Soviet Union, Silver Poltinnik, Coins With Propaganda - 1924 to 1927 - Soviet Union (USSR)

These 90% silver poltinnik coins feature striking imagery in line with the Soviet Union’s complex and widespread practices of propagandism. The obverse side features the USSR state emblem, composed of a hammer and sickle on a globe resting on the rays of the sun, framed by ears of wheat, with a star featured on the top. The reverse side of the coin displays a blacksmith, hard at work, striking an anvil – an ideal figure of the New Soviet Man. Conceptually, the New Soviet Man was an archetype created to embody all of the desired qualities of a citizen of the Soviet Union. He was expected to be hard working, disciplined, selfless and collectivist, and ethnically Soviet, as opposed to ethnically or culturally a member of any of the states making up the USSR. The ideology of art as propaganda, with realism being a reference to an ideal, took hold after the Russian Revolution and during Lenin’s rise to power. Lenin saw art as functional, meant to inspire and model socialist ideals. Stalin e