Visit The Soviet Union/The Country of the World's First Spaceman

Designer Designer Unknown

Publisher Intourist

Datec. 1963

Dimensions38 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (97.8 x 59.7 cm)

ClassificationsPoster

Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection

Terms

Object numberPH.9678

DescriptionThis poster by an unknown designer was issued by Intourist (an abbreviation of “foreign tourist”), a national travel agency established in 1929 on the initiative of Josef Stalin in an effort to bring in visitors (and foreign currency) from the West and to burnish the international image of the Soviet Union. Poster competitions were held to find suitable designers, who looked to Western models as the basis for compositions that typically represented the Soviet Union as a place of peace and progress. By the time this poster was issued, featuring Soviet hero and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who, on April 12, 1961, had become the first human being to enter outer space, many Soviet posters intended for both domestic and foreign circulation were also used as propaganda in the Cold War arms and space races between the USSR and the United States. Gagarin’s achievement created a kind of space mania among the Soviet people, and he effectively became a human vehicle for government propaganda until his death in 1968. (And since Soviet citizens did not have access to television until 1964, printed periodicals and posters like this one served as the main outlets for this sort of content.) His orbit around the earth is represented here as a Soviet Red Star moving along a black line around the globe, which incorporates the Kremlin and the main building of Moscow State University; together they signify the political and scientific work undertaken to launch Gagarin’s space journey.

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