Exploring Propaganda Posters: Stalinist Russia

Propaganda features heavily in authoritarian governments. The spread of propaganda can come in the form of literature, radio, art, film, theater and even music. Posters arose as the “quintessential form of propaganda” because they were a cheap method to reach the audience and could be understood even by illiterate citizens.

As we have seen, Stalin established total control over mass communication in the Soviet Union. Under Stalin, the purpose of Soviet Propaganda became the glorificaton of the State, its policies and its leaders. You will also learn in the next chapter on Nazi Germany that Hitler also utilized propaganda tools to spread his ideas, just like Stalin did. 

Your task, by the end of this lesson, will be to create your own propaganda poster (A4 size). For this task, you will be assuming the role of the Propaganda Minister in the Soviet Union, who has been tasked with creating a variety of posters for different groups of people in the Soviet Union. Take a look at the posters in the next few pages and see if you can pick out some key themes that run through Soviet Propaganda Posters. 

Take notes of these key themes and explain how these themes are evident in the posters. Fill up the worksheet that has been provided for you. This will be helpful eventually in your conceptualization of the propaganda poster. 

After viewing the propaganda posters, evaluate the relevance of the key themes in the posters and conceptualize your own soviet propaganda posters. A mindmap has been provided for you to help you structure your conceptualization of the poster which you will create. 

Draw the poster, and prepare a short write up about how your poster should be selected as one of the final 5 that will be put up in the streets in 1930s Soviet Russia. 

You will put up your posters with the short write up in class. You will be doing a gallery walk. Through this project, you would have been able to pick out some key themes in propaganda posters which will eventually help in your analysis of propaganda posters