Lubok playing cards

Published September 27, 2022 • Updated July 09, 2026

Lubok playing cards designed by Victor M. Sveshnikov. Russia, 1984.

This 36-card pack of playing cards was designed by Victor M. Sveshnikov (1907-1988) and manufactured by the Colour Printing Plant, Saint Petersburg. The Russian title translates as “Playing cards in the style of Russian lubok images”.

The lubok can be described as an "illustrated broadside" or "popular print" characterized by simple graphics and narratives derived from literature, religious stories, and popular tales. It is a form of graphic art in which an artist creates a woodcut, makes prints from it, and then paints them by hand. The name comes from the word luba, meaning the inner part of linden bark, which was used to create the woodcut.

Originally plots for the pictures came mainly from the Bible but over time they depicted satires, folklore, soldiers, battle scenes, mythology, and images of such everyday 19th century Russian life as village scenes, traveling, hunting, domestic, and agrarian activities. Luboks were also used to ridicule the vanity and greed of the upper classes.

Above: Lubok playing cards designed by Victor M. Sveshnikov and manufactured by the Colour Printing Plant, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1984.

Extra scans from Lev Golinkin

Above: extra scans courtesy Lev Golinkin. This deck came with me in my backpack when I was 9 years old and my family became refugees after fleeing USSR. I was allowed to bring a backpack and I had several decks stashed away :)

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By Peter Burnett

United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022

I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.

• Russian Playing Cards

Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.

Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.