The Discourse of Visual Propaganda
Visual propaganda played an enormous role in the history of the twentieth century. It addressed mostly subaltern masses in imperial centres and colonies of great powers, including the vast territories in the east and south of the former Russian Empire. Posters created for (and with the assistance of) Muslims between the two world wars in the Soviet Orient (including the Crimea, Volga region, Urals, and Siberia, on the Caucasus and in Central Asia) represent a still poorly studied layer in the history of Soviet propaganda. They include an enormous body of texts written in different Oriental languages in Arabic, modified Latin and later Cyrillic scripts.
So far, the posters have been studied primarily in the context of art history. However, visual propaganda is critical for cultural history as well. In this lecture, Vladimir Bobrovnikov will discuss the posters’ language, relation to public policy, cultural background, in other words – the discourse of propaganda putting it in a changing historical context of the interwar Soviet Orient. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between knowledge and power, the role of different social actors in the state visual propaganda, its perception and rejection by the Soviet Muslim believers, similarities between the Soviet, Western and Nazi visual propaganda related to the religion.
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