THE PLATE ROOM

01 Plates

02 The Soviet Wall

State poster art from the first Soviet decades, when the medium was doing work no other medium could: a population that was majority illiterate in 1917 was being addressed by a government that needed it to understand a programme. The results are not decoration. Each of these is an argument from one of the twenty files upstairs, cut down until it could be read at a distance by someone who could not read.

The interesting thing about the sequence is how quickly it turns. The 1919 and 1925 plates argue for a world revolution; by 1929 the same presses are arguing for a production target, and by 1930 they are producing a face. Annex B covers what the politics of that turn cost.

03 The Chinese Wall

The Chinese material sits differently, because the Cultural Revolution's characteristic medium was not the printed state poster but the dazibao — the big-character poster, handwritten, put up by anyone, and aimed at a named person. It is the only mass propaganda form in this archive that ordinary people produced themselves rather than received, which is exactly what made it uncontrollable. FILE 12 files the consequences; Annex F files the book that travelled beside it.

04 Moving Agitprop

Short-form edits made and circulated by the movement's own accounts. The archive files them as artefacts of how the tradition presents itself now, in the medium it actually reaches people through, which is the same reason FILE 10 filed the poster and the newsreel.

05 Provenance

The clips in §02 were made and posted by other people. They are reproduced here as archive material, unaltered except for re-encoding to a smaller file size, and the archive claims no authorship of any of them. If you made one of these and want it removed or credited differently, the repository is public and an issue or a message will do it — see the source.

Plates in §01 are a mix of photographs of public monuments, historical posters and contemporary murals. The portraits used throughout the twenty files upstairs are hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under their own licences and are not stored here.

The Soviet and Chinese walls in §02 and §03 are vendored from Wikimedia Commons and re-encoded down to web size. Every one is public domain, CC0 or CC-licensed; the CC BY and CC BY-SA files carry an attribution requirement, so the credit is printed here rather than buried in the repository. Each title links to the Commons file page and its full licence terms.

Soviet plates.

• against the kulak and the speculator — a year before collectivisation turned this into policy — Поманский Николай Николаевич (1887−1935) — Public domain
• against capitalist war, the "yellow" Second International and the League — the 1914 quarrel, still live — Unknown/uncredited artist. No known copyright restrictions. — CC BY-SA 4.0
• the continuous working week — the calendar itself rewritten for production — Власов Сергей Адрианович (1898-1942) — Public domain
• Deni, "Stalin's Pipe" — the cult arriving before the purges — Viktor Deni — Public domain
• Deni and Bedny, "Enemies of the Five-Year Plan" — the caricature as an instrument of policy — Viktor Deni (Виктор Николаевич Дени, 1893–1946) and Demyan Bedny (Демья́н Бе́дный, 1883–1945). No known copyright restrictions. — CC BY-SA 4.0
• Lissitzky, "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge" — the civil war reduced to two shapes — El Lissitzky — Public domain
• "Long live the international proletarian revolution" — test 4, printed as a wall — Stepan Mukharsky — Public domain
• "Peasant woman! Be ready to leave the old life for the new" — the campaign FILE 09 argues about — Unknown/uncredited artist.No known copyright restrictions. — CC BY-SA 4.0
• twelve years of October: the slogan that ends the Manifesto, issued as state art — Unknown artist. No known copyright restrictions. — CC BY-SA 4.0
• Laws of the Young Pioneers — formation begins at nine years old — Unknown/uncredited artist.No known copyright restrictions. — CC BY-SA 4.0

Chinese plates.

• the internationalist saint of chapter 18, and China's most reproduced foreigner — Anonymous (Life time: Unknown) — Public domain
• "Bombard the Headquarters" — Mao's own dazibao, and the start of FILE 12's civil war — 毛泽东 — Public domain
• the portrait as the organising centre of the image — Wilfredor — Public domain
• Mao and Lin Biao review the Red Guards — the men on either side of the Red Book's foreword — 《人民画报》 — Public domain
• dazibao at Peking University — mass criticism as a paper medium — 人民画报 — Public domain
• "All reactionaries are paper tigers" — chapter 6, the formula that travelled — Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT — CC BY 2.0
• the book copied back out onto the wall it came from — Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT — CC BY 2.0
• "Serve the people" — chapter 17, printed at wall scale — Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT — CC BY 2.0
• "Sweep away all monsters and demons" — the Cultural Revolution's opening instruction — 《人民画报》 — Public domain
• "The working class must lead in everything" — test 2, stated as a directive — Unknown author — Public domain

Party and union marks.

• American Communist Party — party emblem — Unknown author — Public domain
• Confederación Nacional del Trabajo — union emblem — Oliver.kamer — Public domain
• CNT–FAI — the red and black diagonal — Confederación Nacional del TrabajoMartufellon (vector) — CC0
• Communist Party USA — party emblem — Michaelwuzthere — CC BY-SA 3.0
• Democratic Socialists of America — official logo — JobobKabob — CC BY 4.0
• Industrial Workers of the World — union emblem — Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 4.0

Dossier plates. The plates in the twenty file dossiers, by file.

• CNT-FAI — "Comrade, work and fight for the revolution" — anarcho-communism — CNT-FAI — Public domain
• the column commander, dead at the Madrid front in November 1936 — anarcho-communism — Cassowary Colorizations/Joel Bellviure — CC BY 2.0
• Makhno's insurgents — the other army that fought the Whites, then the Reds — anarcho-communism — various artists; uploaded by https://www.youtube.com/user/Rossiya582/ — Public domain
• the refusal of work, as a political programme — autonomism — Pmk58 — CC BY-SA 3.0
• the Hot Autumn, the cycle the theory was written from — autonomism — Unknown author — Public domain
• Pirelli — the Hot Autumn, organised from the shop floor outward — autonomism — Archivio De Bellis/Fotogramma — Public domain
• Paterson silk strike — the union that staged its own strike as theatre — de-leonism — Robert Edmond Jones — Public domain
• Lawrence — "Bread and Roses", and the IWW's high-water mark — de-leonism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the Pyramid of the Capitalist System — the whole argument in one image — de-leonism — Artist not credited. Published by International Pub. Co., Cleveland, Ohio. — Public domain
• the visit that restarted the programme after 1989 — dengism — Luafuohue — CC BY-SA 3.0
• reform and opening, curated by the state that carried it out — dengism — Woo King Tam gwiam — CC BY-SA 4.0
• Berlinguer — a third of Italy voting communist, and the historic compromise — eurocommunism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the man who wrote Eurocommunism and the State, and buried Leninism in it — eurocommunism — Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC — CC BY-SA 3.0
• the party as a mass culture, not a cadre — eurocommunism — Nemo — CC BY-SA 3.0
• Guevara, five months after Havana — guevarism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the column that proved the theory once — guevarism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the transmitter — the foco's other weapon — guevarism — Maxence — CC BY 2.5
• roughly 170,000 of them, against an invasion that never came — hoxhaism — David.r.1929 — CC BY-SA 4.0
• the last European state to call itself Stalinist, and mean it — hoxhaism — Post of Albania — Public domain
• siege socialism, poured in concrete — hoxhaism — Calistemon — CC BY-SA 4.0
• the collective as a rendering medium — juche — Kok Leng Yeo from Singapore, Singapore — CC BY 2.0
• the Juche Tower — the idea given a plinth — juche — Bjørn Christian Tørrissen — CC BY-SA 3.0
• the succession, in bronze — juche — Romain75020 — CC BY-SA 3.0
• the Italian left, and the last man to argue with Lenin and not recant — left-communism — Isaak Brodsky — Public domain
• the KAPD — Germany's council communists, expelled within two years — left-communism — Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands — Public domain
• Kronstadt — the sailors of 1917, put down by the state they made — left-communism — Unknown author — Public domain
• Iskra — "from a spark, a flame"; the paper Lenin argued builds the party — leninism — Lenin — Public domain
• after the speech — the crowd the theory was addressed to — leninism — Grigory Petrovich Goldstein — Public domain
• the morning after the Winter Palace — leninism — Pyotr Novitsky — Public domain
• Luxemburg at the congress, arguing the mass strike — luxemburgism — Herbert Hoffmann — Public domain
• Die Rote Fahne — the paper she edited until the month she was murdered — luxemburgism — Die Rote Fahne — Public domain
• armed workers in Berlin — the rising Luxemburg opposed and then joined — luxemburgism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the backyard furnace — steel that was not steel, on a target that was not real — maoism — Unknown author — Public domain
• "The Red Army fears not the trials of a distant march" — maoism — Daderot — Public domain
• the base area where the doctrine was actually written — maoism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the Alexanderplatz — the revolution the Manifesto arrived just too late to shape — marxism — A. Klaus — Public domain
• the founding of the First International — Marx writes the inaugural address — marxism — Unknown author — Public domain
• Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei — twenty-three pages, printed in London — marxism — Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels — Public domain
• Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin — apostolic succession, printed — marxism-leninism — Gustavs Klucis — Public domain
• "Under the banner of Lenin for socialist construction" — marxism-leninism — Gustavs Klucis — Public domain
• the First Comintern Congress — where the Twenty-One Conditions came from — marxism-leninism — Yakov Vladimirovich Steinberg — Public domain
• Kautsky's journal — where the orthodoxy was actually adjudicated — orthodox-marxism — Friedrich Engels / Karl Kautsky — Public domain
• the congress protocol — the programme that defined orthodoxy for a generation — orthodox-marxism — unattributed — Public domain
• the congress that resolved against the coming war — orthodox-marxism — Unknown author — Public domain
• Trotskyist, then something else entirely — posadism — Unknown author — Public domain
• Nehru, Nasser, Tito — the third position, institutionalised — titoism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the Partisan command — the army that made the split possible — titoism — Unknown author — Public domain
• AVNOJ — a state declared in the middle of an occupation — titoism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the Fourth International — founded in a suburb of Paris, in a single day — trotskyism — Unknown author — Public domain
• the last address, walls and watchtower included — trotskyism — This picture has been taken by Oleg Yunakov. Contact e-mail: yunakovgmail.com. Image can be used in accordance with the terms of the СС-BY-SA license. Other photos can be seen here. — CC BY-SA 4.0
• the desk, left as it was on 20 August 1940 — trotskyism — Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada — CC BY-SA 2.0
• Godin's Familistere, a phalanstery that actually housed people for a century — utopian-socialism — Markus3 (Marc ROUSSEL) — CC BY-SA 3.0
• the social palace as its founder drew it — utopian-socialism — jsmaur — CC BY-SA 2.0
• Owen's model village — the experiment that made him famous and cost him his fortune — utopian-socialism — Peter Ward — CC BY-SA 2.0
• thirty-three notebooks, written under a fascist prison censor — western-marxism — Antonio Gramsci — Public domain
• hegemony worked out in a cell, in a hand deliberately hard to read — western-marxism — Antonio Gramsci — Public domain
• the Atelier Populaire — the moment the theory met a general strike — western-marxism — Unknown author — CC0

A note on the Chinese material, since the archive would rather state a limit than pretend it does not exist: most People's Republic poster art from the 1950s to the 1970s is still in copyright — the PRC term is the life of the author plus fifty years, and many of those artists died after 1976. What is reproduced above is the subset that is genuinely free: press photographs and documents that fall under the PRC's copyright exemptions, and scans released under CC licences. The famous poster art of the period is deliberately absent, and its absence is a licensing fact rather than an editorial judgement.