In this 1987 cartoon by Bulgarian artist Milen Radev, an engineer operates a wireless remote control to command a towering robot— but the robot's mechanical hands grip puppet strings attached directly to the engineer himself. Who's really in control?
The image appeared in Szpilki (Polish for "Pins"), a satirical magazine founded in 1935 by Zbigniew Mitzner, Erik Lipiński, and Zenon Wasilewski. Its motto: "True virtue is not afraid of criticism."
From the start, the magazine took a left-wing, anti-fascist stance, warning readers in text and drawings about the threat of war. As reported DESA, Many contributors didn't survive — concentration camps, the ghetto, and death claimed their lives during World War II.
Relaunched on March 1, 1945, Szpilki reached a circulation of 100,000 copies. The magazine was suspended during Poland's martial law period in the early 1980s when the government cracked down on the Solidarity movement, which advocated for workers' rights, civil liberties, and social change. It struggled after 1990, closing in 1994.
