russianrevolutionresearchDRAFT

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION INFLUENCE

The way in which information is packaged and presented in relation to book design in the early twentieth century has been connected to avant-garde movements such as the Constructivists of the Russian Revolution and their propaganda. The geometric shapes and layout used in Soviet book designs have inspired and influenced graphic design completely, with major illustrators/designers like El Lissitzky and Vladimir Mayakovsky, book design changed on the whole to a more modern contemporary look. 

Multiple protests across Russia escalated into movements, brief however in their duration but these movements challenged the regime of capitalism across the west and the propaganda used for this inspired not only the soldiers and citizens of Russia but the illustrators and graphic designers too. With the majority of art banned and criminalized, artists found new ways to protest such as children's books. 

Futurists and Dadaists made enormous contributions in exploding the aesthetic form too, as well as the avant-gardists whom created the groundwork for ways of seeing that last to today. They used their designs to make the form of a book not only as a piece of art but as a functional object that permeated the lives of the masses. 

Early Twentieth-century Avant-garde Book Design: An Agentive Vehicle for Social Change

Shannon Kelly Proulx

DE STIJL IN NETHERLANDS

VORTICISM IN ENGLAND

CONSTRUCTIVISM IN GERMANY AND RUSSIA

Avant garde tendency in 20^th century painting, sculpture, photography, design and architecture, also associated developments in literature, theatre and film. 
Constructivism was first coined by artists in Russia in early 1921 and achieved international currency in 1920s

Russian constructivism refers specifically to a group of artists who sought to move beyond art object and wanted to extend the formal language of abstract art into practical design work, this development was prompted by utopian climate following October revolution of 1917 which led artists to seek to create a new visual environment, embodyin the social needs n values of the new communist order

Concept of international constructivism defines broader current in western art, most vital from around 1922 until end of 1920s centred primarily in Germany

International constructivists inspired by Russian example artistically and politically

Continued to work in traditional artistic media of painting and sculpture while also experimentin with film n photography and recognizing potential of new formal language for utilitarian design

Term constructivism frequently been used since 1920s in a looser fashion to qualities as precision impersonality clear formal order simplicity and economy of organization and use of contemporary materials such as plastic n metal

http://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10955

What is Illustration? By Lawrence Zeegan

Chapter; Book covers

Jan Tschichold; Posters of the Avant-garde

Birkhauser

Summer of 1944, whilst Europe in war against fascist powers at its height, exhibition being held in museum of modern art in new York markin institutions 15^th anniversary ‘ART IN PROGRESS’ catalogue states ‘during twenties, rodchenko and the Russian supremists introduced geometrical patterns in posters; these graphic and typographical potentialities were further explored by another Russian, El Lissitzky,

Exhibition included work by men who had gained a following in the world of graphic design. Usa proved a temporary refuge for some of them: Frenchman jean carlu returned to his homeland after war to resume his career as a graphic designer. Ladislav Sutnar from Czechoslovakia had been in new York in connection with 1939 worlds fair when war broke out, brought his family over from ruins of Europe after war to settle for goodin new homeland

By end of 1918, great war ww1, being lost german empire collapses and Kaiser Wilhelm 2 flees ingloriously to the neutral Netherlands, leaving behind a desperate nation

Inspired by Russian revolution of 1917, communist spartacists under leadership of rosa luxemberg and karl Liebknecht, try to seize power in berlin.

Attempted revolution also takes control period known as Weimar Republic begins

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION TIMELINE

Russian revolution of 1917 deposed the czar(February revoltuon) and installed Bolsheviks in power(October revolution)

After winning civil war in russia, Bolsheviks established soviet union in 1922

Timelines of Russian revolution consufing because until February 1918 they used a different calender than the rest of the western world, in 19^th century, Julian calander was used by Russia was 12 days behind Gregorian calender used by most of western world until march 1 1900 when it became 13 days behind

1887 May 8, Lenins brother hanged for plotting to kill czar alexander the third

1894 October 20, czar alexander third dies after a sudden illness and his son Nicholas the second becomes ruler of Russia

1895 december 8, lenin arrested and kept in solitary confinement for 13 months, then exiled to Siberia for three years

1896 may 14, Nicholas second crowned czar of Russia

1903 july 30, after having four girls czarina Alexandra gives birth to son, Alexei

1905 January 9, bloody Sunday in st petersberg begins 1905 russian revolution

Also in 1905, October 17, October manifesto issued by czar nicholas the second, brings end to 1905 russian revolution by promising civil liberties and an elected parliament

1906 april 23, constitution (fundamental laws of 1906) created reflecting promises made in October manifesto

1914 july 15, world war 1 begins

1915 september 5, czar Nicholas second assumes supreme command of Russian army

1916 december 17, Rasputin murdered

1917 february 23-27 february revolution begins with strikes, demonstrations and mutinies in Petrograd

March 2 czar Nicholas second abdicates and includes his son, following day nicholas seconds brother, Mikhail announced his refusal to accept throne, provisional government formed

April 3, lenin returns from exile and arrives in Petrograd via a sealed train

July 3 – 7 july days begin in Petrograd with spontaneous protests against provisional government after Bolsheviks unsuccsefully try to direct these protests into a coup, lenin forced into hiding

July 11 Alexander Kerensky becomes prime minister of provisional government

August 22-27 kornilov affair, failed coup by general lavr kornilov, commander of Russian army

October 25, October revolution, Bolsheviks take over Petrograd

October 26, winter palace, last holdout of provisional government taken by Bolsheviks, the council of peoples commissars, led by lenin, is now in control of Russia

1918 february 1/14, new Bolshevik government converts Russia from Julian to the Gregorian calender turning feb 1 into feb 14

March 3, treaty of brest-litovsk, between Germany and Russia is signed and takes Russia out of world war 1

March 8, Bolshevik party changed its name to the communist party

March 11, capital of Russia is changed from st. petersberg to Moscow

June, Russian civil war begins

July 17, czar Nicholas second and family are executed

August 30, assignation attempt on lenin leaves him seriously wounded

1920, novemeber, Russian civil war ends.

1922 april 3, stalin appointed to general secretary

May 26, lenin suffers first stroke

December 15, lenin suffers second stroke and retires from politics

December 30, union of soviet socialist republics U.S.S.R established

1924, Lenin dies, stalin becomes his successor

http://history1900s.about.com/od/Russian-Revolution/a/Russian-Revolution-Timeline.htm

Character Concepts

Character Concepts

In relation to Animal Farm, I've researched who each character is based off as the whole book is based around the Russian Revolution and the characters are based off members of the Soviet party.

Napoleon – Josef Stalin

Snowball – Leon Trotsky

Boxer – Exploited working class

Squealer – Propagandist

Old Major – Karl Max

Clover – Could possibly be impressionable public or children

Moses – Used to explore how communism exploits religion as something with which to pacify the oppressed

Mollie – Represents petit bourgeoisie that fled from Russian after Russian revolution

Benjamin – The elderly?

Muriel – Brainwashed public

Mr Jones – Represents tsar Nicholas second

Mr Frederick – Based on adolf hitler

Mr Pilkington – Capitalist governments of England and united states

Mr whimper – Iniates contact between animals and people, scaring animals

Jessie and Bluebell – Mothers of soviet youth

Minimus – Creator of animal farm, animal farm which later replaces beasts of England

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/characters.html 

Russian Children's Books Artists

Vera Ermolaeva

Vera Ermolaeva, Myshata

Vera Ermolaeva, Myshata

Vladimir Marakovsky

Vladimir Marakovsky, Let Us Take the New Rifles

Vladimir Marakovsky, Let Us Take the New Rifles

Solomon Telingater

Vladimir Lebedev

Vladimir Lebedev, Slonenok (The Elephant's Child)

Vladimir Lebedev, Vchera i segodnia (Yesterday and Today)

Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Tatlin, Letterpress illustration from MOMA collection

Vladimir Tatlin, Costume Design (for the Tsar)

Vladimir Tatlin, Engine, 1911

Mikhail Tsekhanovsky

Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, Animalarium

Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, Animalarium

Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, The Post

V Kaebak
M. Purgold
E. Evsyuko
Nikolai Ushin
Galina & Olga Chichagov
Dmitry Bulanov

Russian Childrens Book Research

RUSSIAN CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Tatiana Glebova, Where is the bear?

The most prominent artists of the Russian Revolution were the children's book illustrators, they had a mass audience of uninformed, malleable young people that they could mold into allies of the Soviet Union, these young people appealed to their commitment to an art manifesto based on the creation of a new kind of person for the revolutionary age. 

Within children's books illustrators work, they mostly used geometric designs, with machine-age forms and an architectural sense of space in their approach to the visual arts. 

In the early 1930s, the people in charge within the Soviet Union decreed that avant-garde had no right to exist, making local authorities, law enforcers and their interior ministry system take up the task of liquidating these artists as a class and in the unprecedentedly short historical span of the first Five Year Plan (1928 - 1932) had accomplished that task on the whole. 

Avant-garde did not die though, it merely adopted itself into a new historical situation with childrens book illustrations, poster design, typeface etc. Authorities realised they had made a mistake but by this time Avant-garde had already surfaced in pretty much anything with a design. 

'To the envy of all Europe, illustration of children's books is developing in our country in a most interconnecting and significant fashion... Illustration, too, has its exploration of new paths, its fierce competition among schools, but all this is being done so richly, so vividly and confidently; the artist of the word has on the whole and in general fallen behind the artist of the image' 
- Anatoly Lunarcharsky. 

An absence of the art market and an increased government made artists look for other means to adapt, images from art and literature reinforced and developed dominant ideologies and in some way anticipated them. 

Picture books for toddlers and children might not seem like a good place for the reconstructing of the message brought to the masses by leading figures in the art world of the 1920s, but we can find much in them that is both edifying and instructive.

Children's books are aimed at an audience of thousands thus giving them a much broader social impact and an logical place to start in relation to a new utopia like thinking, Books for children are significant for builders of the new world, since it wasn't a matter of re-informing but in forming to begin with. 

'Contemporary children's books and contemporary illustration must educate the citizen in the child, the citizen who will be ready to build the culture of the new world.' 
- Pavel Dulsky 

Avant-garde movements are generally prone to the feeling that everything done before by their elders is bad and must be either destroyed or replaced, however even with their forward and logical thinking in relation to children's books and creating this new utopia with their visual imagery, avant-garde still didn't get their hoped for immediate reaction and it instead took a long time for it to become a big thing.

Stories for Little Comrades; 
Revolutionary Artists and the making of Early Soviet Children's Books 
by Evgeny Steiner 

Soviet Poster Research

SOVIET POSTERS AND PROPAGANDA

V. Pshenichnikov, Russian Poster Dealing with the Five Year Plan, 1931

Soviet propaganda became the focus of much attention, many people in many countries turned their attention to this art form which began more than a century ago in a country that, since Perestroika, has ceased to exist. 

The main period of interest addresses posters created between the 1917 October 'Socialist Revolution' and the 1980s. 

The poster form existed well before the Revolution, and the first Russian posters date back to the 1880s. Posters were extremely helpful and important during the Civil War and 1917 October Revolution, they often replaced newspaper tabloids and instead posters were printed, posters were sent to the front-lines to keep the soldiers in spirit, tearing the posters down was seen as committing a counter-revolutionary crime.  

Soviet Posters: The Sergio Grigorian Collection 

Maria Lafont



Some of the best propaganda posters were created by artists like Dmitry Moor, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Cheremnykh. Their work used unique methods and techniques to create empathetic propaganda posters that influenced a lot more propaganda artists.

Mikhail Cheremnykh, The Sectarian is the Kulaks' Puppet', 1925.

Dmitry Moor, Have You Enlisted in the Army?

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Maiakovskaia galereia. Te kogo ia nikogda ne videl, 1923

Mikhail Cheremnykh, Antireligious ABC, 1933

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Agitprop 

Artist Research: Propaganda

CONSTRUCTIVISM 

Industry production in Russia during the beginning of the nineteenth century redefined the way humanity divided labour and wealth, the revolution in Russia and Germany during 1914 and 1918 resulted in the breakdown of established political structures, social order and cultural cohesion in Europe. However in the meantime, the October Revolution of 1917 firmly established the Soviet Union. Constructivists of Moscow and Leningrad connected their art with sociopolitical aims of the Bolshevik vision.

Revolution is the necessary step towards a renewal of a society. 

'We praise war, the only hygiene in the world' Futurists published this quote on the front page of the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro in 1909.

Avant-Garde Graphics: 1918 - 1934 Constructivists of USSR 
Lutz Becker & Richard Hollis 

ARTISTS

EL LISSITZKY 

El Lissitzky was a Russian artist, architect, typographer and designer who did a lot of propaganda for the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century, his work for the Soviet Union propaganda included books, posters, buildings and exhibitions. He influenced the Bauhaus and Contructivist art movements and his development of styles and techniques from the 1920s and 30s are still influential today in graphic design. 

El Lissitzky, Give us more tanks!

El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge

GUSTAV KLUTSIS 

Gustav Klutsis was a major member of the Constructivist Avant-garde in the early twentieth century during the Russian revolution. He defended the Bolsheviks and in the October revolution of 1917. 

Gustav Klutsis, Untitled, 1922

Gustav Klutsis, Maquette for Radio-Announcer

ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO  

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Dobrolet

Aleksandr Rodchenko is a Russian painter, sculptor and designer, he was a central exponent of Russian Constructivism and was also closely involved in cultural debates and experiments following the 1917 revolution. His work had a systematic characterization in which from 1916 he wanted to reject the conventional roles of self-expression, personal handling of the medium and tasteful or aesthetic predilections, this makes it difficult to actually name him as an artist because of his condemnation of the concept of art.

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Untitled 

Aleksandr Rodchenko, A Yankee in Petrograd 

 

Propaganda Research

State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda Steven Luckert + Susan Bachrach 

Propaganda is generally associated with Nazi Germany & brutal regimes in fascist Italy and the Soviet Union state controlled or greatly restricted public access to information & dictated what could or could not be disseminated to the public through the press, film, radio & the arts.

'All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth' George Orwell[1] 

The meaning of propaganda has changed over time, the catholic church attempted to rid Protestantism during the Counter Reformation in 16th & 17th centuries, and by doing this used propaganda that was against Protestant religion. The use of the word propaganda changed from religious to political and has been characterised as a form of mass communication and persuasion developed in modern society. 

'A systematic process of information management geared to promoting a particular goal and to guaranteeing a popular response as desired by the propagandist' Aristotle A. Kallis[2]

Propaganda simplifies complicated issues or ideology for mass communication, it is always biased, and is geared towards achieving a particular end. 

The propagandist gives out ply information that backs their own point and consciously omits contrary information. 

Propaganda isn't always successful, the effectiveness of it depends on the receptivity of an audience to its message and favourable social context. Propaganda didn't get its recognition until World War 1. 

---

[1] A quote by George Orwell, 1903 – 1950 (http://www.qotd.org/search/single.html?qid=40673)

[2] Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War by Aristotle A. Kallis.