National categories in the Soviet agitational posters during the Great Patriotic war

The propagandists practice of any state inevitably faces with the necessity to form the identity of their citizens, to definite the role of the country in the outer world and to evaluate the relations between nations. Created images are often included in three conditional imagological categories: "native", "alien" and "other". Existing constantly, as a rule, in ethnic context, during open conflicts and wars they are not only sharpened and concretized, but are comprehended specially. This process viewed by the example of the Soviet agitational posters during the Great Patriotic War. The internationalism was a key value of the Soviet ideology of the 1920-1930s. In terms of imagology, in pre-war propaganda categories of "native-other-alien" are traced, but they were mostly specifically constructed on non-ethnic signs. But in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War - direct fierce struggle between nations - the internationalist system of internal and foreign images could noticeably change and had new contexts. To consider that process from more than 430 agitational posters the sample by three directions was made: the materials which contented national categories of the USSR (native), the Axis (alien, hostile) and the Allies (other, friendly). Posters of the all-Union and republican publishing houses, in which texts and images expressed national signs, were researched by the content-and intent-analysis method. Also for creating this article used agitation, oriented to East European countries, freed by the Red Army. According these materials, we could conclude, that national categories were noticeable part of the visual propaganda imagery during the wartime. Anyway they were traced in more than half of all the 1941-1945's posters (250 posters), which the author has. The highest point of the nation-centric trends was in 1943, when in enemy's image anti-German discourse prevailed, although throughout the War fascism and fascists, not Germans, were the main content of it. In that period native image also was comprehended mostly as Soviet, Slavic or Russian. In general, the original Soviet propaganda's internationalism, apparently, did not allow to contrast different nations and to reproduce national stereotypes for a long time even during the war, offering to consider only criteria of the specific moment. It could explain the spread of the positive allies' image in the end of the war, including Western and East European countries, which were certainly hostile in 1930s. But soon after the victory in the Second World War they all found new qualities according the Cold War era logic.

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