[Commlist] new book: Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political Cartoons

NEW BOOK: /Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political 
Cartoons/
John Etty
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
ISBN: 978-1-4968-2052-5

Dear all,

I'm very pleased to say that /Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: 
Krokodil’s Political Cartoons/ is now published with the University 
Press of Mississippi. A flyer for the book is attached.

*Cover Description*
After the death of Joseph Stalin, Soviet-era Russia experienced a 
flourishing artistic movement due to relaxed censorship and new economic 
growth. In this new atmosphere of freedom, Russia’s satirical magazine 
/Krokodil /(/The Crocodile/) became rejuvenated. John Etty explores 
Soviet graphic satire through /Krokodil /and its political cartoons. He 
investigates the forms, production, consumption, and functions of 
/Krokodil/, focusing on the period from 1954 to 1964.
/
/
/Krokodil /remained the longest-serving and most important satirical 
journal in the Soviet Union, unique in producing state-sanctioned 
graphic satirical comment on Soviet and international affairs for over 
seventy years. Etty’s analysis of /Krokodil /extends and enhances our 
understanding of Soviet graphic satire beyond state-sponsored propaganda.

For most of its life, /Krokodil /consisted of a sixteen-page satirical 
magazine comprising a range of cartoons, photographs, and verbal texts. 
Authored by professional and nonprofessional contributors and published 
by /Pravda /in Moscow, it produced state-sanctioned satirical comment on 
Soviet and international affairs from 1922 onward. Soviet citizens and 
scholars of the USSR recognized /Krokodil /as the most significant, 
influential source of Soviet graphic satire. Indeed, the magazine 
enjoyed an international reputation, and many Americans and Western 
Europeans, regardless of political affiliation, found the images pointed 
and witty. Astoundingly, the magazine outlived the USSR but until now 
has received little scholarly attention.

*Endorsements*

“This highly sophisticated and intellectually exciting study is a tour 
de force of visual and political analysis that overturns traditional 
notions of Cold War strategies. Etty surveys the long-lasting satirical 
magazine/ Krokodil /(1922-2000) (2005-2008) as an officially approved 
publication lampooning the execrated West but also selectively 
criticizing aspects of Soviet life. He concentrates on the Thaw era, 
tackling the issue of the magazine’s Sovietism from multiple 
perspectives even as, with the illuminating aid of Bakhtin, he moves far 
beyond the conventional wisdom of /Krokodil/ as pure propaganda. With 
cartoons by such celebrated graphic satirists as the Kukryniksy and Ivan 
Semenov, the study engages transmedia theory while rigorously adhering 
to a non-partisan, historically informed base that takes into account 
the publication’s /telos/, patterns of production, aesthetic/humorous 
considerations, and audience reception. The impeccable scholarship alone 
is worth the price of the book, though the Conclusion serves as a 
superlative summation not to be missed. Teeming with insights and 
rigorously argued, /Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union/ is indisputably 
one of the most riveting monographs in Slavic Studies to appear in the 
last few years.”
—Helena Goscilo, Professor of Slavic Studies at the Ohio State 
University, affiliate faculty in Comparative Studies, Film Studies, 
Folklore, Popular Culture, and WGSST. Author/editor of approximately 
twenty volumes, including /Putin as Celebrity and Cultural 
Icon/ and/ Fade from Red: The Cold War Ex-Enemy in Russian and American 
Film 1990-2005/

“A fascinating, lavishly illustrated, often astonishing study of Soviet 
Russia’s key satirical journal with the focus where it belongs: its 
brilliant cartoons. Etty’s reading of /Krokodil/ through a Bakhtinian 
lens, as a form of Menippean satire, proves fabulously productive and 
illuminating; his scrutiny of the decade after Stalin’s death, 
meanwhile, plugs a hole in the scholarship of Soviet caricature and 
visual culture that needed filling. It delights me to no end that this 
book will bring further attention to such great Soviet-era cartoonists 
as Boris Efimov, Iulii Ganf and Kukryniksi – names as familiar to 
Russian readers as Charles Schultz, Al Capp and Herblock are in the US.”
—José Alaniz, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 
University of Washington, Seattle; author of /Komiks: Comic Art in 
Russia /and /Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond/

Link to Book Depository, for convenience: https://bit.ly/2CIJqPG


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