The Soviet Lubok of the First Half of the 1920s as a Form of Propaganda among the Peasantry

Abstract

The lubok of the 1920s is a little-studied page of Soviet art. The tradition of using lubki (popular prints) and folklore for revolutionary propaganda goes back to the 19th century. The first part of the article examines the cases of using the lubki in the revolutionary movement. The Narodniks were the first who used the lubok literature form for revolutionary propaganda among peasants. The Narodniks’ “ryazhenaya” (“mummer”) literature masked in lubok clothing both for the purposes of conspiracy and for attractiveness for the peasantry. Before the October Revolution, the lubok had been mainly used by the Narodniks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who positioned themselves as a peasant party. After the revolution, the Bolsheviks also used the lubok form when it was necessary to broadcast Marxist ideas to the countryside. For this purpose, they used Soviet popular prints (Soviet lubki) and lubok books (propaganda prints). The second part of the article is dedicated to Soviet popular prints. At first, the Soviet lubki were oriented in their pictorial form on old traditional folk prints, and in their texts — on folklore. They imitated folk speech and took over ditties (chastushki) from the new Soviet folklore. From the second half of the 1920s, the Soviet lubok started changing its form, transforming into a reproduction from realistic easel paintings. The third part of the article considers the lubok books and agro tales for peasants. There is shown that the Soviet lubok books in their form also resembled pre-revolutionary ones.