Following the opening of the TASS exhibition “Their Feat Is Immortal”, where “TASS Windows” were mentioned in Lavrov’s opening speech, we present an extended translation of a publication by TASS made in 2021, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the creation of “TASS Windows”.
The article below is extended with insets, where we add our translation of each of the presented Window. After the article, we will show several other Windows from the posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.
80 years of “Windows of TASS”
Who and how created the posters that even Goebbels was afraid of
About one and a half thousand posters with a total circulation of more than 2 million copies. With printing for the army and partisans, filmstrips and exhibitions during the War being done in the USSR, Great Britain, Sweden and China. All these are “Windows of TASS”, which were produced during the Great Patriotic War to raise the morale of the Soviet soldiers.
Poster No. 13 “Chatterbox is a godsend for a spy”, 1941. Artist A. Radakov
Poster No. 13 “Chatterbox is a godsend for a spy”
Here you see their different shapes:
– A tongue so long it can let slip a military secret.
– Two ears from each side: a fly flies into one, an elephant emerges from the other (a play on the saying “to make an elephant out of a fly”, that is, to magnify rumours).
– Glasses that are rosier than roses: he sees wolves-spies as innocent kids.
– Catch these helpers of the enemy, BE ON GUARD!
On June 22, three hours after the radio announcement of the outbreak of war, members of the Moscow Organisation of the Union of Artists: Mihail Cheremnyh, Nikolai Denisovsky and Pavel Sokolov-Skala met at the art salon at 11 Kuznetsky Bridge. They discussed the creation of an editorial office for the production of propaganda posters to help the front.
And already on June 24, the “Windows of TASS” appeared. From that moment on, TASS was responsible for their content and efficiency.
For the first time, the posters of the “Windows” were printed on June 27, the fifth day after the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. They were exhibited in Moscow in the building on the Kuznetsky Bridge, where a workshop for their manufacture was located.
During the first month of the war, 119 posters were released, with a circulation of 7,200 copies. The team worked seven days a week, and work in the editorial office did not stop even for an hour.
Poster No. 63, “The Feat of Captain Gastello”, 1943. Artist P. Sokolov-Skalya
A poster dedicated to the feat of pilot, captain and posthumously Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Gastello. On June 26, 1941, he died during a combat mission with his crew, ramming an enemy convoy of fuel tankers and tanks on a damaged and burning bomber.
The Feat of Captain Gastello
– from Beorn And The Shieldmaiden
The poster vividly illustrates the feat of Captain Gastello and his crew, and the poem by Demyan Bedny under the picture speaks of those last seconds.
When the fuel tank’s aflame, and there is no salvation
When life’s final seconds on the wane,
The final second is for the Victory,
The final breath if for the LandWithout fail obedient machine is flying,
As if a bomb, a flaming torch, on target it will fall.
And right into the midst of tanks, gunpowder and fuel
He throws himself and his bird.The hit and the explosion! The fascists run with howls,
And flame is catching up to them mid-run.
Thus dies the citizen and soldier,
By his very death, bringing death to foe.
Poster No. 590, 1942. Artist P. Sokolov-Skalya
The sons of all nations go into battle for the Soviet fatherland of the Soviet Union. Long live the Red Army, the army of brotherhood and friendship of the peoples of the USSR!
The “Windows” were printed in several colours using stencils. This allowed them to be more colourful, than typographic posters. Thanks to the use of stencils, the daily printing grew from 100 to 1,200 copies over the years of poster production.
Poster No. 635, “It shall be so”, 1943. Artist P. Sokolov-Skalya
During the siege of Moscow in 1941-1942, in order to tell all Muscovites and soldiers at the front that the work in the capital if continuing even in the current situation, they began to write the date and the word “Moscow” on the TASS Windows stamp.
TASS Window – Moscow 29.11.1941
TASS Window – Moscow 29.11.1941
The fearless pilot
The lord of the heights,
Tank driver so young,
Rushing fiercely into fight,
The infantry soldier,
Who will finally beat,
The two-legged, bloody
Fascist beasts.
Long live the friendship
Of all kinds of arms,
The defenders of freedom-loving
My Fatherland.
Poster No. 645, 1942. Artist V. Lebedev, text by S. Marshak
Donkeys and Goebbels resemble each other,
They scream the same thing over and over
Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany, sentenced to death in advance all those who worked at the “TASS Windows”. Soldiers who came from the frontlines for more posters, quoted the words of captured Germans who declared: “As soon as Moscow is taken, everyone who worked at the “TASS Windows” will hang from lampposts.”
Poster No. 574 “Not a step back!”, 1942. Artist P. Shuhmin
Not a Step Back!
Warriors of the Red Army!
Strike without mercy the Fascist beasts!
Steadfastly defend your native land!
In addition to Moscow, “TASS Windows” were also produced in Leningrad, Ashgabat, Baku, Tashkent, Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and other cities. Posters were sent to active armies, while in cities, as a rule, they were placed on bulletin boards, in shop windows, on fences and poles.
Poster No. 584, 1942. Artist P. Sargsyan, text Demyan Bedny
The Germans are sad:
– Russians fight not according to the rules!The sign from a German reads in broken Russian: “Rus!! We is many! You must zurrender!”
Goebbels wants to hide his worry:
He is blaming Russian that,
They are fighting, as all see,
In this war not by the rules!What can Soviet fighters say?
– We’re not hiding, we’re beating
Vipers not by any German rules,
But according to our own!This complaining from the German side about “not fighting by the rules” found a reflection in the Danish underground publication “2 Years”, where on page 64 we can read that “Bolshevik military leaders are capable of constantly introducing new tactical methods, of instinctively adapting to new situations, of course without rules, but very effectively, to take advantage of significant happenstances.”
While on page 11 Germans complain about the Russian pilots’ misconduct: “On other air battle fronts, it is further stated, the spirit of honest single combat between the aviators is generally retained, but in this regard, the Russian pilots resemble the infantrymen. The downed Russian aviators hang in the parachutes and with automatic pistols they shoot at the German fighter-planes that circle around them to determine where they land. German aviators, on the other hand, do not respond to fire in such cases, since an enemy descending by parachute is considered a defeated enemy by the German Air Force.”
The Moscow editorial office of “TASS Windows” consisted of 125 artists, 83 writers and several hundred printers.
In particular, the posters were created by artists Mikhail Cheremnyh, Nikolai Denisovsky, Peter Shukhmin, Nikolai Radlov, Boris Efimov, Vladimir Lebedev and Vladimir Kozlinsky.
Poems and slogans for the posters were invented by poets Demyan Bedny, Samuel Marshak, Pavel Antokolsky and many others. Texts by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Mayakovsky were also used.
Poster No. 534, 1942. Artists of Kukryniksy, text by A. Prokofiev
For the Soviet land,
Beat the German beasts,
Beat with bayonet, and with grenade,
Beat with what you have at hand, but kill!
Whole families worked in the editorial workshop. So, the famous painter Georgy Savitsky designed author’s posters, and his wife worked as a stencil printer; artist Mikhail Cheremnyh created author’s posters, and his wife Nina Cheremnyh wrote texts under the drawings.
The record holders were the Tymoshenko spouses, who printed 821,280 text sheets for posters during 1,418 war days. A total of 3,320,000 copies of the text were printed.
Poster No. 899 “At the reception of the possessed commander-in-chief”, 1944. Artists of Kukryniksy, text by O. Brik
At the reception of the possessed commander-in-chief
A General from the Eastern Front:
– What shall we do now Führer?
Hitler:
– Wait! Let me gather my thought.The poster is a play on the expression “to think with one’s arse”, that is to take ill-advices decisions.
The star of the Kukryniksy, a collective of artists that consisted of Mihail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov (BATS note: see our article 100 Year Anniversary of the Soviet Art Collective “Kukryniksy”), was rising in the “TASS Windows. Their contribution to the posters is witty caricatures.
The poster “Let’s finish off the fascist beast in his own den!”, Leningrad #23, November 1944. Artist S. Pankratov
In Leningrad, during the first winter of the siege, posters were painted by artists Viktor Slyshchenko and Moisey Vaxer, who were dying of hunger and dystrophy. Then the baton was taken over by the artist Vasily Selivanov, who from the spring of 1942 to the spring of 1943 single-handedly made posters in the besieged, starving city.
At that time, he was the only full-time employee, he worked as an editor, artist, technical editor, producer and poster of the Windows on Nevsky Prospekt. Selivanov created 108 posters, each with a circulation of up to 3 thousand copies.
Poster No. 511 “The People’s Avengers”, 1942. Artist P. Shuhmin
In the winter of 1942, the editorial staff began publishing the “partisan” “TASS Windows. Posters in a special format, measuring 20×30 cm, were made for the partisans. They had to be understandable even to the illiterate. They were distributed in villages where there was no telegraph, telephone, or radio.
Also, the “TASS Windows” were transferred to film, filmstrips were made from them, and they were shown to soldiers in the rear and at the front.
The editorial workshop ceased to exist on December 29, 1946. During the 1,418 days of War, 1,289 posters with a circulation of 842,550 copies were printed there. The carvers cut out 246,375 stencils of drawings and 669,500 for texts. 1,500,100 copies of lithographic posters, 1,363,174 copies of postcards, filmstrips and light shutters were produced. 30,000 copies of the posters were made for distribution abroad.
The material uses information from the book by Maslennikov V. A. “TASS Windows. 1941-1945”, as well as the materials of the TASS dossier. All images are from the TASS archive.
This concludes the translation, but not our publication. Below we wish to present several more “TASS Windows”, which we have translated earlier at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, as well as some posters that we came across now, while working on the article.
The first “TASS Window”, drawn by M. Cheremnyh. Both verses double and triple layer puns, and are therefore untranslatable without an explanation.
“The Fascist took the course on Prut, but the Fascist gets driven out from Prut”.
The word “Prut” is here both the name of the river, and the verb, meaning in Russian “he is being chased/driven away”. Sadly, it will take 3 long years of war, before the Germans will be driven back across Prut river.
“The tried to break through in the area of Sculeni, we hit them on the cheekbones, so the whining became heard.”
Sculeni is a town in Moldavia on the river Prut. Now, “skuly” in Russian means “cheekbones”, while “skulenie” is a noun meaning “whining”.
TASS Window No. 12, another early poster, and yet another one where we notice how Germans are complaining that Russians are fighting “not according to the rules”.
The drawing is done by V.Titkov, and the verses written by I.Muhachev.
Partisans are hitting their mugs.
You can’t escape from that,
Whatever they do, they’ll get captured.
Bolshevik, why are you
conducting the war not according to the rules?
Transformation of the «Fritzes»
Artists: «Kukryniksy»
Text: Demyan Bedny
Poster: «TASS Window №640» 1942.
The three verses of the poem by Demyan Bedny illustrate the three stages of what the «Fritzes» – the Germans – faced in their lust for «lebensraum».
In the first verse, Hitler’s voice from his public speeches is likened to that of a howl of a wild animal. The second verse gives a selection of «presents» the occupiers can expect – including «battle bushes» – and the final verse is the logical conclusion of the march to the East
Below are two versions of the poem, where in the first we preserve as much of the poetic fines as possible, while the second version is a verbatim translation.
Not the animals, with howls,
Plunging into freezing mist –
That is Hitler, driving rows
Of the «Fritzes» to the East.Where each window bullets spits,
Where bushes kill‘em dead,
Having foreign earth partaken,
Foolish «Fritzes»
Turn cross-shaped.German filth’s demise
Is not some act occult –
The result of Soviet Army’s
Military might!
♦️♦️♦️
Those are not animals, with a wild howl
Rushing into a stormy stream.
That is Hitler, rank by rank,
Driving «Fritzes» to the East.Here, where each window is an embrasure,
Here, where bushes hide death,
Here, having swallowed foreign earth,
The fooled «Fritzes»
Are turning into crosses.The death of the German scum
Is not someone’s sourcery,
It’s the military triumph
Of the Soviet Army!
Our Azbuka: Letter ‘U’
TASS Window №694 from 1942, depicts Goebbels standing over the famous lier, Baron Munchausen, pinning him to the ground with his pen, thus proclaiming own superiority.
A sub-series of “TASS Windows” went under the heading of “Our Azbuka” (Our Alphabet), where verses played on each of the letters of the alphabet. This one was a variation on letter “U”.
Here is our poetic rearrangement of the verse, preserving the first letter:
Ugly is Goebebels, but he can
Use lies better than Munchausen
Verbatim, the verse reads:
Hideous is Goebbels, but
He can lie as no one else.
Artist: V.Ayvazan
Poet: S.Marshak
The Fourth Reich is proudly treading in the footsteps of the Third one, so we feel obliged to give a continuity to this poster:
Ursula
It’s not for nothing Von der Leyen
Has got a by-name Von der Lying —
Both Goebbels and Munchausen
Are envious of her bad-mouthing.
And so as to back our words, here are Exhibit A (https://t.me/BeornAndTheShieldmaiden/3) and Exhibit B (https://t.me/BeornAndTheShieldmaiden/12603) of Ursula’s mastery.
Crimea is Ours!
Under the image there is a quote from newspaper «Pravda»:
The mighty Soviet warrior walks with huge strides across the blessed Soviet Crimea, swiping into the sea the remnants of the despicable German-Romanian bandit gangs.
Poster: TASS Window №969, May 1944
Artist: Pavel Sokolov-Skalja
Crimea – The All-Union Health Resort
Text at bottom reads:
«What is healthy for a Russian, is deadly for a German!»
From under the waters of the Black Sea, the bloodied hand of Romanian fascist dictator Antonescu reaches out for Hitler.
Poster: TASS Window №971, May 1944
Artist: M. Cheremnyh
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