WORKERS GUARD


SzDSz (Alliance of Free Democrats)



This poster from the Autumn of 1989 is part of a series of dramatic posters by the Alliance of Free Democrats (see the May 1st poster in this same case) that use strong graphic elements to produce an unsettling feeling about the symbols of the old order. The "Workers Guard" to which it refers was the communist party's armed militia, composed disproportionately of older workers who met at their places of work for drills (or, more frequently in the latter days of the regime, simply meetings or idle chatter) while continuing to draw their wages. As they campaigned to abolish the Workers Guard in the referendum of November 1989, the Free Democrats remind the public that the danger of an authoritarian backlash would not be removed until the party's repressive apparatus was fully disarmed. In the meantime, the false teeth were fangs.