Soviets

From the Back Cover ?From the authors of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series, Soviets features unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev. They satirize the Communist Party system, exposing the absurdities of Soviet life from drinking (Alcoholics and Shirkers) to the Afghan war (The Shady Enterprise), via dissent (Censorship, Paranoia and Suspicion) and religion (Atheism as an Ideology). Baldaev reveals the cracks in the crumbling socialist structure, detailing the increasing hardships tolerated by a population whose leaders are in pursuit of an ideal that will never arrive. Dating from the 1950s to the period immediately before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, his caricatures depict communism's winners and losers: the corruption of its politicians, the stagnation of the system, and the effect of this on the ordinary soviet citizen. Baldaev's drawings are contrasted with classic propaganda style photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev for the newspaper Vercherny Chelyabinsk. These photographs portray a world the Party leaders dreamed of: where workers fulfilled their five-year plans as parades of soldiers and weapons rumbled through Red Square. This book examines - both broadly and in minute detail - the official fiction and the austere, bleak reality, of living under such a system. Product Description Soviets features unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev. They satirize the Communist Party system, exposing the absurdities of Soviet life from drinking (Alcoholics and Shirkers) to the Afghan war (The Shady Enterprise), via dissent (Censorship, Paranoia and Suspicion) and religion (Atheism as an Ideology). Baldaev reveals the cracks in the crumbling socialist structure, detailing the increasing hardships tolerated by a population whose leaders are in pursuit of an ideal that will never arrive. Dating from 1950s to the period immediately before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, his caricatures depict communism’s winners and losers: the corruption of its politicians, the stagnation of the system, and the effect of this on the ordinary soviet citizen. Baldaev’s drawings are contrasted with classic propaganda style photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev for the newspaper Vercherny Chelyabinsk. These photographs portray a world the Party leaders dreamed of: where workers fulfilled their five-year plans as parades of soldiers and weapons rumbled through Red Square. This book examines – both broadly and in minute detail – the official fiction and the austere, bleak reality, of living under such a system. Review Many of Baldaev's dozens of angry caricatures and commentaries on life in Sovietdom are uncomfortable and grotesque, addressing subjects like anti-Semitism, alcoholism, and the Afghan War. Soviets covers so much that it's hard to summarize its value for students of Soviet-era or post-Soviet Russian literature and culture. For someone like me, a life-long learner in the field who lived for an extended period in 1990s Russia, (and admittedly has trouble making it through book-length nonfiction), the broad range of figures in Baldaev's drawings and Vasiliev's photos - the former draws everyone from a barfing drunk to a medal-covered Brezhnev, and the latter photographs everyone from soldiers meeting Yuri Gagarin to female prisoners 'volunteering' on their day off - goes a long way toward filling in gaps on aspects of Soviet life that I never had a chance to witness or learn about. Vasiliev's photos, all black and white, depict official parades, sporting events, and workers. They make a beautiful complement to Baldaev's drawings, particularly because it's often difficult to decide which angle on Soviet reality feels more realistic. Or absurd. --Lisa Hayden Espenschade, Lizok's Bookshelf Blog Danzig Baldaev's drawings dark-lined, stippled, blunt, often disturbing have become most familiar through his renderings of Russian criminal tattoos and later horrific scenes of life and dea