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.