Publisher: Molodaia Gvardiia (Young Guard)
Author: Khazin, Evgenii
Artist: Shifrin, Nisson Abramovich, 1892-
Materials:
Colors: Black, Blue, Brown, Grey, Red, White, Yellow
Subjects: [Workers?], Adults, Architecture, Bandannas, Blimps, Children, Clothing, Flags, Kerchiefs, Machinery, Oil Drilling, Pants, People, Pipes, Shirts, Technology, Towers, Transportation
This is a poster of the five-year plan. Similar to this page, the number of years is the most prominent and largest image and is bright red. However, there are key ideological differences expressed visually in this page from the children’s book and the poster above. In the poster for the five-year plan, a fist uses the number five to crush enemies of the Soviet Union, including a the capitalist (identified by his top hat). In this page from the children’s book, the number “2” has machinery being built on top of it, and workers protesting and supporting manufacturing production below it. The book discusses on the first page how “At one point, the capitalists ran the show. The revolution drove them to Europe. The workers now extract the oil not for them, but for their own proletariat state.” Here labor is uplifting the five-year plan to defeat the capitalists. Furthermore, the number ½ is small, exaggerating that the plan could conclude even sooner, maybe in just two years.
Here the text reads (from top left to the base of the 2): Not in 5, not in 4, not in 3, but we will fulfill the oil Five-Year Plan in 2 1/2 years.
These are the “children of Grozny and Baku” as described in the text. The red kerchiefs tied around the necks of two of the figures mark them as Pioneers, a Communist youth organization for children ages 9-15. Depictions of Pioneers are common in children’s works of this time period and showed young readers how they could be part of the larger social and economic movements they saw around them.