Social and Political Paradigm of Totalitarianism in Poster Art of the USSR and Communist Poland during the Period of Late Stalinism

The purpose of the research paper is to analyze poster art as a tool for imposing communist ideologemes in Soviet and Polish societies during the period of late Stalinism, to identify the paradigm of Totalitarianism in the subject matter of posters, as well as the ways of its conveying through form and content, and to show the similarities and differences in the semantic and artistic tendencies of poster art of both countries. The scientific novelty is in the comparative analysis of the subject matter and content of Soviet and Polish political posters during the period of late Stalinism (the mid-1940s – the first half of the 1950s) in terms of their use by the ruling regimes as tools of totalitarian propaganda. Conclusions. During the post-war period, Stalin regime actively continued to use the poster as an important means of communist propaganda in order to create specific ‘memory markers’ in the mass consciousness of the population. The poster played not only the role of a channel for conveying information, but also influenced the mental, emotional, and behavioral state of a person living under the pressure of the totalitarian system. The poster art of both states was under the absolute control of the Party and the government, its content and subject matter were determined by official documents. The visualization of slogans and images officially permitted by the authorities, enhanced by the appropriate color scheme, was intended to create a myth about the exceptional importance of the Party’s policy and to promote the implementation of Communism ideology in the mass consciousness. A characteristic feature of a totalitarian system is the presence of a cult of the leader, who personifies the state, nation, and progress and is a sacred value for society. By means of poster art, the majestic, even monumental, image of J. Stalin was deliberately imposed on the population of the USSR in order to legitimize his stay in power. Unlike the USSR, in communist Poland, the cult of the leader was not developed significantly, which, accordingly, was reflected in poster art, although Polish artists were also forced to work in the framework of the artistic method of socialist realism imposed on them by Stalin’s regime. One of the main subject matters of the USSR and Poland’s political posters during the Cold War period was the struggle for peace and criticism of the aggressive policy of the ‘imperialists,’ primarily the USA. The image of the ‘other’ (enemy) visualized in the communist poster contributed to the establishment in the public consciousness of a matrix of perception of the outside world in a bipolar coordinate system, at the opposite pole of which was absolute evil, which posed a potential threat to the existence of the socialist bloc.