The revolutionary design of communist currencies | CNN

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A new British Museum exhibition, "The Currency of Communism," celebrates the centenary of Russia's October Revolution with a display of banknotes and posters from socialist states. Dating back to 1980, this Chinese note is among the newest items in the collection. It depicts the people who the government hoped would spearhead the development of modern China: an intellectual, a farmer and an industrial worker. "Intellectuals were treated with a great deal of suspicion during the cultural revolution of '66 to '76, so it's interesting to see them included, almost as a conciliatory gesture," said curator Thomas Hockenhull.

Courtesy The British Museum

The new exhibition also features a variety of propaganda posters, such as this one from Azerbaijan (then part of the USSR) shows the supposed benefits of "sberkassa," the financial institution that stored citizens' savings. "This is where all the sberkassa contributions go," reads the caption, as a woman is shown what can be achieved by putting savings into the state bank. The scene depicts a collective farm. "Very representative of lots of poster campaigns in the 1930s and 1940s," according to Hockenhull.

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"Strengthen the power of the socialist state with your labor," reads this poster from the USSR. Hockenhall describes the depiction of a woman in a wheat field with a gold medal as "a slight irony as no worker would wear such a thing in the middle of a field during harvest season."

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This banknote from Somalia was designed to empower women and show them the things they could achieve through communism, such as finding work and being part of the military. "The image of the woman holding a shovel, a rifle and a baby at the same time might be too optimistic though," said Hockenhull.

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The woman pictured on this banknote is Clara Zetkin, a German Marxist who organized the first International Women's Day in 1911.

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This note features a portrait of Arif Heralić, a furnace worker whose photograph appeared in a newspaper in 1955. Heralić became a national hero when the image was used on a banknote, though he died penniless in 1971.

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An Albanian note depicts a farming scene and a trailer overloaded with crops. "The goal is to show the latest technologies and the collective farming operations, to convince the urban citizen that collectivization is both desirable and necessary," said Hockenhull.

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The foundry is a common motif in socialist art, often acting as a metaphor for the forging of the communism state.

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South Yemen's currency was not updated after it became communist in 1967, so designs still carried earlier images of a boat with the capital Aden in the background.

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"Keep the money in the savings bank," instructs this poster, highlighting the virtues of the "sberkassa," the financial institution that stored citizens' savings. "Contributions to sberkassa will support the reconstruction and development of national economy in the USSR," reads the caption at the top of the page, which also shows a savings account book. According to Hockenhull: "This shows not what the state can do for you, but what you can do for the state. Putting money in a savings account contributes to the development of the people's economy."

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This medal was issued to a female machine builder in Donetsk, Ukraine (then part of the USSR). It was a highly coveted award, with recipients of all three classes given a wide range of benefits, including a 15% pension increase, free public transport, a free annual pass to a sanatorium and a free first-class roundtrip flight every year.

CNN —

The British Museum explores the history and design of communist banknotes in its latest exhibition, open this week. But the show’s title, “The Currency of Communism,” is – in theory – a contradiction in terms, according to curator Thomas Hockenhull.

“Under full communism, or Marxist theory, there should be no money,” he said in a phone interview.

“It’s a social construct, therefore it should not exist – and yet we have the material evidence in front of us, currencies from all these countries that never succeed in eliminating money from their economies.”

Since the October Revolution of 1917, more than 20 countries have adopted some form of communism – so why did none of them abolish money?

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This banknote from Somalia was designed to empower women and show them the things they could achieve through communism, such as finding work and being part of the military.

“The answer is that it was too difficult: It’s impossible to interact with capitalist states without some form of monetary exchange,” said Hockenhull.

Instead of eliminating money altogether, which may have caused economic chaos, communist states pursued a different approach: “The currency was symbolically devalued, to give citizens an indication that they should not value monetary wealth, but other things such as social interaction and access to art and culture.”

This move brought about a transformation. Stripped of value, money instead carried a message: “It became an organ of state propaganda, a visual representation of the state’s aspirations, and easily the most circulated one,” said Hockenhull.

While banknotes’ designs were heavy with classic socialist symbols such as workers, foundries and large infrastructure projects, more specific messages were relayed through posters and public ads, which also form part of the British Museum’s exhibition.

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"Saving Bit by Bit, We'll (Be Able To) Buy," USSR, 1955.

One poster from the USSR shows a family gathered around a piano, along with the message that saving money “bit by bit” was the only way to buy an expensive item, as there was virtually no access to consumer credit at the time.

The iconography can be taken to comical extremes, such as a Somalian banknote – designed to empower women – which shows a woman holding a shovel, a gun and a baby simultaneously. But for Hockenhull, the items on display share one common trait: “The images on the notes are startlingly beautiful,” he said.

“They’re very aspirational, they show the kind of idealized state that the social government wanted to build.”

The Currency of Communism is at London’s British Museum from 19 October 2017 to 18 March 2018.