In 1932, Stalin was obsessed with getting money to fund the big war he was planning. As part of his money-making activities that year, he was not only starving 8,000,000 Ukrainians to death but also trying to attract Western tourists with posters like this one:
It looks like cars were allowed onto the Red Square back then but I don’t know if it’s true or part of poetic licence. Today they aren’t, of course. Neither are pedestrians unless there is a special dispensation.
The poster’s a bit cutsey, almost Disney-ish. It’s remarkable how at the time of the revolution Russian art was very modernist and into abstraction and stylish, jagged calligraphy, yet 15 years later this tame parody of US cartoon styles was the best they could produce. Still I suppose it may have attracted the sort of Western tourists who would just go ‘Ooh,’ and ‘Gee wiz!’ at what they were shown. Were those the ones Stalin wanted?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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