"Must strike with laughter": "Crocodile" magazine and soviet cartoonists during the cold war (late 1940s - early 1990s)

The article is devoted to the crucial developmental stages of the magazine «Crocodile» in the post-war years. At the end of the 1940s, the magazine, which replicated cartoons, proved to be a popular tool in the conditions of the aggravated confrontation of the former allies. The material and organizational improvement of the magazine's work led to an improvement in the situation of cartoonists, whose status turned out to be close to the status of the nomenclature. At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, the magazine entered a phase of crisis associated with both the peculiarity of the domestic and foreign policy situation, and with the processes that took place inside the cartoonists' workshop. The author concludes that the crisis phenomena in the Soviet agitprop, expressed in the gradual physical and moral decrepitude of the propaganda apparatus, led to the fact that the cartoon ceased to act as an effective tool of influence on public consciousness.

Soviet caricature, CARTOONISTS, Crocodile magazine, soviet ideology, soviet propaganda, cold War