Irakli Toidze's Poster "I Swear to Defeat the Enemy!"

"I Swear to Defeat the Enemy!" is a 1943 poster by Irakli Toidze. A young soldier bends towards a red banner and presses the fringed, tasselled edge of the cloth to his lips. In his hand he holds a helmet with a star, a palisade of bayonets rises behind him, and above him large red letters spell out the words that gave the poster its title.

Irakli Toidze (1902–1985) was born in Tiflis. It was he who in 1941 created the poster "The Motherland Calls!". Toidze was also a book illustrator: in 1941 he received a Stalin Prize for his illustrations to Shota Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in the Panther's Skin".

The poster was published by the Iskusstvo publishing house, Moscow – Leningrad. It is letterpress-printed on paper and small in format, 295 × 210 mm. At the bottom of the sheet are the artist's signature and the imprint.