Soviet Poster per day with commentary blog

The blog "A Soviet Poster a Day" does just what it says on the tin: posts a new Soviet propaganda poster scan every day, with witty and informative commentary.

Vietnam Lives, Fights and Will Finally Win!
Suryaninov R., 1970

According to Geneva Accords which granted Indochina independence from France in 1954, Vietnam was partitioned into two states - the North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the South Vietnam. The Northern part has got the communists in power, and the Southern, which was to remain under temporary protectorate of France, was governed by political forces supported by the USA. The situation in the split country was far from peace and quiet. Between 1963 and 1967, South Vietnam was extremely unstable as no government could keep power for long. So in 1965, the USA with its president Lyndon Johnson made a fatal mistake of sending troops to South Vietnam to secure the country from the communist influence. The USA generals had very limited experience of guerrilla warfare in the jungle. Also the North Vietnamese partisans were armed with latest arms provided by Soviet Union and China, like loads of sturdy AK's-47 and soviet aces on MIG-21 "Fishbed" jet fighters. In 1975 the South Vietnam regime fell and the country was united under the communist government. Of course in Russia this was considered to be the victory of Soviet arms over the Evil Empire of the USA.

Link (via IZ Reloaded)

[#1 posted by Will , September 13, 2007 8:02 AM]

A similarly fascinating site for Chinese propaganda can be found here, at Stefan Landsberger's site- http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/

He's got the inside scoop on all those struggle posters you've been dying to know about! Now we can all be a revolutionary screw which never rusts.

[#2 posted by kromekoran , September 13, 2007 9:52 AM]

very, very cool. I have a fetish for Soviet propaganda, so this site is perfect and has been bookmarked.

[#3 posted by Anonymous , September 13, 2007 10:18 AM]

Here's a fantastic Cuban poster with a similar theme. Part of a collection of Cuban propaganda art that toured a few years back:

http://www.artworkis.com/FineArtJournal/Cuban%20Poster%20Project/images/c6xx.jpg

Just a bit of a factual note: Johnson's move in 1965 (ostensibly in response to the Tonkin incident of '64) really only formalized the build-up and and active involvement of the US military in Viet Nam that had been occurring since 1961, in contravention of the Geneva Accords. To be fair, the North was also in violation of the accords, but then again there was a little matter of a canceled election. The US also bankrolled the bulk of the French involvement in the conflict which ended in '54.

My point is that the US made several fatal mistakes long before Johnson, and that the tragedy of US involvement in Viet Nam stretches back much further than 1965.