Only a few decades ago, Americans could be interrogated, blacklisted and even jailed for viewing Soviet propaganda. Now, Northwestern has opened its doors to collections of USSR posters, offering insight into an empire once shut out in the cold.
The NU Library and Block Museum of Art joined forces with nine other Chicago institutions for The University of Chicago Presents The Soviet Experience, a showcase of art, dance, music and theater from the USSR running through December.
“Northwestern and the Northwestern University Library are major players in the Chicago metropolitan cultural scene,” said Jeffrey Garrett, NU’s Associate University Librarian for Special Libraries. In total, NU presents five exhibitions along with lectures and events.
Though the citywide Soviet Experience began last October, the NU exhibits are just beginning. The library opened “They Were Fighting for Our Freedom: American and Soviet Propaganda Poster of World War II” Tuesday. A smaller exhibit, “Dmitri Shostakovich at Northwestern,” displays mementos from the famous composer’s 1973 visit to campus, Garrett said. Also this week, the Block Museum opened “Views and Reviews: Soviet Political Posters and Cartoons” and “Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde.”
Corinne Granof, the Block Museum’s curator, said Soviet propaganda hasn’t been widely shown in the U.S. before because of old tensions. Since so much time has passed since the Cold War ended, however, she said the posters can now be appreciated for their artistic and historical merit rather than derided as unpatriotic.
“It comes at a really interesting point, 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Granof. “We have a little critical distance, so we’re able to look at the posters and see how they used imagery to convey meaning. It’s kind of a reassessment saying, ‘What did this contribute to 20th century visual culture, how does it represent aspects of modernism?'”
The Block Museum’s “Views and Re-Views” exhibit showcases propaganda posters from before the Russian Revolution to the Cold War. The images are bold, graphic and, Granof joked, nearly always red. Many portray Stalin and Lenin as powerful heroes. Others demonize America while encouraging hard work and great production. This slant, Granof said, resonates with modern audiences.
“In the midst of all this, there’s terrible famines and underproduction, and a lot of hardship. The posters all give this really positive spin like we can unify, we can do things together,” Granof said. “It’s really familiar to us because it’s the language of advertising.”
NU isn’t just hosting the Soviet artwork. The library also acquired damaged Soviet posters from the Chicago Public Library and successfully restored 22 of them. The posters will comprise the exhibit “Papering Over Tough Times: Soviet Propaganda Posters of the 1930s” starting November 2.
Mainly created from 1930-1934, the posters shed light on the Stalinist society’s values, said Scott Krafft, curator of the NU Library’s Special Collections and University Archives. The propaganda promotes modernism, industrialism and Russian “super workers” but demonizes reactionary and religious forces. Originally, state publishing houses printed these posters in mass quantities, Krafft said. But because officials mostly plastered them in public domains like barns and train stations, few survived.
“They’re inherently significant in that they’re fragile and there aren’t a lot of them around,” Krafft said of the restored posters. “Whether anything’s important eventually is always a big question, but in terms of human understanding of our times, it’s nice to have real evidence.”
