The Battle for Literacy and Soviet Avant-garde Posters

One of my favorite Soviet Avant-garde posters is a poster for the Leningrad State Publishing House. Alexander Rodchenko made this iconic photomontage in 1924. It is one of many propaganda posters to eliminate illiteracy. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, male illiteracy was estimated at 60%, and female was close to 90%. The rates were even higher in rural areas. To Lenin literacy was a major priority. "Without literacy, there can be no politics, there can only be rumors, gossip and prejudice." One of Lenin's early programs was Likbez – an acronym for "likvidatsiya bezgramotnosti",  "elimination of illiteracy."

The three Cyrillic letters Л Е Н on the black background correspond to the Latin letters LEN for Leningrad. Г И З on the red is GIZ, the initials for gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo -State Publishing House. Russians love to use acronyms or names formed from abbreviations. The publishing house was known as LENGIZ. It was a designer's dream for Rodchenko that the red and black could symmetrically divide the the two syllable acronym. The woman has her hand against her mouth and is shouting the words "books in all branches of knowledge." Over the black background in the shape of a megaphone is the word книги (KNIGI or books). The woman is Lilya Brik, the wealthy Jewish mistress of futurist poet, playwright, and artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. She also was the wife of the writer and literary critic Osip Brik. Mayakovsy later moved in with the Briks. Rodchenko frequently collaborated with Mayakovsky on designs for the literary and art magazine LEF. Almost everyone in the Russian and Soviet Avant-garde knew each other, Many of them, and even Matisse, did portraits of Lilya and her sister. In this poster, Lilya is wearing a head scarf emblematic of the proletariat and peasantry. In the early years after the Revolution, literacy classes were hindered by a distrust between the peasant students and the teachers with a petty bourgeois background. In the lower right corner are Alexander Rodchenko's initials in Cyrillic– РА.  Being an advertising and propaganda poster, it had no name, but now it is often called Books. 

Rotate the poster 90 degrees and an old-fashioned lock appears that can be unlocked through literacy.

Russian and Soviet Avant-garde posters used heavy and bold futuristic fonts, not the thin, squiggly, curved and whiplash fonts of Art Nouveau. The fonts had simplicity and were sans-serif. The colors were bold and pure with rarely any different shades. Red and black was a common color combination.

Here are some other post Revolutionary and early Soviet posters about fighting illiteracy.

Knowledge Will Break the Chains of Slavery
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

                                                                                                                                                                           

If you will not read books, you will forget the grammar. 1925.





















Literacy is the road to Communism, 1920. In Russian and Yiddish.

The illiterate person is a blind man: Everywhere pitfalls and misfortunes await him.
Alexei Alexandrovich Radakov, 1920.

 Night of the Books, Varvara Stepanova, 1920.
(Stepanova was married to Rodchenko)

Peasant woman, consolidate the unity of workers and peasants,1925.






















In 2014 David Redon combined famous musicians and performers with vintage advertisements. He used Beyoncé in his parody of the Rodchenko poster.

It's an interesting parody, but the early Soviet feel is lost with his red and pink combination.









To see more of Redon's vintage advertisements go to:

https://www.designboom.com/art/david-redon-remix-vintage-american-ads-pop-icons-04-04-2014/