Monday, July 06, 2009

Russian Revolution Zines of 1905

















"On Sunday, January 9th, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II ordered trooops to fire on a peaceful procession of workers demonstrating in St. Petersburg, unleashing a storm of strikes, mutinies, violent uprisings, and brutal reprisals that raged across Russia for well over a year. Known collectively as the Revolution of 1905, these upheavals transformed the political landscape and set the stage for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed. Bloody Sunday also marked an important watershed for Russian graphic artists. With the momentary collapse of censorship, over 300 different satirical magazines were published during the Revolution of 1905, more than had seen the light of day in Russia during the entire nineteenth century. Most of them survived for only a few numbers before the censors caught up. Yet the ouput was impressive all the same. Rushing to fill the expressive void, artists and writers captured the events and personalities of the revolution with biting satire and aesthetic sophistication. While styles and subject matter varied, artists often chose to depict nightmarish scenes of bloodshed and repression, drawing on images of the macabre and the mystical that had already been in vogue in Symbolist circles across Europe at the turn of the century."

See more at the collection on display in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Found at Trixie's Treats

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff Aeron, I have some of these in the book "Blood and Laughter" by King and Porter.
They remind me of those early works by Alfred Kubin which were done about the same time,
- Is this the start of a whole week of political cartoons? -I hope so.
Paul Rumsey

Andrew Culture said...

These really wonderful, subtle gore!

Andrew Culture
My Zine Distro (CornDog Publishing)
My button badge/ custom band merch thing

Ryan S said...

holy hamburgers.
what an amazing, incredible find!

Aeron said...

Thanks, and Paul I might be able to pull off a full week of these. I don't have it planned as I have around 20 sites that I still need to fully dig through for the sort of Political cartoons I like to post here. If I do, there will be a truly epic collection of political cartoons posted at a later date still.

And yes, I was reminded of Alfred Kubin upon seeing these.