When Mikhail Gorbachev saw the shift towards independence propelled by democratic movements in the Baltic States, he attempted to forestall events. In 1988 he initiated changes to the Constitution of the USSR designed to make devolution from the Soviet Union more difficult. In response, the Lithuanian reform movement Sajudis announced on the 9th November that it would collect a million signatures in protest against the changes. Over a short period one million eight hundred thousand people signed the petition in Lithuania.

When this political action was announced, a poster was designed overnight and quickly printed. The designer, Aušra Indrašiute, used a photograph of a barrier formed by Soviet soldiers with rubber truncheons (‘bananas’) and gas masks. The photograph had been taken at a meeting organised by the Lithuanian Freedom League that had seen violent clashes between soldiers and protesters. The Lithuanian text on the poster calls for the collection of signatures to the petition. The word ‘constitution’ written in Russian is shown falling on a tilting red plane in reference to the contested constitutional changes. The poster was published in both Lithuanian and Russian.

The poster design was assembled as a collage. The red rectangles and text, composed from re-photographed letters, were pasted on a black background with the photograph of the soldiers overlaid.