Projecting Morality: Diapositives from Soviet 1982–1984 Propaganda Aid Kits

The article is dedicated to a close study of two kits of diapositives (slides) that were produced in 1983 and 1984 by Plakat, a Soviet state-owned publishing house, and were meant to be used as a visual aid within the infrastructure of political education, addressing a vast audience, including propagandists. The article combines close analysis of slides to reveal the particular visual and textual language of this sort of material, the affordances of the medium and the medial material specificity, placing all of the above against the backdrop of late Soviet mass domestic and institutional use of diapositives. Authors pay special attention to the ways in which the diapositives project the state norms of moral conduct and demands for self-discipline. Drawing upon printed press, institutional and ego documents, the text problematizes the use and usefulness of these slide kits within the demise of state propaganda and initiatives for its intensification.