Lenin used the skills of a modern advertising executive to sell his ideas after the Russian Revolution, a new exhibition reveals. By Dan Carrier

SEX sells. The first rule of any advert is make it beautiful, make it bold and make it bright: throw in good looking people and the public will snap up whatever it is you are flogging.
And the same rule applies to selling politics as it does cars, vacuum cleaners and beer.
And although advertising in the Soviet Union was not about selling consumer goods, it borrowed the tricks advertisers in capitalist countries were well versed in – but instead of washing machines, cars and fridges, they used it sell the idea of a Communist state.
And now, an exhibition in Islington Chambers Gallery examines the power of the advert in the Soviet Union.
Gallery owner Michael Chambers – a law book publisher and former William Ellis School student who has tacked a gallery on to the side of his Smithfield offices – has called in Russian art expert Catherine Arsenieva to help collate an 80-strong exhibition by the state-sponsored artists.
Mr Chambers, who opened the gallery in October, believes now is a good time to revisit Communist art.
The works have been chosen by Ms Arsenieva – a Russian émigré living in Anson Road, Tufnell Park. She is the former deputy director of the Russian Academy of Fine Art in St Petersburg, one of the country’s most prestigious art institutions.
She first came to London in 1995 and worked for Somerset House before setting up a gallery in Boundary Road, Swiss Cottage.
Mr Chambers says: “Fifteen years after the demise of socialist realism, we can look back and assess it without the ideological prejudice that surrounded it during its lifetime.”
But he does not believe the work is comparable to western European fine art.
He explains: “It was art for the people. Comparing it with fine art is to misunderstand its role and its audience. The true comparison is with popular art.
“Soviet realism was art for the public poster, magazine, book jacket, walls of schools, hospitals, factories. Hence the need for it to be comprehensible. The true comparison with western art is with the art of the advertisement, the art you see around you on billboards.”
And because the state was keen to exploit this form of selling the Communist message, it pumped cash into employing the best artists available.
He adds: “Soviet artists were well trained. The Academy of the USSR ran excellent institutes of painting, sculpture and architecture in all the Soviet Republics.”
This was to help cement the Bolsheviks in power.
During the first years of government the Bolsheviks were a small force in a large country.
According to journalist John Reed, who wrote Ten Days That Shook The World, a first hand account of the revolution, the Bolsheviks were at first a well organised clique.
They represented the small, industrial working classes based in cities but had to bring the rural peasantry on side. Leader Vladimir Lenin decided using poster art would be a key factor in selling communism to a population that was largely illiterate.
In the first three years of the USSR, 3,200 poster designs were produced, espousing the advantages of life under communist rule.
The new Soviet government had already taken hold of the paper mills and printing works to ensure its views reached the masses. And by mid-1918 artists like Alexander Apsit – responsible for developing such iconic images such as the Hammer and Sickle and the Red Star – was producing posters that told of a golden age for the Russian people.
And Mr Chambers believes the true spirit of the Soviet Union comes across through the 80 paintings they have chosen for the show.
He said: “They reflect an era now passed; an era of intense drama, of conflict and changing values.
“The pictures may be idealised, some more some less, but they all show a people’s spirit in times of hardship and struggle. It is the human spirit in these pictures that lives on.
“These paintings have real quality about them, rather than just as works of propaganda. They speak directly to the people, and that is why they were displayed in public places. They show soldiers, families – and they also feature heavily the heroes of the revolution: it will have Lenin with groups of children, with groups of workers, in the fields and at workers’ committee meetings.”
And the art was successful in its aims. Two of the best known artists, Dimitir Moor and Vladimir Deni, worked during the civil war after 1917 revolution. They encouraged people to fight the internationally-backed White Russian army, which opposed the Bolsheviks.
Along the lines of Lord Kitchener’s Your Country Needs You, their poster Have You Enrolled As A Volunteer? used an image of a worker answering the Red Army’s call. The 50,000 copies distributed boosted the recruitment campaign overnight.
But despite the vast numbers of posters printed, Ms Arsenieva said they were comparatively rare today, because they were primarily used as posters and not kept.
They were often recycled while others were destroyed for political reasons – for example, pictures that had Leon Trotsky in them were dumped after 1928.
Ms Arsenieva adds: “Although a lot were produced, there are not many available. Many were destroyed and many went into private hands after the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Some have found their way into Russian museums. Ms Arsenieva explains: “When the Soviet Union was splitting up, the art was given to institutions across the former states. And this makes the exhibition all the more exciting, because Russian museums do not tend to lend them out.”
And Ms Arsenieva said the exhibition marked a renaissance in the appreciation of Soviet realism.
She continued: “The style was accepted for its beauty, but by the 1980s it was considered to be boring.
“After the fall of communism, it became popular outside the former Soviet Union but was still considered passé in Russia. But once the country started to recover from the economic problems of the early Yeltsin years, there has been an air of nostalgia. The Soviet socialist realism of the communist era is back in demand.”

• Soviet Realism is at the Chambers Gallery, 23 Long Lane, EC1 from June 15 to July 17, 10am to 6pm. Phone 0207 778 1600 for more details.