Stalinist cartoons
In our previous article,
Interesting book, misleading cover, we discussed the poster used on the cover of Alain Frerejean’s book
Stalin Against Trotsky (Stalin Troçki’ye Karşı), published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları (YKY). We pointed out that this poster was not, as claimed on the back cover, a product of Stalinist propaganda, but rather an example of the counter-revolutionary propaganda waged against the Bolsheviks.
After publishing that article, I was reminded of the Stalinist black propaganda cartoons and posters targeting Trotsky -examples I have come across in various publications over the years, which could well have been used on the cover of Frerejean’s book. I thought that bringing together the examples I could access, along with brief explanatory notes, would offer a small but nonetheless significant insight into how the Stalinist propaganda apparatus operated and how it helped perpetuate the regime’s lies.
These cartoons and posters were produced by Soviet illustrators who legitimised every twist and turn of the Stalinist bureaucracy through their art, having sold their souls to the privileged bureaucratic stratum that had usurped power from the working class. During the Stalin era, like many other artists and intellectuals, these cartoonists bowed before the bureaucratic reaction that had betrayed the October Revolution; they submitted and became servants of the bureaucratic counter-revolution.
The attacks they launched against Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders -whom they had lavishly praised until the mid-1920s- were utterly nauseating. In these cartoons, particularly in their depictions of Trotsky, they also gave voice to the regime’s antisemitism, portraying him as being in league with the Nazis through the Moscow Trials. While Stalin was alive, they displayed an almost worshipful devotion to him; yet after his death, those who survived swiftly turned their backs on the very leader they had once idolised.
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| Boris Yefimov (1997) |
One of them, Stalin’s favourite cartoonist -Boris Yefimov, a People’s Artist of the USSR (1967), Hero of Socialist Labour (1990), twice recipient of the Stalin Prize (1950, 1951), and a full member of the USSR Academy of Arts (1954)- lived to the age of 108. After Stalin’s death, Yefimov would refer to his once-beloved leader as a “murderer”, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he began to speak with contempt of the regime he had served for decades.
Most of these cartoonists had already been producing work for propaganda purposes before the Stalinist counter-revolutionary process began. In that earlier period, however, propaganda served genuine socialism -the struggle against capitalist exploitation, social equality, freedom, and world revolution. Under the Stalinist regime, the same instruments were employed to defend the privileged bureaucracy and to discredit those who opposed this counter-revolutionary course.
* * *
“I’M FED UP WITH THIS MUSIC!” (or “This Music Is Infuriating!”)
Caption: “We keep playing, but no one comes to listen!”
Cartoonist: K. Eliseyev - Cover of Krokodil magazine, November 1927
The cartoon mockingly depicts the leaders of the United Opposition -Zinoviev, Trotsky and Kamenev. Trotsky is shown as the man playing the barrel organ, Kamenev as the parrot, and Zinoviev as the female singer. Since the cartoon was published almost a decade before the Great Terror (1936-38), its satirical tone is comparatively mild.
* * *
Cartoonist: Viktor Deni - 1930
In the cartoon, Trotsky is portrayed with a pen dripping blood from its tip -an image that clearly symbolises “writing in blood”, or producing malicious and destructive propaganda. His forehead bears the Daily Express logo, a mark intended to mock him for contributing articles to that bourgeois newspaper.
* * *
Little Judas Trotsky (or "Judas Trotsky")
Cartoonist: Viktor Deni - 1936
The cartoonist produced a variant of his earlier 1930 portrait. Through the use of the word “Iudushka” (a diminutive form of Judas), Leon Trotsky is mockingly and contemptuously portrayed as a traitor.
* * *
Cover of Krokodil magazine - 1936
Cartoonist: Unknown
A piece of propaganda depicting the trial of the “Sixteen” (the First Moscow Trial, a show trial). The defendants stand in separate groups upon the arms of a large Nazi swastika.
* * *
A cartoon published in Krokodil magazine - 1936
TERROR
Cartoonist: Unknown
A “Terror” playing card. The figure in the upper half of the card represents the Nazi officer/Adolf Hitler, while the figure in the lower half represents Leon Trotsky. Trotsky is depicted as a subcontractor or agent of Nazi terror.
* * *
DESTROY THE SERPENT / THE VERMIN!
Caption: WIPE OUT THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, TROTSKY, AND HIS BLOODY FASCIST GANG FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH!
The documents Trotsky is carrying and dropping are labelled: RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM; ESPIONAGE AND SABOTAGE ACTIVITIES; TREASON; THE DESTRUCTION OF THE USSR; WAR; SECRET AGREEMENT WITH COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES; FASCISM; MASSACRES AND EXECUTIONS...
Cartoonist: Viktor Deni - 1937
* * *
We Sell Wholesale and Retail
Map of the USSR
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov - 1937
G. Pyatakov, L. Trotsky, and K. Radek are holding a map of the USSR, while on the left, L. Serebryakov, his hands bloodied, is showing the map to German and Japanese generals. The "enemies of the people" declare that they are ready to sell Soviet land -either piece by piece or as a whole.
* * *
Cartoonist: Kukryniksy (a collective of three artists) - 1937
Trotsky is depicted washing his bloodstained hands in a spiked Prussian helmet. Behind him, various weapons lie scattered on the floor, while a dirty towel hangs from a coat hook shaped like a swastika.
* * *
Cartoonist: Kukryniksy collective - 1937
A group of “Trotskyists” are depicted carrying a Nazi officer -symbolising Nazism- on their shoulders. The officer holds a small figurine of Trotsky under his arm, like a pampered lapdog. Those bearing the weight of Nazism are Karl Radek, Georgy Pyatakov, Leonid Serebryakov, and Grigory Sokolnikov. All of them would later become victims of the Moscow Trials.
* * *
Cartoonist: Kukryniksy collective - 1937
The name “Yezhov” contains the Russian word yozh, meaning “hedgehog”. In this cartoon, a pun and visual joke are made by depicting him wearing a “steel hedgehog gauntlet”. The image was meant to glorify Yezhov’s toughness and authority.
* * *
Caption: Judas Trotsky and his offspring (or progeny)
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov - 1937
The term offspring (or progeny) used in the caption is, of course, deliberately pejorative and demeaning. In the cartoon, the figure following closely behind Trotsky is his elder son, Leon Sedov, who, two years after this cartoon was published, was assassinated in Paris in 1939 as a result of a plot organised by Stalinist agents.
* * *
Little Judas Trotsky and His Fawning Bandits - Lackeys Bent on Destroying and Selling Out the Motherland
Caption: Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre: Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, and Others
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov - 1937
The cartoon refers to the Second Moscow Show Trial (the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Centre).
* * *
LONG LIVE THE MEMBERS OF THE NKVD - THE LOYAL SONS OF OUR GREAT MOTHERLAND!
LONG LIVE NIKOLAY IVANOVICH YEZHOV, PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR FOR INTERNAL AFFAIRS!
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov - 1937
Nikolai Yezhov is depicted strangling a multi-headed serpent with a swastika-shaped tail, labelled “Trotskyite-Bukharinite-Rykovite agents, wreckers, and saboteurs.” Yezhov, who headed the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) between 1936 and 1938, was the principal executor of the “Great Purge” carried out under Stalin’s directives.
* * *
THEY MARCH TOWARDS THEIR DOOM!
WAR
JUDAS TROTSKY
ESPIONAGE / TREASON
Cartoonist: Viktor Deni - 1937
* * *
The Rabid Dog of Fascism
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov - 1938
A two-headed rabid dog, bearing the faces of Bukharin and Trotsky, held on a leash by the hand of Nazism.
* * *
THEIR HOMELAND
FATERLAND (An ironic reference to the German word “Vaterland”)
Caption: A fabricated story about a supposed meeting at Berlin’s “Vaterland” restaurant between Chernov, a representative of the anti-Soviet “Right–Trotskyite bloc,” and Dan, a leader of the Second International and an agent of German intelligence.
Cartoonist: Boris Yefimov – 1938
In the cartoon, Rykov, Bukharin, Trotsky, and others are portrayed as pigs being fed by their Nazi masters.
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