Posters collection of agricultural production from fonds of Fine Arts Department of Institute of Book Studies of V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine

Abstract

The aim of the research. The article displays the processes of agricultural production in Ukraine as reflected in visual media, posters in particular. In contrast with the vast majority of researchers who viewed posters as an effective means of indoctrinating the society, the author states that they also played an essential role in the development of country’s productive forces. With certain reservations, these can be considered as poster witnesses providing the visual evidence of the Ukrainian history of the 1920-ies. The research methodology is based on the method of comparative analysis in the presentation of socio-political processes in Ukraine in the period mentioned. Scientific novelty of the research consists in re-considering the principal postulates of the Soviet historiography of the 1920-ies with reliance on posters as visual information sources. The viewpoint that under the influence of Bolshevik propaganda the Ukrainian citizens unanimously started building a new society is contrary to actual facts. Without denying the effect of propaganda on social life, the author stresses the necessity of a more balanced approach to the processes that took place in the critical periods of Ukrainian history. In particular, attention should be drawn to the repressive measures of Soviet authorities against the prevailing majority of Ukraine’s population. This research is carried out in an alternative direction of studying the socio-political history of Ukraine in the 1920-ies. Conclusions. The analysis of the posters examined has shown that those concerned with agricultural production played not a marginal, but, probably, even a major part in the growth of Ukrainian peasants’ selfconsciousness as compared with political posters. New technological ideas and the methods of their implementation, which posters presented, rather than a stock of stereotype communist slogans, played the decisive role in the rise of agricultural production in Ukraine. Skillfully composed and masterfully made, they, on the one hand, became the pieces of figurative art and, on the other, – an ideal means of communication in the milieu of semi-literate rural citizens. They also are an essential supplement to the textual history of the Ukrainian agriculture of the 1920-ies.