
Soviet Posters - Phithagoras
https://www.sovietposters.com/
======
rdtsc
Some of them are quite dark and powerful

[https://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?poster=871](https://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?poster=871)

I remember seeing that growing up in a history book somewhere. It's just an
image your never forget.

There is also something completely unsettling with the "here is how the dead
mother and the crying child would look against your mid-century modern
furniture" on the website.

Site was flaky sometimes returning 500s so I archived the page
[https://archive.is/ujUpy](https://archive.is/ujUpy)

There is also a terrible and shameful one I had never seen before, "Everyone
to the Polish front". Do the owners know what they are posting there?

[https://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?poster=85](https://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?poster=85)
([https://archive.is/DvQLY](https://archive.is/DvQLY))

These might seems artsy and cool to some how haven't had their family members
suffer during the wars there or who were sent to labor camps. But to those who
have, these symbols and images carry a lot of significance.

~~~
trhway
>There is also a terrible and shameful one I had never seen before, "Everyone
to the Polish front". Do the owners know what they are posting there?

it isn't really more terrible/shameful than the rest of Revolution and Civil
War related.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War)
\- The Red Army was trying to get to Germany to support the Revolution there.
It was along the ideology of sparking worldwide Revolution. It is just
happened that the path was through Poland who wasn't a part of Russia anymore
- it was a young independent nation state which has finally just got it
independence back after more than 200 years of it being lost, and who had
their own big plans
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermarium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermarium),
and didn't want to be steamrolled by Russia again. Polish were very
enthusiastic in that war and tore the Red Army/Bolsheviks a new one. Btw,
Stalin was one of the main commanders of that invading force. In the history
lessons in USSR schools those events were kind of muted and/or pretty much
lost from the narrative together with many other events/facts which would be
hard to fit into the supposedly glorious story of Revolution and Civil War
victory by Bolsheviks.

~~~
rdtsc
Very good background, thank you for replying.

They tried to capture Warsaw. Budyonny's thugs were brutal as well. But it is
interesting that somehow Budyonny managed to be a hero in the end after
technically losing the war.

Another aspect of course is that it set the stage for Russians try to
"recapture" Poland, and made a deal with the Nazi Germany to "split it"
between themselves in 1939. That's when the Soviet secret police committed a
lot atrocities there.

~~~
Shivetya
Well eventually they do take all that territory and more in their "liberation"
of Poland and more from Germany though they love to have the world ignore the
annexations of Latvian countries and attempt to take Finland when they opened
WW2 with Germany. So of the two aggressor states that started WW2 they gained
a lot of what they were after and left the world with decades of oppression.

~~~
fuoqi
Oh, it's very convenient to forget the fact that Poland has occupied
Czechoslovakia territory in 38 as part of the Munich Agreement supported by
the "free" world. "Hyena of Europe" is a really good description in my
opinion. Even before WW2 Poland has shamelessly invaded Ukraine and Belarus
during the civil war in an attempt to implement its Intermarium imperialistic
vision. You reap what you sow.

------
DavidVoid
If you ever have the chance to see parts of the late Ruki Matsumoto's vast
collection of Soviet posters, then I highly recommend going! Seeing them in
person was (imo) much more interesting than seeing them online. The sheer size
of some of them really adds a lot to the aesthetic.

I got to see some of them at an exhibition at Liljevalchs in Stockholm in 2018
[1]. My favorite was probably this one [2], which was encouraging workers to
not be lazy. Design-wise I think this was the best one [3].

I apologize for the poor picture quality, but if you're interested then there
are some more photos from that exhibition here [4].

[1] [https://www.liljevalchs.se/utstallningar/sovjetisk-
affischko...](https://www.liljevalchs.se/utstallningar/sovjetisk-
affischkonst/)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/5l9t83s.png](https://i.imgur.com/5l9t83s.png)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/fh1mv63.png](https://i.imgur.com/fh1mv63.png)

[4] [https://imgur.com/a/FfMOSA5](https://imgur.com/a/FfMOSA5)

------
Infernal
Seems down to me, however
[http://web.archive.org/web/20200602043034/https://www.soviet...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200602043034/https://www.sovietposters.com/)

~~~
rob74
Yup... too many visitors from Hacker News maybe? Or maybe they somehow angered
the Russian hackers?

I'm getting a good ol' PHP/MySQL error (EDIT: with credentials in clear text,
I removed them):

 _Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[HY000]
[2002] No such file or directory' in /home/sovietpo/public_html/db.php:17
Stack trace: #0 /home/sovietpo/public_html/db.php(17):
PDO->__construct('mysql:host=loca...', '[REDACTED]', '[REDACTED]') #1
/home/sovietpo/public_html/showposter.php(6):
include_once('/home/sovietpo/...') #2 {main} thrown in
/home/sovietpo/public_html/db.php on line 17_

~~~
RL_Quine
That's unfortunate for a store.

------
every
As a child I got to play around with a war surplus shortwave in the 50's and
60's. The English language Radio Moscow signal was very strong, even in Texas.
The stories, vignettes and takes on the news were an interesting and sometimes
confusing contrast to my essentially Ozzie and Harriet existence. Later, as an
art student, I also became fascinated with their visual propaganda. It was not
too dissimilar from our WPA stuff:

[http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos](http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos)

------
medymed
I’ve often been intrigued at the sense of fascination, cultural and
technological, directed towards the USSR on HN. I share the fascination. It
may stem from an appeal to see engineered works from a system far different
than our own both on the technology front as well as cultural
engineering/propaganda front; there may be some appeal in the notion that the
USSR is historically contained/bounded in some sense and can be isolated and
studied; also, the political message of focusing national efforts on
progress/technology in some sense would resonate with engineers (though
communist policies impeded innovation and no doubt industrious politicians
stood to gain more than industrious scientists/engineers at most junctures).
Would be interested in others’ thoughts.

~~~
Synaesthesia
My views on the Soviet Union have shifted over the years, when I learned about
Stalin's offer of a unified Germany in the 1950's which was rejected, for
example, and you realise the USA also was guilty of prosecuting the Cold War.

The technological progress made was impressive, although I thought it was made
largely at the cost of the people and workers, rather than in co-operation
with them. I am a socialist, (anarchist) and anti-Bolshevik. The October
revolution was more of a right wing coup, which came after a true broad based
revolution according to my interpretation of history. That said, despite the
brutal methods employed to reinstate managerial control of the factories and
so on, the country did progress from an impoverished, illiterate state in 1917
to an advanced manufacturing state.

The same can be said of China, which in 1948 was developmentally on the level
of say India or Africa.

~~~
nickik
> The October revolution was more of a right wing coup, which came after a
> true broad based revolution according to my interpretation of history.

It was a coup from some socialist against others. Only an anarchist could call
it 'right wing' and by that standard essentially 99.9% of history is 'right
wing'. Seems kind of a useless way of using words.

> the country did progress from an impoverished, illiterate state in 1917 to
> an advanced manufacturing state

This is mostly nonsense. People regularly underestimate the Imperial economy.
If you actually look at the Imperial economy and the war economy they had
during the war, it was quite impressive. The efforts by socialist to call it
some medieval economy is just plane nonsense. Growth during the last 30 years
of Imperial was quite good, among the best in Europe.

Arguably the Soviet economy was never as dynamic. And only the Stalin
industrialization drives produced more industrial growth at a cost the
Imperial government wouldn't pay.

Check out this set of lectures on Imperial Russia, it includes a lot of
insight on their economy and industry:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEETkM6vwQPHJHhXinsuQ...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEETkM6vwQPHJHhXinsuQN7jahEjbUPPY)

~~~
Synaesthesia
Well if you look at their actions, they were anti-worker, they had to
recapture the factories from the soviets (worker councils) and reinstate
managerial control. This meant fighting the most dedicated revolutionaries and
socialists, a real tragedy IMO.

in 1917 the country was 90% illiterate. It was also mostly foreign-owned, kind
of like a 3rd world country.

~~~
nickik
You can't just declare those you liked as the 'most dedicated'. They put
workers in control of those factories, and only because of that did they have
any chance at to win the Civil war and making Soviet Union as such possible.
So who is really the 'most dedicated'.

> in 1917 the country was 90% illiterate. It was also mostly foreign-owned,
> kind of like a 3rd world country.

The point is not that Imperial Russia is some kind of paradise, but that there
is not fundamental break between Imperial and Soviet, no matter how much
propaganda wants to 'start history' in 1917.

The land was the most productive asset in the country, and that was not
foreign-owned. In fact it was mostly owned by the peasantry themselves.

------
lostlogin
There was a Soviet poster exhibition at The Tate Modern several years ago. It
produced a great book and they reprint some of the posters.
[http://www.victoriasadler.com/russian-revolutionary-
posters-...](http://www.victoriasadler.com/russian-revolutionary-posters-tate-
modern/)

------
cpursley
Can anyone recommend a good source within Russia to buy Soviet reproduction
posters (I live in Russia)?

~~~
082349872349872
Maybe a museum, like in the frame story of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBnCo2SKafU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBnCo2SKafU)
? (for context, the soviets didn't have separate boy and girl scouts — they
were all young pioneers together. So today's russians apparently go clubbing
in "sexy pioneer" outfits on 80's nights, much like Halloween in the US is the
time for "sexy nurse")

Yandex just gave me
[https://yandex.com/search/?text=ссср%20Плакат%20купить&lr=10...](https://yandex.com/search/?text=ссср%20Плакат%20купить&lr=10520)
5 pages of hits...

------
082349872349872
Both Russia and the US have a strong tradition of "demotivational posters",
shared online.

I've assumed this is because both countries had the non-lamp shaded version
first.

Do any of you all live somewhere that has demotivational posters as a common
meme, but never had the propaganda poster?

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
Hispanic countries didn't have them (some were Russian backed) but we love the
demotivational posters. Dark humor is pretty commmon in spanish countries.

~~~
samplatt
I might have been too young to see/notice the motivational posters, but here
in Australia both the motivational and DEmotivational posters became
unironically popular at around about the same time.

------
smitty1e
Notable in this context is the band Franz Ferdinand:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ferdinand_(band)#Music_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ferdinand_\(band\)#Music_and_art)

------
myth_drannon
It's missing a lot of space themed posters that you can find on AliExpress

------
voldacar
>Soviet posters have always kept pace with the times. They created images of
role models for generations of Soviet workers and soldiers, exposed
international warmongers and fought for world peace.

Ah yes, the peaceful non-imperial USSR, fighting against those international
warmongers. That's the Soviet Union I know and love

------
kalium-xyz
Site has been hugged to dead.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200602042013/https://www.sovie...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200602042013/https://www.sovietposters.com/)

------
baybal2
I am very surprised to see this post come back from the third page back to
front.

------
lihaciudaniel
Slashdot'd

------
dusted
seems to have gone offline

