Content note: Derisive caricature of Mao Zedong as a footstool for a Stalin figure. This object is shown as it was published. Why
史太林說「學而時習之，不亦樂乎！」 (Stalin Says: "To Study and Practise in Due Time, Is That Not a Pleasure?"), U.S. cartoon poster
A Chinese-language cartoon headed 'Stalin says'. A Soviet-uniformed figure with a red-star collar tab and hammer-and-sickle armband lounges in a chair whose seat is the back of a bent, grimacing Mao figure in a green uniform, while a gaunt patched peasant in a cap props the chair from behind. Over it runs the Confucian line 'To study and practise in due time, is that not a pleasure?'. The loaded picture (leader as footstool, people as prop) and the borrowed saying do the labelling in place of any argument (name-calling).
- Date
- September 5, 1952
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- U.S. Department of State, International Information and Educational Exchange Program (records later held by the U.S. Information Agency)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Truman Administration
- Leader
- Harry S. Truman
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Event
- Cold War
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (from U.S. National Archives, RG 306, NAID 5730089), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work; Commons PD-USGov, NARA RG 306)
U.S. Department of State / U.S. Information Agency, 1952. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5730089, 306-PPA-190).
Text on the object
史太林說 「學而時習之，不亦樂乎！」 共
Stalin says
"To study and at due times practise it, is that not a pleasure?"
[Gong] ('Communist'/'together')The saying is lettered in two rows read in columns, right to left, top to bottom. One or two glyphs on the peasant's patched shirt are read only as 共 and the rest is illegible; a small artist's mark near the central figure's shoe is illegible. Translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader.
