4 8 9 1 0 : 193 R E T S O TO P THE O H P T SOVIE ERIKA WOLF vii S T N E T CON xii E PREFAC TS GMEN NOWLED STER OTO PO H P T E I : V HE SO UCTION INTROD RETSKY AND T ster KO oto Po h P VIKTOR o t tage tomon o h P S om PLATE ar 941: Fr iotic W r t 1930–1 a P t Grea 5: The 4 9 1 – 1 194 talinism S e t a L 953: 1946–1 w he Tha T : 3 6 9 ra 1954–1 hnev E z e r B e ers 974: Th al Post t n 1964–1 e m nu ate Mo L : 4 8 9 1975–1 RAPHY BIBLIOG 1 ACK INDEX 15 77 171 261 321 397 453 TK artist, ganda a p o r p ring Soviet ced du g u in d d o r a p as a le ky was that he Korets 1998) w phic posters , – s 9 e 0 d 9 a vice six dec etsky (1 ivid photogra s a no r g A o . in K n n r n io o a Vikt oduct d with r the v eer sp ster pr imente own fo r liic car o n e o p k r p l t p x a s e a e ic nda b h lit initially ropaga r II. Wit y viet po p a k o a s W S t s e ld a r r in o e rty Wo t igure 930s, K is meteoric ris ommunist Pa n 1 e ly in r a m the ing h the e a pro he C ent of rtist in . Follow ork in t m a e w p g ic lo a is t h e h n p v f o es gra the de ation o photom montag c in t li o t b is le o u n o h r p r p e key in a mod y the egular graphs layed a pired b d the r o p t s n o a e In h t h r. p , is e t erly st da ed ar h paint er Prav otographic po to shoot stag it p w a p s s o new phot ”—in gan st ph posters ar, tsky be g these st Reali e r in li o k t o ia r o K c o h , o S eld , rew s “p r the w Hearti cinema esignation a ely afte rutality t ia of John at emulated d d e ib their d imm r th of Naz s ring an r led to e u manne izes. t t D s a . o h s t ge id p alin Pr a es t t iv u S n v iq o o h n m it h e w t w to tec becam arded tation to pho s u w r n p a e t e io r s s it o a s d his was he w oppo y in p solidiie , for which ograph retsky’s work t y o k h s t p e r f m ky o Ko Korets and Ko t herois ion, the use , , s ie m n v is o io t n S des and ognit ccusa f Stali st deca e this rec years o nding these a la l e a e it n h p i t s De in th hsta g the ar. In Notwit t durin poster Cold W l a e h ic t t li f suspec or formalism. r the o o the p f maker dium fo e d e n e e i k g m e c a s d a t s e at jor im to r t ma e a ma ominan worked d e e h h t becam r, e as iet pow of television sly of Sov . e is r ltaneou eology he u t id f im t o s ie , e v s o of wak poster ations ’s ion of S t m y r a k o s f in t s e m um e tran disse of Kor this alb creativ cades f e d o n d e a r ix l, o s a c r s ory l, cultu survey . At the ers, preparat a a m ic ik t u li o lb r o t a post This peres f the amic p ividual ism to . All o he dyn y d n t ll li in a g a t n ic in S o g c n, s tra ollectio hronolo ure from otated entrie c C lt i u d a c e lt t iz o Sovie Ne B organ nsive d ann terial, om the s exte es hundre r a e f o d m e w r lu t d a c e e ar um vid t in relat this alb art tha his album pro ers , and T studies reproduced in propaganda . ost ding p archive f ls l o lu ia a r c n e n t in o re a io , s k m collect and mo wn per t’s wor o ia e is s t t ’s r s a y a u iv k r R s e a p anda of th Koret t-day propag presen ination s from f e g m o h in t a n x ld d e io o n t ters h transce oretsky’s pos hensive pular imagina e t r o p n m o id o or d ac uced. K made f in the p nance d e o r in o s r e a e p r w m y y e e that r t. The initiall whos lm of contex the rea works y were s e t e in r r h , t a u is c h e t s of a hic in ob the aim dia—th s for w tion outside a e h n it m ig w s a s n p e ma cam ative writte func ion in th e been ting cre ated to t v a e u r a in c h ib r e m t s r s, is lu d trie we d entrie t, and il e The en x play or t . e a is t e t d s n o r o c n u c li pub g the eative l disco ese an ky’s cr politica ntent, clarifyin plement to th s , t c e r li o b u K ing p o a com oncern iew of c s v g the c r A s in e . e v t in s o r a la exp poste Stalin e deb es an creativ ring the s of the essay provid n t u o c d e y is p s h s the a a p y otogra l emph ively in ductor h s ia o n p c r e t e d h in p n e s d a the compr t, with ntage, tsky an e n o e r r e o m o m o K m t p r o h Vikto er, ph develo alt wit unism: al post k is de ic m r t o li m o o w p r C the late and retsky’s ue for Vision g era. Ko alo ion cat exhibit E C A F PRE viii PREFACE THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 Dissident Public Culture, edited by Matthew Jesse Jackson. KORETSKY A Note Concerning the Album Entries The titles are the main text slogan of the poster. If a poster includes additional text, a full translation is provided. The title is followed by the year of publication, which is usually printed on the poster itself. Most Soviet posters produced after 1931 routinely include detailed publication information printed in small type on the poster itself. For each entry, any available publication information concerning the coartists, publisher, press date (when the poster was oficially approved for publication), and print run are included with the image. If this ix information is not included in an entry, then it does not appear on the poster. The entries are ordered chronologically by press date. Posters without press dates are listed at the end of their publication year. When the content of such a poster enables more precise dating (i.e., posters produced for speciic occasions or in response to historical events), it has been ordered accordingly. The transliteration of Russian names and terms follows the modiied Library of Congress system, except in cases where an alternative spelling is well established (i.e., Mayakovsky and not Maiakovskii, Koretsky and not Koretskii). x S T N E LEDGM the etsky, r o K r o d this of Vikt ntly, an ing, e work e h t c e r in sted writ quite arose n intere ch and r l e a e ia e r b s e t e g I am r a n this m eople. nths of have lo p o n I f o m e o il k ix r y h s t me o W a varie esting tensive ity to w f g in n o g u n u t t s a r r f o o r opp , this supp m fo esult o Museu gestion he is the r g usiastic li r u h t e s m n u m e ’s lb t im a ne he f the Z ip from out Ja d by t h o h e s it t r p a r W la it a . il o fac Sch ress ssible ne Sh New P ummer de it po l to Ja e S a u f h t m e A t t . o a a r d g age g u terialize iversity of Ota format the im Favrea a c m r a e . v M n , to entries not ha t the U search m a ld e r u u s l o lb ie a a r w it f e fts o uman ntial book t gen itial dra re esse of the H pe to conduc e in n w e io h n t is io t g us Div oldthor i Collec mposin numero G a o p lt c y u o il in B d m t e also for E assis the Ne follow ts, and d her staff at tiently es. I am s a c li r p k u c y o e e s ina, n ch ject. Th ral key a Nikit e o inova a n r v g v p e o o s L v is n h a la stis ster. Ann n of t g dow arina M produced po alizatio trackin e M r in o e t h d t e e e lity t r to is hospita ucing m for his most nd ass d a g o r s in t ie in m r l o tque nna for er and mode e welc artmen h A p t a o t d r l e e y u t form sity gratef daugh , I enjo a at the at the Univer ’s step v oscow y e k s M t s t n o e a t r to ar ns Ko ccess rief trip libraria ovna B a b il e n h a d a T n D g . a r of alina Durin ans sevich numbe rary lo a and G and Vera Git a b li in n r r e a w t o M in d he of es in t oretsky in procuring racked u t K g f a a o n e li ll u io stud ted lated khvat r of co vice re o assis es. Galiya Tu numbe d g a a A t le . O b ia a s ies: of as in Rus d invalu l album entr t datab s e n e id a c t v r r o u r o imp ure p ividua hanks ary so iet cult ed ind neer. T v c ial prim h t o n S n a S e h id s d n v s ton e e an and Da Welling e that ussian , f is e R t o r d f e e o y p v it ield of ex ivers ark S ussion areas lmer, M t Victoria Un seminar disc a ir e P h t t t o o a c t e ersity Long, S e Univ ramme sky; th t h g t e d o r r r t a o P A h y K y. Ric and m History inar on y essa r, t r m r e o e t n A s c d u e a h trod earc ry R to th din, I g a res reining the in ar, Hilla tory. In Dune in ll t u s P o h g n in for Art His to Elle tli. Durin d t sisted e n e s u a a O d y x r ly e t a grea of M ks ar ssian f Histo erence full Ru ment o o, than v t g r e e r a a h t ir t p O e d d nd of in the D he wisdom an nscribe translation, a a s r e t u g ly a n t colle es in from not o ghter eitted passag h to our dau atulina n v y e h n b r k o u o h T t t als Liya e bir with oject, sisted lso gav s a a t , s u r this pr b e st ement the po hile. courag n text of e worthw y ll il a a it d e d k provide se smiles ma o h w Dina, W O N K AC xii : N O I T C U D D N O A R T Y K IN S T E R R E O T K S R O VIKTO IET PHOTO P V O S THE the g with in id s rtists port 1917, a ganda in sup in n io t a l of lu w leve al prop r Revo u e lo b is e o v t h f t c ally e of the O rms o in visu ake of Becaus le erse fo . w o iv r e e t d t a h t t n d s the a In te import lic. In easant s crea b p n ik u a v p d e n d h e a t Bols 918– playe illitera orker poster il War (1 to to an new w iv e y e C h g h t t e lo , h f o o sia bols ring t ry ide in Rus and du ual sym r the lutiona n is o io v v t e r literacy d lu e o o t g sickle, nicatin the Rev ts crea u r d is e t n m t r a f a m a r o e s side c ediately rished and it e hamm d cinema out m h t im s a s r h u er yea er, suc h limite ry post ster lo d it a r o w n o p t a io r e t ie e h v lu 1 In an ion. revo 21), t w So educat hains. t the ne ion, the d c n is n f e v a s o , le e r e n e t io re pid rep ersuas aking f a of ra adio or r r p e r e , e b r n is r o f io h e t t Civil work nd be biliza ster, nters a ass mo tical po sation of the en e li m c o r p n o f a t b ur dium ), wh e Sovie with the ces ital me 921–28 ered s of th t 1 d , in e P o d E p n was a v e (N tt h fervor Policy he sha the hig t e f ic o e iv m t t e o a la n n e u red O and cr ew Eco order to stim eappea n r N io e g t h a t in v f is with inno vert ed in nset o rcial ad n to compete he permitt d the o e n s m a a r m w a o a c W ,t g de g NEP, nomy and be he same time is ale tra c in r s u ll D a sm eco omy. . At t e cris market iewers n econ wartim v d ia f e s m o s o w r n u e f R rol in n tio ren al cont ansitio e atten r of the t ic h t t t li r e r a o h o t f p p g f r e as t workin ment o l poste to mak c a h s n in ic li t t a li b g is a o e d t the the p ent b he es ion in ts, and o funct overnm truction and t is t t g r n t a a ie r g v o nt e f b So ns vernme patron artists o ul reco t y f g r ie e a v c g o a im in e re. S to p reas he pr of cultu der inc came t n e lm u b a e e r e t e a m st th ca ns. The ual imagery is conditio v ssure ical pre nd tion of t c li u o d l. p o o r r g p ont untin tion, a y and c art, mo publica , , r n e t io scrutin s s o cialized t p mis e ie p m v s o o c S ly r high art, ms fo re of e sphe ment of syste sters became rtising, h e t v d in a h d r h o Wit tion, an yed fo stablis n of p c e lo io u t p e d c h o m t u r e d d in led to trial p e pro hods ecialize s l, indus d met ion. Th p a t n s u a ic t ib li ly r s t o e w a r p o dis ilitary, ct gen rs narr oster w e m p in t h , l s is e a li d n ic b t hygie with e poli s role nd pu n, ilm, ers. Th ks to it rtists a t io n a t s a a o h h c t t p u o , f e and ed sters. B eciic types o estigious typ ialism o c p o s r e t t thea of sp state Sovie and pr ty. The liefs of duction t signiicant r e o a r b P p l t a e is ic s tists th the mo ommun successful ar ideolog C e ly r b e o a h c t u e arg creativ ives of ing the rs, and t t r e a t e ia g s it h t a o r in p p u ters in pro litical and f peciic al pos n of po o resources ic oting s t io li t m o c o p r u t p d t in her, as lons of Sovie the pro ccess ig a h in r d o e t e ls t a e ere a inves r ech ad gre takes w by the uppe area h s is e h h t t in . Yet utiny unities dic scr io r e p opport to ubject were s 1 Photography played a similar role in promoting Soviet ideology and providing persuasive images of the realization of state initiatives. With the mastery of new printing techniques during the 1920s, photography was soon incorporated into the production of Soviet posters, initially through the application of photomontage technique to poster design. As a self-conscious creative technique, photomontage began in avant-garde revolt, spread into mainstream mass culture, and was adopted by political regimes as a tool of state power. Photomontage entails the combination of photographs and/ or text to create new, distinct images. A photomontage may be composed of fragments of numerous photographs or may simply be a single photograph combined with text or other graphic elements. The power of photomontage is due to the truth-value commonly attributed to photographs, which are perceived as offering a type of visual evidence. In photomontage visual evidence is often supplemented or enhanced to reveal other truths about a subject. With its combination of photographs and text to create new messages, photomontage has often been used as a tool for sociopolitical commentary, activism, and state propaganda. Photomontage was recognized as a distinctive critical practice after World War I, at roughly the same time in both Germany and revolutionary Russia. In Berlin, the Dadaists deployed it as a weapon to assault the morally bankrupt bourgeois establishment responsible for the horrors of the irst modern mechanized war. The Berlin Dadaists produced Klebebilder— glued pictures—that forced the viewer to confront the everyday material world by wholly incorporating advertising, newsprint, photographs, popular culture, and the detritus of daily life. Escapist, ethereal artistic creation 2 was supplanted by the mechanistic assembly of real objects. Coined by the Dadaists, the term “photomontage” is derived from the German verb montieren, “to assemble,” and has an explicitly mechanical connotation. Similarly, the noun Montage originally referred to the installation of mechanical equipment or the assembly of machines. The most extreme in his rejection of traditional art and its institutions, the Berlin Dadaist John Heartield would later play an important role in the development of Soviet photomontage. Like many of his generation, Heartield’s war experiences led him to revolt both artistically and politically. He destroyed his earlier paintings and rejected the label “artist” in favor of the designation Photomonteur— “photo mechanic.” Heartield adopted the identity of a mechanic, a skilled industrial worker, rejecting that of the artist or advertising man. Heartield joined the German Communist Party in December 1918, the moment of its initial foundation. During the 1920s, he turned away from conventional artistic work and instead pursued the production of Communist political photomontages for mass reproduction in books, magazines, and posters, deploying the photograph as a weapon of class warfare. A similar trajectory was played out in the newly established Soviet Union, pioneered by the Latvian artist Gustavs Klucis. Often credited as the irst Soviet artist to explore photomontage, Klucis began with experimental compositions and then turned to agitational propaganda aimed at a mass audience, producing numerous explicitly political photomontage posters. Like Heartield, membership in the Communist Party conirmed Klucis’s commitment to a politically engaged creative practice, which included extensive teaching, writing, and organizational work. In the Soviet Union, the application of photomontage to the design of posters, books, magazines, and other graphic works proliferated with the start of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928, when the Soviet government asserted complete control over the economy and embarked upon both forced industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Poster artists were called upon to assist in the mass mobilization of the Soviet populace toward these ends. The Five-Year Plan was accompanied by a cultural revolution, in which different groups struggled for control in diverse sectors of Soviet culture, including poster production. Viktor Koretsky’s artistic career began amid the cultural conlicts of the First Five-Year Plan. He was born in 1909 in Kiev, Ukraine, to the family of an opera singer. In 1921, the family moved to Moscow, where Koretsky developed an interest in art. He initially studied painting and took lessons from the artist Mikhail Leblan. He then enrolled in the 1905 Memorial Academic Art School, where he studied with the Soviet critic and Marxist art historian Aleksei FedorovDavydov, who introduced the young artist to ideas about the social role of art and the need to develop new forms of representation to depict the new themes required of Soviet art.2 A member of the modernist creative group October, Fedorov-Davydov actively participated in the cultural debates of the era and would later write about his former pupil’s work.3 Koretsky was part of a new generation of Soviet artists who came of age after the Revolution. Educated within the Soviet system, they established their artistic careers within the transformed conditions of state-sponsored art in a command economy, in which art was overtly harnessed to the achievement of speciic ideological ends. Koretsky’s work was shaped by the preceding generation of artists, speciically experimental modernists whose work was transformed in the wake of the revolution. Photomontage began to lourish during Koretsky’s studies, and his posters from the early 1930s clearly emulate the work of the irst generation of photomontage artists, including Klucis, Vasilii Elkin, Nina Kulagina, Natalia Pinus, and Sergei Sen’kin.4 Following his graduation in 1929, Koretsky embarked upon a career as a graphic and INTRODUCTION: VIKTOR KORETSKY AND THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 KORETSKY power. With Iosif Stalin’s ascension to power in the late 1920s, political poster production was placed under increasingly tighter political control, which included a comprehensive censorship process. poster artist, initially working on advertising posters. Inspired by the work of Heartield and Klucis, he soon shifted to focusing primarily on political posters. At the start of his professional career, Koretsky often worked in collaboration with his wife, Vera Gitsevich (1897–1976), and Boris Knoblok (1903–1984), with the trio signing their works “Brigada KGK.” Such collective work was common in this era, when artists sought to develop new collective forms of creation—parallel to the brigades of workers engaging in the construction of socialism at industrial work sites. While this brigade dissolved after the 1930s, Koretsky continued to regularly collaborate with his wife and other artists throughout his creative career, an indication of his commitment to collective forms of art practice. Koretsky began to work as a contract artist for the State Fine Arts Publishing House (Izogiz) in 1931, around the time that the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party moved to regulate poster production, placing all political poster publication within Izogiz and closely monitoring the process of commission, approval, and publication. A Central Committee resolution issued in March 1931 ordered the implementation of a series of measures intended to correct a situation that had led to the “publication of a signiicant percentage of anti-Soviet posters and pictures.”5 In addition to transferring poster production to Izogiz, leadership for poster production was delegated to a sector of the Central Committee, oficially the highest body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. With the centralization of production within Izogiz, political posters were produced according to set plans. Slogans from propaganda campaigns were assigned to artists, who then submitted draft works for approval. Artists were required to work closely with editors, and completed posters were submitted for oficial approval prior to publication.6 The inished printed posters began to routinely include detailed publication information, such as the names of the artist 3 KORETSKY In addition to structural changes in poster production, the Central Committee resolution called for critical discussion of posters both in the press and in specialized professional and academic organizations. This led to the organization of public forums and extensive debate in the cultural press. Photomontage emerged as a central issue in these debates, its place in agitational art being hotly contested. The inluential critic Ivan Matsa argued that photomontage’s de facto use in Soviet art was inappropriate, as it was visually unintelligible to a large sector of the Soviet population.7 As debate continued, modernist photomontage was increasingly attacked for its visual fragmentation. In these exchanges, the work of John Heartield, who was in Moscow for an extended visit at the time, was juxtaposed to that of Klucis as the preferred alternative.8 While Klucis’s work was criticized for visual fragmentation, Heartield’s was praised for clarity and simplicity of means (Figures 1 and 2). The Central Committee’s intervention in political poster production led to a reappraisal of fragmented photomontage and increasing rejection of its use in political posters. As the 1930s progressed, Soviet photomontage and graphic design experienced a transformation, with fragmented photomontage giving way to more luid, seamless images. Fractured, disjunctive images were replaced by synthetic images that presented a cohesive vision of the new Soviet society and economy with Stalin irmly at the helm. When one views Koretsky’s work from the 1930s, this shift is subtle yet profound. While posters from the start of the decade are characterized by fragmentation, shifting scale, and spatial disruption, later works are more spatially cohesive and uniied. These changes relected not only the impact of the poster debates but also the implementation 4 INTRODUCTION: VIKTOR KORETSKY AND THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 and editor, control numbers for the censorship body Glavlit, the date of oficial approval for publication, and the print run. of Socialist Realism, which was declared the oficial method for Soviet literature at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Initially deined in terms of literature, Socialist Realism would be endorsed as the only acceptable style in all spheres of Soviet culture. At the time of its initial formulation, Socialist Realism advocated principles of accessibility, party-mindedness, and being of the people Emulating the work of John Heartield, Koretsky began to stage photographs, instead of cutting and pasting preexisting images. He observed later that “artists of the photo poster worked a lot on the resolution of the correspondence of the image with this or that politically important theme. As the experience of those years showed, it is impossible to be satisied with any readymade photographs. For the poster a special shoot is necessary.”9 After shooting carefully staged photographs, Koretsky would then rework the images using painting and retouching techniques. As such, the photo poster is a synthesis of photomontage’s use of the “reality” factor of the photograph combined with painterly effects. The result is an image seemingly grounded in reality yet enhanced in a manner that generalizes the human igures, transforming them into types. While this technique had its origins in photomontage and drew upon the example of Heartield, the distinctive term “photo poster” was used to differentiate it from photomontage, which had increasingly pejorative associations with the viliication of modernist approaches after the rise of Socialist Realism. Koretsky’s meteoric rise as a political artist was marked by the prominent reproduction of his posters in magazines and newspapers in the midst of the Great Terror, a purge of the Communist Party and government bureaucracies that resulted in the arrest and execution of numerous political and cultural igures. In October 1937, several of Koretsky’s posters were reproduced in Pravda, the Central Committee newspaper.10 The following figure 1 figure 2 John Heartield, photomontage in the magazine SSSR na stroike (USSR in Construction), 1931, no. 9, Gustavs Klucis, LABOR IN THE USSR IS A MATTER OF HONOR, GLORY, VALOR AND HEROISM, 1931, Poster Heartield designed this photomontage during his extended visit to the Soviet Union in 1931. The frontispiece for a magazine issue featuring the new Moscow, this photomontage visually demonstrates the realization of Lenin’s plans through the superimposition of photographs of Lenin’s Lenin and new housing in Moscow as seen from an airplane. week, an article entitled “Election Posters and the Izogiz Bamboozlers” attacked the Izogiz publishing house for delays in the publication of posters for the irst elections to the Supreme Soviet, a governmental body established by the Stalin Constitution in 1936. Reviewing the posters thus far released, the otherwise vitriolic reviewer commented favorably upon Koretsky’s Young Soviet People Vote for a Happy Youth (Plate 16).11 Koretsky’s rise to prominence coincided with the fall of Klucis, who was arrested on January 17, 1938, and executed a few weeks later, on February 11.12 A Communist Party member since 1918, Klucis had served as a Latvian Rileman and been a part of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s bodyguard after the Revolution. It was this association and not his political art that led to his downfall. Nevertheless, photomontage played a role in the purge as it worked its way This poster by Gustavs Klucis was reproduced in Soviet art magazines during the debates about photomontage that followed the Central Committee’s resolution about poster production in March 1931. Photomontage posters like this were attacked for formalist distortion and lack of clarity due to the inclusion of numerous source photographs with varying spatial constructions. through Izogiz. An article published in Pravda on February 7, 1938, a few days before Klucis’s execution, identiied photomontage in a review of the publishing house’s serious defects: “The leaders of Izogiz are orientated principally toward photomontage. It is not without reason that the publishing house has earned the nickname ‘fotogiz’ in circles of artists.”13 Boris Malkin, the director of Izogiz and an important editor of innovative photomontage and photographic publications, was arrested the following month.14 As a shadow fell over Klucis and photomontage, Koretsky and the photo poster began to lourish. In 1938, Pravda began regularly to feature graphics by Koretsky. Taking up this role, he replaced Klucis, who had pioneered the incorporation of striking photomontage designs into the front pages of this newspaper in the early 1930s. Koretsky’s graphics, usually identiied as “photo 5 KORETSKY I must admit that toward the end of the war, when the Soviet Army had already gone beyond the borders of our Motherland in a victorious march and attacked the enemy on his territory, I turned out good posters less and less often. Perhaps a reaction had figure 3 figure 4 figure 5 Viktor Koretsky, RED ARMY WARRIOR, SAVE US! 1942, Album page from personal archive Viktor Koretsky, RED ARMY WARRIOR, SAVE US! 1942, album page from Koretsky’s personal archive Viktor Koretsky, RED ARMY WARRIOR, SAVE US! 1942, photograph, 183 x 250 mm Images of the poster reproduced on the cover of the illustrated magazine Krasnoarmeets (Red Army Man), 1942, no. 15 (August) and Bloknot agitator Krasnoi Armii (The Agitator’s Notebook of the Red Army), 1942, no. 2 (August 18). This page includes variants of the poster in several formats, including postcards and envelope. To the right are two clippings from wartime newspapers: a heavily retouched photograph captioned “Leningrad in October” that depicts a street in besieged Leningrad with a painted propaganda panel based upon the poster, and a photograph of a mother and child at the front, with a copy of Koretsky’s poster hanging above them. A hand-drawn version of Koretsky’s Red Army Warrior, Save Us! on display in a tank factory during the Great Patriotic War. The propaganda slogan to the left reads “We will give more tanks to the front!” While this poster was targeted initially at Red Army soldiers at the front, its popular success led to its deployment at the rear to bolster the urgency of work in provisioning the Red Army. compositions,” eschewed fragmentation and distortion in favor of more coherent, spatially uniied images. the artist’s most renowned work and one of the most memorable Soviet posters of the Great Patriotic War. Depicting a mother and child threatened by imminent Nazi brutality, the poster appealed to Red Army soldiers to save civilians in enemy-occupied territory. Reproduced extensively in the mass media in diverse formats, the poster itself was the subject of an elaborate propaganda campaign. Images of the poster at the front and mural variants of it proliferated in the mass media (Figures 3, 4, and 5). Newspapers published soldiers’ letters recounting the heroic deeds that the poster inspired them to perform on the battleield. Koretsky’s poster even became the subject of a poster; Nikolai Zhukov’s Fight to the Death! (1942, Figure 6), which depicts a machine gunner heroically ighting to the bitter end, with a copy of Red Army Warrior, Save Us! hanging above the gunner’s nest. set in after the incredible stress of several years of war; perhaps it was dificult to quickly change one’s approach and make posters that no longer carried in them bygone dramatic stresses and tragedy. At any rate, I felt that my posters lacked the former acuity and targeted quality in the resolution of the whole.15 Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Soviet propaganda apparatus was immediately harnessed to the war effort. Posters played a pivotal role in mobilizing the civilian population, in boosting the morale of troops, and in propaganda aimed at enemy soldiers. Numerous images produced during the Great Patriotic War, one of the peaks of Soviet poster art, remain popular in the former Soviet Union to the present day. Koretsky’s work during the war secured his reputation as a leading political poster artist. Within days of the German invasion, he designed posters that encouraged Soviet citizens to assist in the war effort as soldiers, medics, partisans, and workers on the home front. In 1942, his imagery shifted to depictions of the inhuman cruelty of the enemy invaders. Producing images analogous to Heartield’s critical photomontages that attacked Hitler and Nazi Germany, Koretsky’s posters are calls to action, expressions of moral indignation and disgust at savagery and inhumanity. Red Army Warrior, Save Us! (1942; Plate 35) is 6 As the war progressed, Soviet poster artists had dificulty adapting their work. The passionate patriotism and horriied indignation at the brutal invaders provided rich fuel for poster art. As the tide turned and victory approached, however, poster artists faced new challenges in inspiring their viewers and adapting to the prospect of Koretsky acknowledged that he had more facility in creating images of the enemy and conlict than afirmative ones of peace. This problem intensiied after the war, when poster artists faced a crisis similar to that encountered by their predecessors after the end of the Civil War: how to make the transition from war to peaceful reconstruction. After the war, Koretsky received numerous accolades and awards. In 1946, Koretsky and his colleagues Viktor Ivanov, Aleksei Kokorekin, and Leonid Golovanov were jointly awarded a Stalin Prize in recognition of posters completed during 1943–44. Awarded between 1941 and 1956, the Stalin Prizes recognized outstanding achievements in science, technology, literature, and the arts. The award to the poster artists was classiied under INTRODUCTION: VIKTOR KORETSKY AND THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 peace. Koretsky himself later observed: “Painting, Second Class”—an indication of the awkward position of the poster within the Socialist Realist hierarchy of the arts. Despite the ideological importance of the propaganda poster, the more traditional art forms of painting and sculpture were given pride of place in the conservative Stalinist cultural pantheon, which was modeled upon the traditional academic hierarchies. In that same year, Koretsky was awarded irst prize in a competition for the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution for his poster The Motherland Will Not Forget the Heroic Deeds of Her Sons (Plate 79). In 1948, Koretsky participated in an international poster exhibition in Vienna, in which he received a total of eight prizes for his posters.16 His postwar recognition culminated in 1949 with the receipt of a second Stalin Prize. Shared once again with Ivanov and Kokorekin, this prize recognized their postwar work. Despite these successes, within a few years Koretsky was harshly attacked during the broad cultural crackdowns of late Stalinism, when xenophobia, anti-formalism, and antiSemitism welled up at the start of the Cold War. In 1948, a campaign against formalism was initiated that had a wide-ranging impact on artists, critics, art historians, exhibitions, museums, and art schools.17 In November that year, the Central Committee issued the resolution “On Shortcomings and Measures for Improvement of the Publication of Political Posters.” Asserting the great political and artistic signiicance of poster art, this resolution noted a variety of defects in poster production and identiied concrete areas for action: Weakly popularized are the achievements of the Soviet people in the struggle for the timely fulillment of the postwar FiveYear Plan, the experience of pacesetters in industry and agriculture. In a series of posters dedicated to the development of agriculture, the tasks for the further growth and strengthening of collective farm construction are insuficiently relected, without knowledge of the matter. 7 The Central Committee called for intensiication of the ideological and political content of posters, as well as the improvement of quality in both artistic execution and printing. The issuance of this resolution also coincided with the start of the Anti-Cosmopolitan Campaign in December 1948, when a variety of predominantly Jewish cultural igures were attacked for formalism, for aestheticism, and for being “rootless cosmopolitans.” While the overt anti-Semitism lessened after March 1949, oficial xenophobia and hostility to modernist culture continued to manifest itself as the Cold War intensiied.19 figure 5 Nikolai Zhukov, FIGHT TO THE DEATH! 1942, poster, 348 x 275 cm Publisher: Iskusstvo. Press date: November 30, 1942. Print run: 50,000. 8 In response to the Central Committee resolution, a meeting on the political poster took place in Moscow in October 1951, with more than two hundred participants in attendance. This meeting assessed the development of Soviet poster art since the 1948 resolution.20 In the closing speech, the prominent art historian and critic Vladimir Kemenov extensively attacked the use of photomontage and photography in posters. Kemenov traced photomontage’s origins to bourgeois European and American advertising and ilm. Similarly, he linked prewar Soviet photomontage to the extreme formalism of the modernist group LEF (Left Front of the Arts), something “through and through hostile to realist art.”21 Kemenov deplored the application of photomontage in contemporary posters, as the piecing together of found photographs deviated from the norms and methods of realist art. He also critiqued the use of photographs without any further artistic reworking, as such posters merely re-presented social types and failed to convey a genuine artistic image. INTRODUCTION: VIKTOR KORETSKY AND THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 KORETSKY Few posters are published that depict the struggle of the Soviet Union for the enduring peace and security of peoples or that expose the instigators of the new war. Many posters are inexpressive, they represent the life and labor of Soviet peoples primitively and banally. The printing execution of posters is at a low level.18 Kemenov also attacked “photographism”—the emulation of photography and photomontage in graphic and painted posters. Insidiously, these formalist photographic approaches were even contaminating realist painting. The claim that photography somehow corrupted realism may seem paradoxical. Due to photography’s capacity to provide seemingly objective records of the world, photography is often considered the realist medium par excellence. However, Socialist Realism entailed a distinct set of aesthetic and ideological dictates. Socialist Realist art was required to depict reality in its further revolutionary development, and “naturalism” (i.e., the direct transcription of nature) was viewed negatively. The conservative academic foundations of Socialist Realist painting also made it dificult to reconcile with photography. In his speech, Kemenov singled out Koretsky for formalist deviation. While other poster artists were mentioned, Koretsky’s work was subjected to intensive interrogation. Kemenov criticized his posters for the cutout nature of igures from backgrounds, the inclusion of various spatial planes in a single poster, the unnatural coloring of photographic images, the repetitive use of the same human models in different posters, and the failure to imbue photographic material with deep expressive feeling capable of moving viewers. Koretsky was clearly the central target of Kemenov’s venom, as the other artists mentioned were younger, not well-established igures. Kemenov allowed that photography should not be entirely prohibited, giving the example of Koretsky’s Red Army Warrior, Save Us! as a superlative poster of great emotional force (given its iconic status, this poster had to be presented positively). In this instance, Kemenov reasoned that the camera did not merely mechanically capture an image. Rather, photography captured the emotional expression of the model, who “was illed with the idea of the poster, understood and lived through the feeling of a mother, expressed with her face, igure, and gesture 9 About six months later, an unsigned editorial in Pravda about poster production again attacked photomontage and photographism, singling out Koretsky for criticism.23 A combination of factors made Koretsky susceptible to attack in late Stalinist culture. While younger poster artists began to employ similar techniques after the war, his photo posters were comparatively unique. His Jewish ethnicity also made him a target during an era of extreme anti-Semitism.24 For an aggressive Stalinist cultural apparatus in search of a scapegoat in the area of poster production, Koretsky presented the perfect solution—a Jewish artist who had earlier dabbled in fragmented photomontage and worked with photography. At the time of these attacks, Koretsky was in a serious situation. Some creative individuals attacked during the period suffered severe consequences. The critic Nikolai Punin, for instance, was arrested in 1949 and died a few years later in Siberia.25 After these attacks, Koretsky turned to more graphic and painterly means in his poster designs. Prior to 1952, his posters are almost entirely derived from photographs, sometimes supplemented with hand-drawn graphic material. In the years following, Koretsky produced numerous posters with exclusively graphic or painterly means, often in collaboration with other artists. Initially drawn to art through painting, Koretsky returned to his origins. However, this shift also coincided with Stalin’s death in March 1953 and the ensuing political and cultural “Thaw,” during which artists frequently broke with the repressive dictates of Stalinist culture. During 10 the Thaw, Koretsky freely incorporated Western modernist sources, as in the exuberant awardwinning posters of dancers that he designed for the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students, which clearly emulate Henri Matisse’s lyrical paintings of musical subjects (Plate 124). During the Thaw, Koretsky was able to publicly articulate his thoughts on the political poster and respond to the criticism of his work. Writing in Izvestiia in 1955, Koretsky argued for the distinction of posters from paintin g, thus countering the attacks on his work predicated on painting as the norm for artistic creation: A good poster is always direct. While the painter makes the viewer gradually draw the necessary conclusion, the poster appeals for quick action. “Do Not Spare Effort for the Good of the People and Homeland!” “Love Your Homeland Above All on Earth!” It is in this direct appeal to human hearts that we see the special role of poster art. “A poster,” said M. I. Kalinin, “must above all be extremely incisive. The difference between a picture and a poster consists also in the fact that in a poster everything must be gathered together and concentrated. After all, only the concentrated and typical produces a great impression.”26 Adding weight to his argument, Koretsky cited Mikhail Kalinin, an old Bolshevik who served as the oficial head of state of the USSR from 1919 to 1946. Kalinin’s quotation asserts the importance of typage in communicating a poster’s message, an aspect of Koretsky’s work that had been attacked. Kemenov’s critique of the application of photography to the poster was grounded in the assumption of Socialist Realist painting as the model for artistic production. In this article, Koretsky challenged the primacy of painting. He also drew attention to the lack of serious attention to political posters on the part of the Academy of Arts and other Soviet cultural organizations, a result of the exaggerated emphasis given to painting. While the attacks doubtlessly affected Koretsky in the early 1950s, his career lourished during the Thaw and he maintained his status as a major political poster artist to the end of his career. While Koretsky produced fewer photographic posters in the years immediately after Kemenov’s speech, for the rest of his career he employed a diverse mixture of approaches—photographic, painterly, and graphic—and continued to explore new means of visually engaging his viewers. Koretsky’s commitment to the political poster never waned. In addition to poster design, he also taught and published articles and books about the poster. Toward the end of his career, Koretsky participated in a revitalization of the Soviet political poster that took place under the auspices of the publishing house Plakat. While the poster was initially a primary medium for disseminating the ideological messages of the new state, growing literacy and the expansion of the other print media lessened its primacy. The rise of radio, ilm, and then television resulted in its gradual displacement. Even at the level of the street, the poster was no longer visible. Writing in 1978, Koretsky noted: INTRODUCTION: VIKTOR KORETSKY AND THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1931-1984 KORETSKY exactly that emotional state that was necessary for this poster.”22 Hence, the success of this poster was due to the model’s communication of emotion. Kemenov advocated that poster artists employing photography should work in the manner of ilm directors, suggesting that their models adopt the acting techniques of Konstantin Stanislavsky in order to fully convey a true sense of life and emotion. Koretsky produced posters of exceptional visual appeal. By the 1970s, television had effectively displaced the poster as the primary visual medium of state ideology. These late posters sought to reach the television generation with dazzling, often oneiric images. Produced during the stagnation of the Brezhnev era, Koretsky’s striking multisheet works appear to have had little resonance with a public habituated to the long empty slogans of Soviet political posters. Koretsky stopped designing posters in the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in the reforms of perestroika. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Soviet political poster ceased to exist. Koretsky devoted himself to painting until his death in Moscow on July 4, 1998. Dimensions are of no small importance for the political poster. Not so long ago, as a rule, posters were published in the dimensions of 60 × 90 or 70 × 110 [centimeters]. They were inferior in format even to theater text posters. Naturally, such sheets were not visible on the streets, railways, and squares. Today we can state with joy that this problem, distressing to all poster artists, has been solved. The publisher Plakat has organized the printing of large-format posters—diptychs, triptychs, polyptychs—for posting on the street and in squares. In the near future there will be many meter-long printed poster panels.27 Working in this enlarged multisheet format, 11 THE SOVIET PHOTO POSTER: 1930–1984 KORETSKY NOTES 1 For critical accounts of Soviet posters from Lenin to Stalin, see Stephen White, The Bolshevik Poster (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Victoria Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For a comprehensive reference resource on Soviet political posters, see N.I. Baburina, ed., Sovetskii politicheskii plakat. Iz kollektsii Gosudarstvennoi biblioteki SSSR imeni Lenina (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1984). 13 V. Vdovichenko, “Politicheski bezotvetstvennoe izdatel’stvo,” Pravda, February 7, 1938. 2 G. Sintovskaia, Viktor Koretskii (Moscow: Planeta, 1984), 6. 16 Iurii Khalaminskii, Viktor Borisovich Koretskii (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1951), 28. 3 Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, “O politicheskom plakate,” Pravda, June 5, 1941; Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, Viktor Borisovich Koretskii: Master sovetskogo plakata (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1949). 17 For a discussion of the anti-formalism campaign, see Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 284–87. 4 Viktor Koretsky, Tovarishch plakat: Opyt, razmyshleniia (Moscow: Plakat, 1978), 9–10. 5 The full text of the resolution appears in Brigada khudozhnikov, nos. 2–3 (1931): 1–3. 6 Valentina Kulagina’s diaries provide insight on poster production in Izogiz during the 1930s. Margarita Tupitsyn, Gustav Klutsis, and Valentina Kulagina, Photography and Montage After Constructivism (New York: International Center of Photography, 2004), 197–210, 215–22, 226–28. 7 “Kommunisticheskaia akademiia o plakata,” Brigada khudozhnikov, nos. 2–3 (1931): 4. 8 Hubertus Gassner, “Heartield’s Moscow Apprenticeship, 1931–1932,” in John Heartield, ed., Peter Pachnicke and Klaus Honnef (New York: Abrams, 1992), 262–64. For more recent discussion of these debates, see Maria Gough, “Back in the USSR: John Heartield, Gustavs Klucis, and the Medium of Soviet Propaganda,” New German Critique 107, vol. 36, no. 2 (2009): 133–83. 9 Koretsky, Tovarishch, 16. 10 Pravda, October 11 and 13, 1937. 11 “Predvybornye plakaty i izogizovskie ochkovtirateli,” Pravda, October 18, 1937. 12 For new research related to Klucis’s arrest and its aftermath, see Sergei Larkov, “Crushed in the Mill of Terror: The Last Days of Gustav Klutsis” and “Valentina Nikiforovna Kulagina: The Fight for her Husband’s Name” in Gustav Klutsis, Valentina Kulagina, Plakat. Knizhnaia graika. Zhurnal’naia graika. Gazetnyi fotomontazh. 1922–1937, edited by Aleksandr Skopkov, Aleksei Morozov and Aleksandr Shkliarukh (Moscow: Kontakt-Kul’tura, 2011), 260278. 12 14 International Historical-Enlightenment Human Rights and Humanitarian Society Memorial, “Rasstrely v Moskve” (Executions in Moscow), http://mos.memo.ru/shot-49.htm (accessed May 1, 2011). 15 Viktor Koretsky, Zametki plakatista (Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1958), 105. 18 “O nedostatkakh i merakh uluchsheniia izdaniia politicheskikh plakatov,” quoted in Koretsky, Zametki, 108. 19 Yaacov Ro’i, “Anticosmopolitan Campaign,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/ Anticosmopolitan_Campaign (accessed April 25, 2011). 20 “Soveshchanie po politicheskomu plakaty,” Pravda, October 29, 1951. 21 Vladimir Kemenov, “O politicheskom plakate,” in Stat’i ob iskusstve (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1956), 55. For an earlier variant of this essay, see Vladimir Kemenev,“O sostoianii i merakh uluchsheniia ideinokhudozhestvennogo kachestva politicheskogo plakata,” Iskusstvo, 1952, no. 3 (May-June): 34-37. 22 Kemenov, “O politicheskom plakate,” 64. 23 “Uluchshit’ kachestvo politicheskogo plakata,” Pravda, April 25, 1952. 24 While there are conlicting claims concerning in regard to this matter, a membership form that Koretsky completed in 1931 for the Assocation of Artists of the Revolution (AKhR) includes the answer “Jewish” to the question about his nationality. Rossisskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), Fond 2941 (AKhr), op. 1, ed. khr. 349, ll. 37–38 25 Bown, Socialist Realist Painting, 287. 26 Viktor Koretsky, “Notes on Political Posters,” Izvestiia, August 23, 1955. Translation from The Current Digest of the Soviet Press 7, no. 4 (1955): 31. 27 Koretsky, Tovarishch, 55. 13