The older woman portrayed here is wearing a traditional village kerchief, a head covering that was associated with female peasants in the early Soviet period that stemmed from a number of traditions. On the one hand, the head covering is religious in nature, referencing the modesty in attire for women principles of Russian orthodoxy. However, by this period the item had been someone de-religionized and instead served to protect the head against the cold, but was likely to be worn by poorer women who could not afford a hat. The red color of the headscarf sticks out on the page, drawing the reader’s eye to it. The cane combined with the scarf forms a familiar image of the wise, elderly “babushka” (grandmother) that appears throughout both Russian and Soviet literature.

This young man is wearing a typical Red Army uniform complete with the budenovka on his head, a cap that was named for cavalry officer and Civil War hero Semyon Budyonny. The cap is said to have been designed by Russian painter Viktor Vasnetsov after the hats of the bogatyr, an epic Russian hero usually portrayed as such. The man’s uniform in this image is also typical of the Red Army, with tall boots, which were important for infantry walking, and a warm jacket which was important for fighting in the subzero winter temperature conditions. These jackets typically had three black stripes with buttons on the front, as this one does.

The formation of this line, consisting of cartoon versions of various types of members of Soviet society, is very reminiscent of a different image from the same period: an advertisement for a brand of cigarettes sold by the “Donskaya” government-operated tobacco company. In the image, seven people are lined up, similar to the way in which these figures are lined up. These people are all united in that they all smoke these cigarettes, despite being from very distinct segments of society. In order from left to right, the advertisement poster features a Red Army soldier complete with a budenovka (analyzed above), a proletariat worker with a hammer in his hand, a member of the intelligentsia (holding a briefcase and wearing glasses), a woman wearing a hat, another working man, and finally followed by a man and a woman from the “capitalist” NEPman class portrayed with a black jacket and top hat for the man and an expensive fur coat for the woman. The following is the image in question: Aleksandr Nikolaevich Zelenskii, 1925. Poster of the Donskaia State Tabacco Factory, "Our Brand"

The Russian text plays on the two meanings of "mashina" -- both as car and machine -- as the Primus stove makes his claims to equivalency with the Ford.