The «collective East» on the pages of the magazine «Crocodile» (1922–1932)

The article is devoted to the study of the image of the East as an object of Soviet politics in its economic, ideological, propaganda and cultural aspects on the pages of the Soviet satirical magazine Crocodile in the first decade of its existence – in 1922–1932. The author vividly demonstrates, using a textual narrative and visual sources, the novelty of satirical rhetoric and strategies of satirical journalists in creating a meta–image of the collective East. Using materials on Eastern themes, the authors and editors of the magazine were solving a new task of creating a kind of positive satire, in which criticism of Western politics in its eastern dimension emphasized the image of friendly Asia updated by the changes. And the pre-revolutionary rhetoric of the enemy from the East is being replaced by a new image of the friend from the East, which is fully supported by the USSR. During the period under review, this strategy only formed its own language and image system, but in the future it will confirm its relevance in Soviet propaganda discourse and foreign policy rhetoric.