Our Notes & References

Disadvantaged groups, workers, and minorities at the heart of capitalism: a striking Soviet photomontage book by the ‘Tatar Rodchenko’, published in 1933 in Russian and English.

Rare complete: OCLC records just three copies that have both supplements: Harvard, NYPL, and Johns Hopkins University; and a further handful with only the main part.

“The United States of America, its way of life and its technological prowess have long attracted the attention of Soviet readers, but quantitative indicators in no way conceal the price paid by America’s working people” (preface in Russian, our translation). Life in New York and the everyday struggles of the workers—who “through their labour create its visible yet deceptive splendour” (ibid)—are portrayed in this collection of short texts drawn from contemporary American literature and newspaper articles.

Most notably, the book stands out for its avant-garde design and photomontage illustrations and maps by the Tatar-born master of book art Faik Tagirov (1906–78), one of the most innovative graphic designers in the USSR in the 1930s and a leading figure of the Kazan avant-garde. After studying at Vkhutemas, in 1923 Tagirov became a member of the presidium of the Tatar branch of the Left Front of the Arts (TatLEF) and its national wing, ‘Sulf’. In 1930, Tagirov studied art and printing techniques in Germany. On his return, he continued his studies at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, where he also taught his own course, ‘Theory and Practice of Typography’.

For his illustrations, Tagirov used 1929 photographs by Walker Evans, including “42nd Street”, “Workmen Sitting on Sidewalk”, and “City Lunch Counter”, and the caricatures by the cartoonist William Gropper and by Soviet poster artists Dmitrii Moor and Mechislav Dobrokovskii, among others.

The collection opens with a preface in Russian, followed by an excerpt from a speech by Stalin, translated into English and laid out in the style of a Futurist poem. The text is divided into seven thematic sections: “Metropolis”, “Gangway”, “Traffic”, “Melting-pot”, “Prey”, “Metro-police”, and “In the land of the free”, the latter focusing on organisation of workers’ movements and their struggle against the police and various fascist groups. Each section contains works by American authors, such as O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, John Reed, Michael Gold, A. B. Magill, Joseph North, Konrad Bercovici, Allan Johnson, and the radical writer Nathan Ash. Several sections also include articles from The New York Times and the Daily Worker.

The rarer and sought-after supplementary brochures consist of vocabulary and explanatory notes for each section. They were prepared by Mariia Fedorovna Lorie (1904-92), a Russian translator of Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw, O. Henry, and Oscar Wilde.

The book was printed for export purposes in an effort to undermine the dominion of capitalism, in the same year—1933—that full diplomatic relations between the USSR and the United States were finally established, after nearly sixteen years without official ties between the two countries.

The publication was warmly received in Soviet art circles and was honoured with a special discussion and exhibition at the House of the Press, attended by El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Aleksei Gan, Dmitrii Moor, and Solomon Telingater.

Bibliography

Not in MoMA.