The Swedish-Russian poster war is still going! In march a Swedish law firm specializing in immigration law advertised outside of the Russian embassy in Sweden.
Then, as Sweden began discussing the possibility of joining NATO, these posters appeared outside the Swedish embassy in Moscow outing famous Swedes as Nazi sympathizers. One was even vandalized, to say "sorry" in Swedish.
And now, we have an American uncle Sam character like in James Montgomery Flagg's iconic poster, using Swedish Pippi Longstocking and Finnish Moomin as puppets.
The copy on the poster translates (to the best of my ability) to:
DON'T BE TOYS IN ANOTHER HANDS!
All this will end with stupid fun on a pile of garbage, noise and uproar, as it has been all my life ...
Moscow branch of the Interregional Public Organization
Search Association Our Victory
Now, I don't know who the association Наша Победа is, but it appears to be the same sender as the previous campaign in May, when I could only make out the word "our" at the bottom of the poster. If you search Наша Победа or Ассоциация Наша Победа you'll find all sorts of news about all kinds of organizations doing things since 2015, but I can't find this specific one.
Russians, in general, are having success with their posters spreading on social media recently though, as the one proclaiming "Alaska is ours" which was for a local trailer factory was taken by some to be a threat to the USA.
Pippi Longstocking is a beloved character written by Astrid Lindgren, from Sweden. The Moomins are the central characters in a series of books and a comic strip by Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson, which was ironically originally published in Swedish so we love them just as much as Pippi.
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Tove Jansson has published in Swedish language, but she is fully Finnish. It is just that Swedish is another mother language in Finland (: Swedes just sometimes automatisaatio think that it is Swedish if some Finnish person publish in Swedish 🙄 Have noticed that some Swedish people think that Moomins are for that reason Swedish 🤦🏻♀️ But Tove Jansson had made great publications and drawings also from the Finnish war times for supporting her home country, they could be printed for a response to these posters.
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PermalinkI didn't realize my mention of Tove's first published work being in Swedish was that unclear but I see now how it can be.
Of course, I know she's a Finnish national, and I also about our shared history which means we have Finlandssvenskar/Suomenruotsalaiset residing in both Finland and Sweden, of which Tove Jansson was one as her surname clearly signals. That her work was published in Swedish did help her creation become an immediate hit in Sweden as well. I've never met a Swede that thinks she's a Swedish national, but then my family and my buddies are mainly from Tornedalen and we know what's what. 😉
But Tove's Moomins are a huge part of Swedish lives, we love them just as much as we love everything Astrid Lindgren wrote, so in an odd way it feels like the poster is insulting Swedes twice. Do not mess with the Moomins! 😂 Muumit on pyhiä!
Someone on Twitter brought up your other point too, actually, and reminded me that much of her work was created to ease the anxiety of living in wartime. She said: It’s impossible to target a Moomin character as anything related to war. Tove Jansson would not approve of joining NATO. Tove created the Moomins as a way of escaping the anxiety and horrors caused by World War II. Especially in her story ’The Moomins and the Great Flood’. That's a really good point. But I don't suppose the Russians know that. And like you say, Tove Jansson drew a lot of work for Garm magazine, you could totally run those today only changing the Nazi swastika to a Russian symbol.
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PermalinkI REALLY WANT THIS POSTER - please make it available to buy
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PermalinkThis is such low level propaganda, I'm actually amazed. Thanks for throwing weird stuff like this into the mix and not just your usual million dollar ad campaigns from Droga5.
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PermalinkDrogawho?
Kidding.
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