Postcards from Utopia

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Secretary Generals of totalitarian states in the twentieth century have been highly conscious of the need to present a national image suited to the new political culture they sought to inculcate. In these regimes, state-sanctioned art performed a key function, giving visual dimension to an abstract political ideology. There is a striking similarity between the idealized images from these countries. This book presents about fifty postcards from the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Spain, and China, between 1920 and the 1960s.

While some of the images are of a high aesthetic calibre, others are simply intended to portray a vernacular socialist realism or to cultivate the cult of the leader. Taken together, they form a fascinating look at the art of power and its expression at a time of political upheaval and experiment.

Author Biography

Andrew Roberts is a historian and biographer who has published books on Waterloo, Hitler and Churchill, the Marquis of Salisbury, the Earl of Halifax and the history of English-speaking peoples since 1900 amongst many others. He is an expert on military history and has won many awards for his writing.