Sous le signe de l’étoile rouge, une histoire visuelle de l’Union soviétique de 1917 à la mort de Staline

The famine in Ukraine, the instant photos of the convicted at the Moscow trials, Maïakovski after his suicide with a red stain at the level of the heart, the battle of Minsk – the worst battle of tanks during WW II. These are but a few of the uncountable images that draw forty terrible years of Russian and Soviet history, of which Stalin’s death marks the symbolic end in 1953. This iconography dug out by a well-known British graphic designer over a period as long as the one described (from 1970 to our day) combines photography, movie scenes, a remarkable ensemble of revolutionary posters and typographic manifests. While Stalin, Beria or Joukov obviously appear, the excluded from History are also present – Kolkhozians, workers from the canal of the White Sea or Iagov Djougachvili, Stalin’s oldest son captured by the Germans. The Great Leader refused to exchange him: «There are no Soviet war prisoners, there are only traitors.»

•  Sous le signe de l’étoile rouge, une histoire visuelle de l’Union soviétique de 1917 à la mort de Staline (Red star over Russia, a visual history of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the death of Stalin) by David King, Gallimard, 2009, 352 p., 39 €, ISBN : 978-2-070-124510