The Presidential Library to mark Vladimir Mayakovsky’s anniversary

July 19, 2023 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Contemporaries called him a loner rebel, a revolutionary poet, a master and an innovator. He himself wrote about himself like this: "I feel like a Soviet factory that produces happiness...".

Vladimir Mayakovsky was an artist, playwright, director, editor of literary magazines. A special place in the poet's work is the genre of satire. The satirical propaganda poems of 1919–1920 made up a whole volume of his collected works. However, satire came out not only from the poet's pen. The knowledge gained by the young Mayakovsky at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture allowed him to paint portraits, draw cartoons and caricatures using oil, pastel, ink, watercolor, charcoal and pencil.

In 1919-1921, thanks to this passion, the poet became one of the authors of ROSTA Posters and participated in the production of satirical propaganda posters, which are often called the first Soviet social advertising. They were produced by Soviet poets and artists in cooperation with the Russian Telegraph Agency, a large publishing organization that mass-produced printed wall newspapers, posters, weeklies, its own newspaper Agit-ROSTA, several socio-political, economic, literary illustrated magazines. The agency also served as a news service and a center for instructing the entire local press. In 1925, on July 10, a decision was made to create a central all-Union information body - the Telegraph Agency of the USSR (TASS).

The first poster of ROSTA Posters was drawn by hand, then copies were made using a stencil. The image was necessarily supplemented with verses. Mayakovsky was responsible for short catchy slogans and poems.

Shortly before his death, speaking on March 20, 1930 in the Komsomol House of Krasnaya Presnya, the poet will say the following: “I remember the ROSTA Posters - these are huge panels, almost a quarter of the wall; and I had to make such windows more than once - only about 5000 posters. How did we do? I remember that we went to bed at 2-3 in the morning, put a log under our head instead of a pillow - there was a pillow, but we were afraid to oversleep. Many of these works, designed for a day, subsequently went to the Tretyakov Gallery, exhibitions in Berlin and Paris, and ten years later became things of real so-called ar”.

The posters fit perfectly into the revolutionary ideology of the young Soviet state. They were designed to educate, inform and agitate. Mayakovsky became the author of the first "selling texts", in which advertising inspired the Soviet people: ours is the best.

He made his own step into eternity. Contemporaries did not understand and did not accept Mayakovsky's decision to die. In the third issue of the journal of Marxist art criticism, Print and Revolution, for 1930, an obituary to the poet was published.

The Presidential Library’s portal features the collection Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), which includes digital copies of documents and materials about the life and career of one of the greatest innovative poets, who largely determined the development of poetry in the 20th century. The collection contains the first editions of the poet's works. This is the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky", written in 1913, published in 1914; the first edition of the play "Mystery-Bouffe", written for the anniversary of the October Revolution; collected works of the poet “All composed by Vladimir Mayakovsky. 1909-1919". The collection also includes satirical works of the poet, in particular, an example of social advertising: the brochure “Out with moonshine!”, “Mayakovsky scoffs: the first book of satire”, the magazine edition of the “enchanting comedy” “The Bedbug”. Agitation and satirical posters (ROSTA Posters), the result of the collaboration of the poet and artist Mayakovsky with the Russian Telegraph Agency (1919–1921), are presented in the collection as a digital copy of the 1932 edition. Part of the collection is literary works about the life and career of the poet, starting from 1931, almost immediately after his tragic death; as well as photographs depicting monuments, sculptural portraits, personal belongings of Vladimir Mayakovsky.

It is significant that in St. Petersburg the street on which he lived for several years, one of the central metro stations and the city public library, which was named after Mayakovsky on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the birth of the recognized classic of Soviet literature, are also named after the poet.