Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin (Studies on the History of Society and Culture, 27)

by Victoria E. Bonnell

Release Date: November, 1999

Edition: Paperback

Price:

More Info

Academia at its least comprehensible...

I have an extensive collection of Soviet posters and consider this book a good, even seminal, work on the subject, but the writing is horribly dull and mostly made of the well-nigh incomprehensible academic goop that made the idea of graduate school so unappealing. If you are interested in Soviet posters or propaganda posters as a general matter you would do better with "Persuasive Images" or any of several commercial sites that sell original posters on the net. This is not a general interest book and those looking for an interest collection of posters to view would do better elsewhere.

What's worse, though, is that the author describes in great detail about posters not even pictured in the book. Since these posters are not in general circulation, the author has done a great disservice by not providing more representations of the works which she discusses.

Still, it does have some interesting information about Soviet poster art, if you can manage to get through the bootstrap proto-feminist garbage about Soviet women...

Great analysis of political meaning.

I do not agree that this is a sociology of Soviet posters, in the sense that it is a "long range" cultural analysis of their meaning. I think that the book's highlight is exactly in drawing a connection between changes in artistic style and "short range" political events. So, in the early days of Soviet power- from Lenin's time down to collectivization - one has an Expressionistic, unreal style that tries, above all, to convince strikingly the viewer to support a given political "lime". After Stalin's consolidation as leader, one has a pseudo-realistic style praising the "actual" quality of living in the USSR, in order to obtain the passive acquiescence of the viewer. Very useful book. Can be used - with due guidance - at undergraduate level.