Iconography of Political Thearte

Abstract

The author's English summary from the article:

Key words: Stalin, political posters, totalitarianism.

The letter is dedicated to the fact of translating the book «Iconography of Power» by American sociologist and historian Victoria Bonelli. The political poster is a mirror of its era, as it depicts visual narratives of official ideology and provides visual scenarios of new patterns of behavior. The poster plays a role as an indicator for reflecting on the political aspects of totalitarianism, particularly the Soviet past, as it conceptualizes the reality of that era. The book describes the stages of forming the Soviet political poster as an expression of power, the factor of social mobilization, and the visual phenomenon of everyday life. The pictures on the Soviet poster are not only reminders of the past, but also help with social diagnostics.

Understanding and reading its political archetypes and semantics is desirable right now in the post-Soviet era. This type of reading is taught by Victoria Bonnell’s book “Iconography of Power”, which gives us a desire to research and create a work on the Georgian political poster.

Published in the journal Sjani, vol. 20/2 (2019), pp. 290–294. Open the paper