About

Нет!, also known as the No! Poster, is a Soviet Russian anti-alcohol propaganda poster featuring an illustration of a man refusing a drink by making a dismissive gesture towards a hand offering a shot glass, which has been widely photoshopped into humorous messages on the Russian web and elsewhere online.

Origin

In 1954, Russian artist Viktor Ivanovich Govorkov created the propaganda poster as part of an anti-alcohol campaign launched following the death of Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin (shown below, left). It is unclear when the poster became the subject of a photoshop meme. On January 22nd, 2009, the earliest known examples were featured in a post on the Russian Internet news blog Net Lore^[5] (shown below, middle, right).

Spread

On September 25th, 2009, a page about the poster was created on the Internet culture wiki Lurkmore.^[4] On November 16th, 2011, Blogspot^[1] user riowang published a compilation of photoshopped variations of the poster. On May 6th, 2015, Redditor Ididpotato submitted a photoshopped version of the poster in which the man is shown refusing a container of french fries to the /r/Europe^[6] subreddit (shown below). Within two months, the post gained over 860 votes (94% upvoted) and 190 comments.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References