Mortal competition

“Eat delicious chicken”, advertises the poster of the Beyza – “The taste you trust” – meat company in Urfa. I can’t help but agree with them, especially around lunch time like now. But why do the poultry, destined for the kebab skewers and the saç tava pan, do the cheerful Kurdish dance, happily waving the scarf, and why do the beef and sheep, presumably the former favorites of the audience, note with dismay that now they have less chance to end up in kuşbaşı and saç kavurma?

If I were a horse – to quote Evans-Pritchard’s famous fallacy –, I would not want to be eaten. I’d rather have someone else get eaten instead of me, if anyone at all. Evolutionary competition and natural selection are based on this consideration.

But I am human, just like the creator of the poster and its target audience. Therefore, I can at least grasp the anthropocentic view that the primary mission of certain animals is to serve us as food. That is why we removed them from the evolutionary competition and subjected them to artificial selection. The tastier it is, the more perfectly it has fulfilled its earthly mission. And it is clear that just as humans become frustrated and depressed when they fail to fulfill what they consider to be their earthly mission, so do animals collapse when a fellow from the farm outranks them in it.

And if I were a cow or a sheep, thinks the designer of the poster, this is probably how I would immortalize myself in this shamefully failed situation.

This line of thought is not entirely absurd. After all, we also know careers among people whose goal is senseless death, and their practicioners are at least as proud of this mission as the imagined cattle, sheep and chickens. For example, the gladiators, or the soldiers sent by dictators to be slaughtered at the front.

However, this line of thought and this poster are not new. Their original is Hungarian: the poster attributed to Frigyes Karinthy, the legendary gagman of the 1930s, on which the cow and the pig tearfully look at the success of the carp with consumers. Although Karinthy himself distanced himself from the authorship of the slogan, some other Hungarian may also have gone to Urfa to sell the punchline.

“Tell me, cattle, why this grief?” / “Cheaper the fish than the beef!”

Referendum

When I first glimpsed them, peering out through the dirty window glass of the no. 5 tram as it scraped its way along the embankment of the Vltava, I had trouble making sense of them. Were they really a series of propaganda posters agitating for the Czech annexation of Subcarpathia? Were they really prominently displayed in the stone frames that, before 1989, displayed Communist propaganda to the travelers along one of Prague’s busiest thoroughfares?

I blinked, twice. Yes, it seemed to be true.

Is this evidence of some latent thread of Czech hope, a nostalgic longing for a mythic Slavic past, a yearning for reunification with Československo’s lost little brother, Podkarpatská Rus? Emboldened, perhaps, by Putin’s recent swallowing in a single bite the whole of Crimea, were there Czech irredentists on the march?

The whole thing struck me as maybe satirical, so I went to the internet to find out more. It is true that, prior to 1989, the six stone frames built into the wall that separates Letná hill from the embankments named after Edvard Beneš and Kapitán Otakar Jaroš, were used for socialist propaganda. After the change of regime, they fell into disuse. In 2005, they were again put to use as an outdoor public art gallery named Artwall.

The current exhibition, Verchovina, is by a group of Slovak artists, known as Kassaboys, who hail from Košice (Kassa in Hungarian). The posters act as the ephemera from a fictitious referendum to reunite Czechoslovakia, including Subcarpathia, which was an integral part of the republic in the interwar period 1918-1938. The artists themselves state that the work is a reaction to current events in Ukraine, where an implicitly fictitious referendum in real life has brought Crimea back under Russian rule. And their choice of the series of words: integration, connection, affiliation, annexation serves as a commentary on a possible future for Podkarpatská Rus (and, pars pro toto, of the whole of Ukraine) with regard to the EU.

The original posters show that they were composed by adding the red slogans on the illustrations of a German-language travel brochure of Subcarpathia from the 1930s

You can find out more at the Artwall web site (in Slovak) and in this article of the Aktualně.cz site (in Czech).

Otta Soap

Koží, that is, Goat Street, the former Ziegengasse in the old town of Prague preserves, like a geologic fossil, the traces of where the asanace – the rehabilitation, that is, the complete elimination of the crowded poor district, especially the Jewish quarter, which began with seismic force in 1893 – ended in the 1920s. The left side of the street was raised to the level of the newly erected Neo-Renaissance and Art Nouveau palaces, which lies, like a smooth-surfaced lake, above the vanished crooked streets of the former Josefov, enclosing the negative island of the lower-lying Jewish cemetery and the two surviving synagogues. The right side of the street, however, remained at the pre-rehabilitation level, and its winding streets also continue the missing tissue of Josefov.


I am rambling in the quarter of Saint Castalius, which goes for only a hundred meters, but at least a hundred years away from the palaces of the Art Nouveau Prague, when in the Street of the Sisters of Mercy, on the back wall of the deserted and decaying medieval Gemeindehaus, I catch sight of a curious plaster ad.


The ghost ad promotes Otta Soap. Its logo, the crayfish (in Czech, rak) suggests that the company was founded in Rakovník, that is, Rakonitz, by Joseph Otta in 1869. But when did they paint it here? The time delimiters are sufficient, as the Otta company, albeit nationalized, was still a going concern after the war, up until the 1990s, when it was acquired by Procter & Gamble.

I am researching in the library the traces of a disappeared inn of Prague, the Golden Angel in Smíchov, on the other bank of the Vltava, when among the old photographs of Smíchov I suddenly stumble upon this one, which depicts the building amely a Štefánikova 9/55:


The adjacent number 10/53 was built in the 1920s, leaving the firewall of number 55 free and suitable for advertisements. This photo was made in 1935. The ads change rapidly, for their effectiveness is contingent on novelty. Therefore the plaster ad in the Street of the Sisters of Mercy probably also comes from that period. In this way, it has advocated for Otta Soap for at least eighty or ninety years, since the end of the rehabilitation of the Old Town, already in its fifth generation. Time has really stopped on Koží Street.

Tábor, the tower of the South Bohemian Industrial and Military Exposition of 1929, from where the President of the Republic was greeted with trumpets, from here

“A riddle. Children, what is this? A figure? No! It is the name «Otta», the soap with the crayfish logo! Excellent and good for everything.”

“Soars the world over without wings / the excellent reputation of Otta Soap.”

Dissolving: The snake

Luciano Ramo: Attention, the German snake is taken! We must now tear his fangs, Brescia, F.lli Geroldi 1916

Otto von Kursell: Down with Bolshevism! Bolshevism brings war and destruction, famine and death, 1919

The death of the lie, ca. 1932-1933. Labels: Marxism, Plutocracy

Sergei Igumnov: Let us destroy the spies and diversants, the Trockist-Bukharinist agents of Fascism, 1937.
(The confusing caption reflects the confusion of the official ideology. Although the serpent
bears a Nazi monocle, but the Germans are at this time potential, and then actual Soviet
allies. This is why they have to talk about other enemies in the caption: Trockists,
Bukharinists, or even Fascists, as Nazis are still referred to
in the post-Soviet world.)

Jean Carlu (1900-1997): World Day of Peace, 2 August 1936

John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld, Bertold Brecht’s stage designer): We request the ban on nuclear weapons, 1955

We will overcome drunkenness! Soviet temperance poster, 1960s

Disolución: la serpiente

Luciano Ramo: ¡Atención, la serpiente alemana está atrapada!
Ahora debemos arrancarle los colmillos venenosos!
Brescia, F.lli Geroldi 1916

Otto von Kursell: ¡Abajo el bolchevismo! El bolchevismo trae guerra y destrucción, hambre y muerte. 1919

La muerte de la mentira, ca. 1932-1933. Inscripciones: Marxismo, Plutocracia

Sergei Igumnov: Destruyamos a los espías y a los divergentes,
agentes Trotskistas-Bujarinistas del Fascismo 1937.
(El confuso título refleja la propia confusión de la ideología oficial. A pesar de que la serpiente
lleve un monóculo nazi, los alemanes son en este momento aliados potenciales, y muy pronto
efectivos, de los soviéticos. Por eso hay que hablar de otros enemigos en el cartel: trotskistas,
bujarinistas, o incluso fascistas, tal como se llamará todavía a los nazis
en el mundo post-soviético.)

John Heartfield (nacido Helmut Herzfeld, escenógrafo de Bertold Brecht):
Exigimos la prohibición de las armas nucleares, 1955

¡Derrotaremos al alcoholismo! Póster soviético de la campaña por la sobriedad de los años 60.

Long live the Republic!

Among the photos of the Dicescu collection, presented yesterday, there is one – picture 13 in the first mosaic –, in which, it seems, we can discover the earliest example of the well-known Stalinist photoshop procedure.


In the photo, taken in the first days of the February Revolution, the soldiers posing for a group picture on St. Petersburg’s Liteyny Prospect with drawn swords, cheer the revolution. This is also emphasized by the inscriptions of the banner and flag in the background: В борьбе обретешь ты право свое – “In struggle you find your rights,” and Долой монархию! Да здравствует республика! – “Down with the monarchy! Long live the Republic!”

However, David King’s great overview, The Commissar vanishes: The falsification of photographs and art in Stalin’s Russia (1997) also publishes a previous version of this image.


The waving of the flag is much more natural here than in the previous photo, but we do not know what is written on it, if anything at all. And about the banner, it turns out that it was retouched onto the place of a shop sign in the background, whose original inscription was: Часы, золото и серебро – “Clocks, gold and silver”.

In David King, this beautiful circular story, as the earliest example of Communist photo retouching, ends here. However, there are some additional details that deserve attention.


On the Russian internet you can already find the heretofore unpublished archival original of this picture. The original photo clearly shows that the flag actually had an inscription, and it really began with Долой мо…


And in another photo, which displays the same soldiers in another pose, you can see not only the entire shop sign in the background, but also the inscription of the flag. And it reads the same as in the retouched picture, though somewhat erroneously: Долой монорхію. Да Здравствует Демократическая Республика – “Down with the monorchy. Long live the Democratic Republic!”

That even the previous image is still not completely retouch-free, is proven by this “more original” version, with a larger cut-out and handwritten caption, which suggests that it was also part of the Ion Dicescu collection.

But what is the other inscription retouched on the photo: In struggle you find your rights? For assistance, let us contact the classic:

“Koreyko was attentively watching Sinitsky’s new riddle. On the beautiful image of the goose there was also a sack, from which the following things were peeking out: a letter T, a pine tree, behind which the sun was rising, and a sparrow sitting on musical staves. The riddle ended with a comma upside down.
– This is certainly no child’s play to decipher – Sinitsky said. – You will have to rack your brains for a while!
– Come on, come on – Koreyko replied with a smile. – Only this goose disturbs me. What on earth does this goose do here? Aha! Got it! Done! In struggle you find your rights!
– Yes – said the old man, frustrated, in a drawled tone. – How did you get it so fast? You’re an incredibly talented person. One can immediately see that you’re a first-class bookkeeper.
– Second-class – corrected Koreyko. – But for whom did you make this riddle? For the press?
– For the press.
– Then it was a totally pointless work – Koreyko said. – In struggle you find your rights: this is the slogan of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Not suitable for print.”

Ilf-Petrov, The Little Golden Calf

The Socialist Revolutionaries – the esers (эсеры or “S.R.s”) – who, until the armed Bolshevik putsch in October, were the leading party of the revolution and the organizers of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, drew the slogan of their movement from the German jurist Rudolf von Jhering.

“In struggle you find your rights!” Socialist Revolutionary posters, 1917

The retouched photo has therefore nothing to do with the Communists; on the contrary, it comes from the party which they considered their most powerful rival, and whose memory after the civil war they condemned to oblivion. And the purpose of the retouching was also not that kind of falsification of history, the Orwellian retrospective change of the past, what we know from the manipulated photos of Stalinism.

Think about it: these photos were distributed right after the well-known events, in the form of postcards. Their purpose was propaganda: to popularize the achievements of the revolution and the party standing behind them. They do not alter the events depicted in them, but, in the manner of folk luboks, they make their message unambiguous for recipients who are familiar with this visual formula. One of the two retouched inscriptions makes clearly visible the slogan which was really carried by the soldiers, and the other represents the one which must be somewhere in the picture in order to make it clear, to whom the republic is due. It could also be placed in a caption, but when there is space for it in the place of the absolutely irrelevant shop sign, let it be there, as in the luboks. Just as in that other picture from the Dicescu collection, of which the postcard version was also complemented with a flag labeled Long live the Republic! with the purpose of disambiguation.



“Absolutely irrelevant shop sign”, I say,  in full awareness that, in the later decades of the Russian revolution it is prophetically relevant that you read “Clocks, gold and silver!” in the place of the slogan of the Red Army. Just like the fact that the signs betraying this pursuit are carefully retouched from the picture, which we have already written about in connection with Yevgeny Khaldei’s 1945 Reichstag photo.