Natalia in Saint Petersburg, Russia was kind enough to send (along with several postcards featuring night views of her city) a couple of replicas of Soviet propaganda posters, scaled down to about 5 x 7 inches (12 x 18 centimeters).  The first, from 1929, features a poem entitled “Night Panel” (no, I don’t get it either) and a fine, upstanding young citizen shouting “Stop!” to flappers and other revelers.  My Russian is terrible, but I think that the gist of the poem, which starts with a phrase something like “Here is how things should be”, is that the youth should work and have faith in the government instead of in drink and debauchery.

And speaking of work:

This second poster from 1947 reminds the proletariat that, hey, you can work at night, too!  Of course, we’ll have to put you on the waiting list for tractor headlights; you should have them in about two years.

This postcard, published in 1976 and celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution, shows a ship of the Soviet fleet surrounded by the flags of the Soviet republics, with the flag of the USSR largest at the top. The artist (phonetically spelled, of course) is B. Parmeyev. I hesitate to consider this a chrome postcard, as it seems to be printed on uncoated bleached manila.

Слава Великому Октябрю!

This is a Soviet greeting card, I suppose, measuring about 6-7/8 inches by 3-3/4 inches. I assume that, since Christmas was illegal, one needed a festive occasion on which to send such a card — and what better occasion than the anniversary (which just happens to be today) of the Octyabrskaya Revolyutsiya! (For you bourgeoisie out there, that’s Russki for “October Revolution.”)

As far as my extremely limited Russian can tell, the caption means, of course, “Glory to Great October.”

What’s really interesting is the “copyright” notice:

The first line is the artist credit: a name that sounds out to something like Lukbyanov.

I’m not sure what the first word is immediately after the copyright symbol. The second word, however, is one that I recognize. It’s pravda. I’m going to guess that copyright was held by the Soviet state, and God help you if you made unlicensed copies.

If you can shed any light on this particular card, then by all means please leave a comment.

This very nice Soviet postcard of the Russian Museum in Leningrad was printed in the USSR in 1976. I could tell you where I got it, but then I’d have to kill you.

From the arrangement of the printing on the back (and the lack of a stamp box), it’s not clear that this is actually intended to be a postcard — though it is of the proper size and card stock. Perhaps, if you were mailing it from the USSR, the printing on the left is intended to discourage you from writing a personal message — which would probably have been censored anyway.