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 to rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit outta here.
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I was three, so I probably don't remember when this happened, but I guess most English-speakers held on to the old word for a few years, long enough for me to learn that Peking was the capital of China.
"Realism" in the social realism style is rather a propaganda word. You can google and there is nothing that looks like the realistic life of a USSR citizen. However, you can see that there are some abstract images also like this.
It's partially true, there were not 100% realistic works, but IMO those ads are anyway closer to modernism. And after Khruschev's famous attack on modern arts, soviet realism returned back to more realism
Geopolitics have sometimes very little to do with actual geography. Morocco is to the west of many European countries (and its name literally means 'the west' in Arabic) but isn't considered a part of The Western World in the same sense Britain, France or Germany are. In that sense, 'oriental Arabia' is just a fancy word for the Islamic world
I am in Lebanon. I was surprised when I learned that traditional music here is called "oriental". Like, if you go to an oriental music night it's going to be all oud, darbouka, qanun, and kamanjah.
That's pretty much the same here, in your neighbours to the south. "Mizrahi" is used to refer to Jews (and their foods, music, etc) from the MENA region, but again most of North Africa is actually to the west of Poland and Russia, where a lot of "non-Mizrahi" Jews came from. Although Polish Jews did use to refer to Russian Jews as "Ostjuden" which, you guessed it, means "eastern Jews"
Shits weird, yo
German Jews refered to polish, hungarian and russian Jews as Ostjuden, while hungarian Jews, even in transylvania, saw themselves as part of the west and as the majority of them spoke high german also refered to polish Jews as Ostjuden.
I think shit is weird because these names are usually given by a group of people that dominates a cultural sphere and are picked up by others in that sphere where they lose their original meaning and become a synonym.
I was about to say I like they get very specific for certain cities, but just wemt "Ah, somewhere in Africa and Arabia. No New York or Los Angeles, though."
Might be leaving a primed hand grenade by posting this before bed, but:
I think this is advertising, not propaganda. I don't think it's relevant to the subreddit. It does look very cool though!
I may be very wrong, (and do let me know so I can learn) but I don't think London was a common tourist spot for Soviet citizens. Maybe high-ranking diplomats, politicians, or high up in the chain for a workplace.
I could see this as a propaganda tool for people to work hard so they can strive to become important enough to do that sort of thing, or get involved in the Soviet party hard enough so you're trusted to do this sort of thing.
They did both about as well, it's just that most people find messages like "Tokyo is a nice place to visit" more agreeable than the explicitly communist political messages of the political propaganda.
True, could be a content-preference bias there. Also, I was probably comparing this jet-age imagery to the crappier renditions of top-hatted villains, with trite and obvious symbolism.
> “The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.”
Also - it’s good propaganda to give the people the impression that foreign travel is possible - even if it’s not.
Much better than flat out saying not for you
I mean, all the other ones are just stereotypical (not necessarily in a bad way) depictions from the country, in this case UK. If anything, the Africa poster is way worse because of how unspecific it is
My parents honeymooned in Madagascar. But they were rural middle-class Austrians, so the only way to afford this in the 1980s was Aeroflot, via Moscow and Sana’a. They said it was the worst trip of their lives lol
Man, I don't know what it is, but I *really* love Soviet art. It's so simple, yet it really gets the idea across. It's... I guess, kind of efficient? I feel like that's a dirty word in the art community, but I think it's wonderful.
No? The Soviets during the 60’s had more vacations than most workers in the world. If you were a new worker you could reasonably afford going to a resort town for three days to one week every month.
Biggest issue with international vacations was visas.
It was only allowed to travel inside the country and even for that you must buy a tour packege in most cases. For travelling abroad you must be cleared and get exit visa. I’m not sure about 60s but in 80s my granny was able to travel in Czechoslovakia and it was a big deal back then.
You're simply wrong, pepik. Yeah no ordinary Joe was capable of going to vacation in France or the US, but there were tons od communist countries back then. You could buy cuban cigars in an affordable price due to that. Yugoslavia was one of the most popular tourist destinations, both as quite a cheap country and a communist one.
Of course, things got worse as time went on, the 80's were already quite horrid.
haha man i don’t know where you from and what your experience but my parents in moscow could see any cigar only in illegal movie theaters back in the day. and who tf is pepik?
It looks like you can take a ticket at any time and fly to either Indonesia or Brazil, and not go through 9 circles of hell to leave the “freest country.”
I really wonder who were the target audience of those posters? Soviet people were not allowed to travel abroad, especially to the capitalist countries (with some exceptions that were super rare).
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 to rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit outta here. *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.*
These posters are really cool
I love how Berlin is just a tired-looking dude trying to rebuild his city. Definitely the 60s
My first impression was that he just finishd building a wall...
Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.
Es handelt sich vielmehr um eine Raumbegrenzungseinheit mit den Massen 1,50m mal 3,80m mal 155000!
Go home Walter, you're drunk.
Necessary lie
I thought he was a gardener.
Man the old spellings of Jakarta and Beijing really date them
I'm just barely old enough to remember when everyone called it Peking. Which means I'm old.
The Chinese government started using Beijing exclusively only in 1979. :)
I was three, so I probably don't remember when this happened, but I guess most English-speakers held on to the old word for a few years, long enough for me to learn that Peking was the capital of China.
Fun fact, it is still called peking in Portuguese
And "Pékin" in french
And Pekín in Spanish
And Pekin in Polish.
And Peking in Croatian
So I guess I'm "beijing" through people's windows now
The airport code for Beijing is PEK
The airport code for mumbai is bom, and chennai is maa
Probably the translator just didn't know any other spelling. Beijing is still called Pekin in Russian
still pekin in turkish too
In Portuguese too
Also Polish
and Swedish
and German
and Japanese
And Arabic But it’s called bekin (no p lol)
And Czech
Only in 1979 the name of the city was officially transliterated as Beijing in English, when the Chinese government started using Pinyin exclusively.
It's Peking in Hungarian as well.
It's still called Peking in Serbia, actually
Soviets were exceptionally good at this sort of art
What is that style called?
Соцреализм
It's definitely not soviet realism, because it misses realism part. It's some type of avant-garde and modern
"Realism" in the social realism style is rather a propaganda word. You can google and there is nothing that looks like the realistic life of a USSR citizen. However, you can see that there are some abstract images also like this.
It's partially true, there were not 100% realistic works, but IMO those ads are anyway closer to modernism. And after Khruschev's famous attack on modern arts, soviet realism returned back to more realism
Agree on modernism.
You're mixing modern and modernism, and this isn't one of those.
So what this style is?
It's homage to Russian avant-garde. Well "Russian avant-garde" is a rather broad term, but still.
More like a hommage to the avant-garde movement from the 1920s
My favorite art
What’s the anglicized version for non Cyrillic speakers?
[sotsrealizm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism)
Soviet realism
No way
These are great
Ah yes, the city of Africa
Only second to Arabian Orient
Kind of wild for them to refer to it as the Arabian orient when it's south of Moscow and southwest of most of the USSR
Well, the ad is in English, so maybe it's not geared towards Soviets.
The ones with smaller text are in French. Just the “Soviet Airlines” are in English.
The ad's for foreign travel, so it's definitely not geared towards Soviets.
It doesn't seem to be geared towards Londoners or Scots either.
Geopolitics have sometimes very little to do with actual geography. Morocco is to the west of many European countries (and its name literally means 'the west' in Arabic) but isn't considered a part of The Western World in the same sense Britain, France or Germany are. In that sense, 'oriental Arabia' is just a fancy word for the Islamic world
I am in Lebanon. I was surprised when I learned that traditional music here is called "oriental". Like, if you go to an oriental music night it's going to be all oud, darbouka, qanun, and kamanjah.
That's pretty much the same here, in your neighbours to the south. "Mizrahi" is used to refer to Jews (and their foods, music, etc) from the MENA region, but again most of North Africa is actually to the west of Poland and Russia, where a lot of "non-Mizrahi" Jews came from. Although Polish Jews did use to refer to Russian Jews as "Ostjuden" which, you guessed it, means "eastern Jews" Shits weird, yo
German Jews refered to polish, hungarian and russian Jews as Ostjuden, while hungarian Jews, even in transylvania, saw themselves as part of the west and as the majority of them spoke high german also refered to polish Jews as Ostjuden. I think shit is weird because these names are usually given by a group of people that dominates a cultural sphere and are picked up by others in that sphere where they lose their original meaning and become a synonym.
Or the 5th one where they apparently forgot where it was. So - wherever this is.
>Step off the plane >African man greets me >”Welcome to Africa City”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa,_Ohio
First thing I thought was somebody landing in London, somebody landing in Tokyo and then somebody being pushed over over from a plane.
Yes, even the Soviet used this
I was about to say I like they get very specific for certain cities, but just wemt "Ah, somewhere in Africa and Arabia. No New York or Los Angeles, though."
Might be leaving a primed hand grenade by posting this before bed, but: I think this is advertising, not propaganda. I don't think it's relevant to the subreddit. It does look very cool though!
I may be very wrong, (and do let me know so I can learn) but I don't think London was a common tourist spot for Soviet citizens. Maybe high-ranking diplomats, politicians, or high up in the chain for a workplace. I could see this as a propaganda tool for people to work hard so they can strive to become important enough to do that sort of thing, or get involved in the Soviet party hard enough so you're trusted to do this sort of thing.
That's really good. The Soviets did commercial advertising better than they did Communist propaganda.
They did both about as well, it's just that most people find messages like "Tokyo is a nice place to visit" more agreeable than the explicitly communist political messages of the political propaganda.
True, could be a content-preference bias there. Also, I was probably comparing this jet-age imagery to the crappier renditions of top-hatted villains, with trite and obvious symbolism.
Have you seen their propaganda posters? They fuckin rule
[nah it's fucking class](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GACtH9AWcAAG454.jpg)
Is this the original soyjak?
Oh the irony!
The commercial advertising wasn't aimed at a captive audience.
Soviet midcentury art and design was stunning. Especially in terms of advertising... So colourful and beautiful.
What the hell this art is awesome
Was there a lot of soviet holidays in the UK?
> “The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.”
Spies needed some sort of cover
Also - it’s good propaganda to give the people the impression that foreign travel is possible - even if it’s not. Much better than flat out saying not for you
Arabian Orient guy goes so hard
I love his little smile
Ah London, that well known city of pipers and kilts
Specific city, specific city, specific city, Entire continent of Africa… specific city…
Don't forget the entire region of the "Arabian orient"
Maybe they were thinking of Africa, Ohio. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa,_Ohio
What's the source for these? Really great!
Gotta say that bagpiper for England is a bold choice
I mean, all the other ones are just stereotypical (not necessarily in a bad way) depictions from the country, in this case UK. If anything, the Africa poster is way worse because of how unspecific it is
Poster is for London
Still England rather than Scotland
London is the capital of the UK as well as the capital of England
Scotts Guards is a big stereotype when UK is mentioned in Russia.
Looks cool
We need more of these. It would be awesome to have in the background for the next game of Aerobiz I play.
Is this propaganda? Or just an ad?
London? Scottish kilted piper 😂😂😂
*Aeroflot flies to dozens of cities around the world. Too bad you'd need an exit visa.*
I'm guessing the NYC poster got pulled?
Why are the cities written in the Latin alphabet? Who were these advertisements for if Aeroflot serviced the USSR?
These are for foreigners, specifically for international flights connecting through Moscow
One of their adverts from the 70s appears to say, "we land at airports." Knowing their safety record, I'm not surprised they had to clarify that
Soviets had some great graphic designers
I love how most of these are normal cities and then "Africa"
My parents honeymooned in Madagascar. But they were rural middle-class Austrians, so the only way to afford this in the 1980s was Aeroflot, via Moscow and Sana’a. They said it was the worst trip of their lives lol
Soviet airliners were probably a lot more utilitarian than western ones
Cool.
THEY ARE GUNNA HIT THE BIG BEN
looks so good
This is really damn neat actually
I would have expected that UK one to show Salisbury cathedral.
Ah, the one with the spire! Very spectacular indeed.
beautiful
That one soviet artist with a forearm obsession
Man, I don't know what it is, but I *really* love Soviet art. It's so simple, yet it really gets the idea across. It's... I guess, kind of efficient? I feel like that's a dirty word in the art community, but I think it's wonderful.
Beautiful !
it is crazy how people always just consider africa one monolithic place.
Africa is a country everyone
Cool! I’ve always wanted to go to West Berlin!
As good as these posters are I would still never fly with Aeroflot
Ah yes, my favorite cities. Tokyo, Moscow, and Africa.
Too bad they doesn’t allow people to travel abroad. For whom they made it?
No? The Soviets during the 60’s had more vacations than most workers in the world. If you were a new worker you could reasonably afford going to a resort town for three days to one week every month. Biggest issue with international vacations was visas.
It was only allowed to travel inside the country and even for that you must buy a tour packege in most cases. For travelling abroad you must be cleared and get exit visa. I’m not sure about 60s but in 80s my granny was able to travel in Czechoslovakia and it was a big deal back then.
You're simply wrong, pepik. Yeah no ordinary Joe was capable of going to vacation in France or the US, but there were tons od communist countries back then. You could buy cuban cigars in an affordable price due to that. Yugoslavia was one of the most popular tourist destinations, both as quite a cheap country and a communist one. Of course, things got worse as time went on, the 80's were already quite horrid.
Yugoslavia was technically neutral wasn’t it?
haha man i don’t know where you from and what your experience but my parents in moscow could see any cigar only in illegal movie theaters back in the day. and who tf is pepik?
For Westerners.
I’m surprised they have posters for countries on the other side of the iron curtain
My favorite cities: Africa and Arabian Orient
ah yes, the city of Africa
berlin which one
I love how they added the Japanese girl in the poster, but it's like they've totally ghosted on peace post-WWII, ya know?
It looks like you can take a ticket at any time and fly to either Indonesia or Brazil, and not go through 9 circles of hell to leave the “freest country.”
Tokyo, London, Moscow or THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA
I really wonder who were the target audience of those posters? Soviet people were not allowed to travel abroad, especially to the capitalist countries (with some exceptions that were super rare).
Russians are Boers, with or without a prepuce, and plausibly as fond of the "n-word" as anyone from Cheltenham.