Defend Petrograd with Might!

ГРУДЬЮ НА ЗАЩИТУ ПЕТРОГРАДА! - Defend Petrograd with Might! (literally "defend Petrograd with your chest!) by Alexandr Apsit, 1919

Alexandr Petrovich Apsit was born in 1880 in a poor family in Riga, Latvia, but was given free painting tuition. He produced sketches and illustrations for journals and novels. During the First World War he worked for the Government desiging war posters. He was, however fully committed to the revolution and from 1918 onwards worked on posters supporting the revolutionaries in the civil war.  In 1921 he returned to Riga, where he worked as a book illustrator and designed advertising posters and greetings cards. In 1939 he moved to Nazi Germany where he died around 1943.

During the Civil War following the October Revolution. Petrograd was successfully defended by the revolutionaries, halting the White's advance. The poster was conceived, drawn and printed within a single day while the White Army under General Yudenich was preparing to attack the city.

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In 1917, after three years of devastating war, food shortages and government corruption, the workers and peasants of Russia rose up to overthrow the ruling elite and attempted to create the world’s first communist society under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets”.

Throughout the year there were riots, mutinies and strikes, influenced by and involving Mensheviks, Anarchists, Social Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks.

By October, the Bolsheviks, who promised to end Russia’s involvement in the war, were able to overthrow the provisional government, which had been established after the abdication of the Tsar in February.

As the Bolsheviks centralised power and tightened their control over the new state, civil war broke out across Russia as monarchists and liberals (known as the Whites), supported by Western capitalist democracies, fought back against the Bolsheviks.

At the same time, various non-Russian independence movements, anarchists and anti-Bolshevik socialist parties rebelled against Bolshevik imposed terror.

By 1923 the Bolsheviks had defeated the White Army and suppressed internal dissent. The Civil War concluded with a Bolshevik victory.

Before the Revolution and throughout the period of the existence of the Soviet Union, visual propaganda was considered a significant means to inform, educate and motivate people.