Visual framing of red martyrs: Soviet and Yugoslav partisan propaganda compared

Abstract

This paper compares the Soviet propaganda of the Second World War with that of Yugoslavia, focusing on the visual image of partisan martyrs. As for the wartime communist propaganda in Yugoslavia, since Yugoslav Partisans were an ill-equipped resistance movement, it had only restricted resources and networks for agitation. Yet it does not mean that the wartime mobilization of Yugoslav Partisan movement was an ephemeral one, because the method of agitation did not radically change in socialist Yugoslavia. While nations involved in the Second World War tended to organize massive propaganda (especially through visual representations such as films, newsreels, posters, paintings and pictorial magazines), Yugoslav Partisans could not afford to conduct such large-scale propaganda. In addition to the Theater of People's Liberation, a performer's group which played a significant role in the newly liberated territory, memorization through a photographic image exerted significant agitating effect in the Yugoslav Partisan propaganda.