During wartime, propaganda has a significant role in raising the fighting morale of the nation as well as in stirring up animosity towards the enemy. One of the most famous artists groups taking part in the visual propaganda effort in the Soviet Union during World War II was the Kukryniksy trio, consisting of Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov and Nikolai Sokolov. Their use of symbolic devices derived largely from cultural memory. In this article, with close reading and contextualization, I examine the interplay of the visual and textual devices in Kukryniksy’s work during the “Great Patriotic War” (1941–1945). More specifically, I concentrate on the political cartoons with non-human animals in them. The animal symbols vary from ones evoking fear and hatred to ones that humiliate and belittle.

Keywords: animal symbolism, enemy depictions, Great Patriotic War, Kukryniksy, political cartoons, Pravda, propaganda, World War II, Soviet Union