“The Deceiving Brothers Have Fallen Upon Us!” This pro-Bolshevik propaganda poster from the Russian civil war is loaded with symbolism. It draws on the Greek myth of Hercules battling the Hydra to depict the enemies of the revolution as a many-headed snake. Ugly caricatures of Germany, France, Tsar Nicholas, Britain, and the church bleed from the blows of a powerful Russian worker, who embodies the revolutionary working class. At the bottom of the page, a lengthy poem calls on the Russian people to stand together to defeat the “deceiving brothers,” and in the background a booming industrial landscape represents the economic development that will follow Bolshevik victory.

(The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY)