Stalinist Posters (retrospectively funny and ironic)

jhindin.com ^ | 2002 | Website

[Cincinatus]

Ha!! Here's one that contrasts the glorious accomplishments of Soviet education with the run-down, bankrupt, crappy education system of the USA. What fools!! What boneheads!!! Claiming that our educational system stinks!! Our teachers are crap!! Our students are idiots!!

Ah......

Never mind.

[Dr. Frank fan]

What jumps out at me is the calculated, contrived attempt to include various ethnicities of the old USSR on the poster. Diversity!

We are beaten over the head with the same kind of thing, in the U.S., all the time. Some things just never change, do they?

[cornelis]

Highly recommended:

Anything by director Nikita Mikhalkov is worth watching.

[buffyt]

We visited Dachau concentration camp in 2000. It was a very moving experience. WORK MAKES YOU FREE is on their entry gate, also. We know enough German to read it. Also visited the Ann Frank house in 1980, and that was truly moving. Human cruelty seems to know no limit. I do believe that most people on this earth are good people and just want to live life and work and enjoy family. But the terrorists, the Stalins, the Husseins, the Hitlers, the bin Ladens, the Arafats - make this peaceful life impossible. Sad. But I would go right now and join the military if they would take me, and I am OVER 50.

[Cincinatus]

A Soviet comment on US atmospheric testing of atomic weapons (published no doubt prior to 1949, when the Soviets exploded their own nuclear device).

[CIBvet]

"Isn't that Al and Tippy over on the right?"

Tickets for the 'Shoot' were included in Senator Gore's quarterly bribe from Armand Hammer.

Ahhhhh ... ain't Communism Marxism Socialism Liberalism Glo-baloneyism GREAT, Comrade.

[seamus]

The Old School Axis of Evil.

[sweetliberty]

Look at the third from the left...could it be our "first black president?"

[buffyt]

TRUE, and evil is still alive and well worldwide. God bless our troops who work so hard to keep us all safe!!!!

[cornelis]

Burnt By the Sun. "This is the first anti-Stalin film to come out of post-Communist Russia, and the new freedom shows in the full scope of what Mikhalkov is able to criticize. " -- James Berardinelli

[seamus]

At a web site filled with laughers, this one might be my favorite. Of course, there is nothing funny about the reality of the situation: Americans producing enough to feed themselves and most of the world while the Soviets starved. I just wonder what was going through the minds of the average Soviet citizen with an hunger pains when they would see this garbage, and I will always marvel at how long it took for the tyrants to be toppled.

I suppose we Americans take for granted the power of freedom because it is part of our culture.

[El Gato]

What fools!! What boneheads!!! Claiming that our educational system stinks!! Our teachers are crap!! Our students are idiots!! Seeing as theirs worked soooo very well (NOT!), we copied it.

[Eternal_Bear]

It makes me sick that we allied ourselves with this monsterous demon spawn! He murdered ten times as many people as Hitler and we actually chose to be on his side? Our media was owned by New York communists and Roosevelt's administration was infiltrated by communist agents. What a disaster.

[Lev]

Hi Buffy, which ones do you want?

[Gumlegs]

Boltat' - vragu pomogat'.

Ah. I was using the method Harpo Marx used when he toured the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s. His name in Cyrillic looked to him like "Xpano Mapcase," which he used for several years thereafter.

But using your rendition, I'd say the slogan is, "Attention! Use Ragu On Pomegranates!"

[AppyPappy]

Translation:

Stalin:I read your book, Comrade Mao. It sucks
Mao: Eat death, you drunken Slav retard.

[Skooz]

Stalin's next purge victim:

[VOA]

Human cruelty seems to know no limit.

"Without God, all things are possible."
It's my understanding that something like this is said in one of Doestyevsky's (sp?) books.

That one line, combined with what I've seen on TV from Rwanda, 9-11, and a thousand other
messes created by human machination, told me more than I learned in years of Sunday School
and graduating from a university that would be considered an ideological boot-camp
of conservative Christianity.

[Skooz]

I would LOVE to have a translation of this one:

[VOA]

Great site and images!

For other interested in Soviet images, might I suggest:

"The Commissar Vanishes"
by David King

It's a great compilation of photos from the Soviet era, many of them a series of photos that
show how, over time, disfavored or executed Party members were simply air-brushed from view.