"Collecting Soviet Posters
Soviet posters are a relatively new area of collecting. Virtually unavailable in the West until Perestroika, they were thoroughly researched by Stephen White in his 1988 monograph The Bolshevik Poster. With the decline of Communism, there is more interest than ever in the images from this bold social experiment.
Although most Soviet posters were issued in editions of 5,000 to 50,000, they are extremely rare today. The primary reason is that most posters - as intended - were posted, and survived only weeks or months. The remainder were generally not recognized as valuable historical documents or collectibles at the time they were printed. They usually were recycled or lost due to the ravages of war or neglect. Others were destroyed for political reasons (it was dangerous to keep images of Trotsky after 1928, for example)."
Copyright 1998 Jim Lapides and Clive Foss (http://www.internationalposter.com/ru-text.cfm)