Cookniks caricature on fascists. Kukryniks from Vhowemas

Cookniks caricature on fascists. Kukryniks from Vhowemas
Cookniks caricature on fascists. Kukryniks from Vhowemas

Creative team of Soviet graphic artists and painters, which included valid members of the USSR AH, Folk artists of the USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903-1991), Porphyry of the Wings (1902-1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903-2000) .

The pseudonym "Kukryniks" is composed of the first syllables of the names of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the name Nikolai Sokolov. The artists always worked together, this was the phenomenon of their collective creativity. The greatest fame of the "Kukryniks" brought numerous masterfully filled cartoons, cartoons, posters and books, created in a characteristic satirical style.

The joint work of Kukryniks began in student years in the highest art and technical workshops. In Moscow Vhutemas, artists traveled from different ends of the USSR. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Wings from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov got acquainted and began to work together in the wall newspaper of Vhowemas like a dumb and a cride. At this time, Sokolov, still living in Rybinsk, put the signature of Nicks in his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Kryonov, and since then they have worked in three as the Kukryniks.

At the beginning of the creative path in the group, there was a search for a new single style that used the skill of each authors. The heroes of literary works were the first to feather cartoonists. Later, when the Kukryniks became permanent employees of the True newspaper and the Crocodile magazine, they took advantage of the political caricature.

Caricatures, posters and "TASS windows" were a big role in the patriotic education of Soviet people, created by Kukryniki during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945, combining in symbolic-generalized images the evil satir and heroism ("mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!", 1941) . The post-war work of Kukryniks, impellers of war, imperialists, enemies of peace and socialism possess significant political power. For political cartoons and posters, Cookryniks were awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1942) and the Leninist Prize (1965).

The works of Kukryniks are almost all major museum meetings of Russia; State Tretyakov Gallery, Russian State Library, Rybinsky and Yaroslavl State Historical and Architectural Art Museum-Reserves, Tula Museum of Fine Arts, private collections of Russia and abroad.

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Kukryniks are a pseudonym of the creative team of three jointly worked Soviet painters and graphs. It was composed of the first syllables of the names of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first syllable name and the first letter of the name Nikolai Sokolov. Three artists worked by collective creativity. At the same time, everyone worked and individually - over portraits and landscapes. Numerous caricatures, cartoons and books were brought the greatest fame.

The joint creativity of Kukryniks began in student years in the highest artistic workshops. In Moscow, they traveled from different ends of the country. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Wings from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov met and began to work together as the cookies. Sokolov, even in Rybinsk, put the signature of Nicks in his drawings. Since 1924, artists have already worked as a threesome kukryniks. "Our team, in truth, consists of four artists: Kupriyanov, Krylova, Sokolova and Kukryniks. To the last we all treat with great care and care, "they write Kukryniks and emphasize: - what has been created by the team, could not master any of us separately. In full force, the picturesque talent of artists unfolded during the Great Patriotic War. A significant moment in the work was a military poster "mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!". He appeared on the June streets of Moscow one of the first - immediately after the attack of Hitler's Germany in the USSR. The Kukryniks passed the whole war: their leaflets accompanied the Soviet soldiers all military road to Berlin. They continued the tradition of Mayakovsky, creating posters for the TASS window cycle. They became classics of the Soviet political caricature, which they understood as an instrument of combating the enemy. How many times the Hitler in the caricatures of Kukryniks commanded skeletons and turned into a skeleton himself! How many times the Soviet cartoonists were predicted the end of the bloody adventure, how many times did the "rupture" of Reich noted! Kupriyanov, Wings, Sokolov - reflected the entire history of the Great Patriotic War, created famous caricatures on the rulers of the Third Reich. At first, as a rule, the text appeared - something like "At the Gada Hitler, all plans are broken. In the failure, they are not, however, is to blame, and the red fighters are the heroes-giants. " On his posters, Gadina, strangled, piled up with a sharp spear, were shone into the shackles. Carticatures were another our powerful tool and beat right into the target. Napoleon suffered striking the same and with the accrediting Hitler!

In Moscow Kalachi,

Like fire hot.

At night fascist reptiles

Hail of fiery shells

Muscovites treat!

The exhibition opened in Moscow is timed to the Victory Day. It is called "the history of the eyes of Kukryniks". The team was awarded the Leninist Prize (1965), Stalin Prize (1942, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951), the picture "End" is a peak in the painting of Cookrynks. This is the fruit of artistic fiction, and at the same time - this is the truth of art based on the deep knowledge of life. An extremely important role in the history of this painting was played by artists in Berlin. Here they are descending into the dungeon of Reichskancelary, they go with dark corridors, see their eyes the funnels from shells sketching the living Nazis, reflect ... All this has had an imagination of artists, and the thought worked in a certain direction. Behind the series of paintings dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War - Tanya (1942), "End" (1948) and "German Flight from Novgorod" (1944), - the creative team was awarded the State Prize (1975). Their art remains topful and in our time. Especially when NATO is on the east! Let's notify that all the Kukryniks are Colonels of the Soviet Army. Characteristic time sign. Kukryniks worked together before old age, struck by everyone amazing for a group of creative people with unanimity. All pictures managed to save and restore. Today, the works of artists performed in the war years in some hands - at a private collector.

Kukryniks - the creative team of Soviet artists-graphics and painters, which included valid members of the AH USSR (1947), Folk artists of the USSR (1958), Heroes of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kupriyanov (1903-1991), Porphyry Krylov (1902-1990) and Nikolai Sokolov (1903-2000).

The pseudonym "Kukryniks" is composed of the first syllables of the names of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the name Nikolai Sokolov. A similar example of the compilation of the pseudonym is a pseudonym of the creative team of Soviet writers "Grivady Gorpeps".

Three artists worked the method of collective creativity (everyone also worked and individually - over portraits and landscapes). They brought the greatest fame of numerous masterfully filled cartoons and cartoons, as well as book illustrations created in a characteristic caricature style.

The joint work of Kukryniks began in student years in the highest art and technical workshops. In Moscow Vhutemas, artists traveled from different ends of the Soviet Union. Kupriyanov from Kazan, Wings from Tula, Sokolov from Rybinsk. In 1922, Kupriyanov and Krylov got acquainted and began to work together in the wall newspaper of Vhowemas like a dumb and a cride. At this time, Sokolov, still living in Rybinsk, put the signature of Nicks in his drawings. In 1924, he joined Kupriyanov and Kryonov, and in the wall newspaper they worked three of them as Kukryniks)

The group was searching for a new single style that used the skill of each authors.
The heroes of literary works were the first to feather cartoonists.
Later, when the Kukryniks became permanent employees of the True newspaper and the Crocodile magazine, they took advantage of the political caricature. According to the memoirs of the artist of the journal Crocodile, Hermann Ogorodnikova, from the mid-1960s, Kukryniksi almost did not visit the magazine:

Power works for Kukryniks were grotesque topical caricatures on the themes of domestic and international life (Series "Transport", 1933-1934, "War Certificates", 1953-1957), agitation, including anti-fascist, posters ("mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy! ", 1941), illustrations to works by Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1939), Anton Chekhov (1940-1946), Maxim Gorky (" Life of Klim Samgin "," Foma Gordeev "," Mother ", 1933, 1948-1949 ), Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrova ("Golden Challenge"), Miguel Cervantes ("Don Quixote").

A significant moment in the work was a military poster "mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!". He appeared on the June streets of Moscow one of the first - immediately after the attack of Hitler's Germany in the USSR.
The Kukryniks passed the whole war: their leaflets accompanied the Soviet soldiers all military road to Berlin. In addition, the cycle of posters "TASS windows" was very popular.

They became classics of the Soviet political caricature, which they understood as an instrument of combating a political enemy, and did not recognize any other trends in art and in caricatures, which were fully primarily in the first place in the new format of the "literary newspaper" (department of humor "Club 12 chairs" ). Their political caricatures, often published in the newspaper "True", belong to the best examples of this genre ("ticks in the ticks", "I lost my ring ...", "Under an eagle, I responded, I responded to Rome," "Wall-haircut", "Lion Share ", series of drawings of" War Maltarians ", etc.). The team belongs to numerous political posters ("Transformation of Fritz", "Peoples are warned", etc.). Kukryniks are also known as painters and masters of a machine drawing. They are the authors of the paintings "Morning", "Tanya", "German escape from Novgorod", "End" (1947-1948), "Old hosts" (1936-1937). They are drawn Pastel's drawings - "I. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov, "I. V. Stalin in Kureik, "Barricades in Presnya in 1905", "Chkalov on the island of UDD" and others.

Members of the team also worked and apart - in the field of portrait and landscape.

An extensive collection of art works belonging to Peru Kukryniks, is collected in the private collection of the Mammoth family.

Since April 30, 2008, the Museum-Reserve "Tsaritsyno" has exhibited a posthumous exhibition dedicated to the Victory Day "History through the eyes of Cookryniks. 1928-1945. Military poster. Caricature. Painting. Graphics"

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The famous Soviet poet Alexander Zharov recalls that in 1925, by his editor by the editor of one youth magazine, three artists students somehow came to him and offered their services. "What can you draw?" He asked the heat. Then young people immediately began to work and, in the course of work, transmitting the drawing one another, quickly sketched a few laid cartoons on the writers who were present at the same time than the general admiration caused. Since then, the journal began to regularly appear acute and expressive drawings of young authors, signed by the composite surname Kukryniksi.

It was at the dawn joint creative activity of Talented Soviet artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Kuryovanov, Porphyer Nikitich Krylova and Nikolay Alexandrovich Sokolov.

The work of Kukryniks is striking by its diversity. Thoughtful artists over large picturesque canvases, caricature, poster, book illustration, and even over a sculptural portrait, seeking to see each other form of art high results, are inspired and persistently. The extraordinary relevance of the subject, ideological orientability of the content, originality and laconism of the artistic language - these clearly visible works of Kukryniks make them clear the widest range of Soviet spectators and readers.

Cartoon artists Kukryniksov

Being gifted painters, Kukryniks primarily and most of all - the most prominent masters of Soviet political graphics, artistic satire. It is difficult to name at least one significant event in international life since the 30s and ending today, which would not cause the corresponding response in their work.

At one time, Kukrynikov caricatures mercilessly exposed the plot of imperialist powers against Republican Spain, the preparation of the Second World War (the "Strict Control Scheme of Spanish Borders", "continuation of the last war" and others). In these, as in all other works, artists speak expressive to the views and interests of our people, who is tirelessly struggling for peace all over the world.


Cooknows in the area household satire. Their strikes are directed against the entire talked, oblique and ugly, which prevents the movement of the Soviet people to an excellent future. From the extensive cycle of the works of Kukrynikov on household topics, a series of "transport", drawings "hopeless days off", "Service note", "Reliable" (about young people, serving in front of a foreigner).

Caricatures of Kukryniks are so peculiar in shape that the viewer immediately recognizes their authors, even without looking at the signature. Inexhaustible in artistic fiction and ingenuity, Kukryniks are able to recreate the appearance of a particular political degenerate with several bold and accurate lines (Stolypin, Kerensky, Wrangel), show typical in the images of a bureaucrat, glasses, Hapugi. The deposit of Kukrynikovskaya graphics is a bright example of a large value of collectivity in creativity: each of the artists offers its decision to the topic, in the process of discussion, all the best is selected, and then all the forces of the team are sent to the finalization of the final version.

War posters in the work of Kukryniks

More in our memory, numerous posters in the "TASS windows", created by Kukryniki in the harsh years of the fight against fascist invaders: "Ruthlessly defeat and destroy the enemy!", "Transformation of Fritz", "Volzhsky Rock", "Harvesting - a formidable blow to the enemy " other. We answered the most pressing tasks of time, extremely expressive, they were powerful ideological weapons, gave even more strength to Soviet soldiers at the front and labor population in the rear.

On the pages of "Pravda", "Crocodile" and other Soviet editions, sharp caricatures of Kukryniks have invariably appeared, which navigate the Cold War Trubadur and their accomplices to the shameful post. In 1958 - 1959, the caricatures of the Berlin Question were published, the "militant parrot" and others were published. In No. 2 "Crocodile" for the 1960s dedicated to the memory of A. P. Chekhov, a witty caricature of the "attacker on an international scale" is remembered: The Western German Chancellor Adenauer diligently unscrews nuts from rails, which have a pointer to peaceful coexistence.

Pictures of artists Kukryniks

Great Novgorod in January 1944. Against the background of the gloomy sky, the majestic commander of the Sofia Cathedral is minted. From under the snow, fragments of the barbarus destroyed monument "Millennia of Russia" stick out. Near the buildings, Hitler's warriors are fussing with torches. Forced under the mighty blows of the Soviet army shamefully flee from an ancient city, they are trying to destroy the invaluable treasures of Russian culture in powerless malice.

Such is the content of the well-known pictures of Kukrynikov "The flight of the fascists from Novgorod." Despite the dramatic tension of the moment, well-transmitted by contrasts of dark and light spots, the picture is imbued with an optimistic mood. Artists managed to show in it the complete doom of geek, intending to enslave our socialist homeland.

Other pictorial works of Kukryniks, dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War, are penetrated by a patriotic sense, "Tanya", "True", "End".

In the last picture in the images of a large artistic force, the ingredient death of Hitlerism is shown, in the defeat of which the Soviet Union played a decisive role.

Illustrating the works of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov and Gorky, artists strive with the maximum fullness to disclose the humanistic oriental focus of the Great Russian literature to the reader. The most successful drawings of the Kukrynikov to Gogol "Sineli", the stories of Chekhov "Tosca" and "I want to sleep".

It should be noted that each of the Kukryniks has a bright creative personality and works a lot on their own. So, M. Kupriyanov especially fascinated by the scenery of the Moscow region and Volga, P. Krylov performed many portraits and perfectly handed over the picturesque peculiarity of Paris, Rome and Venice, and N. Sokolov loves the life of his native Moscow and the touching charm of Russian nature. Continuously enriching their knowledge and experience, artists connect them in a general general plan, persistently achieved in every new product of increasing completion of the plot and his artistic incarnation.

How many artists are Cookryniks?

What does the pseudonym "Kukryniks" mean - decoding

* The pseudonym "Kukryniks" is composed of the first syllables of the names of Kupriyanov and Krylov, as well as the first three letters of the name and the first letter of the name Nikolai Sokolov.

Years of life

* Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov 1903-1991

Porphyry Nikitich Wings 1902-1990

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Sokolov 1903-2000 (Source - Wikipedia)

Tags: biography and creativity artists of Kukryniksov.

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By the time of the Great Patriotic War, the art of Kukrynikov-Satirikov reached full, deep maturity. The creative methodology was finally developed, a very wide range of art techniques was determined, the visual technique was honed to shine. And the main enemy was taken to the sight, studied and understood. He was understood by artists not only concrete-politically, but also morally, aesthetically (oddly enough such words sound in this context). From the towers of the socialist humanism, the Kukryniks keen saw and recognized not only the public essence of fascist concepts, but also all their relationships with the life of the era in general and each of her contemporaries separately. Before the eyes of the masters were not distracted abstracts, but live destinies. And this is already the theme of full-blooded art. Exposing the inhumanity as the root side and the internal impulse of any theories and actions of fascism, the Kukryniks were inspired by the figurative idea, a full noble ethical meaning and high meaning. In this, the first priority of their creative and civilian feats of the fight against the fascist invasion.

His first work of the era of 1941-1945 - a poster "mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy!" - Kukryniks performed on the first day, "more precisely, in the first evening of war - June 22, 1941. On June 24, the poster became an integral part of the instantly changed, severely intense appearance of Moscow, and then other" our cities. He entered the life of Soviet people As invoked agendas and darkened windows. It was inhabited with a lapidalkinal clarity of a brief formula. The whole situation of the Great Wrestling of the Great Fight: Hitler's Mask against the Red Army, against Freedom; cannibal against a person. Radiatfully, before sharpness straightforwardly? Yes! And some other Cooknikov posters, Made during the war years, are yours. other they could not be. This is not a spectacle for a slow-thoughtful museum contemplation. It was necessary to create images capable of breaking through the storm of cutting events and unrest of wartime, to capture everyone's imagination by their anger and passion Tell about the main, decisive features of what is happening in the language of ordinary, distinctly clear truths.
Cookniks were managed. Their art, more than ever, gained nationwide. And the matter it did the general one. It fought. Artists resorted to different genres, as a variety of weapons. They beat on the enemy long-range volley posters, shelled the hordes of the invaders by mines and torpedoes of their caricatures, threw asians of satirical leaflets into their rear.

The atmosphere of military time required the utmost efficiency of work. For many drawings for newspapers and magazines, for the "TASS windows" artists had a read clock. About complex, long searching for the image, about variants, alterations could not be speech. If a different thing was schematically, without the "highlight" - it was unthinkable to postpone it, hide into the archive. The new works of Kukryniks in the most literal sense of the word praised from the hands. And it would be a snobbing chandelness to condemn artists for the fact that in a huge mass of their works of the military era there is some number of "passing", small ruffles. Moreover, they served their such work, albeit a short, but the necessary and noble service. But if you judge for the best works of the period, the Kukryniks not only remained the high level in their work, but also gave it a new strength and sharpness of artistic impact. Generated by high pathos, violent inspiration of the struggle energy of complete dedication, the internal mobilization of artists has drove their art living juice, gave him a new impetus to development. Satirical fantasy, metaphorical image system, so characteristic of artists in their caricatures of military years, is embodied with a special capacity and lapidinity of allegorical generalization.

Let's say, in the "turning of the Fritz" (1943), the ranks of German soldiers sent by the prescribing finger of Hitler, "transformed" first into the walking fascist signs, and then into the ranks of birch crosses on the snow-covered Russian fields. The metaphorical action of caricature with the clarity of aphorism captures the entire history of the Hitler's invasion - from the sources to the final, which artists with complete conviction were foreseen.

A similar order of the metaphor in many other works is easy to disdain, clear and catchy in their rapidly figurative dynamics - to your manner treats significant events of time, summarizes their results, exposes the most important and significant. Hitler tried to surround her tank divisions with sparse paws, take into mites in Moscow, but ran into the dead grip of other ticks - a response strike of the Soviet army ("ticks in ticks", 1941). The same strong, working ticks (likelihood, of course, non-random), bent into the figure "3", squeeze the sip of the Fuhrer with their ends ("three years of war", 1944). The pental fanatics in Berlin already "the kittel does not cook" - and here is the result of his brainless strategy - "Russian boiler near Minsk", in which the butded-fighter is dried by a pile of Germans ("Two boilers", 1944).
Traitor Laval is tied by the fascist rope to the chair of the Prime Minister of the Puppet Government of Vichy, but on this dilapidated furniture "Rococo" will not be skiing with comfort: the blade of the bayonet "Fighting France" pushed the seat through, and the Gnombic Laval in despair balancing in her hands ("Neither to sit down, Neither tear ... ", 1943). This is the whole chapter of the history of military years, embodied with inconceivable eccentricity, but absolutely faithful and accurate assessment is quite the real state of things.

In general, the obvious majority created by the Kukryniks in the war years of satirical allegory has a deep and multifaceted expressiveness. They, these allegory, rely on specific situations that artists managed and transferred in their works with amazing ingenuity and shine wit. The notorious Gospel of Fashism - "Main Campf" - is transformed by artists to the Maiden Cow with the Morda Hitler, which Hitler himself is happily - because the income of the Fuhrer from this book was fabulous ("Doyna Cow", 1942). Fascist leaders squeezed the last juices from their European satellites - and here in the caricature of 1942 it is shown like Hitler and Mussolini, like a dirty lingerie, twisted the leggings, and other quisings are already hanging on a rope, like pathetic, spent rags. The Nazis rely on the power of the power of the Atlantic Shaft created by them on the northern shores of France "Atlantic Shaft" - and Kukryniks show what this "blowing value" is shown: a long row of some latal flue claps, which, like football chambers, inflates Marty Goebbels ("Solid Selling" , 1943). The content of all these and many sets of similar satirical fantasies is easily decrypted, but they are full of significant historical meaning, each uses with the help of imaginary X-ray to the background, to the hidden depths of many events and the characters of the era.

I intentionally entered a number of descriptions of several making caricatures of Kukryniks. This not only allows you to make an idea of \u200b\u200bthe circle of scenes that came to the artists. Sometimes the descriptions can serve as a purely art historical purposes. Here they are a few paradoxical: the author sought to prove that it is impossible to create an accurate verbal parallel works of artists: the satirical works of Kukryniks constitute the exclusive belonging of a visual series of impressions, the elements of visual images. I may argue that the visual arts, as well as music and architecture, has always possessed their special and unique artistic speech, for which it is unthinkable to find an exhaustively accurate verbal equivalent. I do not argue, but this well-known truth does not apply to modern cariculature. Its a huge part is much closer to the literature than to the visual arts. True, letters and words are replaced in thousands of newspaper and magazine cartoons of the 20th century by bar hieroglyphs, but by themselves they do not yet create or visual images or visual arts. These caricatures resemble an ancient pictographic image - a picturesque letter, an image of events and actions using conventional signs. The whole essence of these "pictographic" cartoons in such situations, such actions, even more often than the characters. Not only a visual image, but even the technical quality of the picture almost no matter here. This kind of cartoons and are invented and perceived according to the laws of literature; Stroke hieroglyphs serve in this case as a kind of printed liter.

Such caricatures can not only retell, but without any loss, to fully replace with the words. I do not intend to go into the course of quality criteria, talking about how good or bad genre of the "pictographic" caricature is, it exists and is a special phenomenon in which it is necessary to easily understand in detail and thoroughly. But as for the Kukryniks, their creativity is entirely and undilly belongs to the visual arts, the age-old tradition of satirical graphics based on the techniques of purely visual characteristics, likes, metaphor. During the war of deep maturity and virtuoso artistry, not only the picturesque skill of artists reached, but also their visual-shaped thinking. The free game of satirical fantasy, ease and elastic strength of its flight, the ability to instantaneous and every time the original shaped improvisation on topical, even now the topic has arisen - all this has become the everyday atmosphere of artists. In 1941-1945, they created hundreds of caricatures, and any of them - at least a tiny screensaver for the leaflet, even drawing a sticker on the nutritional concentrate wrap - contains its satirical image. Kukryniks simply can not otherwise: the visual metaphor is the native speech of their caricatures. By the way, the organicity of this speech is one of the obvious evidence of the full-blooded vitality of classical traditions in the field of satire, the ability of these traditions to give new shoots, to join the living pairing, with our modernity.

But back to the content of the military caricatures of Kukryniks. Did there be some facilitance in them, did they show a strong and merciless enemy just a pitiful and ridiculous ridiculous?
It is impossible to answer such a question. With all the external simplicity and conventionalness of the Kukrynikovy caricatures, they contain several figurative layers. Of course, the fascists are subjected to ridicule. Artists of Togo and sought to be the first emotional reaction that their drawings and posters were able to cause the Soviet audience over the Nazis, even in the most difficult periods of war (I would say, in such periods - especially). For this laughter attached forces in the mortal fight, turned into an empty legend the myth of the invincibility of the fascist hordes, inspired contempt for the enemy, and the ridiculous and despised enemy was not terrible.
But it is worth thinking about the nature and the basis of this laughter. Not just invented comic situations, it is caused by not the deliberate stump of fascists, their appearance and actions. This is a laughter of historical justice over dirty uninforcement, laughter from the positions of moral and public superiority. When Hitler and his candies depict the brainless, empty, then it's not the same thing that artists want to convince the audience in the clinical psychopathy of the leadership of fascism, in the fact that these "figures" are shaped idiots, the challenge of the power of power. This is where as simple, but then the true setting of the great struggle would be subjected to unacceptable distortion: the tragedy took place in the fields of the Patriotic War, and not an opener.

There is no such distortion in the works of Kukrynikov and in risen. Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Mussolini and others perform in their satire not so much with specific personalities as the personalized images of fascism as a whole. Mr. Adolf Hitler could be from nature a smart or stupid, talented or founder, but Nazi dogma, which put forward him to the political arena, was a historically doomed, hostile mind and the prospects for the development of human civilization. Mr. Izife Goebbels could have short-hearted eloquence, but everything he said was a dirty lie and a subsection demagogue, aimed at justifying the most severe crimes and disgusting injustices - this was determined not only by his personal properties, and above all the character of the case he was dedicated served. Similarly, Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Frank, Hess, Borman, Kaltenbrunner and other major and small demons of Nazism could have those or other shades of individual qualities, but they were all bloody monsters, buty, just because became active practitioners Fascism: only in such types he needed. Someone he selected the already established scoundrel, someone gradually turned into a voluntary executioner - shades are insignificant, the result is important. In the dark fascist kingdom, the logic of the formation of individual characters, the logic of individual destinies was determined by the overall logic of fascism, its social content and historical function. All this Kukryniks felt perfectly and understood. "Hitlers of all the masters" are in their caricatures as typical representatives of fascism in general. Artists are sarcastically ridicule and branded not the pathology of individuals, but a perverted, hostile nature of humanity of Nazi abomination.
It is precisely that fascism so dimly and viguly perverts the human in man, which monstrously deforms the human soul and human actions, is naturally connected so frequently appearing the motives of "beasts" in the anti-fascist caricatures of Kukryniks. It was already about the fact that these motives were met in the pre-war works of artists for similar topics. Now the "brutal start" is being developed by masters with special acute and strength.

The similarity with the fastened transfer of concepts here is purely external and secondary. After all, in the Esopov language, artists had no need. The inner spring of the "brutal" images in the caricatures of Kukryniks is completely different. Atrocality - the soul of fascism; The power of low-lying instincts underlies all the motives and actions of his leaders. Therefore, all the animal in the image of them is quite portrait, and all humans are implausible, fake, it looks like a mask. This paradox is terrible, but absolutely real - laid in the very essence of "nature", which the authors of anti-fascist caricatures used in their works.

Kukryniks beat this disgusting paradox not only as material for artistic metaphors and hyperball, but also as a "prosecution formula", if we speak the language of jurisprudence. They are thrown in the animal face of the fascism prosecutor's charge of their satire, "Lightitus bitterness and anger." They accuse fascism in inhumanity. Accused viewing of caricatures perceived as material evidence of poor crimes. Fantastic eccentricity of drawings, absolutely distant from "external affair", not only does not prevent their life conviction, but, on the contrary, it is here to be a faithful key. Is there any similarity between the sickness of the patient and the virus that caused the ailment? And the Kukryniks show exactly the virus of the fascist epidemic, they expose her hidden, covered essence.

Beasts in caricatures of Kukryniks - a special kind. In no zoo you will not meet them. They do not have tied to an animal genre. It is not surprising: after all, even the most brazen jackal, the most poisonous snake, the most evil shark much more than noble and attractive fascist. Their, Shakalov and snakes, actually, nothing to blame - they live on the laws that nature prescribed them. And fascism is a vile perversion of human nature, abuse over it. He is a culprit of disgusting metamorphosis: people, while maintaining human doors behave like predators and reptiles. These are monstrous centaurs, equally naple and with normal "homo sapiens" and with ordinary animals. By the way, it was this collision that it is very accurately embodied by artists in one of the "TASS windows" ("Krylovskaya Martyka about Goebbels", 1934); Pathetic, depressed monkey with frightened amazement examines the portrait of the last times of steel, perhaps, still harsh and tougher in its sharp and angry sarcasma, do not entertain, do not amuse at leisure. They call against the fight, to the high voltage of forces in the name of the protection of the ideals of good and justice. Evaluating specific political situations from the standpoint of socialist ideas, the Kukryniks give their creativity universal character, reflect on the fate of the whole human civilization, fight for her bright future. The artists fall on the enemies of the world and the freedom of all the separating power of their mature, restless talent. They could, referring to the previous to the newly "Hitlers of all the masters," to shine them with the scourge of angry-contemptuous Pushkin rows: "All your bastard I will torment the penalty of shame." This fierce tirade would sound like the motto of all their work in satire, as the oath, which they kept, which is sacred true and so -na.
1969
Alexander Kamensky

From the album "Kukryniks political satire 1929-1946", "Soviet artist", 1973