Content note: Graphic atrocity imagery: a blood-covered soldier with a knife menaces women and a child (Polish anti-Bolshevik poster, 1920). This object is shown as it was published. Why
Bolszewicy mordują bezbronne kobiety! (The Bolsheviks Murder Defenceless Women!)
A colour lithograph shows a bearded soldier in a red-starred cap, a knife between his teeth and a bloodied blade in his hand, advancing on two women and a child in front of a burning building. The headline asserts as fact that Bolsheviks murder defenceless women; the threatened women and child are the staged harm of the fear appeal, and the snarling, blood-covered figure is the loaded label made visible.
- Date
- 1920
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Polish Polish-Soviet War poster (sponsor not named on the sheet); signed lithograph printed in Lwów
- Country
- Poland
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- Second Polish Republic
- Leader
- Jozef Pilsudski
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Event
- Polish Soviet War
- Techniques
- Fear appealName-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (item from Polona, National Library of Poland), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (Polish poster of 1920, published before 1931; Commons: PD-anon-70-EU, author unknown)
Unknown artist; Polona (National Library of Poland), via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
BOLSZEWICY MORDUJĄ BEZBRONNE KOBIETY! [signature, illegible] 20 LITOGRAFIA A. [illegible], LWÓW
THE BOLSHEVIKS MURDER DEFENCELESS WOMEN! [signature, illegible] 20 LITHOGRAPHY A. [illegible], LWÓW
Words in the headline are separated by raised dots on the sheet. The vertical imprint at lower right is very small and the surname is not reliably legible; the year in the signature is faint. Library shelf mark at top right omitted.
