To the Glory of October!

СЛАВА ОКТЯБРЮ! - To the Glory of October! by Mikhail Gordon, 1963

The image features Lenin, the battleship Aurora, symbolic of the start of the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew Kerensky's provisional government; celebrating the Soviet Union launching a rocket (Yuri Gagarin was the first person to go into space in 1961 and Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space in 1963) and with St Petersburg (then Leningrad) skyline clearly recognisable.

Mikhail Abramovic Gordon was born in 1918 in St Petersburg. He completed his training at the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1936. He worked in Leningrad preparing the streets for the anniversary of the October Revolution. During the war he published his first posters with political themes.

Created for the 28th anniversary of the October Revolution: "Congratulations on a Victorious October!", 1945

After the war he created posters supporting the five-year plans. From the late 1950s he worked on illustrations for magazines and books and posters for circuses, theatre productions and films. He died in 2003.

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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.