Soviet agit-trains

1919

Footage of the Bolshevik agitation trains that carried painters, printing presses, poets and film crews into the countryside during the civil war years, with Dziga Vertov visible among them. The technique is delivery: for a largely illiterate rural audience the message had to arrive physically, as painted carriages, posters, leaflets and film shows put on from the train itself. It made the new state visible in places where it otherwise had no presence.