[MAYAKOVSKY'S WORK FOR ADVERTISING] Izvestiya. #175 (August 2nd, 1924)

Moscow: Krasnyi mayak, 1924. 8 pp.: ill. 65x54 cm. Very good. A very fragile newspaper with tears of the extremities and spine, ink stamp of the non-existing library (Lenin's institute).

An extremely rare survival of the time. Page 8 with advertisements including an illustrated ad for ABC with poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930). Mayakovsky started to work in advertising in 1922 and continued till his death. The greatest number of ad texts created by him falls on period from 1923 to 1925. He wrote texts for lea ets, newspaper ads, advertising posters, candy, wrappers, cookie boxes, etc. His views on Soviet advertising, to which he attached great agitational and political signi cance, Mayakovsky expounded in the article of 1923 'Agitation and Advertising': ''We know perfectly the power of agitation. In every military victory, in every economic success, nine tens comes from the skill and strength of our agitation... Advertising is industrial, commercial agitation... We must not abandon this weapon, this agitation of trade in the hands of the NEPman, in the hands of a bourgeois foreigner''. Mayakovsky insisted that the poet should work on advertising in full force of his talent. The work on collecting advertising texts by Mayakovsky presents great dif culties. Literary bibliography of them was not conducted, almost all of them were published anonymously. Still not found some texts about the existence of which there is information.

The promoted ABC (titled ''From the Village. ABC'') was the most popular news textbook with a nes alphabet and letters which were eliminated after 1918. The ABC was is made by the method of whole words, a new trend in pedagogy, popular before the 1930s.