The brainchild of Leon Trotsky, the “Society of Friends of the Air Fleet” (ODVF) was founded in the spring of 1923 to enlist citizens in the task of developing “Red” aviation. This poster was one of the first produced by ODVF in support of its initial “Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet.”

The airplanes depicted circling the globe are WW I-era British DeHavilland DH-4s. Licensed for production by the Imperial Russian government in 1917, the DH-4 served as the basis for the first mass-produced airplane to emerge from Soviet factories following the Bolshevik take-over: the Polikarpov R-1.

Appearing at a time when the country’s economic and industrial infrastructure had collapsed from the effects of war, revolution, and civil war, this poster was one of the first to make explicit the importance of industrial capacity to Soviet Russia’s future emergence as an aviation power.

Note the visual contrast between the rural countryside (represented by the windmill) and the industrial landscape (from which the fleet of airplanes emerges) at the bottom of the poster.

ODVF was but the first in a series of official “voluntary” organizations created in the 1920s by Bolshevik leaders to channel citizens into working on behalf of Party-mandated causes. Typically, the success of these organizations was measured not by qualitative performance but, rather, by the size their membership.

Ironically, by July 1925 ODVF had ceased to exist. In May 1925 the organization was merged with the “Society of Friends of Chemistry” to create the “new” society Aviakhim (Friends of Aviation and the Chemical Industry).

Another poster dedicated to expanding the ranks of the voluntary society.

Modeled after contemporary reading primers, this poster sought to eradicate “aeronautical illiteracy” among Soviet Russia’s peasant population by introducing viewers to aviation-related terms and the many new organizations created by Soviet officials.

One of the first propaganda posters produced in support of the campaign to build Soviet aviation, this placard urges “Workers, Peasants, Red Army Soldiers! Everyone assist our Air Fleet!”

Combining the traditional genres of the rhymed couplet (chastushka) and the woodcut (lubok), this ODVF recruitment poster tells the story of how a young peasant lad named Petya becomes a Red aviator. Constantly repeated in Soviet propaganda of the 1920s, the “peasant into pilot” motif was a transparent metaphor of Russia’s revolutionary transformation from a backward agrarian nation into a modern industrial power that would take place under the leadership of the Communist Party.

In an effort to win peasant support for building the Red Air Fleet, Communist Party propaganda during the 1920s focused on the ways in which aviation would be used to benefit the rural economy, increase production, and raise living standards. Typical of the times, this poster advertises Aviakhim’s ability to improve agriculture by fighting the scourge of locusts.

In the aftermath of the 1931 tour of the Graf Zeppelin across the USSR, the Soviet government launched a campaign to build a native fleet of “Red zeppelins” intended to rival the Germans’ efforts. Aside from this well-known poster (which was reproduced in numerous languages spoken throughout the USSR), the short-lived dirigible construction program produced few results.

Employing the photographic montage techniques that characterized the artistic movement known as Constructivism, this poster’s transposition of soaring airplanes and smiling young men communicated the importance of aviation to the Soviet Union’s future and the importance of youth to the future of Soviet aviation.

The airplane appearing overhead with red stars on its wings is the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. The world’s largest airplane at the time of its inaugural flight in June 1934, the Maxim Gorky flew for less than a year before meeting its tragic end in a mid-air collision.