Vladimir Voinovich's Monumental Propaganda

“Today the entire Soviet people and the whole of the progressive mankind is celebrating the glorious jubilee of our very greatest contemporary, the wise leader, the teacher of the peoples, the luminary of all the sciences, the outstanding military leader, our own dearest beloved Comrade Stalin.” This quote marks the beginning of a Soviet Russia historical marker in Vladimir Voinovich’s novel Monumental Propaganda. Titled; Monumental Propaganda gives reference to an original strategy used in the era of Lenin to visually place or stand monumental art as significant means of representing the communist ideas and revolutionary means. Finding the artists and noted sculptors from all over Russia became daunting to fulfill Lenin’s new task; as
Firstly the decoration of buildings and traditional places containing slogans, banner, and posters written with praises of revolution and memorial. Second in the plan, the production of monuments that honor the leaders of the Soviet Russia revolution were to be standing tall among the landmarks of Soviet Russia. Unfortunately Lenin’s plan for monumental propaganda did not fully turn out the results had hoped (not to mention the extreme expense that it also occurred). What Lenin’s plan did achieve was an ideological practice that would again become important, and even titled a satirical novel, focusing on the irony of Monumental Propaganda and its usefulness in regards to Stalin and the following eras of Soviet Russia. This very basic background signifies the importance of the setting in Soviet and Russia and the book. The mindset of a large piece of the population includes the devotion to Stalin. In the era Stalin you were either supporting his cause or in the gulag/dead for opposition. Periods of leadership after Stalin were plagued with a constant struggle of change but lack of any actual footwork. Monumental propaganda proves just that. In terms of satire it displays perfectly the confusion in terms of change from one leader to another