Page 53 [53]
Constructing Images of the Other in Peace and War
ENEMIES OF THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
Soviet poster produced in 1929. It attacks—from top left and clockwise—landlords,
kulaks, journalists, capitalists, White Russians, Mensheviks, priests, and drunkards.
Mensheviks were the more moderate wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party,
as opposed to Lenin’s Bolshevik faction. The doggerel at the bottom was written by
Demyan Bedny, one of Stalin’s favourite rhymesters. It calls these representatives of the
ancien regime “dogs that have not yet been caged”. They are enemies of the Five-Year Plan
because they know that “it will bring about their final destruction”.
V. Deni, 1931.
51