Propaganda Poster Soviet Russia Tsar Priest Capitalist Apsit

Original vintage Soviet Anti-Imperialist propaganda poster titled: The Tsar, the Priest and the Rich Man on the Shoulders of the Labouring People (Tsar, Pop i Bogach). This poster shows the Tsar and the Priest being carried by the miserable and dying labouring people with the rich man controlling the masses with his whip. This poster is supposed to represent how things were like for Russia before the October Revolution. Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxist–Leninist ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In the Stalin era, it penetrated even social and natural sciences giving rise to various pseudo-scientific theories such as Lysenkoism, whereas fields of real knowledge, as genetics, cybernetics and comparative linguistics were condemned and forbidden as "bourgeois pseudoscience". Propaganda was one of the many ways the Soviet Union tried to control its citizens. The main Soviet Union censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item". In the Stalin era, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. In the post-Stalin era, these punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work and loss of citizenship. "Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head", said writer Isaac Babel privately to a trusted friend. Alexander Petrovich Apsit ( Latvian Aleksandrs Aps?tis, Russian ????????? ???????? ????? , born March 25, 1880 in Riga , † September 19, 1943 in Ludwigslust ) was a Latvian artist. Apsit was born into a Rigenser worker family, who moved to Saint Petersburg in 1894 . From 1898 to 1899 he attended the drawing school and was a student in the studio of Lew Dmitriew-Kawkaski. From 1900 to 1910 Apsit was a member of the Moscow art circle "Sreda" (Wednesday). During this time he worked for various Petersburg magazines and designed war posters. After the October Revolution Apsit was commissioned by the Soviet State Publishing House to design revolutionary posters, having gained experience in political propaganda. In the fall of 1919, when General Yudenich's troops had moved up to 30 km to Petrograd, the poster "Protecting Petrograd with the Breast (Using Their Own Life)" was created. The posters designed by Apsit were highly detailed, finely graduated drawings with many figures accompanied by explanatory texts. They were under the influence of the Lubok , the Russian Folkpicture. His poster "A Year of Proletarian Dictatorship" is considered a milestone in Soviet poster history. Designed for the first anniversary of the October Revolution, it shows the most important elements of the visual language of the Revolution poster: in the foreground a farmer with a red flag and scythe and a blacksmith with a hammer, the emblems of fallen capitalismBoth of them are standing guard in front of a field of simple, flag-bearing farm laborers, in the background an industrialized city and a rising sun. Alexander Apsit developed on his posters the hammer, the sickle and the red star, the symbols of the Soviet communist era. He is considered the founder of Soviet poster art. In 1919, during the advance of General Denikin , Apsit left Moscow. After the Civil War, he worked in Latvia as a book illustrator. In addition, he designed advertising posters and greetings cards as well as the wrapping paper of chocolates and confectionery of the company Vilhelms ?uze. In 1939, Alexander Apsit moved to Germany, where he died in 1943.Year of printing: 1918, country of printing: Russia, designer: Aleksandr Petrovich Apsit, dimensions (cm): 106.5x73.5. Good condition, losses and repaired tears, creases.