Soviet means excellent

Born in the USSR people remember this slogan “Soviet means excellent!”. This statement, formed in the second half of the 1930s, after the NEP (New Economic Policy), and the period of the first five-year plan and the collectivization came the period of industrial growth. By 1934-1935 has come a stage of stable expansion of the consumer market. Along with advertising exports, was gaining popularity advertising for domestic trade, created in the specialized art offices. Virtuoso poster artist A. Zelensky (1882-1942) is considered Patriarch of Soviet commercial posters. The same brilliant creative way is characteristic for a young Soviet artist-advertiser of the time A. Pobedinsky (1904-1979). They worked in parallel in commercial poster art – the ice cream advertisement, meat and dairy products, canned food, fruit juice and spirits. Advertising these products is striking in diversity.
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USSR Energetics Soviet Poster Art. Alexander Samokhvalov ‘The Soviets and electrification are the basis of the new world’. Leningrad, 1924

USSR Energetics Soviet Poster Art created by prominent and unknown Soviet artists gallery of posters, which in fact, has become the chronicle of several epochs of a giant country – the USSR. These posters are kept in private collections and museums and have already become true antiques. The first posters were meant to get across the basic idea of countrywide power plant construction to the common man. The main slogan was “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country”. And thus energetics, the driving force of the economy in the twentieth century, has become one of the main themes in poster art, from the GOELRO (State Electrification of Russia) plan to the youth working on building new HPPs, from preserving electricity to its measured production.
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Soviet poster art. M. Lukyanov. Peace. Labor. May. Poster. 1976

Why do we love Soviet poster? It is no exaggeration to say that as a form of fine art and a means of visual agitation, it plays a very important role in our lives. It is published in millions of copies, on display in the streets and squares, factories, collective farms, institutions, schools, and even kindergartens. The whole country – its exhibition hall. The main objective of the poster, its purpose – to convey to every viewer the word of truth, persuade, inspire, to respond to the most pressing, urgent problems of life. It was always in the forefront of the fight for high ideals proclaimed by the October Revolution. This was a poster of the first years of the Soviet power and the civil war, the legendary five-year plans, the Great Patriotic War, the recovery of economics, the development of virgin lands and the construction of power plants, space exploration, Siberian construction projects and the construction of BAM. Unfortunately, with the collapse of the Soviet Union we’ve lost a lot of good things, including Soviet poster art.
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Soviet Union political posters. For Peace, Unity, Social Progress

Soviet Union political posters
Monumental propaganda was truly unprecedented phenomenon in the history of world culture. In the first years after the civil war propaganda pathos permeates all types and genres, including art and crafts. However, an important role in shaping the social and aesthetic consciousness of the revolutionary people can play and play arts, capable of living on the streets. Therefore, active development, along with the monumental sculpture was a political poster, which at that time was the most mobile and the most expeditious.
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Soviet children life rule posters. 1926 poster ‘Down with the beating and punishment of children in the family’. Artist A. Fedorov, USSR

In the Soviet Union a leading role in the upbringing children was undertaken by the state, the school and the society was given priority over the family, which, however, also played an important role. Already in 1920 the Soviet state carried out a real educational revolution, a symbol of which has become “the system of Makarenko”, recognized by UNESCO as one of four teachers, who determined the method of pedagogical thinking in the twentieth century. The new education system was based on the scientific and humanistic principles, it has been focused on the formation of harmoniously developed personality of the child, his active life position, social responsibility and work habits. One of the main problems of Soviet pedagogy was the eradication of child abuse in the family, the physical impact was recognized absolutely unacceptable. West countries come to this much later.
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Soviet political-propaganda poster. L. Nepomnyashchy. Moscow – the capital of the Olympic Games – 80. 1979

Soviet political-propaganda poster
The history of the Soviet state in the poster as the most widespread and popular form of visual art – known to everyone. People in the USSR met it everywhere, in the shops of factories, collective farms, institutions, schools, building sites, on the streets of towns and villages. Soviet poster is descended from the best examples of Russian graphic art. In it, as in a mirror, reflected life. Truly, no appreciable moment passed by a poster artist. That is why it can’t be argued that the poster captured the history of the USSR, its visual image.
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Soviet Anti-Alcohol Poster. No!

Soviet Anti-Alcohol Poster
The struggle with alcoholism began with the arrival of Soviet power. In December 1917, the Soviet government extended the ban on the sale of vodka. December 19, 1919 the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a decree signed by Lenin – “On the Prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcohol, spirits and alcohol-containing substances on territory of the country”, providing stricter measures: at least 5 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property.
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