Creative Review

Emma Tucker

As small and cheaply produced pieces of print, postcards were easily smuggled from person to person, allowing subversive ideas to be shared among a population that was largely illiterate.

It's Nice That

Billie Muraben

Written by Tobie Mathew, a historian specialising in Russian graphic art and propaganda, the book takes in the publishing activity of a diverse set of revolutionaries; who while differing in their views and intentions, were settled on the efficiency of postcards in spreading messages of defiance.

Calvert Journal

Writer and journalist Tobie Mathew’s Greetings from the Barricades explores the history of Russian picture postcards, which opponents of the Tsar came up with as a way of beating censorship and inspiring defiance in the early 20th century.

Russian Art & Culture

Peter Lowe

Greetings from the Barricades: Revolutionary Postcards in Imperial Russia takes as its theme the popularity of the postcard format in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Chronologically, its content ends with the abdication of the Tsar in early 1917 and the apparent fulfilment of many of the reformist hopes that inspired the cards seen in its pages. These were not, in the main, views of places or people intended to be sent simply through the Russian postal system. They were, rather, inexpensive ways of circulating photographs, cartoons, or other images via underground and, occasionally, commercial channels, facilitating the exchange of ideas in a country where the print media was often heavily censored.

Literary Review

Donald Rayfield

Tobie Mathew’s magnificent book testifies to Russia’s unrepeatable two years of free-ranging political satire.

White Review

Ben Eastham

Offers an unexpected illustration of how new communication technologies can upend societies.

Tank

Greetings From The Barricades, written by historian Tobie Mathew and published by Four Corners books, is the first major study of the design, production, and distribution of these cards, collecting over 200 images. Produced by revolutionaries, liberals and economic opportunists (postcards were in high demand and mostly sold rather than freely distributed), the cards are unified by their subtle design and sharp criticism of Tsarist repression.

Spectator

Charlotte Hobson

In this handsomely illustrated book Tobie Mathew makes a case for the lowly postcard’s role in the politicization of pre-revolutionary Russia.

Times Literary Supplement

George Walden

The images reproduced here in glorious profusion are as colourful, powerful and original as you would expect at a moment when Russian art was in the ascendancy.

Jeff Brooks

Greetings From the Barricades, a delight to read, illuminates a hitherto ignored aspect of Russia's revolutionary past.