Description

Chislennost' armiy capitalisticheskikh stran [Size of the Armed Forces of Capitalist Countries], a poster by Nikolai Gerasimov (1897-1974). Published by the Pictorial Statistics Department of IZOGIZ, Moscow - Leningrad, 1932, 104 x 70.5 cm.

An interesting and fairly representative example of the Soviet approach to Otto Neurath's ideas on visual representation of statistical data. While accepting many recommendations of the founder of the Isotype movement, Soviet propagandists rejected one of Neurath's main principles, the one that called for removing any graphic element that may distract the viewer from absorbing the statistical information. In the propagandists' eyes, acquisition of data was of little value if not accompanied by a strong dose of political indoctrination. Thus, Gerasimov's design forces the viewer to concentrate on Stalin's mantra We do not seek an inch of foreign soil; neither will we surrender an inch of our own before paying any attention to factual information.

Search extension words: Russian poster, Soviet poster.