During the last couples of weeks, we were studying about the Russian Revolution. This was one of the projects, which was to analyze sources. One of the main sources druing the 21th century was the internet but during the Russian Revolution, it was posters. Most posters presented the propaganda. Propaganda is ideas, information or rumors spread, aiming for influencing the opinions of large numbers of people. The effective propaganda was often completely truthful but some propaganda presents facts to encourage a particular theory or to produce an emotional rather than response to the information presented. The five propagandas I’m going to analyze are going to be on Lenin and Stalin.

A poster of Lenin; he was placed on top of everyone, high in the sky. This suggested that he’s high in position or powerful. He bravely led the others, from the expression of his face. It looked like he and his people completed their missions. The red flag represented the USSR; he’s on top of it. This gave us the impression that he was in control of the USSR.

This was another poster of Lenin. Same as the one above, where there’s red which represented USSR. Above him there were his pictures since he was young. He’s surrounded by the color of red. There were lots of pictures of him, put into a “V” shape. The “V” might stand for Vladimir, which was Lenin’s first name. In the year 1924, he died and in 1929, Stalin became the next ruler of USSR.

This is a poster of Stalin where he, again, was placed higher and bigger than the other people. Also the use of the red flags behind his people, having his people respect and cheered for him from kids to adults. From the expression of his looks, he kindly understood his people.

This is another picture which showed how much Stalin was important to his people. One of the reasons for him becoming famous was because of his poster. His eyes told us that he was concentrating on determining to reach his goal. Whatever he promised his people, he’ll do it for them.

This is the last poster which I’m going to analyze. This is a poster on both Lenin and Stalin. The shadow of Lenin behind Stalin showed that Stalin followed Lenin or achieved what Lenin wanted to. On the other hand, this meant that Stalin reminded us of Lenin.

In conclusion, there were similarities and differences between the posters of Lenin and Stalin. The propaganda really affected people during that time especially, to force people to think that their leaders were the right one. In my opinion, to be a good leader, where your people respected you, isn’t just forcing them to look at you only the positive sides but for them to look at your negative sides and accepting you as you really are.

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Citation

Helsingin , Sanomat . Rosa. 5 Dec 2004. 2 Nov 2007

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"Wikipedia." Answer.com. 2 Nov 2007

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"Russian." 2 Nov 2007 http://images.google.co.th/imgres?imgurl=http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/3/39/350px-Poster08.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.answers.com/topic/joseph-stalin&h=259&w=350&sz=30&hl=th&start=5&um=1&tbnid=Cszh_g1BTOerlM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLenin%2Bpropaganda%2Bposter%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dth%26sa%3DN.