PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR FOREIGN TRADE For you he, tirelessly / chasing daylight around the world, / buys from various countries / all that the Union doesn’t have.

The red scarf worn by the young boy as he appears in every page of this book is the scarf worn by the Young Pioneers, a scouts organization for children 9-15. The Young Pioneers were heralded as the ideal future Soviet citizens and were taught to be model communists.

The Commissar is dressed in a Western style and, in this way, stands apart from the portrayals of the other Commissars in this book. He is wearing a top hat and a wing-tip collar shirt (typically worn with formal wear), is carrying a briefcase, and has polished shoes. In any other context, his image would be synonymous with capitalists and class enemies. Here, however, he is proudly portrayed as performing an important service for the government.

The artist appears to have emphasized the keyhole on the briefcase via the shading; contrast this with the briefcase three pages prior which has no lock. Speculatively, this could emphasize the downsides of private property by illustrating the need to protect against theft in the foreign, capitalist countries to which this Commissar must travel.

During the Russian Revolution and the NEP period, chocolate (шоколад) was derided as a symbol of material privilege and excess. It was primarily imported from abroad and was therefore a delicacy enjoyed only by the bourgeoisie. However, once Stalin declared that the transition from capitalism to socialism had been completed, mass consumption of chocolate came to be viewed as a symbol of the Soviet Union’s economic success. While chocolate was still mostly being imported at the time Your People’s Commissars at Your House was published, nine chocolate factories were built in the Soviet Union during the 1930s so as to produce chocolate for internal consumption. Source: https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1451&context=lang_facpub

Fordson was a brand of tractors developed by Henry Ford, of Ford Motor Company fame. Fordson tractors were the first lightweight, mass-produced tractors that were affordable to the average farmer. The Soviet Union began importing Fordson tractors in 1919, and by 1927, 85% of all Soviet trucks and tractors were Fordsons. The Soviets even attempted to copy the design of Fordson tractors and produce them for themselves, but because Soviet engineers could not figure out the intricacies of the production process, the Soviet Fordzon-Putilovets tractors did not match the quality of the originals. Source: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital- collections/artifact/219291/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0096144217710233

The “RF” on the ship, notably written in roman and not cyrillic letters, stands for Russian Federation, the name Soviet Russia was unofficially known by. The Russian Federation is the official name for Russia today.