Six years of the Red Army
The pins
Context
For discussion
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1
Cult of personality Trotsky Trotsky's head, the largest element on the sheet, as founder and commissar of the army. Within five years he was in exile and this face was cut from the official picture.
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2
Juxtaposition The target White officers and top-hatted capitalists pinned to a target like insects. The enemy is not fought but aimed at.
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3
Mass spectacle The ranks Strips of photographed soldiers in ranks: the army as an endless, orderly mass. The photographs are real; the order is the montage's.
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4
Appeal to tradition The caption "Six years of the Red Army." An anniversary is a claim that lasting is winning, and that the sixth year follows from the first.
Gustav Klutsis's photomontage for the sixth anniversary of the Red Army, February 1924, reproduced here from the magazine Smena. Trotsky's head, as the army's founder and commissar, dominates the sheet, with a field gun, a commander with binoculars, ranks of soldiers, and a target on which White officers and capitalists are pinned. Within five years Trotsky was in exile and images like this were withdrawn or retouched; the poster is a record of what the official picture looked like before it was corrected.
- What is an anniversary poster asking the viewer to feel, and about what?
- The photographs are real. Are they evidence?
- Why might photomontage have appealed to a government that wanted to look modern?
See also
Same era, or the same techniques.
