Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Fulfill the Five-Year Plan not in Five Years But in Four

Preview image of work. lithograph on paper, Fulfill the Five-Year Plan not in Five Years But in Four 33090

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Fulfill the Five-Year Plan not in Five Years But in Four

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Artists

Nikolai Chomov (1903 - 1974); Iurii Merkulov ; Nikolai Chomov and Iurii Merkulov

Title

Fulfill the Five-Year Plan not in Five Years But in Four

Creation Date

1930

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

28 x 19 1/2 in. (71.12 x 49.53 cm)

Object Type

Creation Place

Asia, Russia

Medium and Support

lithograph on paper

Credit Line

Generously lent by Svetlana and Eric Silverman ’85, P’19

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

“Staging Socialist Happiness” Aimed at rapid industrialization and based on the Marxism-Leninism theory of the productive forces, Five-Year Plans were launched in 1928. While during the previous New Economic Policy period commercial advertisements had been tolerated, the new system monopolized the production of posters and utilized them to promote the economic restructuring. Collectivization and industrialization became important themes. By the mid-1930s, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party had fully regulated poster production through IZOGIZ (the State Fine Arts Publishing House), assigning themes and editing the works, as well as occasionally censoring images and texts. The Party also fostered a critical discussion of posters through professional organizations and public forums. The centralization of poster production, paralleled by an increase in output, ensured the uniformity, consistency, and maximum accessibility of the posters. The state demanded from artists to subordinate themselves to their audience in order to better serve the needs of the proletariat.