Page 23 - All About History - Issue 38-16

Dictators

CUT THE STENCILS

For the windows, up to 65 stencils would be cut to
make up the individual elements. Unlike printed
posters, windows could vary in size and intricacy
as they were pieced together from multiple sheets
of paper and put up in shop windows. There was
also no restriction on the number of colours used.
THE POSTER HITS THE

PRODUCTION LINE

An assembly line of workers would then spring
into action: the stencil was put in place, one painter
gave it a splash of colour, another stencil came
down, another painter added his or her paints, text
cutters added their stencils and so on, as the pages
were passed from workstation to workstation.

THE WORKER ANTS DO

THEIR THING

With one eye on the clock, three shifts of workers
would turn out between 50 and 1,500 copies of
each poster a day. Each one would have been
produced by hand. This was actually quicker than
lithographic printing, because if there’s one thing
the Soviet Union wasn’t shy of, it was manpower.
THE BIG REVEAL

Between 12 and 20 individual sheets of paper
would be stuck together, revealing a single
gargantuan image that could be as big as 12 foot
tall. The finished product was a masterpiece –
painted by hand, it had greater detail than would
be possible in a printed poster.

PRINTS CHARMING

A run of postcard-sized flyers and lithographs
would be printed using the same design. They had
flatter colours and less texture, but were far easier
to transport across the country to the far-flung
reaches of the red empire. Some designs were later
outsourced to studios like Gopolitizdat, Sotrudnik
and Iskusstvo to print en masse.
Employees at the Svoboda printing
plant in Prague stack Soviet
propaganda posters

© Alamy

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