mlevy - 6/18/2006 at 00:40
The stamp below was issued in August, 1941 - very shortly after the
start of the Great Patriotic War (June 21 1941). The Scott Catalog says:
"Mother's Farewell to a Soldier Son ('Be a Hero')". But somewhere I came across a remark that said that the stamp was based on a poster. Amazingly, I
was able to find a scan of the original poster on the Internet. Comparing the original poster with the stamp is interesting - the main change I see is
(a) the male in the stamp seems to be younger than the male in the poster, and his head is facing a different direction on the stamp. My
interpretation is that the stamp designer decided that the young soldier must look as if he is eager to get going. Comments? (The poster image follows
in the next post).
mlevy - 6/18/2006 at 00:42
The poster artist was Victor Borisovich Koretsky.
jlechtanski - 6/20/2006 at 09:27
The Stanley Gibbons catalog describes this stamp as "Reproduction of Poster" and lists Koretsky as the designer. Apparently, he made the changes you
describe.
A nice piece of research.
GOZNAK
oldteddy - 6/20/2006 at 15:03
An older Russian catalog states that the stamp is BASED ON KORETSKY"S POSTER. a later one (STANDARD-COLLECTION) states
"оформление коллектива
художников ГОЗНАКа" which can be translated as
DESIGNED (or FRAMED or many other options) BY GOZNAK ARTISTS. Usually that later catalog states desiner's name in that place. So it's not clear who
designed stamp's version of the poster - Koretsky himself or GOZNAK. I vaguely recall that there was an article in Russian publications regarding this
issue.
ameis33 - 6/20/2006 at 16:05
Is Goznak the name of a people or is it something else?
http://www.goznak.ru/eng/
http://www.goznak.spb.ru/eng/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goznak
Gary - 6/20/2006 at 16:55
The state printing office. Anything official was to be printed there.
jlechtanski - 6/20/2006 at 20:31
Liapin also says Koretski is the designer.
Liapin also lists the "People's Militia" of December, 1941 as being by a poster of L. Lisitsky (Scott 859). Another poster to search for.
mlevy - 6/20/2006 at 23:31
Perhaps the place to look is The State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia (http://www.sovr.ru).
From their web site:
"One of the biggest collections of political posters in the world is stored in the Museum. Poster was for a long time one of the main attributes of
any agitation.
Collection consists of more than 70,000 units of storage and covers a period from 1905 to our time."
Unfortunately, very little of the collection is on-line.
Maybe someone in Moscow could persuade the museum to put more of its posters online? "People's Militia" in particular would be nice.
...mlevy
Fergana - 12/8/2006 at 09:58
I know this is going down the postcard collecting trail, but in Moscow in May 2004, I saw postcard size reproductions of large Soviet-era posters on
sale in several shops. The publisher’s poster gallery at http://www.plakat.ru/Catalog/cat1.htm could be worth looking at.