Who made this Sino-Soviet Propaganda Poster?

Question

Who made this Sino-Soviet Propaganda Poster?
And, why was it made so early?

By the left armpit, there is a signature:

The Who:

I believe this says "ВИКТОР ИВАНОВ" which google says translates to "VIKTOR IVANOV". Unfortunately, this is a very common name - wikipedia has dozens of people with this name.

I think that it might be Viktor Semyonovich Ivanov as a lot of his previous posters have a similar style. Or maybe it is Viktor Ivanovich Ivanov?

Where did the artist work when this poster was created?

The Why / The When:

Google translate tells me that the bottom: "Да здравствует дружба народов СССР и Китая"
Translates to: "Long live the friendship Peoples of the USSR and China"

Mao didn't proclaim the PRC until October 1949, and the Sino-Soviet Friendship treaty wasn't signed until Feburary 14, 1950. The date on the poster is 1949. One would assume that this poster would not be produced until after the treaty had been signed. Perhaps it was ordered prior to the meetings with Mao? What information is available about the production of this, and other early Sino-Soviet friendship propaganda?

Extra Info:

SE user @TonyK did some legwork to provide translation for the text on the poster. I hope it will help someone dig up the answer. TonyK says:

The Cyrillic text reads:

Da zdravstvuyet druzhba narodov SSSR i Kitaya!

meaning "Long live the friendship of the peoples of the USSR and China!"

The Chinese text reads:

中蘇两國人民友誼萬歳 !

In pinyin:

Zhōng-sū liǎng guó rénmín yǒuyì wànsuì!

or "Long live the friendship between the two nations China and the Soviet Union!"

Characters 蘇, 國, 誼, 萬, and 歳 are traditional; only character 两 is simplified. (The remaining four characters were not changed in the Great Simplification.)

Edit 2016 December

I had the opportunity to read through Iconography of Power by Vitoria Bonnell. In it, she describes how the purposes of Soviet posters changed from 1917 to 1953; very fascinating. One of her primary sources for Soviet posters was the Russian State Library, which has a collection of over 400,000 posters.

Perhaps someone with basic Russian reading skills can find it in the online catalog? Here's a search that I did in the catalog; but I can't read!

Answer 1

Soviet Union supported the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War, so since the Mao Zedong's rise to power in 1949 to Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s Sino-soveit relations were quite good. There is no surprise that the Soviet propaganda supported Chinese communist regime and considered them as the closest ally in 1949.

Viktor Semyonovich Ivanov was a Soviet artist who painted propaganda posters. He started painting his posters at the end of the 1930s. It seems that he was a freelance artist in 1949. There were some posters on Sino-Soviet relations among his works. Unfortunately I did not manage to find the poster you have posted in your question neither on some online catalogs of his works nor on Russian State Library's catalog. But here I found the poster which is similar to it. It was painted in 1954. The artist depicted two men in the same style and left the same signature in the bottom right corner.

Answer 2

The poster was actually made in the 1930s to celebrate Soviet-Mongolian friendship, and re-done for USSR-China. I can't seem to send an image here, but will send you a copy if you give me an email address