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Hoover Archives:
The Illiterate Man Is Like a Blind Man
By Heather Farkas and Mathew Morris
Soviet posters from the literacy campaign of the 1920s. By Heather Farkas and Matthew Morris.
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The illiterate man is like a blind man. Failure and misfortune lie in wait for him on all sides. Artist: Aleksei Radakov (1877–1942).
Influenced by traditional woodcuts in what was known as the lubok style of popular prints, the poster presents illiteracy as life-threatening blindness.
Lithograph. Petrograd: State Press, 1920.
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On December 26, 1919, Lenin issued an official decree that all members of the population between the ages of 8 and 50 who could not read or write would be obligated to study reading in either Russian or their native language. He gave his commissar of enlightenment, Anatoly V. Lunarcharsky, two weeks to work out the details.
Lunarcharsky envisioned adult learning taking place in factory reading rooms, where workers could read and discuss Marxist pamphlets on their work breaks. Peasants would learn to read in village reading huts, where newspapers would be available. School-age children would teach illiterate parents. A series of dramatic posters was prepared to promote the campaign, as Pravda asserted that posters had a particular ability to sway the masses, making “a first impression on their consciousness which lectures and books can subsequently deepen.” In 1920, German economist Alfons Goldschmidt reported, “You find posters on all the walls, in thousands of Moscow shops, on telegraph poles, in pubs, in factories—everywhere you find posters.”
The introduction of free compulsory education up to the age of 17 and the creation of an infrastructure for mass adult learning became tools for shaping the minds of the new Soviet citizens. The leap from ignorance to knowledge, then, was synonymous with embracing the ideology of the new regime. In Central Asia the literacy campaign was linked to establishing the Russian alphabet.
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Moonshiners: Get out of the country! Artist: Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Moonshiners: Get out of the country! Out of the farm! Out of the village! Member of the Communist Youth League! Peasants! Hey! In order to live a free and full life, beat the green snake with a book! Beat it with knowledge! Catch his tail in the school’s door! Send out to pasture the ones that graze, banish the one in a drunken haze!
Armed with a book labeled “enlightenment” instead of a sword, the educated working man beats back the snake of drink, which is depicted with an inebriated peasant, complete with cart and horse, in its jaws. A school has collapsed under one slap of its tail. Two members of the clergy unsuccessfully attempt to stop “enlightenment.”
Lithograph. Moscow: “Red Soil,” 1920–1930.
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Soviet artists relied on familiar images, national archetypes, and association to create an easily recognizable visual code and develop a simple alphabet of literacy. The Russian word for education, prosveschenie, literally means enlightenment; an ignorant person is called temnyi (dark). With enlightenment comes progress and power. Darkness brings slavery.
Literacy in the Soviet public space had two faces, public and private. Public appeals concerned constructing new educational spaces, contributing to community education, and engaging with the work of schools and libraries—by extension, the construction of the new Soviet state. The private face of literacy emphasized the personal satisfaction that came from knowing how to read, not to mention the economic rewards of better crops, healthier stock, and that ever-present symbol of progress the lightning rod, harnessing the unruly power of nature.
Although Lunarcharsky lost influence in the Stalin era and resigned in 1929, his literacy campaign continued to be enormously successful. Statistics from the end of the nineteenth century, claiming that nearly 70 percent of Russia’s male and 90 percent of its female population to be illiterate, gave way to new statistics by the eve of World War II, showing 89.1 percent of Soviets between the ages of 9 and 49 able to read and write.
On the following pages are literacy campaign posters chosen from more than 3,000 Russian and Soviet posters in the Hoover Archives collections.
Many more Soviet literacy posters can be seen in the exhibit “Alphabeticon: Russian Experiments with Text and Image in the Twentieth Century” at the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion through August 30, 2003. Faculty and student curators from the Stanford Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures—Oksana Bulgakowa, Dustin Condren, Heather Farkas, Monika Greenleaf, Dietmar Hochmuth, Martha Kelly, Matthew Morris, Anna Muza, Sara Pankenier, Joshua Walker, and Glen Worthey—illustrate the relationship between the written text and visual image in the visual arts, literature, and performance. For more information contact the Hoover Archives, 650.723.3563, or visit www.hoover.org/hila.
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A book is nothing more than a man speaking publicly. Artist: Sergei Yakovlev.
This poster was printed in the midst of the civil war, a time when Soviet presses were paralyzed with chronic paper shortages and distribution problems. Reading books aloud spread decrees both quickly and inexpensively.
Lithograph. Petrograd: State Publishing House, 1920.
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Children! The illiterate man leads a terrible life! Artist: Aleksei Radakov (1877–1942).
Children! The illiterate man leads a terrible life! He lives as if in a dark forest. He doesn’t understand anything. He imagines that there are horrors everywhere. The eagle owl calls at night—the illiterate man thinks that a wood goblin is howling. He believes in demons and witches; he does not know what is harmful and what is helpful. Lightning strikes his hut, and he says that God punished him for his sins; he does not know that lightning rods capture lightning. When his crops are poor, he performs a prayer; but if he knew from books how to use a soil fertilizer, then he would have some crops. With the friends of man—animals—he relates badly! He doesn’t know how to herd them; he does not know how to derive any benefit from them. But then he passes by a school—immediately rays of light appear through the blindness. Everything is understandable to him, everything is clear! He sees what he did not notice before. He becomes a man of a hundred eyes. He starts to enjoy his life on earth. Everything goes smoothly. And when there is misfortune, he will consult with his friend, the book; it does not deceive, and he will discover how to emerge from this difficulty!
Radakov contrasts the dark impoverished world populated by monsters with the joyful and wealthy world of literacy. A line of people progresses from darkness, blindness, and fear to light via a schoolhouse.
Lithograph. Petrograd: State Publishing House, 1920.
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Woman! Learn how to read! Krasnyi Agitator (Moscow) 1923.
Woman! Learn how to read! “Oh, Mama! If you knew how to read, then you could help me!”
In 1914, Russian printmaker, illustrator, and teacher Elizaveta Kruglikova took up the silhouette cut from black paper, a genre she applied to portraits, poster designs, children’s books, and magazine illustrations. This silhouette presents a mother unable to answer her daughter’s request for help with her schoolwork. The rhetoric encourages adults to keep pace with the progressive education of the younger generations.
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Mathew Morris is a graduate student at stanford university.
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