Visual Stalinism from the Perspective of Heroisation: Posters, Paintings and Illustrations in the 1930s

Abstract

The deployment of power as violence, confinement, terror was no doubt vital for the survival of the Stalinist regime. No one would question the repressive nature of Stalinism. But perhaps not all of the regime’s policies fit the purely repressive, coercive model; otherwise it would be difficult to envisage how this dictatorship managed to increase the productive potential of the predominantly peasant country within the framework of the new urban‐industrial organisational staructures, especially in the 1930s. How did the Stalinist regime induce people to appropriate and internalise the Soviet programme for themselves and become involved in the process of self‐transformation and self‐realisation? The Soviet leadership adopted a number of strategies to achieve this goal. Two important ones are the focus of this paper: heroisation and visualisation.