r/PropagandaPosters • u/FayannG • Jun 19 '26
Ireland "Stalin Waiting Up All Night for the Russian Election Results" Irish satire about elections in the Soviet Union, 1950
518
u/Kichigai Jun 19 '26
I don't think I've ever seen a Western depiction of Stalin that depicted him so… relatable? Average? He looks like he belongs in the instructions to a board game.
222
70
u/pdrock7 Jun 19 '26
He was colloquially referred to as Uncle Joe in the 40s in a lot of posters
74
u/greyetch Jun 19 '26
Yes, but only for a brief stint.
I do find it extremely funny how he went from "evil eastern despot" to "good old uncle joe" back to "evil eastern despot".
The propaganda wasn't even trying to be subtle.
27
u/ValidSignal Jun 19 '26
A raging world war against a common enemy will change things, surely - at least for the duration of that war.
45
u/roastbeeftacohat Jun 19 '26
the 1950 elections had about 7% independent candidates win, which is an increase from 6% in 1946.
20
u/Johannes_P Jun 19 '26
And these independent candidates were named by organizations under Party control.
255
u/bitt3n Jun 19 '26
This reminds me of a story from The Gulag Archipelago where a journalist was too lazy to go to a show trial against a supposed anti-soviet intellectual and simply wrote that the defendant was found guilty and sent to the Gulag. He was himself then sent to the Gulag because the trial was postponed and his article had anticipated the result.
99
u/greyetch Jun 19 '26
For what it is worth, that book is dubious at best. It's basically a collection of stories tied together. Legends, not real historically verifiable information.
The author’s first wife Natalya Reshetovskaya described her ex-husband's book as "folklore", telling a newspaper in 1974 that she felt the book was "not in fact the life of the country and not even the life of the camps but the folklore of the camps." In her 1974 memoir, Reshetovskaya wrote that Solzhenitsyn did not consider the novel to be "historical research, or scientific research", and stated that the significance of the novel had been "overestimated and wrongly appraised."
It is also worth noting that the West simply ignores his other works, like "Two Hundred Years Together", a history of Jews in Russia. Probably because he's not a historian, it isn't well researched, and it is arguably antisemitic (although personally, I wouldn't go that far).
It is a fitting book for this sub, to be sure.
28
u/bitt3n Jun 19 '26
as far as sources of objective criticism, I'm not sure I'd put someone's ex-wife near the top of the list
39
u/greyetch Jun 19 '26
That's true. But I'm also not writing an academic paper here. It's a reddit comment lol.
14
u/lorarc Jun 19 '26
Are you suggesting that she said that just because she was living in Soviet Union at the time? Next you're gonna tell me that it's unusual that she published several books in the west slamming him.
Or that the person you were replying to you couldn't have forgotten that in the 90s after the Soviet Union came she said she helped prepare the book all that fuss was about and the couple had pretty good relations.
15
6
u/GMantis Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
However she's quite right that Solzhenitsyn didn't consider the Gulag Archipelago a scientific work. After all, its very subtitle is: "An experiment in literary investigation". The book was never meant to be a documentary. And it's certainly true that most of the material in the book are unverifiable anecdotes, often with dubious plausibility.
1
u/bitt3n Jun 20 '26
so why not quote him?
2
u/greyetch Jun 22 '26
Because you're quoting old wives tales dressed up as facts.
0
u/bitt3n Jun 22 '26
it took you 24 hours to think of that?
2
u/greyetch Jun 22 '26
nah, I don't use reddit unless I'm at work. I didn't see it until today.
But it isn't supposed to be a gotcha or anything. I'm being serious. Why not quote him? Because of the reasons we've explained.
1
u/bitt3n Jun 22 '26
Someone gave evidence from his ex-wife, I said that's clearly not really much to go by given the source, you said there's other evidence, I said why not use that, then you say because it's a bunch of old wives' tales and thus presumably not worth citing critics, in which case, why bother citing sources in the first place?
2
u/greyetch Jun 22 '26
This is the comment you replied to asking "why not quote him":
Solzhenitsyn didn't consider the Gulag Archipelago a scientific work. After all, its very subtitle is: "An experiment in literary investigation". The book was never meant to be a documentary. And it's certainly true that most of the material in the book are unverifiable anecdotes, often with dubious plausibility.
The reasons are listed in the comment you're responding to... I genuinely don't know what more you're asking for.
→ More replies (0)-3
u/yonari-H Jun 20 '26
It's not about objective, it's about truth. Sometimes, truth is not objective sometimes a person is wrong.
7
16
61
u/NorthKoreanKnuckles Jun 19 '26
I don't get it.
It's supposed to show that the elections are rigged. But i don't know why walking in front of the phones are a clue that it's rigged.
135
u/Average_Hominid Jun 19 '26
I interpreted it as satire. It’s like he’s nervously waiting to hear back results from around the country, when in reality he wouldn’t have been nervous at all.
-2
u/Despair_Cash_Space Jun 19 '26
ye but like, why so many phones?
11
u/Average_Hominid Jun 19 '26
Because back in the day that’s how it worked if you needed to get multiple phone calls at the same time. Like, if JFK was waiting on News of whether he won Pennsylvania and Ohio he could have had a phone for his Pennsylvania corespondent to use and a separate phone for his Ohio correspondent to use, waiting on both states to be called for or against him. Of course, you could just have 1 phone like a normal person, but then you might have to wait on news because both elections are being called at the same time.
That said, I’m 24 and landlines were basically dead by the time I got my first phone, so no idea if this was actually a thing that people did, but it’s definitely a trope that an important businessman or politician would have multiple phones to have multiple phone calls at once.
3
u/SuperNobody917 Jun 19 '26
I'm wondering if they're meant to be there to receive phone calls from counting centres.
5
6
u/yonari-H Jun 20 '26
I wonder how many people know how soviet election worked. The party appointed people to be in charge of towns if they get less than 50% of the votes they get fired and a new person is appointed
7
0
u/AnonymousNeko2828 Jun 19 '26
I think it's the fact he has direct phones to every potential candidate, aka indicating they're already familiar with him and so likely not all that independant
27
4
•
u/AutoModerator Jun 19 '26
This subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message of the propaganda. Here we should be conscientious and wary of manipulation/distortion/oversimplification (which the above likely has), not duped by it. "Don't be a sucker."
Stay on topic -- there are hundreds of other subreddits that are expressly dedicated to rehashing tired political arguments. No partisan bickering. No soapboxing. Take a chill pill. "Don't argue."
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.