Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin

The Bolsheviks, Victoria Bonnell writes, were the world's first masters of visual propaganda, a form necessary to spread revolution in a largely illiterate nation. Political posters took the place of religious icons as a means of unifying the people, and artistic experimentation was encouraged--at least until Stalin came to power. After his ascension, artists were ordered to "typicalize" their work, to ignore present realities and instead imagine a glorious socialist future. This idealized artistic representation led to depictions of female collective farmers who might have been fashion models and to other such distortions. Bonner's text is packed with visual examples, and the whole book is a fascinating study in political imagery.