On Soviet Scales (1949), Berryman's hammer-and-sickle balance

On Soviet Scales is a Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star, dated 9 February 1949. A gloved fist holds a hammer and sickle shaped into a balance; a cross labeled CHRISTIANITY hangs from one pan, and a smoking pistol labeled POLICE STATE lies below. NAID 5743144.

The drawing

Berryman built the scale out of the Soviet emblem. In the archive's description, a gloved fist grips a hammer whose head and handle form the balance, with a sickle-shaped beam. A cross labeled CHRISTIANITY hangs on a chain from one pan. Below lies a pistol labeled POLICE STATE, with smoke rising from the barrel. The cartoon carries three words and a signature.

CHRISTIANITY

POLICE STATE

JIM BERRYMAN

The argument

The archive tags the cartoon as a fear appeal and reads it as a symbolic equation: on Soviet scales, Christianity is weighed and answered with force. The smoking gun is the fear image, and the emblem of the state is literally the instrument doing the weighing.

The point the cartoon makes, that a regime which claims power over conscience will answer faith with police, is one a defender of the First Amendment can recognize. What the cartoon does not do is name an event, a country, a church, or a victim. Nor does the archive's record tie it to a particular case.

Press, not state

This is a private newspaper cartoon. The Washington Evening Star printed it, and the copy survives in a Senate collection at the National Archives. That makes it a useful contrast with the government's own anti-communist posters printed for audiences abroad, such as the Thai sheet Communism Destroys Religion of 1954, which makes a similar charge with photographs and a specific claim. The U.S. Information Agency hub covers that government output.

Also on this site, Berryman's Back to Normalcy of 1945 is a gentle joke about a family car trip.