News and notes from Reston (tm).

Monday, April 29, 2013

Flashback Monday: The Most Soviet Photo of Our Brutalist Gem, Ever, The End

Comrade Worker.jpg
We've often compared the brutalist architecture of Lake Anne Plaza with some of Europe's finest monuments to socialism, but little did we know the extent to which our beloved earth-toned community borrowed the iconography of our communal brethren in its propaganda official history. Please to be enjoying this photo of a Noble Working-Man helping glorify the Motherland build the ASBO building, his heroic pose making a mockery of the poorly constructed, bourgeois capitalist Oldsmobiles in the parking lot before him. Build faster, Comrade! The Five-Year Plan Reston Master Plan demands office space for the revolution commercial sales!

poster2.jpg
Uncanny, isn't it? (Except, of course, the Soviet DRB permitted its propagandists to use a brighter pallete of colors.)

Perhaps iconography like this was an important factor in Reston nearly singlehandedly winning the Cold War. (SRSLY.) It's also good to know similar photography is being used to win the hearts and minds of skeptics of current-day public projects, the end.

10 comments:

  1. Please to be examining:

    http://www.grillivenezia.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Uncle-Sam-bond1.jpg

    http://www.davno.ru/assets/images/posters/moor/big/poster-49.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  2. Comrades!
    The capitalist running dogs and their lackeys have overrun our Workers' Paradise of Reston. The bourgeoisie
    planners and architects have built large monuments and office buildings to glorify those who control the means of production solely to exploit the working classes and take away their golf course views.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Picture translated:
    USSR - (On Banner) The Gifted Brigade of the Proletariat of the Entire World. (By pole), For the Proletariat, for the Entire Country, Defend your Socialist Fatherland.

    (I'm guessing these people are against the sale of the RNGC to developers.)

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

    In Anon's 4:30 second URL:

    "You have signed up yourself as a Volunteer?"

    I'm guessing that the HoA is having a tough time finding board members. The guy does look like a bit of a busybody, doesn't he?

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's an odd translation, Convict. How about:

    USSR - the striker brigade of proletariat worldwide.

    Actually, if you research overt propaganda methods, symbolism, imagery, etc. between Nazi Germany, United States and the Soviet Union, much of it is the same. The campaigns may as well have been done by the same PR firm.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For the US I would say it's pretty much limited to the current regime (oops... 'administration') and those shopping at the Urban Outfitter. This is my conclusion as a Soviet ex-pat so I've got a solid grasp on that topic.

      Delete
  5. You're more correct. Dar is gift, Ydar is strike or blow.

    (Sorry. My Russian has gotten weaker with the years.)

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  6. It's used in the same sense as a military striker unit. As in, those administering the first blow. The USSR being such a unit on behalf of the proletariat of the world (Unite!).

    Dar being gift/present is older usage. Dar as in gift/talent is typical.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not sure what is scarier, the similarities in the symbolism of the presented images, or the apparent Soviet era/Russian language expertise present in this forum ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's one of the things I love about Reston. The old ladies in the library turn out to be retired Kremlinologists who could whup yo'ass at chess whilst counting missile silos from a U2 plane.

      Delete
    2. Guest RevolutionaryJuly 9, 2013 at 1:26 AM

      Actually, I thought it was more of a Maoist cultural-revolution thing, you lackey counter-revolutionary! Off to the reeducation camp with you for a period of self-criticism...

      Delete

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