The People's Cube - Political Satire

Today: No Supremacist Kubism, no Hyperventilation, no Climatism.
Just a lightweight iconographic overfly of the glorious celebration of May 1st, along the timeline.

Dawn.

1889 (iconic; by Walter Crane; original English; variants in many other languages).
Designed for the very first celebration of the (international) Worker's Day, on May 1st, 1890.

Pic: One leg in French Revolution, one leg in Marx & Engels. Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité as leitmotif.
The reality of 20th century Collectivisms not even on the horizon yet.


Optimistical, encompassing all continents. No indication of "struggle" & "smash" & "revolution".
Stylistically a piece of early Art Nouveau, rising by then from Britain's Arts and Crafts movement.
~

1901. German Maifeier. No exuberant pathos. Radiant Future in sky. A verse reminding "servants of mammon" not to take bread away from "the people" and not to play "like Huns".


No "smashing", "slashing", "squashing". No "burning". Style? Solid late 19th century illustration.


Early spring.

1917. (and Art Nouveau - after blooming and maturing in West Europe - goes Russia!)


The menacing mob, it's not "capitalists, bourgeois and other vermin" on their way to squash the ephemera. It's the "masses". By then, it's not yet СССР - it's РСФСР (1917-1922), the proto-СССР.
Their signs say: PROLETARIANS, UNITE and LONG LIVE COMMUNISM and LONG LIVE РСФСР.



1920. Woman! and ethnicities! and oozing (imaginatively) all over the World!


(embracing ethnic groups - will become a constant visual meme, as РСФСР, later CCCP, expands)


Spring.

1920. Former "menacing mob" (= "masses") now taking standard (& heroic) shape.


Worker. Peasant. Woman!
Scythe. Hammer! Sickle!
Exuberance! Ethnicities! Internationalism! GERMAN PROLETARIAT too! (says a sign).
And under their feet - commented:

THROUGH THE RUBBLE OF CAPITALISM TO BROTHERHOOD OF WORKERS!

and another rising (so to say..) visual meme: breasts swollen with pride!



1920. uh-oh. Meme thickens.


Civil war (1917-1922) figures appear. Konarmyeyets (+budyonovka!) and Matros. In the background: boisterous multiethnic enthusiasm! On the horizon: Radiant Future!

And: Art-Nouveau traces fading. Socrealism knock-knock on the door.


Getting hot.

1920. uh-oh. Revo color palette: red, black, white. Art-Nouveau adieu (except lettering).


And Woman!
Hammering the "Locomotive of Revolution"?
Of which Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili will soon become its "Machinist"?


1921. Not yet socrealism, but grumpy Marx in center. Unfettered internationalism! Multiculti!



1925. Huh! Socrealism advancing! Pioneer! And mighty, weaponized (matros!) proletarian!


Internationalism! English, Deutsch, Français - and all them on the LONG LIVE... tune!
And, heh-heh-heh, see the bourgeois vermin runnig for life? heh-heh-heh.
But what - no pop (orthodox priest)? no rabbi? no imam?


1925. Sickle! Hammer! Proto-form of zheleznaya parochka, the Iron Twosome (1937)?


... and that bucolic "generic Russian" scenery - byeryozki, the birches!


Hardcore.

1926. Here comes a variant of (early) socrealism. Red, black, white. Diagonal lettering (that shtick to this day used for "revolutionary" "effect"). Russian avantgarde, living out dadaism & futurism, and soon to be silenced.



Dread.

1934.



Dead.

1950. Post-WW2. Stalinism ossified, grim (and spread over Eastern Europe).


Full-blown (and wannabe) internationalism.


Lie.

1960. Socrealism looses any glow. Socrealistic kitsch becomes norm.



Era of Lie - Comrade Red Square wrote about that (can't find it ; was a couple of month ago). The ossified Soviet system under Brezhnev's gerontocracy. Rituals (May 1st included) played as usual - congresses of CPSU, parades, media-transmitted mush, glorified sport events, etc. - and barely anybody taking it serious. A puppet performance in a theater with no audience.

Poring through Soviet agitprop, along timeline (that above is just a nano-glimpse), you can verily sense the changes in the underlying system. Changes going from vitality to stasis.



Epilogue.

And what happened to those - once upon a time bombastic - May Day parades?


2007. Paris. MLKP (Homework: ML for ... and KP for ...) is a party of Turks.


2012. Chicago. May Day, interlocked with "Occupy"-iers.


2013. Berlin.



2015. Berlin. Ugh, that red-black-white palette... But it's all Anti.fa! No, really!



2015. Berlin. Sole solution Revolution (+ Turkish, English, Greek) :



P.S. May 1st, wee hours... Antifa & Co soon to start Revolutionary Smashing, business as usual.

Well I know one thing for sure, I'm not leaving the mansion today.

Some recently discovered color footage shot by an American officer stationed in Moscow, including the only "unofficial" footage of Stalin's funeral.

Correction! May Day was celebrated way before that!

Here is newly discovered photographic evidence that even before, during, and shortly after the Ice Age, early humans celebrate May Day by marching for women's rights and against U.S. imperialism.

See more here - May Day 2017 - List of Party-approved catchy slogans

America was discovered by women marching for women's rights across the Bering land bridge.

The men didn't know what it was. But women know.

1st May postcard, signed: zat odzer Kollektivism.


In Germany, May 1st is an official state holiday.
Q: Since when?
A: April 10, 1933 - opening the 11th week of Nationalsozialisten regime.

(Sozi - colloquial for Sozialist (SPD); and so, Nationalsozialist (NSDAP) got shortened to Nazi.) (It should have been, indeed, NatSozi, but Nazi was handier, of course.) (Present-day Sozis extremely frantic in keeping the "Sozi" out of (Marx forbid!) the NatSozi, the Nazi.)

That holiday was named Tag der nationalen Arbeit, Day of National Work.
The Nazi Gov announced that all celebrations were to be organised by the government.
Any separate celebrations by communists, social democrats or labour unions were banned.


1932. Election in November. These were the three main protagonists :


Rotate imaginatively the scene clockwise, and you see what the other two - Red Star first, and Black Swastika next - thought about themselves, and tactics needed respectively the others.

In complex steps, that election lead to Moustachio Man declared Reichskanzler (Jan. 30, 1933), whereas he promptly started Nationale Revolution.



1933.



1933. It's now Tag der deutschen Arbeit.


N.S.B.O. - Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation, Nazi union-cells. WTF?
Simple: There were Sozi-unions. But that wasn't good enough for Kommies. So they started their own "cells". Kommies started their own cells? Ok, so Nazis started their own cells. And N.S.B.O. was their umbrella org.

Yet, as Nationale Revolution was ongoing, just 10 days after May 1st, there was no unions, and cells, and also no N.S.B.O. any more. Zhe Revolution created DAF, AF for Arbeitsfront, as a single, state-controlled, super-trade-union.


1934. uh-oh. Hammer! Sickle! (but - no Woman?) (and New Man not exactly a "worker"?)



1935. Huh! Übermensch, as troika. (and still - no Woman?)


.. no Woman .. : Not "sexist".
For one, Western women were, at that time, already pretty "liberated".
And, however nightmarish the Revolution turned out, women were in high "state esteem". Embodiments of maternity (sincerely). Hailed and rewarded. With a (devilish, and not so hidden) "vision" of them being "Wombs of the Übermensch Nation".


1936. uh-oh. No (explicit) Übermensch. Sickle to plow. And an ominous addition...

Margaret wrote:America was discovered by women marching for women's rights across the Bering land bridge.

The men didn't know what it was. But women know.

No, the men just got lost and refused to stop for directions. "I'm sure it's just a little further..."

- SK

Chief Designer wrote:

Margaret wrote:America was discovered by women marching for women's rights across the Bering land bridge.

The men didn't know what it was. But women know.

No, the men just got lost and refused to stop for directions. "I'm sure it's just a little further..."

- SK

No, we sent the women over and stayed in the Russian regions to drink vodka and finally be able to go 5 minutes without one of them nagging that she needs us to kill another bear so she can make a coat when she already has 5 perfectly good ones for goodness sakes.

Comrade Stierlitz wrote:

Chief Designer wrote:

Margaret wrote:America was discovered by women marching for women's rights across the Bering land bridge.

The men didn't know what it was. But women know.

No, the men just got lost and refused to stop for directions. "I'm sure it's just a little further..."

- SK

No, we sent the women over and stayed in the Russian regions to drink vodka and finally be able to go 5 minutes without one of them nagging that she needs us to kill another bear so she can make a coat when she already has 5 perfectly good ones for goodness sakes.

Oh, fiddle-faddle. It was your fault for always leaving the privy seat up.

RedDiaperette wrote:

Comrade Stierlitz wrote:No, we sent the women over and stayed in the Russian regions to drink vodka and finally be able to go 5 minutes without one of them nagging that she needs us to kill another bear so she can make a coat when she already has 5 perfectly good ones for goodness sakes.

Oh, fiddle-faddle. It was your fault for always leaving the privy seat up.

That says all, Comratroglodytes.

"privy seat up! privy seat up!", but herself "needs" a "litter box", bear fur inlaid.

Comrade Stierlitz wrote:...she needs us to kill another bear so she can make a coat when she already has 5 perfectly good ones for goodness sakes.

Wait. What?