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Soviet Posters + American Pin-ups = 2014 Olympics Calendar

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By Oleg Atbashian
First published in PJ Media


When a young illustrator from Moscow, Andrei Tarusov, decided to picture how the Winter Olympics might have looked in the old USSR if the erstwhile Soviet government hadn't been so zealous in suppressing the sexuality of its citizens, he let his imagination run wild.

The result was an off-the-wall calendar that creatively combined Soviet propaganda poster art with vintage American pin-ups: scantily clad retro-babes in classic pin-up poses but with Soviet enthusiastic fire in their eyes, engaging in winter sports with athletic equipment from the 1940s and 1950s. The pictures were accompanied by rhymed slogans, written by the artist's friend in the traditional propagandistic style with a new, ironic twist.

Tarusov contacted the Olympic Committee hoping it would sponsor his project in promoting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Whether the Committee was protecting its reputation or it feared attacks from feminist groups, the answer was definitive "nyet."

That's when the artist decided to go solo with "crowdfunding" and posted the calendar, stripped of any official Olympic trademarks, on the Russian version of Kickstarter.com. His goal was to raise 120,000 rubles (USD $3,554) to cover the printing costs, but the result exceeded his expectations: donations from 1,493 people totaled 1,453,900 rubles (USD $43,060).

Image Andrei Tarusov

According to Tarusov, his calendar became "super famous in Russia," resulting in a solid week of TV reporters crowding his apartment. This prompted him to create the English version, too.

The young Russian's love affair with American pin-ups started long before this recent success. In 2012, he created a humorous Apocalypse Tomorrow Calendar with sexy babes in various stages of getting undressed against the background of alien invasion, global warming, zombies, global cooling, and other similarly improbable scenarios.

Last year he issued The Fridays of the 2013 calendar with imaginary posters of made-up horror movies starring classic Hollywood actresses.

And four years ago we reported on an even more hilarious series of pin-up/agitprop posters, also published as a 2010 calendar by another Russian illustrator, Valeri Barykin.

What compels Russia's graphic artists to create these phantasmagoric, culture-jamming mash-ups of Soviet visual propaganda and vintage American pin-ups? Imaginative and comedic on its face, this new genre seems to have a deeper cultural motive, being an artistic response to the larger society's nostalgic longing for America's 1950s - a mythical golden age which had been denied to the Soviets by their own tyrannical and rigidly ideological government.

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Samples of Soviet posters used by Tarusov in his work


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Depictions of sports in Soviet propaganda art
The Soviet 1950s started with Stalin's rule of terror, post-war deprivation, and millions of political prisoners rotting in the gulags. 1953 was marked by a nation-wide anti-Semitic witch hunt as Stalin's death was blamed on the conspiracy by Jewish doctors. Only in 1958, as Khrushchev denounced Stalin's tyranny and set a course of reforms, there appeared a timid hope of "socialism with a human face," but even that lame promise was never fulfilled.

At the same time, a shimmering image of a better life was rising from above the Iron Curtain, like the atmospheric reflection of a distant world across the ocean - a mirage producing displaced and often misshapen images of a happier, sunnier, and sexier lifestyle. Any attempts by the Soviets to recreate that fanciful image in music, fashion, or art were severely persecuted by the authorities.

Four decades later, in the early 1990s, the fall of Communism and the Iron Curtain had left the former Soviets with a legacy of severely distorted history, incomplete culture, and a warped vision of the outside world. The nation's intellectuals rushed to repair the damage and correct these deficiencies by doing what was then termed "filling in the blank spots." Historians and journalists researched and published shocking revelations from newly opened archives, authors wrote books on previously forbidden subjects, and musicians played somewhat anachronistic rock and roll of the 50s and 60s to the delight of their multiple fans.

That work is obviously still in progress, as artists continue to fantasize about things that could have happened but didn't, helping their audiences to re-imagine and relive their past in a happier, sunnier, and sexier alternative reality.

History may not operate in subjunctive mood, but art certainly does.

As does this promotional video.

Bonus feature: Drawing the Sports Calendar

Tarusov's Olympic Calendar in English

(Author's note: these English translations don't do justice to the original Russian rhymed slogans and the March calendar is mislabled as "May")

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That's a good calender. I would like to have it on my wall.

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There's a clear possibility here that Comrade Red Square chose to parade these posters because they remind him of Mrs. Red Square.

Interestingly enough, the American pin-up artist Gil Elvgren, who inspires his modern Russian colleagues, modeled his fantasy girls on HIS OWN WIFE!!!

The Photographs Behind Gil Elvgren's 1950s Pin-Up Girl Art

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Wholesome depictions of healthy Soviet womanhood in healthy Soviet sport. I approve.

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Dear Comrade Red Square:

As Kubist Party Leader you are above reproach, but I must remind you that in the Rodina, life was deliberately bland because of our Revolutionary Zeal. Only Members of the Nomenklatura had the right to the girls, vodka and songs. The Proletariat had the Revolutionary Right to cue up in long lines for their rations of cow hooves, beets, and "Grit #100" Toilet Paper, and life was good; good for them so that they were too busy from rising up to become Reaktionaries.

Still today, life is like that in workers paradises such Pyiongyiang and Havanah, but I digress...

If the Proletariat had such racy girls in Revolutionary Posters, most Proles would have risen up in arms demanding that their daily lives ressembled the pretty Comradettes. Nyet!!!!!! The Revolution is too serious for such decadence. Remind me why the Revolution collapsed.

The sad irony is that all that reproductive charm is lost in the West to a Socialist Party which doesn't care about such femenine beauty. Even the Dear Leader Barack shuns such beauty in favor of male athletes... What a shame; the last true man of American Socialism was William Jefferson Clinton, and he carried it to the extreme, when he fell in disgrace for that plump Russian-like babe named Lewinsky. Definitely, American Socialists do not understand the personal restraint and austere persona required for the high office of belonging to the Party Elite. Socialism is only successful when performed with the rigidity and zeal of religious fervor. Anything less carries with it the seeds of its own self destruction.

Yours truly, Unkle Jib.

I am having news from my radio now that tells me a citizen has claimed that these drawings are demeaning to women and that there should be an equal amount of scantily dressed males. So I am thinking that the winters are about to get long, hard and cold for Barney Frankovski and his "companion", Ivan Bychyakokoff.

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Jíbaro wrote:Dear Comrade Red Square:

If the Proletariat had such racy girls in Revolutionary Posters, most Proles would have risen up in arms demanding that their daily lives ressembled the pretty Comradettes.
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Comrade, On my kollective, a woman that can feed 12 undocumented voters with a beet and some potato peelings, change oil in the tractor, and keep me from frostbite at night is worth more than any of those skinny girls.

(though they are nice to look at...)

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Jíbaro wrote:Dear Comrade Red Square:

As Kubist Party Leader you are above reproach, but I must remind you that in the Rodina, life was deliberately bland because of our Revolutionary Zeal. Only Members of the Nomenklatura had the right to the girls, vodka and songs. The Proletariat had the Revolutionary Right to cue up in long lines for their rations of cow hooves, beets, and "Grit #100" Toilet Paper, and life was good; good for them so that they were too busy from rising up to become Reaktionaries.

Still today, life is like that in workers paradises such Pyiongyiang and Havanah, but I digress...

If the Proletariat had such racy girls in Revolutionary Posters, most Proles would have risen up in arms demanding that their daily lives ressembled the pretty Comradettes. Nyet!!!!!! The Revolution is too serious for such decadence. Remind me why the Revolution collapsed.

The sad irony is that all that reproductive charm is lost in the West to a Socialist Party which doesn't care about such femenine beauty. Even the Dear Leader Barack shuns such beauty in favor of male athletes... What a shame; the last true man of American Socialism was William Jefferson Clinton, and he carried it to the extreme, when he fell in disgrace for that plump Russian-like babe named Lewinsky. Definitely, American Socialists do not understand the personal restraint and austere persona required for the high office of belonging to the Party Elite. Socialism is only successful when performed with the rigidity and zeal of religious fervor. Anything less carries with it the seeds of its own self destruction.

Yours truly, Unkle Jib.

Ud, tio Jibarito, les una VERGUENZA a la revolución.

¡VIVA EL CHE para siempre!



 
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