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"He is the First to Open the Way to the Stars!" (1971) by Oleg Mikhailovich Savostyuk and Boris Alexandrovich Uspensky is a calculated response to the American Moon landing of 1969. This silkscreen poster deliberately refocuses attention on Yuri Gagarin's pioneering 1961 spaceflight, demonstrating how the USSR sought to maintain its narrative of space leadership to maintain ideological dominance in the Space Race.
At its heart, a crimson star contains Gagarin's portrait wearing a helmet. From this central motif, concentric blue circles create a tunnel-like vortex, leading the eye through the depths of space to a blue globe where a map of the Soviet Union glows in red. This dynamic arrangement employs classic Constructivist design principles, using a restricted palette of deep blues and vibrant reds to maximum effect. The typography, incorporating the hammer and sickle emblem, anchors the upper left corner with modernist angular letterforms that emphasise the message's revolutionary character.
The poster's power lies in its emphasis on Soviet "first". This theme appears not only in the text but in the visual metaphor of Gagarin as the origin point of all space exploration, positioned at the source of an expanding cosmic vortex. The red star, transformed into a portal through which humanity enters space, reinforces the message that Soviet ideology opened the gateway to the cosmos. The concentric circles emanating from Gagarin's portrait suggest how this initial triumph continues to ripple through history, implicitly diminishing subsequent achievements by other nations as merely following the Soviet path.
Savostyuk (1927-2021) and Uspensky (1927-2005) were both leading figures in Soviet propaganda. Following their education at the Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov, they produced numerous iconic works that helped define Soviet visual culture during the Cold War well into the 1980s. Both were awarded the title of People's Artists of the USSR and their works are in the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian State Library, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
