Soviet patriotism on posters: visualizing love to motherland in 1930s

The study is focused on the means and forms of visualization of the major rhetorical figures of the Soviet official patriotic discourse in the 1930s. Based on the analysis of 40 posters dedicated to the defense and defensive potential of the USSR, the article explores the means of shaping the spatial images of socialist Motherland, the ways the patriotic ethos and the images of its bearers were gendered and represented, and the various techniques of symbolical demonstration of the socialist regime's might. The author argues that the visual images of the Soviet patriotism in many senses were quotations verbatim from ruling discourse of love to the socialist Motherland. To be understandable, the posters had to speak to the Soviet citizens the language that by the 1930s was appropriated and mastered by many groups of the population in the USSR. The key features of this language were its militancy, mythologizing the power, romantic perception of military and technical achievements and praise to Stalin and his rule. Special attention is paid to the art of photomontage as a new technique of «materializing» the patriotic ethos in the soviet posters. The article emphasizes the constructive and standard-setting character of the visual representations of the soviet patriotism.