vanize a mass audience toward a communist revo-
lution in the context of a capitalist political econ-
omy. Therefore, the tone of agitprop art was
generally critical of and oppositional toward the
governing regime. In the Soviet Union, by contrast,
a communist revolution had already occurred in
- Therefore, agitprop took on a legitimizing
function, designed to further enable the construc-
tion of an ideologically-strong socialist state. Dur-
ing the immediate post-revolutionary period in
Russia, for instance, agit-trains traversed the coun-
tryside while agit-boats docked in harbors. Plas-
tered with pro-Bolshevik images, these mobile
agitprop vessels spread the new ideology on the
premise that the visual image was the most effective
and legible means by which to persuade an often
illiterate mass audience.
Photography played a vital role in agitprop cul-
ture, not least because it was easily transportable,
endlessly reproducible, and possessed a documen-
tary status. As such, a photograph either provided
testimony to Soviet industrial and social develop-
ment, or it asserted capitalist ‘‘degeneracy’’ in the
West. In Soviet Russia, the most innovative agit-
prop photographer was the avant-garde artist
Aleksandr Rodchenko. Through the use of extreme
camera angles, such as close-up, bird’s eye, and
worm’s eye views, Rodchenko aimed to stimulate
the eye and the mind, seeking to produce a fresh
vision of a revolutionary society. Furthermore,
technological advances in printing methods in the
early 1920s, most notably the rotogravure process,
allowed for the mass reproduction of both text and
photograph on the same page. Thus, the journal
USSR in Construction, which was published in four
languages and distributed to an international read-
ership, photographically documented the major
construction projects in the Soviet Union during
Joseph Stalin’s first and second Five-Year Plans.
During this time of accelerated industrialization,
the use of dramatic formal elements such as com-
positionally-assertive diagonals, close-up, and wide-
angle views projected the image of dynamism,
energy, and industrial prowess that the Soviet State
desired to promote abroad. Rodschenko was only
one of many contributors to this journal.
In Germany, the mass media empire of Willi
Mu ̈nzenberg, which was loosely affiliated with
the Communist International (Comintern), used
the photographs as the centerpiece of its agitation
and propaganda efforts. Such was the impetus
behind the Mu ̈nzenberg-sponsoredDer Arbeiter-
Fotograf (The Worker-Photographer), a journal
founded in 1926 and designed to educate a cadre
of amateur proletarian photographers who would
generate class-conscious photographs for the revo-
lutionary cause. Similarly, Mu ̈nzenberg’sArbeiter
Illustrierte Zeitung(Worker’s Illustrated Journal)
provided imaginative and socially critical photore-
portage on a weekly basis for a broad leftist read-
ership. In this journal, visually and politically
compelling photographs were provocatively juxta-
posed with incisive text or other photographs in
order to activate communist political conscious-
ness. Until the advent of National Socialism in
early 1933, theArbeiter Illustrierte Zeitungreached
a peak circulation of 500,000, making it the sec-
ond-most popular illustrated journal in Germany.
Exiled to Prague, the journal continued to circulate
its revolutionary message until 1938, albeit to a
reduced readership of around 12,000.
Photomontage, or the juxtaposition of photo-
graphs with text or other photographs, was equally
if not more significant as an agitprop device as
pure photography. With the cut-and-paste techni-
que of photomontage, it was possible to disassem-
ble and then reassemble the familiarly represented
world. The procedure emphasized the artifice of
pictorial construction, which, depending on its
context, either functioned as a metaphor for the
deconstruction of the status quo, or signaled a new
society still in the making. Typically, photomon-
tage upset conventional representations of space,
accentuating incongruity and spatial instability in
order to convey social dynamism and change.
Early Soviet photomontage, such as Gustav Klu-
cis’ poster designElectrification of the Entire Coun-
tryof 1920, juxtaposed abstract forms drawn from
Constructivist aesthetics with photography, thus
combining symbols of avant-garde art with tech-
nological modernization. Photomontages gener-
ated during Stalin’s Five-Year Plans featured a
more immediately legible pictorial composition, in
keeping with intensified propaganda efforts, but
still foregrounded emphatic diagonals and a dis-
junctive syntax. This shift in representation is
readily evident in Klucis’ 1930Male and Female
Workers (Let Us Fulfill the Plan of the Great
Projects), which unifies multiple hands, palm up,
into a symbol of the Five-Year plan while it slices
across the pictorial surface in a gesture of reso-
lute solidarity.
At the same historical moment, the provocative
photomontages of the German artist John Heartfield
(pseudonym of Helmut Herzfelde) were featured
within the pages and on the front covers of the
Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung. The goal of these photo-
montages was to seize and politically stimulate the
passing gaze in a public sphere saturated by the
photographic image. They aimed to reveal the reali-AGITPROP