Long before the Iwo Jima Memorial was unveiled in the US, an illustrator in the USSR found an almost identical way to portray heroic deeds.
One blogger has posted a cover of a popular children’s game which was issued back in 1929, and it bears a striking resemblance to that of the US Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington Ridge Park, Arlington, Virginia.
The cover says “Ninth International Children’s Week”. The narrative behind the game, however, underscores the differences between the two cultures.
“The action is taking place in one of the capitalist countries, where the cruel oppression of workers is going on” the rules say. “The Pioneer organization [Similar to the Scouting organizations of the Western world] is operating illegally and is being watched with great scrutiny.”
“The pioneers set a secret meeting point, where they should gather for the International Children’s Week festivities. Their goal is to secretly get to the meeting point and to hold a tactical discussion.”
“The goal of the fascists and social democrats who are hunting for them is either to disclose their meeting point or to catch more than half of the pioneers.”
The pioneers' victory was illustrated by the raising of the Soviet flag symbolizing their victory.
At the same time, 'capture the flag' was a popular game among US Boy Scouts. However, it lacked the Marxist-Leninist overtones: two teams would have flags that the other side would attempt to capture and bring back to their territory.
Interestingly enough, the US Memorial is also based on a similar picture. Back on February 23, 1945, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosental took his photo of the US Marines and the US Navy corpsman raising the US flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
The photograph was extremely popular, and was reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and came to be regarded in the United States as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war.
