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The boy wears a utilitarian, militaristic outfit and boots. His pants are short, perhaps indicating his youthful age. The image emphasizes his physicality. He confidently marches into and summons the Communist future (represented by the red cloud in the shape of a flag), his posture resembling that of a member of a military march. As he blows his trumpet, he seems to be emitting the Red flag/cloud, or symbolically playing a song about the Communist future.
2
The children wear the Red Pioneer kerchief, which identifies them as Young Pioneers. The red neckerchief is the most important element of the uniforms of all Pioneer youth organizations. In the Soviet Union, there were three Communist Youth organizations: the Little Octobrists (ages 7 – 9), the Young Pioneers (ages 9 – 14), and the Komsomol, or the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (ages 14-28). The Young Pioneers was influenced by Scouting movements, which had thrived in Tsarist Russia; during the Civil War, many Scouts supported the White Army. After the war, there were several short-lived Communist Scouting movements, including the Young Communists (YuKi) and ROUR. However, Komsomol opposed Scouting, and in 1922 founded the All-Union Leninist Young Pioneers as a Communist organization for children.
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This visually ambiguous red mass can be interpreted in a number of different ways, for it resembles both a cloud and a Soviet flag. Symbolically, this renders the symbol of Communism as a natural force, constituting a physical and symbolic landscape. The Young Pioneer stands amidst this redness, and it envelops him, leaking into the red shadows on his body. Thus, it forms the physical space in which he finds himself as well as the ideological landscape that he presumably inhabits.
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Two May Days
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Two May Days
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“Usto Mumin” is the pseudonym of Aleksandr Nikolaev, the illustrator of this book. It means “Faithful and Gentle Master”; Nikolaev adopted this name after converting to Islam while living in Uzbekistan.
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State Publishing House, 1930
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25 kopecks