Irakli Toidze. Poster "The Motherland Calls!", 1941

A grey-haired, bareheaded woman with a raised arm is one of the most widespread images of Soviet propaganda. Irakli Toidze created the poster "The Motherland Calls!" in the first days of the Great Patriotic War: the work was finished by the morning of 23 June 1941.

In the catalogue this impression is dated 2 July 1941, with Moscow and Leningrad given as the place of publication, so the sheet belongs to the very first weeks of the war. The woman in the poster is a collective image of a mother calling her sons to help. The image was later repeated in films, on a 1965 postage stamp and on a 1995 coin, and the poster itself is often placed alongside Dmitry Moor's "Have You Volunteered?".

Toidze's name is listed among the poster artists of the war years on the poster collection page of the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia.