Guide to the Ladis Donabed Kristof Soviet Posters Collection 1963-1990


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Table of Contents

• Descriptive Summary
• Information on Use
• Access
• Citation
• Biographical Note
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

The collection is open for research.

Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Kristof, Ladis Donabed. Soviet Posters. Collection, [Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Biographical Note

Ladis “Kris” Donabed Kristof was born on November 26, 1918 in Cernauti, Romania to parents Witold Krzysztofowicz and Maria Zawadzki Krysztofowicz. He studied forestry at the University of Poznan, Poland from 1937-1939, returning to Romania at the outbreak of World War II. Kristof was inducted into the German-allied Romanian army but soon imprisoned for working simultaneously for Polish intelligence; he was released when Romania changed sides in the war in 1944. During Soviet invasions into Romania in the 1940s, Kristof escaped Romania by swimming across the Danube River into Yugoslavia, where he was taken to an internment camp and subjected to forced labor. In 1950 Kristof arrived in Western Europe where he made arrangements to emigrate to the United States, moving to Portland, Oregon in 1952 and eventually becoming a U.S. citizen in 1958. After Kristof earned his BA from Reed College in 1955, he moved to Chicago where he met and married Jane McWilliams in 1956 and had a son, Nicholas, in 1959. Kristof studied political science at the University of Chicago, earning his MA in 1956 and his PhD in 1969 with a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Historical and Political Role of a Nation in Space: A Case Study of Russian and Soviet Concepts, Perceptions, Images, and Identifications." From 1962-1971 Kristof held positions at Temple University, Stanford University, the University of Santa Clara, and the University of Waterloo, Ontario. In 1971 Kristof became professor of political science at Portland State University, earning emeritus status in 1990. Kristof died in 2010 in Yamhill, Oregon, where he and his wife ran a 73-acre farm.

Scope Note

The Ladis Donabed Kristof Collection of Soviet Posters contains fifteen posters produced between 1963 and 1990 in the Soviet Union and Romania. The collection has been organized chronologically. Thirteen posters were produced in the Soviet Union between 1963 and 1971, with text in Russian. Of these, six celebrate and commemorate Lenin, the early twentieth-century Socialist Revolution, and the soldiers who fought in World War II (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8), three are related to the Space Race, celebrating missile defense technology and advances in space exploration (1, 5, 9), two celebrate community events or holidays (May 1st and the “Communist Subbotnik,” a weekly obligatory community-cleanup effort; 11, 12) and two are related to domestic and international politics (in favor of pan-European peace agreements and against single-source procurement, 10, 13). The remaining two posters were produced in Romania in 1990 to promote the new Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party (14, 15). The party was founded in December 1989 in the wake of the 1989 revolution which ended communist rule in Romania. The posters call for members to join the party, state the nine tenets of the party’s creed, and commemorate the fall of the original National Peasant Party with the imprisonment of Iuliu Maniu and Ion Mihalache in 1947. The text is written in Romanian.

Related Resources

Browse finding aids by topic.

Bakwin, Dr. Harry and Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin. Soviet Posters. Collection

Subject Headings

• Kristof, Ladis K. D.
• Posters, Soviet
• Propaganda, Soviet
• Space race--Soviet Union
• Romania--Politics and government--20th century

INVENTORY