[ANTI-SOVIET AND ANTI-NAZI UKRAINIAN DP POSTCARDS] "Fun Work, a Folk Song in a New Way" ("Vesela pratsia, narodnia pisen'ka na novyi lad"). Set of seven illustrated Ukrainian postcards, most likely printed in a Ukrainian Displaced Persons Camp in post-war Germany

A striking series of propaganda postcards, most likely issued by Ukrainian nationalists in a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp in post-war Germany. As was recently discovered, the illustrations are quite certainly based on a Ukrainian children's book by Okhrim Sudomora, entitled Fun Work, a Folk Song (Krakow and L'viv, 1944). It seems likely that Sudomora, or another Ukrainian artist, "transformed his harmless child's drawings into powerful anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi propaganda by changing a number of symbols, slogans, and texts to symbolize the Soviet and German regies" (Emil Allakhverdov, "Okhrim Sudomora's Anti-Soviet and Anti-Nazi postcards," Journal of the Rossica Society, no. 168). A series of paired animals thus symbolize both the Nazi and the Soviet regime: two bears thresh peas, whose husks are labeled Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and so forth. Two roosters carry the victims of their "harvest" to a concentration camp. Two crows who have drunk the poison of "National-Bolshevism" are dancing and singing their leader's praises. The final image shows a sparrow sweeping away Nazi symbols against the background of a house in ruins. This, and the fact that the bird wears a helmet with the letter "A", may suggest that the postcards were indeed printed after the end of the war, in the American Zone of Germany. Regardless, as Allakhverdov notes, Sudomora--who had worked as an illustrator in Lviv and Kharkov during and shortly after the war, and about whom little else is known--was arrested for anti-Soviet activities in 1949 and received a twenty-five-year sentence. Whether this means Sudomora himself was involved in this "adaptation" of the images remains unclear. Regardless, the series stands as a remarkably daring attempt to visually capture the Ukrainian view on the two regimes.

As of February 2024, KVK, OCLC appear to show two holdings, in addition to a copy of the 1944 children's book by Sudomora at the University of Toronto. A striking series of propaganda postcards, most likely issued by Ukrainian nationalists in a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp in post-war Germany. As was recently discovered, the illustrations are quite certainly based on a Ukrainian children's book by Okhrim Sudomora, entitled Fun Work, a Folk Song (Krakow and L'viv, 1944). It seems likely that Sudomora, or another Ukrainian artist, "transformed his harmless child's drawings into powerful anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi propaganda by changing a number of symbols, slogans, and texts to symbolize the Soviet and German regies" (Emil Allakhverdov, "Okhrim Sudomora's Anti-Soviet and Anti-Nazi postcards," Journal of the Rossica Society, no. 168). A series of paired animals thus symbolize both the Nazi and the Soviet regime: two bears thresh peas, whose husks are labeled Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and so forth. Two roosters carry the victims of their "harvest" to a concentration camp. Two crows who have drunk the poison of "National-Bolshevism" are dancing and singing their leader's praises. The final image shows a sparrow sweeping away Nazi symbols against the background of a house in ruins. This, and the fact that the bird wears a helmet with the letter "A", may suggest that the postcards were indeed printed after the end of the war, in the American Zone of Germany. Regardless, as Allakhverdov notes, Sudomora--who had worked as an illustrator in Lviv and Kharkov during and shortly after the war, and about whom little else is known--was arrested for anti-Soviet activities in 1949 and received a twenty-five-year sentence. Whether this means Sudomora himself was involved in this "adaptation" of the images remains unclear. Regardless, the series stands as a remarkably daring attempt to visually capture the Ukrainian view on the two regimes.

As of February 2024, KVK, OCLC appear to show two holdings, in addition to a copy of the 1944 children's book by Sudomora at the University of Toronto.