Sunday 26 June 2011

Studies in Comics

Comics at the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow seems to have a growing Comics Studies interest.

University of Glasgow :: School of Modern Languages and Cultures :: Our staff :: Dr Laurence F Grove

Karikatura na sluzhbe so︠t︡sialisticheskogo stroitelʹstva : katalog vystavki / vstupitelʹnye statʹi M.Z. Manuilʹskogo i B.M. Nikiforova :: Rare Books Published in Imperial and early Soviet Russia

Fascinating catalogue on the significance of caricature and cartoons to building the socialist project in the eraly USSR, digitised and available for free online!

Karikatura na sluzhbe so︠t︡sialisticheskogo stroitelʹstva : katalog vystavki / vstupitelʹnye statʹi M.Z. Manuilʹskogo i B.M. Nikiforova :: Rare Books Published in Imperial and early Soviet Russia

The West in The Soviet Caricature: Libya Edition

The West in The Soviet Caricature: Libya Edition

The West in The Soviet Caricature: Israel

The West in The Soviet Caricature: Israel

Chicago Soviet Arts Experience

This looks like a fascinating series of events, including this one which refers to Soviet cartoons and posters.

Views and Re-Views: Soviet Political Posters and Cartoons - Calendar - Soviet Arts Experience

The Political Cartoon Society

The UK's Political Cartoon Society website.

Original Cartoons for Sale

Friday 24 June 2011

Images of Peace and Nuclear War

Very interesting article on Soviet attitudes to, and representations of, the USA during the Cold War. This is a central theme in Krokodil during the period 1945-1990, and it was the stimulus for most of the academic and/or popular studies of the magazine, but it's a subject which now seems to be getting the revisions it deserves.

http://russianhistoryblog.org/2011/02/images-of-peace-and-nuclear-war/

Thursday 23 June 2011

The St. Petersburg Times - Satire revisited

An article from 2005 on Новый Крокодил: the revival of Krokodil.

Dieselpunk: The Flying Crocodile

The USSR sponsored a squadron of propaganda aircraft which toured the country. Often they visited major cities, but they also visited areas affected by famine in the early 1930s. Some of the aircraft were named after Soviet news publications, and here is the aircraft named after Krokodil.

What I don't know is whether the publications in question actually sponsored the aircraft, but the decoration of this ANT-9 suggests perhaps they did.

Dieselpunk: The Flying Crocodile: "A Tupolev ANT-9 trimotor used in 1930s by the Soviet propaganda squadron. Named after the Krokodil (Crocodile) satyrical magazine, it was p..."



Another page about this aircraft here.

Soviet cartoonist Борис Ефимов

Here is a link to an article by film director Kevin McNeer, about his documentary 'Stalin Thought of You'. His film features the life and career of the USSR's pre-eminent cartoonist Boris Efimov.
Soviet cartoonist Boris Efimov

Krokodil and Russian folklore

Krokodil cartoons very often employed folkloric characters and themes. Soviet graphic satire owed much to pre-revolutionary popular prints...