“SOS” late Soviet anti-military posters
Poster with text in Belarusian: Спынiць гонку ўзбраенняў! (“Stop the arms race!”).
These two social posters are dedicated to the INF Treaty. The one shown above is in Belarusian: Спынiць гонку ўзбраенняў! translates to “Stop the arms race!”. The second one depicted below delivers the message in Russian: Не дадим взорвать мир! (“We won’t let the world be blown up!”). Wikipedia says:
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty, formally Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles; Russian: Договор о ликвидации ракет средней и меньшей дальности / ДРСМД, Dogovor o likvidatsiy raket sredney i menshey dalnosti / DRSMD) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (and its successor state, the Russian Federation). US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty on 8 December 1987. The US Senate approved the treaty on 27 May 1988, and Reagan and Gorbachev ratified it on 1 June 1988.
The posters were made by the acclaimed Ukrainian-Belarusian artist Yury Dzeeu (Юрый Дзееў, 1948–1995). The Plakat archive by the Belarusian Union of Designers has a biography:
Born in the city of Gorlovka [Horlivka] in the Donetsk regon (Ukraine), he graduated from the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute in 1977. Participated in art exhibitions since 1963. He worked mainly in the field of the poster. […] Rewarded with diplomas of international poster competitions (Warsaw, New York, 1985), the medal of the 4th international exhibition Satire in Fight for Peace 1983.
The fonts in use are Aki Lines and a Cyrillic version of Kabel Black.
Poster with text in Russian: Не дадим взорвать мир! (“We won’t let the world be blown up!”)
The Aki Lines typeface was translated to Cyrillic, too. Page from Декоративные шрифты (“Decorative fonts”), a book edited by G.F. Klikushkin (Г.Ф. Кликушин) and published in 1987, showing a Cyrillic adaptation of Aki Lines called Радужный (“Rainbow”). The posters by Dzeeu don’t use this version, but the Latin original (with S).
2 Comments on ““SOS” late Soviet anti-military posters”
Thank you, Alex!
Labirint has more photos from Klikushin’s Декоративные шрифты для художественно-оформительских работ (“Decorative typefaces for art and design work”). Is this the same book?
Letterform Archives shares some pages from Type for Graphic Designers, another book compiled by Grigory Filippovich Klikushin and published in Minsk, 1979. It includes a Cyrillic adaptation of Cooper Black.
Hi Florian!
I own both of these books, but this Радужный font is taken from the another one which came later. Anyway, G. Klikushkin’s books that I have show a lot of Cyrillic extensions of the popular fonts, e.g. Jackson, Shotgun, Countdown, Neil Bold, Davida, etc. A lot of them, as I understood, were drawn by Klikushkin himself. I have scanned some of these fonts and I can share these files if you’re interested, just hit me up!