Greeks in the Soviet Imagination: The Case of the Magazine Crocodile

• In Event: Not Quite the Blond Savior: Greeks and the Russian / Soviet Empire

Abstract

The paper explores how Greece and the Greeks were represented on the pages of the main Soviet party venue of political satire, the magazine Crocodile (1920-1987). Crocodile, preoccupied with international politics, included cartoons on Greece and Greeks more often than one would expect. The cartoons in the magazine represent Greece as the southern other, a brotherly nation, or a puppet of the West. They exhibited the Soviets’ ambiguity towards Greece, oscillating with the turns of Greece’s turbulent modern history.

Author

• Nataliya Karageorgos, Wesleyan U