Content note: Soviet drawing of a wrecker, NEPman and kulak as caricatures blown away by Stalin's pipe smoke. This object is shown as it was published. Why

Stalin's Pipe (Trubka Stalina)

A one-sheet drawing of Stalin in profile smoking a pipe, with three small caricatured men tumbling in the smoke, each tagged with a one-word label: 'wrecker', 'NEPman', 'kulak'. Three different groups blamed for the plan's difficulties are reduced to labels and blown away by a single breath, which is the name-calling and scapegoating tell.

Date: 1930
Period: Interwar
Made by: State Publishing House (Gosizdat), Moscow and Leningrad; drawing by Viktor Deni
Region: Eastern Europe and Eurasia
Country: Soviet Union
Medium: Cartoon
Issuer type: State
Regime: Soviet Union
Leader: Joseph Stalin
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Demonize
Themes: Economy and finance, Security and surveillance
Event: First Five Year Plan
Techniques: Name-calling Scapegoating
Regime: Soviet Union under Stalin
Leader: Joseph Stalin
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
Rights: Public domain (published 1930, before 1931; artist d. 1946)
Viktor Deni, 1930. Wikimedia Commons ({{PD-Russia}}); public domain in the U.S. as published before 1931.

Text on the object

Original (Russian) · read from the image, not independently checked

вредитель
непач
кулак

„Трубка Сталина“

ДЕНИ 30 г.

ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО
Москва 1930 Ленинград

Цена 15 коп.

[illegible: censor, order and print-run numbers in small type at lower left]
Типо-литогр. Госиздата «Красный пролетарий». Москва, Краснопролетарская ул., дом № 16.
[illegible: library stamp at lower right]

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

wrecker
NEPman
kulak

'Stalin's Pipe'

DENI 30

STATE PUBLISHING HOUSE
Moscow 1930 Leningrad

Price 15 kop.

[illegible]
Printed at the State Publishing House's 'Krasny proletary' litho-typography, Moscow, Krasnoproletarskaya street, no. 16.
[illegible]

The catalogue and print-run numbers are too small to read reliably at 960 pixels wide and are left out. 'Nepach' is the colloquial form of NEPman.