its focus to center on rapid industrialization and centralized, State control of the economy. By the 1930s, the dissemination of pro-literacy propaganda had slowed throughout the Soviet Union. The bodies for promoting literacy whose establishment Likbez had catalyzed throughout the Soviet Union remained in place, but the push for pro-literacy propaganda was not occurring with the same fervor as it had in the previous decade. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, propaganda became increasingly focused on glorifying the Soviet State, particularly its leader Joseph Stalin. Pro-literacy posters Pro-literacy propaganda posters were a cheap way for the State Publishing House in Leningrad and other Soviet State bodies to reach a wide audience. Moreover, posters could be understood even by illiterate citizens. Propaganda posters had been an important weapon for the Bolsheviks during the Civil War 1918-1921, but they remained in use even after the war's conclusion. After the Civil War and Lenin's institution of the NEP Policy, propaganda posters began increasingly depicting the reforging of Soviet everyday life or byt. Propaganda posters of the 1920s focused on the need to build a new world and way of life after the destruction of the Civil War. While the Bolsheviks were experienced in the use of print media to spread ideas, they recognized that print media could not work to imprint Soviet ideology on the USSR as a whole, since most Soviets were illiterate and could not even understand Soviet staple texts such as those of Marx or Lenin. Due to the prevalence of religion in mass Russian pre-revolutionary culture, Soviet citizens were used to looking at religious icons and learning from the images and symbolism that they saw. Much like the Orthodox Church had done with icons, the Soviet State used propaganda posters to "present symbols in a simple and easily identifiable way, even to barely literate peasants". Pro-literacy propaganda posters sold Communist ideology to the population by portraying the benefits of literacy to individuals, specifically. In the early years of the Soviet Union, particularly in the early-mid 1920s, propaganda posters were used to spread literacy while at the same time indoctrinating the masses in Marxist–Leninist thought. Women and pro-literacy propaganda Women, particularly, became motifs in Soviet pro-literacy propaganda. In pro-literacy propaganda, the Bolshevik commitment to female literacy was used to underscore the party's commitment to improving women's station in Soviet society. Zhenotdel, the Russian Soviet Party's women's section, was a particular force in