A Caricature as a Mean of Visualization of the Nazi Editorial Policy and an Anti-Bolshevik Ideological Weapon
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Date
2019-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi state university, Faculty of social and political sciences
Abstract
Our presentation for the conference deals with a topical issue. It focuses on the importance of the political caricature and its propagandistic function. A caricature plays a major role in informing the public and understanding topical socio-political problems critically. The ideological- political intensions of satirical drawings emotionally illustrate an image of a particular epoch. This form of self-expression is an effective weapon for an author to expose shortcomings of their time. It almost acquired a function of a documentary source in the totalitarian governance, when through a visual message it was possible to say anything symbolically, sarcastically or sometimes enigmatically what was prohibited and punishable.
The sarcastic language acquired a special meaning during the Second World War when an artist who was critical to the Soviet system gave it a function of an effective weapon of a denunciator and fighter against it. This is clearly demonstrated by the cases of detainees charged with anti- soviet activities during the Second World War and the following period. We have studied them within the grant project “Bolshevism and Georgian Literature since the Beginning of the Second World War until the CPUS
20th Conference (1941-1956)” financed by Shota Rustaveli National
Science Foundation.
Based on the materials found in the Archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, we present the newspaper activities of those Georgian cartoonists, who fought on the side of Nazi Germany in order to free Georgia from the Bolsheviks. With the efforts of Georgian publicists and legionnaires gathered around the Nazi newspaper “Georgia” published in Berlin, the Anti-Stalin Campaign was widely disseminated aiming to free the homeland from the Bolshevik tyranny with the help of Nazi Germany.
In the paper we present the exposing style of Georgian cartoonists on the basis of the analysis of the samples published in the newspaper “Georgia”. Despite the apologia of German Nazism, the visual material adapted to the editorial policy hid the idea of fighting for the independence of the homeland. In those propagandistic messages declared as visual narratives, the brutality of the Stalinist regime and the wish to fight against it were clearly seen.
We have used “Four Theories of the Press” by famous American media researchers Fred. S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, Wilbur Schramm, as well as William Hachten’s revolutionary concept of the press as a theoretical framework of the research. We have chosen the connotational semiotic analysis as a research method. In this way, the purpose of the use of the non-verbal semiotic system is better illustrated that aims to strengthen the messages delivered through the verbal code. In the end, reading the allegorical truth of the caricatures using this methodology, enables us to clearly show the picture of the epoch and to expose the violent attitudes of the Soviet regime.
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Keywords
Caricature, The Nazi newspaper “Georgia”, Bolshevism, Anti- Stalin campaign, კარიკატურა, ნაცისტური გაზეთი"საქართველო", ბოლშევიზმი, ანტისტალინური პროპაგანდა