Using posters as a point of entry into the Soviet and Nazi political systems, Kees Boterbloem and Lisa Pine’s comparison of how both regimes employed visual propaganda results in an intriguing, accessible analysis. Boterbloem, a Professor of History at the University of South Florida and author of several books about Russian and Soviet history, and Pine, a Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and author of several works on the history of Nazism, bring their expertise to bear on the subject of propaganda posters in both regimes. As they rightly remind us, posters were visually arresting and a relatively novel form of persuasion in the 1920s and 1930s, making them effective advertisements for the aims of both Soviet and Nazi leaders.
Soviet and Nazi Posters begins by placing the use of visual propaganda in the USSR and Germany within the history of twentieth century attempts to persuade populations. As the authors argue, what set Soviet and Nazi uses of visual propaganda apart from other systems was the scale of its use. Both regimes “used an entire arsenal of propaganda weaponry, designed not only to influence their populations, but also to indoctrinate them with their ideologies in a didactic manner” (5).
In six subsequent chapters—three that explore Soviet posters and three that examine Nazi posters from the 1920s to the 1940s—Boterbloem and Pine provide a history of the origins, use, evolution, and aims of visual propaganda in both systems. As they argue, the Soviet poster emerged because it was relatively easy to produce and fit with the Bolshevik aim to preach the “truth” of their cause. In Germany, Adolf Hitler advocated for the efficacy of the poster as a means to attract the attention of the masses in Mein Kampf. Both systems, the authors argue, ultimately used posters as a form of “political advertising” (31).
The comparative approach taken by the authors is the strength of Soviet and Nazi Propaganda. This relatively short book is not meant to be a comprehensive history or a coffee table book stuffed with numerous examples. Instead, Boterbloem and Pine seek to bring the histories of totalitarian political propaganda together, particularly to suggest that “sometimes aesthetically astonishingly beautiful art” could be “wielded towards abject goals” (6). Talented visual artists such as Dmitry Moor, Hans Schweitzer (who used the name Mjolnir), Viktor Deni, Felix Albrecht, Mikhail Cheremnykh, and others regularly churned out posters that were displayed on streets and in workplaces, making posters a form of propaganda that reached everyone.
Boterbloem and Pine explain that Soviet and Nazi visual propaganda emphasized a sense of belonging to a political community: in the latter, for example, posters became a primary means to define the “national community” (Volksgemeinchaft). Both systems also produced posters that defined and caricatured enemies, both foreign and domestic. Both systems used repetition to drive home their messages, whether through familiar visual tropes such as the fat, top-hat wearing capitalist or repetitive phrases, often using the Fraktur typescript (in the Nazi case).
The authors chose a side-by-side comparative approach: the color plates included in the book are also separate. At times I wished for more of an integrative approach, one that would bring the two examples together within a chapter in order to provide more analysis of the striking similarities between the two forms of visual propaganda (posters of the leader, or posters featuring women, for example) as well as the important differences between the two (the use of text, for example). Of course, individual readers can make their own comparative conclusions. Soviet and Nazi Posters is certainly suitable for the classroom: students will gain valuable information and can draw useful comparisons between the two totalitarian systems and their use of propaganda.
