During the Russian Civil War propaganda posters of the Soviet government used to occupy a special place in the long history of world and Russian poster art. Poster artists fought on a par with Red Army soldiers, factory workers and peasants in the fields.
The collection of the Lipetsk Regional Museum of Local Lore has a large array of original posters of the revolutionary years featuring various subjects and genres. The work “Have you Signed up as a Volunteer?” by the artist Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov occupies a special place in this collection.
Back in 1907, the artist, who collaborated with the satirical weekly magazine “Alarm Clock”, took the pseudonym Dmitry Moor. Before the revolution, Dmitry Stakhievich made several posters for Russian cinema — for the films “Quietly Passed Away”, “The Thief”, and “The Killer”.
The poster from the exhibition was created in June 1920, at the height of the Russian Civil War, on the eve of the Tambov peasant uprising. On the poster, the artist depicted a Red Army soldier in a red Budyonovka, who pointed the index finger of his right hand at the viewer and urged to sign up as a volunteer in the ranks of the Red Army.
In the upper left corner of the poster, the artist placed the abbreviation of the RSFSR — Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in the upper right corner — the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”
A large number of themes and images that were typical for early posters were replaced by a different design: it implied one theme, maximum artistic expressiveness, self-sufficiency of the image, its intelligibility, regardless of the viewer’s ability to read the text, which, in comparison with pre-revolutionary posters, was significantly decreased in size.
Experts name the simplicity, clarity and brevity that were characteristic of the so-called “telegraph style” to be the main advantages of Soviet propaganda posters. This was important, first of all, from the point of view of workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers, who were mostly illiterate.
The collection of the Lipetsk Regional Museum of Local Lore has a large array of original posters of the revolutionary years featuring various subjects and genres. The work “Have you Signed up as a Volunteer?” by the artist Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov occupies a special place in this collection.
Back in 1907, the artist, who collaborated with the satirical weekly magazine “Alarm Clock”, took the pseudonym Dmitry Moor. Before the revolution, Dmitry Stakhievich made several posters for Russian cinema — for the films “Quietly Passed Away”, “The Thief”, and “The Killer”.
The poster from the exhibition was created in June 1920, at the height of the Russian Civil War, on the eve of the Tambov peasant uprising. On the poster, the artist depicted a Red Army soldier in a red Budyonovka, who pointed the index finger of his right hand at the viewer and urged to sign up as a volunteer in the ranks of the Red Army.
In the upper left corner of the poster, the artist placed the abbreviation of the RSFSR — Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in the upper right corner — the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”
A large number of themes and images that were typical for early posters were replaced by a different design: it implied one theme, maximum artistic expressiveness, self-sufficiency of the image, its intelligibility, regardless of the viewer’s ability to read the text, which, in comparison with pre-revolutionary posters, was significantly decreased in size.
Experts name the simplicity, clarity and brevity that were characteristic of the so-called “telegraph style” to be the main advantages of Soviet propaganda posters. This was important, first of all, from the point of view of workers, peasants and Red Army soldiers, who were mostly illiterate.
