THE POSTERS OF GLASNOST AND PERESTROIKA <i> selected by Victor Litvinov (Penguin: $19.95)</i>

Posters have been an important medium for the dissemination of political ideas in the Soviet Union since before the Bolshevik Revolution. Under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, the pseudo-heroic figures of social realist art have given way to sophisticated, imaginative graphics. The eye of a paid informer peers through the vent of an ink-stained pen point in a denunciation of previous, repressive regimes; spoons encircle a dish of caviar, like sperm cells surrounding an ovum, in a poster warning of the dangers of overfishing the Caspian Sea.

Many of these designs seem very Western, including their warnings about the dangers of pollution, alcoholism, etc., but the most poignant image in the collection is an evocation of the thousands of people that Stalin exiled to Siberia, who form a ghostly train that fades into the distance. A valuable book for graphic artists and students of political science.