Feminist Soviet chastushki postcards.

Series of 'chastushki' postcards depicting newly-emancipated Soviet village girls and women, accompanied with humorous chastushki rhymes, created by the master of Soviet propaganda lubok, the painter and graphic artist Afanasii Kulikov (1884-1949). The postcards are notable for their use of traditional Russian folk genres, usually dominated by romantic love motifs, for communicating Soviet propaganda and social messaging especially about the new realities of Soviet women.

Numbered one through five, the postcards depict a village radio operator professing her love over the radio waves for the Bolshevik political leader Mikhail Kalinin, young village girls running off to vote for the new female delegates, and a village girl waiting impatiently for her lover to leave so she can finally return to her studies. The fourth chastushka postcard depicts a 'new' Soviet village girl with cropped hair, shorter style of skirt and smoking a cigarette, emphasising new emancipated behaviour and style.

Afanasiy Kulikov was in born in Moscow in 1884 to a peasant family and began apprenticeships at the age of 12, first at a weavers and then at an icon painters. From 1906 to 1912 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting and Architecture where he was taught by Serov and Arkhipov. After the Revolution he was employed in various roles which straddled folk art and propaganda. This collision of styles meant that he was a pioneer in a new genre and founded the Soviet school of lubki. As with Arkhipov, who was also from a peasant background and learnt from icon painters, Kulikov's illustrations have an affinity with traditional Russian art and fabric designs.

Complete set of five chromolithograph postcards, a very good set, no text to reverse (10.6 x 15 cm).