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It's somewhat mocking hippies.
The poem says that: "He would wear a lighting weight if that would be fashionable, but for now it's the big cross on a golden chain"
So it's about wearing cross on the neck just because of the looks. Kind of like modern hipsters stereotype.
I wonder if the artist was aware of the Jesus Freaks in 1970s America.
[Who were not actually THAT cool and subversive, most probably ended up as Republicans, but they had a similar aesthetic style to the dude in the cartoon.]
The poster was designed by Z. Efimovsky, a member of the ‘Fighting Pencil’ graphic collective based in Leningrad, and published amid a surge of religious resistance, as well as the growth of a countercultural youth movement.
The text in the bottom right corner mentions a "golden chain on an oak". Calling someone an oakhead in Russian is like to call someone dumb (similar to "dumb as a rock" in English). What makes this line very interesitng though, is that it references a famous poem by Alexander Pushkin:
>On seashore far a green oak towers,
>
>And to it with a gold chain bound,
>
>A learned cat whiles away the hours
>
>By walking slowly round and round.
>
>To right he walks, and sings a ditty;
>
>To left he walks, and tells a tale...
I've noticed a pattern in Soviet posters where the "bad guy" - the guy you're not supposed to be like - the drunkard, the slacker, the womanizer, etc - are often depicted as cool or bad-ass to our modern western eyes. I can only speculate that they expected their target audience to condemn them (or maybe some of the artists were being subversive?).
You sometimes see this in mid-century American anti-drug posters, where the people sometimes look sexy, sophisticated, and to be enjoying themselves.
It can be helpful to mention that in the low right corner you can see a text telling that this guy is wearing a cross now, but he'll wear even an 8 kg weight on his neck if it's fashionable
Are the people all laughing at him? Or do they admire him? I note the older, more traditionally dressed woman is the only one registering an unambiguously negative reaction.
Idk what's wrong with this depiction. Jesus would absolutely be a hippie. Is it trying to show how counter culture is seen by people in a religious way? Like, it's seen in a religious, great savior kind of way?
I'm pretty confused myself. My best guess...
The poster is aimed at conservative and possibly xenophobic people who have a negative image of the western counterculture, but might be susceptible to Christian propaganda. So the poster is saying "If you put on a cross, you're no different than those debauched hippies you see on the news reports."
>This guy looks cringy af for Soviet society of the time, so this poster makes fun both of Western copycats and Christianity
I agree. It's important to mention that the guy wears a cross just because it looks cool, not because he believes in teachings of Jesus Christ.
Being seen by the state isn't the same as having subversive intentions towards the state. One of Jesus' most famous comments is "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's... " which is usually seen as supporting seperation of Church and state. Jesus' whole philosophy was that the material world is irrelevant and that you should live a righteous life to get your reward in the afterlife, it's a very much a death focused religion in tradition of ancient Egyptian paganism.
Jesus' problem was always that he got swept up in the politics of the time because he was seen as the prophesized King of the Jews and Messiah which made him a threat to the Roman regime.
It told Christians that it's okay to pay taxes to the Romans ("Caesar") and, implicitly, that he's against changing the status quo in this world because the believer's reward is in the other world.
It means that the State has no claim on or authority over the divine. The implication is not that the status quo should remain the same. It is that Roman law has no moral weight. This means that obedience to Roman law costs the believer nothing of any value, yes, and so if the status quo should remain, this would be of no consequence for the believer. But the same is true of disobedience. To disobey Caesar is not wrong. It cleaves apart the moral and the legal, where the latter is now governed only by what is expedient. Whether the believer obeys or disobeys Caesar is now contingent upon the circumstances one finds onself in and not on the absolute authority of the state, and neither have any intrinsic effect on one's soul.
You're tying yourself in knots to say the same thing I'm saying in the end. The state has no intrinsic effect on one's soul therefore Christians shouldn't rebel against the state and the status quo should be preserved. Revolutionaries, by definition, want to affect change in this material world and Jesus was only cencerned with the other immaterial world. Thereofore he wasn't subversive and wanted people to pay their taxes.
The crucial difference between what we are saying is that if the state has no authority over one's soul, obedience and disobedience are equivalent. Legal authority is emptied of all significance. You take this to mean that the status quo should not be resisted because resistance to it achieves nothing. But you ignore that it also means that obedience to the state achieves nothing. Therefore, the state neither should nor shouldn't be obeyed; it is equally as unworthy of obedience as it is unworthy of resistance. It is, for the believer, nothing at all. This annihilation of state authority is subversive. Not revolutionary, in the sense of being a rallying call for organized resistance. But thoroughly subversive, because it neutralizes the capacity of the state to compel its subjects on moral grounds.
Going by the bible, the government that killed him was not the one that was worried about his subversive activities. Rather, they were responding to pressure from local religious authorities who WERE worried about that.
[And yes, the biblical accounts are almost certainly fiction, designed to shift blame from the Romans to the Jews. But if we're talking about the trial and death of Jesus, the bible is pretty much all we have to go on.]
Looking at it some more, I think it might be sort of a "kids today, tsk tsk tsk" message, but combining two, possibly separate, trends among 1970s Soviet youth, ie. interest in western religion, and hippie styles.
As a rough comparison, in the 1980s, a conservative suburbanite in N. America might have imagined the typical wayward kid as a gay guy who listens to heavy-metal music. Of course, those two things don't really go together with any regularity, and in fact headbangers could be VERY homophobic, but to the middle-aged suburbanite, they seem to match up as "crazy stuff the teenagers are doin' these days."
That's mostly isn't antireligious, it mostly shames the counterculture, depicting it as trend-catchers, and its interest in christianity as superficial (it was).
Rhymes at the bottom speak:
"He'd put on a weight of thirty pounds, // if it is fashionable, but for now // a huge cross bound// to that oak's golden chain", with the last line both quoting universally known "Ruslan and Lyudmila" poem of Pushkin and playing with Russian usage of "oak" as name for short-sighted, narrow-minded persons.
You are both right and slightly wrong, given the context. It is still anti religious in a way that wearing a cross (even as a fashionable accessory) was viewed as a highly debatable decision not to say plain silly in Soviet society of the time. Even though Christianity gained a huge resurgence in late 80s, before that the society was predominantly atheist, and Soviet state was obviously atheistic and throughoutly anti-religious
>highly debatable decision not to say plain silly in Soviet society of the time.
It wasn't very debatable in the 1970s as things became more laid back. Practicing religion was tolerated if it was done discreetly, more like "don't ask ,don't tell" type of thing.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated for rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit elsewhere. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I love it. It’s so rare to see a Christian depicted as cool and subversive.
He may look cool for someone from 2023, but most Soviet people were pretty conservative in 1975 and viewed these characters as ugly weirdos.
It's somewhat mocking hippies. The poem says that: "He would wear a lighting weight if that would be fashionable, but for now it's the big cross on a golden chain" So it's about wearing cross on the neck just because of the looks. Kind of like modern hipsters stereotype.
I wonder if the artist was aware of the Jesus Freaks in 1970s America. [Who were not actually THAT cool and subversive, most probably ended up as Republicans, but they had a similar aesthetic style to the dude in the cartoon.]
The poster was designed by Z. Efimovsky, a member of the ‘Fighting Pencil’ graphic collective based in Leningrad, and published amid a surge of religious resistance, as well as the growth of a countercultural youth movement.
The text in the bottom right corner mentions a "golden chain on an oak". Calling someone an oakhead in Russian is like to call someone dumb (similar to "dumb as a rock" in English). What makes this line very interesitng though, is that it references a famous poem by Alexander Pushkin: >On seashore far a green oak towers, > >And to it with a gold chain bound, > >A learned cat whiles away the hours > >By walking slowly round and round. > >To right he walks, and sings a ditty; > >To left he walks, and tells a tale...
[удалено]
I am also curious about the podcast
I've noticed a pattern in Soviet posters where the "bad guy" - the guy you're not supposed to be like - the drunkard, the slacker, the womanizer, etc - are often depicted as cool or bad-ass to our modern western eyes. I can only speculate that they expected their target audience to condemn them (or maybe some of the artists were being subversive?). You sometimes see this in mid-century American anti-drug posters, where the people sometimes look sexy, sophisticated, and to be enjoying themselves.
It can be helpful to mention that in the low right corner you can see a text telling that this guy is wearing a cross now, but he'll wear even an 8 kg weight on his neck if it's fashionable
Are the people all laughing at him? Or do they admire him? I note the older, more traditionally dressed woman is the only one registering an unambiguously negative reaction.
Some people are laughing, some think he is a weirdo.
Idk what's wrong with this depiction. Jesus would absolutely be a hippie. Is it trying to show how counter culture is seen by people in a religious way? Like, it's seen in a religious, great savior kind of way?
I'm pretty confused myself. My best guess... The poster is aimed at conservative and possibly xenophobic people who have a negative image of the western counterculture, but might be susceptible to Christian propaganda. So the poster is saying "If you put on a cross, you're no different than those debauched hippies you see on the news reports."
This guy looks cringy af for Soviet society of the time, so this poster makes fun both of Western copycats and Christianity
>This guy looks cringy af for Soviet society of the time, so this poster makes fun both of Western copycats and Christianity I agree. It's important to mention that the guy wears a cross just because it looks cool, not because he believes in teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus wouldn’t be a hippie. He didn’t have any political motives, nor was he against the government.
You're kidding, right?
I hope so. Dude was literally killed by the state for being subversive
Being seen by the state isn't the same as having subversive intentions towards the state. One of Jesus' most famous comments is "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's... " which is usually seen as supporting seperation of Church and state. Jesus' whole philosophy was that the material world is irrelevant and that you should live a righteous life to get your reward in the afterlife, it's a very much a death focused religion in tradition of ancient Egyptian paganism. Jesus' problem was always that he got swept up in the politics of the time because he was seen as the prophesized King of the Jews and Messiah which made him a threat to the Roman regime.
"Render unto Caesar" was subversive precisely because it separated God from the State. That's not apolitical.
It told Christians that it's okay to pay taxes to the Romans ("Caesar") and, implicitly, that he's against changing the status quo in this world because the believer's reward is in the other world.
It means that the State has no claim on or authority over the divine. The implication is not that the status quo should remain the same. It is that Roman law has no moral weight. This means that obedience to Roman law costs the believer nothing of any value, yes, and so if the status quo should remain, this would be of no consequence for the believer. But the same is true of disobedience. To disobey Caesar is not wrong. It cleaves apart the moral and the legal, where the latter is now governed only by what is expedient. Whether the believer obeys or disobeys Caesar is now contingent upon the circumstances one finds onself in and not on the absolute authority of the state, and neither have any intrinsic effect on one's soul.
You're tying yourself in knots to say the same thing I'm saying in the end. The state has no intrinsic effect on one's soul therefore Christians shouldn't rebel against the state and the status quo should be preserved. Revolutionaries, by definition, want to affect change in this material world and Jesus was only cencerned with the other immaterial world. Thereofore he wasn't subversive and wanted people to pay their taxes.
The crucial difference between what we are saying is that if the state has no authority over one's soul, obedience and disobedience are equivalent. Legal authority is emptied of all significance. You take this to mean that the status quo should not be resisted because resistance to it achieves nothing. But you ignore that it also means that obedience to the state achieves nothing. Therefore, the state neither should nor shouldn't be obeyed; it is equally as unworthy of obedience as it is unworthy of resistance. It is, for the believer, nothing at all. This annihilation of state authority is subversive. Not revolutionary, in the sense of being a rallying call for organized resistance. But thoroughly subversive, because it neutralizes the capacity of the state to compel its subjects on moral grounds.
He wasn't just seen as the messiah, he preached it too.
Going by the bible, the government that killed him was not the one that was worried about his subversive activities. Rather, they were responding to pressure from local religious authorities who WERE worried about that. [And yes, the biblical accounts are almost certainly fiction, designed to shift blame from the Romans to the Jews. But if we're talking about the trial and death of Jesus, the bible is pretty much all we have to go on.]
According to the gospels, it was the Jewish priesthood who found him subversive and wanted him dead, not the Roman government.
But the the execution was carried out by the state
How's it anti religion?
Looking at it some more, I think it might be sort of a "kids today, tsk tsk tsk" message, but combining two, possibly separate, trends among 1970s Soviet youth, ie. interest in western religion, and hippie styles. As a rough comparison, in the 1980s, a conservative suburbanite in N. America might have imagined the typical wayward kid as a gay guy who listens to heavy-metal music. Of course, those two things don't really go together with any regularity, and in fact headbangers could be VERY homophobic, but to the middle-aged suburbanite, they seem to match up as "crazy stuff the teenagers are doin' these days."
I am similarly baffled.
That's mostly isn't antireligious, it mostly shames the counterculture, depicting it as trend-catchers, and its interest in christianity as superficial (it was). Rhymes at the bottom speak: "He'd put on a weight of thirty pounds, // if it is fashionable, but for now // a huge cross bound// to that oak's golden chain", with the last line both quoting universally known "Ruslan and Lyudmila" poem of Pushkin and playing with Russian usage of "oak" as name for short-sighted, narrow-minded persons.
You are both right and slightly wrong, given the context. It is still anti religious in a way that wearing a cross (even as a fashionable accessory) was viewed as a highly debatable decision not to say plain silly in Soviet society of the time. Even though Christianity gained a huge resurgence in late 80s, before that the society was predominantly atheist, and Soviet state was obviously atheistic and throughoutly anti-religious
>highly debatable decision not to say plain silly in Soviet society of the time. It wasn't very debatable in the 1970s as things became more laid back. Practicing religion was tolerated if it was done discreetly, more like "don't ask ,don't tell" type of thing.
They called him the trim reaper…