Auerbach and Castronovo, “Introduction,” 10.

18. Ibid.

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23. The remit of Narkompros included overseeing education (in the broadest sense), research, publishing, the press, censorship, and the arts, which the Soviets considered facets of the same project (see also footnote 3).

24. Marina Nikolaeva, “Modeli identifikatsii cheloveka v sovetskoi kul΄tury (na materiale sovetskogo plakatnogo iskusstva 1917-1941),” (PhD diss., Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, 2013), 28.

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29. Vladimir Lenin, “Rech΄ na vserossiiskom s΄΄ezde transportnykh rabochikh” (March 27, 1921), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 43 (Moscow, 1963), 130–44, here 130.

30. My use of the term “legibility” follows Elizabeth A. Papazian, “Literacy or Legibility: The Trace of Subjectivity in Soviet Socialist Realism” in The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies, 67–90.

31. Lunacharskii, Anatolii, “Agitatsiia i iskusstvo,” Iskusstvo i revoliutsiia: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1924), 74–76Google Scholar.

32. Dobrenko, “The Disaster of Middlebrow Taste.”

33. Papazian, “Literacy or Legibility,” 74.

34. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 21.

35. Bekker, N., “Sel΄skokhoziaistvennyi plakat,” Za bol΄shevistskii plakat: Zadachi izoiskusstva v sviazi s resheniem TsKVKP(b) o plakatnoi literature: Diskussiia i vystupleniia v institute LIIA. (Moscow, 1932), 29–35Google Scholar, here 29–30.

36. P. Aristova, “Industrialnyi plakat,” Za bol΄shevistskii plakat, 19–28.

37. Janos Macza (also known in Russian as Ivan Matsa), “Vstupitel΄noe slovo,” Za bol΄shevistskii plakat, 7–18, here 16.

38. On Soviet nationalities and the rhetoric of “backwardness” see Martin, Terry, Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin, Terry and Suny, Ronald G., eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, NY, 2001)Google Scholar.

39. Macza, “Vstupitel΄noe slovo,” 18.

40. Respectively: Okhochinskii, V. K., Plakat: Razvitie i primenenie (Leningrad, 1928)Google Scholar; Tugendkhol΄d, Iakov, Iskusstvo oktiabr’skoi epokhi (Leningrad, 1930)Google Scholar; Gushchin, Aleksandr, Rabota s plakatom v klube i izbe-chital΄ne (Moscow and Leningrad, 1931)Google Scholar.

41. Tugendkhol’d, Iskusstvo oktiabr΄skoi epokhi, 182.

42. This is typical of texts on the history of the poster in this period, by a range of authors, including: Polonskii, Tugendkhol΄d, Tarabukin, Sosnovskii, Gushchin, Okhochinskii.

43. Polonskii, Viacheslav, Russkii revoliutsionnyi plakat (Moscow, 1925), 7Google Scholar.

44. For example: König, Theodor, Reklame-Psychologie, ihr gegenwartiger Stand—ihre praktische Bedeutung (Munich, 1924)Google Scholar / Kenig, Teodor, Reklama i plakat kak orudiia propagandy, trans. Egornov, A. N. (Leningrad, 1925)Google Scholar. This text was evidently quite well-known among Soviet theorists, and is directly cited by A. Bogachev, among others.

45. Randi Cox, “‘NEP Without Nepmen!’: Soviet Advertising and the Transition to Socialism,” in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia, 119–52, here 134.

46. One particularly damning article described Polonskii, Tugendkhol΄d, and Tarabukin as “the founders of bourgeois poster theory.” Riabinkin, P., “Protiv chuzhdykh teorii o plakate,” Za proletarskoe iskusstvo, no. 5 (1932): 2–4Google Scholar, here 3.

47. Tarabukin, “Lubochnyi plakat,” 65.

48. Bogachev, A., Plakat (Leningrad, 1926), 7Google Scholar.

49. Tarabukin, Nikolai, Iskusstvo dnia, (Moscow, 1925), 41Google Scholar. The krasnyi ugol (holy corner) is a domestic altar in Orthodox dwellings, where icons are traditionally kept.

50. Tarabukin, “Lubochnyi plakat,” 66.

51. Nikolaeva, “Modeli identifikatsii,” 97.

52. Kurella, A., “Sovetskogo lubka net,” 30 dnei, no. 5 (1929): 45Google Scholar.

53. Tarabukin deliberately avoids this, describing the explicatory, narrative lubok as an agitator. “Lubochnyi plakat,” 66.

54. Maslenikov, Nikolai, “Ob agit-plakate,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 1 (April 1925): 42–47Google Scholar, here 42.

55. Tugendkhol΄d, Iskusstvo oktiabr΄skoi epokhi, 182.

56. Okhochinskii, V. K., ed., Plakat i reklama posle oktiabria (Leningrad, 1926), 29–32Google Scholar. See also Moisei Brodskii, “Tseli i zadachi vystavki,” in Plakat i reklama posle oktiabria, 4–9.

57. Krasnaia niva, no. 8 (1923). Cited by Nikolaeva, “Modelii identifikatsii,” 95.

58. Bogachev, Plakat, 7–8.

59. Tugendkhol΄d, Iskusstvo oktiabr’skoi epokhi, 173.

60. Ibid., 174.

61. Gushchin, Rabota s plakatom, 14.

62. König, Reklame-Psychologie, 9. Some Soviet authors acknowledged this commonality, e.g. Zivel΄chinskaia, L., “O plakate i ego roli v sotsialisticheskom stroitel΄stve,” Novyi mir, no. 9 (1931): 166–73Google Scholar, here 172.

63. Gushchin, Rabota s plakatom, 14.

64. Vera Gertsenberg, Plakat v politprosvetrabote (Moscow, 1932), 19. Her own editors added a footnote to the above, objecting to the “mechanical” division between agitation and propaganda, and contending that “agitation and propaganda must be understood in the unison and interpenetration of the moments of cognition and effect.”

65. Neradov, G., “Oktiabr΄skie zaslugi sovetskogo plakata,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 7 (October 1925): 27–32Google Scholar, here 27.

66. Edward Bernays’s seminal Propaganda, for example, discussed the power of advertising to raise the aesthetic tastes of the public and accustom it to change and progress. Bernays, Edward, Propaganda (New York, 1928)Google Scholar. On NEP-era advertising, see Cox, “NEP Without Nepmen!,” 119–52.

67. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), fond (f.) A2330, opis΄ (op.) 1, delo (d.) 13, list (ll.) 1–3, (Doklad Tsentral΄noi kollegii agitatsionnykh punktov o deiatel΄nosti za sentiabr΄-noiabr΄ 1919).

68. Kerezhentsev, Tvorcheskii teatr (Petrograd, 1920), 112.

69. Gertsenberg, Plakat v politprosvetrabote, 5.

70. Gushchin, Rabota s plakatom, 16–17.

71. Ibid., 18–24.

72. Ibid., 18.

73. Ibid., 22–23.

74. Tarabukin, “Lubochnyi plakat,” 66.

75. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 1.

76. Tarabukin, “Izobrazitel’nost’ v plakate,” Gorn, no. 9 (1923): 125–134, here 125.

77. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, 1983).

78. This coincided with the resurgence of the private art market and the emergence of the NEP bourgeoisie as a patron class. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 23.

79. Arvatov, Boris, “Byt i kul΄tura veshchi,” Almanakh proletkul΄ta (Moscow, 1925)Google Scholar, trans. Kiaer, Christina, “Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing (Towards the Formulation of the Question),” October 81 (Summer 1997): 119–128Google Scholar.

80. Trotskii, Lev, Voprosy byta (Moscow, 1923)Google Scholar.

81. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 60.

82. Nikolaeva, “Modeli identifikatsii,” 101. Emphasis original.

83. GARF, f. P3316, op. 48, d. 85, (Otchet o provedenii Izbiratel΄noi kampanii 1926–27 po Uzbekskoi SSR).

84. Gushchin, Rabota s plakatom, 21; Tarabukin, “Lubochnyi plakat,” 64.

85. Tarabukin, “Lubochnyi plakat,” 65–66.

86. Maslenikov, “Ob agit-plakate,” 46.

87. Zemenkov, B., “Karikatura v sovetskoi obshchestvennosti” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 6 (September 1925): 66–70Google Scholar, here 69.

88. Neradov, “Oktiabr΄skie zaslugi sovetskogo plakata,” 31.

89. Labunskaia, G. and Eisner, A., Kak sdelat΄ plakat (Moscow, 1927), 10Google Scholar.

90. Brodskii, Moisei, Kak sdelat΄ plakat lozung dekoratsiiu v izbe-chital΄ne (Leningrad, 1926), 34Google Scholar.

91. Brodskii, 47–49.

92. Gushchin, Rabota s plakatom, 38–40.

93. Babaeva, P., “Kakoi nam nuzhen plakat?” Za proletarskoe iskusstvo, no. 1 (January 1931): 8–11Google Scholar, here 11.

94. Brigada khudozhnikov, no. 1 (1931), 29.

95. Proletkul΄t (from proletarskaia kul΄tura or proletarian culture) aimed to create a radical, proletarian aesthetic by encouraging workers to become artists.

96. Tugendkhol΄d, Iskusstvo oktiabr΄skoi epokhi, 180–81.

97. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 17. INKhUK refers to the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture, from which Constructivism and the first group of Constructivist artists emerged in 1921. Constructivism called on avant-garde artists to abandon their experiments in non-figurative painting and sculpture in favor of entering industrial production, applying their artistic expertise to designing practical, mass-producible objects for the new society.

98. It should be noted here that in 1931, the Central Committee issued a decree on poster production, bringing the responsibility for publishing posters under central governmental control. (Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) o plakatnoi literature, March 11, 1931). This has usually been framed within the narrative of increasing centralized control of the arts in the early 1930s, followed by the banning of independent artistic organizations (1932), and the famous Soviet Writers’ Congress inaugurating Socialist Realism as the official method of literature (1934). However, in the case of posters, it may perhaps be re-interpreted as a case of extreme centralization at the state-level coinciding with increased localization at the grassroots. Some texts suggest that responsibility for immediacy, responding to current events, making political ideas legible in a local context (namely, much of what in the 1920s had defined the purpose of the political poster) may have passed over to the amateur poster, and some authors argued in 1931 that the localized poster (made by and for local groups, to the level of individual factories) was of paramount importance and should be prioritized (Babaeva, “Kakoi nam nuzhen plakat?”, 9). It is beyond the scope of this article to analyze the causes and effects of the decree, and further research is required to explore its implications for both centralized and amateur / local poster production in this period. See also Nikolaeva, “Modeli identifikatsii,” 88.