Wolność Bolszewicka (Bolshevik Freedom): Polish Army propaganda poster

Under the headline 'Bolshevik Freedom', a nude, blood-red male figure in round spectacles (identified in secondary sources as Leon Trotsky) sits on a heap of skulls with a dagger dripping blood and a pistol, a skeletal figure of Death at his shoulder, while soldiers club prisoners and a village burns behind him. A boxed text sets what 'the Bolsheviks promised' against what they delivered, so the scene is offered as the consequence of a Bolshevik advance.

Date: 1920
Period: Interwar
Made by: Polish Ministry of Military Affairs, Propaganda Department (M. S. Wojsk. Wydział Propagandy); artist given on Wikimedia Commons as Skabowski
Region: Eastern Europe and Eurasia
Country: Poland
Medium: Poster
Issuer type: State
Regime: Second Polish Republic
Leader: Jozef Pilsudski
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Demonize
Theme: War and the military
Event: Polish Soviet War
Techniques: Fear appeal Name-calling
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 29, 2026
Rights: Public domain (published 1920; Commons: PD-Poland, author died over 70 years ago)
Skabowski (artist), Polish Ministry of Military Affairs, Propaganda Department, 1920; via Wikimedia Commons (reproduced in E. Fuchs, Die Juden in der Karikatur, 1921).

Text on the object

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

WOLNOŚĆ BOLSZEWICKA

OBIECALI BOLSZEWICY:
DAMY WAM POKÓJ
DAMY WAM WOLNOŚĆ
DAMY WAM ZIEMIĘ
PRACĘ i CHLEB —
NIKCZEMNIE OSZUKALI:
ROZPĘTALI WOJNĘ
Z POLSKĄ
ZAMIAST WOLNOŚCI DALI
PIĘŚĆ — ZAMIAST ZIEMI
— REKWIZYCJE
ZAMIAST PRACY — NĘDZĘ
ZAMIAST CHLEBA — GŁÓD

M. S. WOJSK. WYDZIAŁ PROPAGANDY

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

BOLSHEVIK FREEDOM

THE BOLSHEVIKS PROMISED:
WE WILL GIVE YOU PEACE
WE WILL GIVE YOU FREEDOM
WE WILL GIVE YOU LAND
WORK AND BREAD —
THEY BASELY DECEIVED:
THEY UNLEASHED WAR
WITH POLAND
INSTEAD OF FREEDOM THEY GAVE
THE FIST — INSTEAD OF LAND
— REQUISITIONS
INSTEAD OF WORK — MISERY
INSTEAD OF BREAD — HUNGER

M. S. WOJSK. [Ministry of Military Affairs] PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT

The boxed text at lower right is set in small type; a signature or monogram at the bottom right corner of the picture is not legible and is omitted.