https://www.eruditionmag.com/home/rosta-windows-propagating-an-ideology-to-an-illiterate-populous Home Art Fashion Architecture Film Society & Culture Podcast Become A Contributor About Subscribe Contact [ ] Erudition Magazine [ ] Oct 28 Oct 28 ROSTA Windows: Propagating an Ideology to an Illiterate Populous Makenna Polan Art You walk down the street in Los Angeles, California, what do you see? Large advertisements for commercial entertainment and products or businesses. Most of these large scale ads have text, telling you the product or the company they are promoting, and it is easy to feel as though one is desensitized to it because of the over-saturation of these advertisements. But imagine you are in a war torn country and you cannot read the newspaper. You're a peasant, or a worker who came to a major city to find factory work in the recent industrialization of your country. The revolution is over and the Bolshevik party now has control of the Russian government, but their power is precarious and the country is split in two. How does the Bolshevik Party continue the momentum of the Revolution during the Civil War, and how do they communicate to the common folk who are largely illiterate? This question inspired the creation of the Russian Telegraph Agency, known more colloquially as ROSTA. If you are walking through the streets of Petrograd during this time, contemporarily known as Leningrad, you might see Vladimir Lebedev's large poster showing a collection of simplified geometrical shapes that are composed together to depict a worker, sawing wood and actively working, with a gun running parallel to the saw (fig.1). If you are literate, you make out Mayakovsky's words, "One has to work, but keep the rifle handy," (fig.1). If you can't read, the message is still clear, you are a worker, but as a citizen of Russian you are also a potential soldier and war is always on the horizon. There were thousands of these posters made, and depending on the location they were intended for, some were done in a more narrative series style with multiple posters, such as Wladyslaw Strzeminski 1920 ROSTA, The Red Army is heroically fighting at the front... (fig. 2), others were large single posters like the one mentioned previously designed by Lebedev. Figure 1: Vladimir Lebedev, Vladimir Mayakovsky, "One has to work, but keep the rifle handy," Petrograd ROSTA, 1920, Linocut, colored. 77.4 x 56.3 cm. The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Figure 1: Vladimir Lebedev, Vladimir Mayakovsky, "One has to work, but keep the rifle handy," Petrograd ROSTA, 1920, Linocut, colored. 77.4 x 56.3 cm. The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Some issues arise when researching ROSTA, including the nature of the organization in such a large country, the style discrepancies in the posters produced, as well as the content of the posters. Another issue that is difficult to measure, especially in hindsight, is the efficiency of these posters and whether or not they accomplished what they intended to. Additionally, the literature surrounding ROSTA, at least that which is written or has been translated to English, is somewhat limited. Stephen White wrote The Bolshevik Poster in 1987 comprehensively outlining the different techniques and eras of Bolshevik propaganda. It is through White that I was able to find the most historical context, as well as the most comprehensive overview of the history of ROSTA and their production houses in different cities, focusing mostly on Moscow. As well as White, Daniel Solovev's essay on ROSTA Windows, or Okna ROSTA, was included in Propaganda!, edited by Daniela Buchten, and offers a more thorough look at the Petrograd ROSTA posters and how they were different to the Moscow ROSTA productions. This investigation into Petrograd, and more specifically into the work of Lebedev, with Nicoletta Misler's essay "A Public Art: Caricatures and Posters of Vladimir Lebedev". Annie Gerin also writes about this era in Bolshevik art in her book Devastation and Laughter: Satire, Power, and Culture in the Early Soviet State, which helps supplement historical context of the other authors. Lunacharsky, whose writings mainly outline the history of these posters and this era of Bolshevik power and propaganda, and a few of them discuss the issues in attribution that arise, benefitted the most from this historical context. He wrote , "Words are weapons. Just as the revolutionary government cannot tolerate everybody running around with handguns and machine guns because some could in fact be menacing enemies, the state cannot tolerate freedom of printed propaganda." ROSTA Windows were used as a tool to reach the common people, but because of their avant-garde influences and artists, they were limited in their accessibility and efficiency in communicating with the intended audience. In this essay I will be comparing the different styles of ROSTA Windows, as well as comparing them to other styles of propaganda to demonstrate how their aesthetic and avant garde nature ultimately, failed. Figure 2: Wladyslaw Strzeminski, "The Red Army is Heroically fighting at the front. The red rear must help the red front," Smolensk ROSTA, 1920. Chromolithograph, 73 x 44.7 cm, The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Figure 2: Wladyslaw Strzeminski, "The Red Army is Heroically fighting at the front. The red rear must help the red front," Smolensk ROSTA, 1920. Chromolithograph, 73 x 44.7 cm, The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg ROSTA produced what are known as ROSTA "Windows" from September 1919 to January 1922. This agency created "agitprop," or agitation propaganda, that helped spread the news as quickly as possible. These posters were used to spread news from the front and would use images to communicate them to the illiterate population, but also included slogans or verse along with them. One person would design the artwork and another would write the words, and they would be hand-copied because the printing amount they needed was too demanding and wasn't functional with the current state of press technologies. When the agency first started producing the posters, they were only making them weekly, posting them in the morning in shop windows, which is why they are called "ROSTA Windows." But the news was happening and changing rapidly, which demanded that the volume of original designs rose and, at their peak, they were being produced multiple times daily. It is important to note that the poster was used as a mass communication tool because radio technology was not accessible enough to reach the number of people they needed to everyday, so instead of announcing the news from the front on the radio, they would send word to ROSTA, who would create and handcopy whatever poster needed using cardboard stencils. Moscow was the Headquarters of ROSTA and where the idea for the Windows was incepted by Mikhail Cheremnykh, a political satirist who contributed both drawings and slogans to ROSTA during his tenure there. After Cheremnykh created the first window, one of the pioneering members of Futurism, Vladimir Mayakovsky, joined the collective after seeing the poster. Mayakovsky had just helped pen a Futurist paper calling for the abolishment of museums, believing that art should go to "the city streets and squares and to appear on the walls, fences, and tramcars in order to 'gladden and ennoble' the passerby." After Mayakovsky came Ivan Malyutin, and it was these three men who primarily staffed ROSTA Moscow. Mayakovsky was primarily a writer, but he functioned as a director of ROSTA with every design needing his approval before it was to be copied. Most of the text that was approved to be used in the posters were his. Cheremnykh had a formal title as art director of the business. Mayakovsky even went as far to say that "he was the 'best draftsman in the Soviet Union.' " But Cheremnykh objected to this, stating that Malyutin was better and he often copied from him, while Malyutin "never copied from anyone else [in ROSTA]." The three all served a purpose and the Moscow branch could produce "300 complete 'windows' in five days." With this ability to reproduce so efficiently, they were able to hang copies of these posters all over Moscow. An example of a ROSTA window that came out of Moscow is one done by Ivan Malyutin, with the words composed by Mayakovsky. It is ROSTA Window no. 392 which is a series of posters portraying the Bourgeois (identifiable by their satirical top hats and tuxedos) withholding food from the Red Army, even though, according to the poster, "three times as much wheat rots there as is needed to feed the people of Volga" (fig. 3). It continues the narrative by saying that the rich in Canada could have saved 25,000,000 peasants but chose not to, and ends with a man dressed in all red, to signify his allegiance to the Red Army, choking and beating one of these members of the Bourgeoisie with the words, "To him, there is only one thing to say: 'Fingers on the throat, knee in the gut!'" (fig. 4). This is an example of just how explicit these propaganda posters were, in content and in meaning. The message of the poster is perfectly understandable, too, if you are illiterate because the artists employ the use of satirical caricatures in their works to make it more understandable to the public. It is also using a technique called lubok, a type of Russian storybook art that was typically a figure composed with unmodulated color and was accompanied by text. This stylistic choice was employed because it would be a style that civilians would likely be aware of and used to. This would make the posters and the content familiar, in a way, and less intimidating. Figure 3: Ivan Malyutin, ROSTA Window no. 392, October 1921, stencilled gouache, 55 x 41 cm. Figure 3: Ivan Malyutin, ROSTA Window no. 392, October 1921, stencilled gouache, 55 x 41 cm. Figure 4: Detail of ROSTA Window no. 392 Figure 4: Detail of ROSTA Window no. 392 The object that was mentioned earlier in this essay, the one bearing the words, "One has to work, but keep the rifle handy" is much different in style to the ROSTA Window no. 392, in almost every way. No. 392 was a series of smaller posters that were numbered in order to sequence them correctly, while "One has to work..." poster is one singular, large poster. The reason is, this poster was made at the Petrograd branch of ROSTA by an artist by the name of Vladimir Lebedev, who played the equivalent role as Malyutin at the Moscow branch. The reason these are formatted differently is because Petrograd had larger windows that were more spread out than Moscow, meaning that it was more effective for them to create one large singular message than a collective narrative. The other difference is the work is much more avant garde and abstracted than the window made in Moscow. The figure is composed of geometrical shapes, completely abstracted and simplified, more reminiscent of a cubist work than a children's storybook or a satirical cartoon. The colors that are used are saturated, primary colors that coupled with the abstraction of the figure make it really pop, especially on the street. It is clear and legible, but the issue is that it is not approachable to the everyday civilian, but of course Mayakovsky, who saw this poster on a visit to Petrograd, immediately changed the slogan that went with to improve it. Though this "cubist-esque" style did help make the copying process easier and more fluid, it was leaving behind the narrative of the lubok tradition. Figure 5: Mikhail Cheremnykh and Victor Deni, "Comrade Lenin Sweeps the World Clean.", 1920 Figure 5: Mikhail Cheremnykh and Victor Deni, "Comrade Lenin Sweeps the World Clean.", 1920 A more explicit difference in style between the two branches can be found in comparing two posters that contain the same subject matter. This can be seen in Cheremnykh's "Comrade Lenin Sweeps the Globe Clean" poster (fig. 5), and Lebedev's poster "Workman Sweeping the Criminal Elements out of the Republic" (fig. 6). Lebedev's poster has no words, and is composed in very simple, geometric shapes. It shows a large figure, a worker identifiable by his hat which was a common identifier in these posters, who is sweeping smaller figures, made in the same style as him, away. Cheremnyhk's poster, though, is something entirely different. The figures are caricatured, but they are clearly identifiable. Lenin wearing a modest suit with his recognizable countenance, sweeps away the Tzar, and members of the bourgeois dressed in a pretentious suit and top hat (fig. 5). They are enlarged figures, set on top of a globe, and there reads a clear slogan underneath it which reads, as stated before, "Comrade Lenin Sweeps the Globe Clean!" Though Cheremnykh's poster is dated 1920, while Lebedev's is dated 1922, these two years cannot entirely explain why their styles are so different. One has clearly recognizable figures representing a hero, performing the primary action of the work, as well as identifiable enemies. As well as this, it literally spells out what is happening in the poster so as to have no confusion. While in Lebedev's poster, there are no words to explain. Of course the graphic nature of the poster is striking, and the use of unmodulated primary colors and scale and focus of the image draw the eye of the viewer, there is too much ambiguity for it to function efficiently as a work of propaganda.This idea, though, is not original, and it was well known that Lebedev's style was controversial, even within the ROSTA collective. Dmitry Moor even criticized Lebedev saying that he employed "'cubist and suprematist' methods to his posters, reducing them to the simplest of schemes." Polonsky, a prominent art figure during this time, called his work "incomprehensible to the broad masses" because of the level of abstraction the posters were at, but Lebedev defended this, blaming the issues of "schematics" on the lack of time to create a less abstract design. This is one of the main differences between the Moscow branch and the Petrograd branch of ROSTA. The offices in Moscow made even more posters and were constantly working overnight and around the clock, while the Petrograd offices occasionally had time off to go survey the public's responses. Petrograd functioned more ambiguously, and believed that the more abstracted work was, the more accessible it would be, while those in Moscow were more realistic in their attempts to communicate with the people. Figure 6: Vladimir Lebedev, "A Worker Sweeping the Criminals out of the Soviet Land", 1923, linograph, colored Figure 6: Vladimir Lebedev, "A Worker Sweeping the Criminals out of the Soviet Land", 1923, linograph, colored This is not to say that the ROSTA Windows were not a successful tool of the Bolsheviks during this time, but there is a reason they were only functional for three years. The issue is that the space between Petrograd and Moscow was too great to ensure a collective aesthetic of ROSTA Windows. And, because of the local-focused content that the poster exemplified, it didn't particularly make sense that there should be one singular look. It is important to note that at this time there was no freedom of the press in Russia. The Bolsheviks had passed a decree eliminating this freedom because of their precarious position during the civil war: they could not risk providing any press power to the opposition because they understood exactly how important and destructive it could potentially be. Anotoly Lunacharsky thought the idea of a free press was ridiculous at this point, stating, "Words are weapons. Just as the revolutionary government cannot tolerate everybody running around with handguns and machine guns because some could in fact be menacing enemies, the state cannot tolerate freedom of printed propaganda." This lack of freedom in what they say could potentially provide an explanation as to why those in Petrograd used the posters for more of a creative outlet. It is also important to note that those working at ROSTA were all notoriously very happy, as well as very wealthy. Stephen White describes the organization as "[operating] with a good deal of informality and a great deal of political and organisational autonomy". A fair amount of the artists who worked at ROSTA intermittently were not devout Bolsheviks or fully "supportive of the Bolshevik's seizure of power". This could explain why the prominent figures at ROSTA are so closely and loudly associated with the organizations: since they were the most supportive of the message they were propagating, they were also the most vocal in that support. Mayakovsky is the person who is most closely associated with ROSTA, especially the Moscow branch, and he was also the most politically involved of the core members, arrested for political reasons since his teenage years. The same is true of Lebedev who says that he was "among the relatively few artists, particularly in Petrograd, who immediately and unconditionally supported the Bolshevik seizure of power". The poster that was first introduced in this paper, designed by Lebedev composed of a worker sawing away and rifle just out of reach from him, with Mayakovsky's words, "One has to work, but keep the rifle handy." This poster, according to Buchten, was a message to the Worker's Army, a subdivision of the Red Army that was recalled from the front and immediately put to work to maintain the Bolshevik infrastructure in civilian life. It perfectly illustrates the agitprop that the Bolsheviks used as a tool to maintain control. They were in control of the press entirely, but needed to remind the workers that, though they may have returned home, their fight was nowhere near finished. The figure is abstracted, and one would need to pause in front of it and analyze it to understand the message if you could not read, which poses a problem, as far as something that could be easily understood, such as the image of Lenin sweeping the Tzar and rich aristocrats off the world. There were other ROSTA outposts, specifically in Vitebsk and Odessa. Vitebsk was headed by Chagall and Malevich, two avant garde artists who produced work that reflected this. Chagall was politically unaware and unconcerned at this point in time, and his tenure as director was not a memorable one, mainly because of his ignorance and indifference toward Marxism at this time. Malevich took over, but suffered from many of the same issues that the Petrograd branch did with over-abstraction. There is little if any surviving Windows from Odessa because their paper shortage was so great, they painted all their posters on wood and would clean and repaint them everyday. They were a more traditional branch though, according to accounts from the time, borrowing iconography from more traditional Russian stories and subjects. This era of Civil War in Russia proved to be difficult for the people, but a time for the artists to flourish. They were able to profit off of the propagation of a message they believed in. But, because of their avant garde tendencies, and their tendencies as revolutionaries, the level of ambiguity in their works proved their downfall. The masses, who were illiterate in terms of suprematism and cubism, most of them never setting foot in a museum, most likely could not interpret such an abstracted form without some leading through text or more straight forward imagery. This level of ambiguity is also why the ROSTA windows died as a form. The government needed propaganda that would serve their specific purpose as a whole and needed to inspire something completely different. With so many more people dying from starvation than from battle, they needed to tell the people that they were winning and that they were prosperous. This is why they were transitioning to constructivism, labeling works and telling people exactly what they were trying to say. The Bolsheviks needed to eliminate the concept of interpretation as a whole, because if too many people saw through them, they were at risk of losing all the power they had gained. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bibliography Brown, Marie, and Duncan MacIntyre. Russia and Revolution: The Promise and the Performance. Glasgow: Blackie, 1979. Buchten, Daniela, ed. Propaganda!: Russian and Norwegian Posters 1920-1939. Oslo:National Library of Norway, 2012. Dickerman, Leah. Building the Collective: Soviet Graphic Design, 1917-1937: Selections from the Merrill C. Berman Collection. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Gerin, Annie. "Laughter in the Ring, in the Street, and on Stage: The Emergence of a Satirical Scene." In Devastation and Laughter: Satire, Power, and Culture in the Early Soviet State (1920s-1930s), 74-99. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2018. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctv8bt1cg.9. Gerin, Annie. "Soviet Satirical Print Culture: A Serious Affair." In Devastation and Laughter: Satire, Power, and Culture in the Early Soviet State (1920s-1930s), 41-73. Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 10.3138/j.ctv8bt1cg.8. Misler, Nicoletta. "A Public Art: Caricatures and Posters of Vladimir Lebedev." The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 5 (1987): 60-75. doi:10.2307/1503936. Solovev, Denis. "ROSTA Windows in Petrograd". in Propaganda!: Russian and Norwegian Posters 1920-1939. 24-31. Norway: Press, 2013. Ward, Alex. Power to the People: Early Soviet Propaganda Posters in The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2008. White, Stephen. The Bolshevik Poster. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998. Makenna Polan Art Russia, Posters, Political Facebook0 Twitter Tumblr Pinterest0 0 Likes Makenna Polan Makenna Polan has a Bachelor's degree in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in German Expressionism. Makenna is interested in exploring the relationship between art and text, both in traditional illumination and modern illustration. She hopes to provide commentary on the current state of art in culture, profiling up-incoming artists and commentating on the perception of art through museums and the internet today. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Leave a comment Makenna Polan Makenna Polan has a Bachelor's degree in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. She specializes in German Expressionism. Makenna is interested in exploring the relationship between art and text, both in traditional illumination and modern illustration. She hopes to provide commentary on the current state of art in culture, profiling up-incoming artists and commentating on the perception of art through museums and the internet today. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Subscribe To receive our newsletter Email Address [ ] Sign Up Thank you! 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