In Holan’s post-War poetic output, the cycle The Red Army Men (1947) enjoyshigh critical acclaim while the trio of his other works Thanks to the Soviet Union,A Memorial Service, and To You is regarded as a crude exercise in propaganda. Themain reason for this evaluative difference, my paper argues, is that the genre of thecycle enables the author to disseminate an ideological message similar to that of theunappreciated trio in a more subtle, less ostentatious manner. The first part of theessay analyzes the various techniques of portraiture employed by Holan to representordinary Russian soldiers (prosopopeia and ethopoeia). In the second part theideological potential of the genre is discussed. Since portrait by definition mustdepict an actual human subject, the very selection of the model and his/her featuresembroils such a work in a social reality and reflects the author’s attitude toward it.This worldview, however, is not added to the text mechanically, from without, butcomprises an integral part of the very mimetic apparatus that generates its overallmeaning.