Ever since the USSR’s suppression of a revolt in Lithuania, graffiti of a strange monster began appearing…
(If there’s any confusion, this is not based off any real historical even, and is set in 1980 in the AU)
Mini fanart project thing I did of my demogorgon oc, Sasha’s lore. She was raised and trained by the Silver Cat Soviet military organization to be a Russian super-soldier, after being discovered and captured during an expedition into the Upside Down as a baby (in my AU the USSR has developed the tech to create interdimensional gates & wormholes before HNL acquired it).
The graffiti drawings are a compilation of various different Lithuanian artists’ works that were anti-Soviet propaganda made in defiance of the USSR, in wake of the Russian army’s violent suppression of an anti-Soviet riot in Kybartai. Since the riot got way out of the control of local Soviet officials, Sasha was sent in with the Russian troops to kill rioters (it was actually her first combat mission). But naturally, there were many witnesses at the riot who did survive (they witnessed Sasha wearing Russian military gear, coordinating with the Soviet soldiers, using weapons against rioters, and otherwise displaying intelligence and a motivation to work with the USSR, so they knew it wasn’t a random chance occurrence that they were being attacked by a strange monster at the same time as the Russian forces).
Because of this, word began spreading among southwest Lithuania that the Russian army owned a deadly and violent monster that it would send after its enemies, and some rebellious Lithuanian graffiti artists felt prompted to call this out through their art.
A few things about the art itself:
- While Sasha is not literally red in color, the artist of the first drawing, the one based off the ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ classic art piece, chose to depict her as red to definitively associate her with the USSR. It became a trend for the other artists to do the same.
- Many of the artists purposefully chose to depict Sasha attacking women and children to ramp up sympathy and anger, although Sasha actually tried to avoid attacking children as much as possible during the suppression.
- When Sasha showed up at the riot and attacked, the Lithuanians had no clue what she was, so they got creative with their interpretations of what she was supposed to be. It became popular to include elements of Slavic mythology/folklore in the propaganda graffiti, particularly with villain or malignant characters.
- As not all of the artists had actually seen Sasha firsthand, and only heard descriptions of her, or saw other people’s graffiti, some of them began drawing her with eyes. Obviously Sasha doesn’t have eyes, but many of the artists had trouble imagining a humanoid being without eyes, so they gave her them anyways.
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