Soviet Visuals
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About
Soviet Visuals is a social media project and gimmick account documenting the visual culture of the pre- and post-Soviet Union, sharing pictures of advertisements, clothing, people, propaganda and architecture from the 1910s to the present day. Originally centered around a Twitter account in May 2016, Soviet Visuals expanded to its own website in July that year, as well as Instagram.
History
The account began on Twitter in May 2016. The founder Varia Bortsova, who was born in Moscow in the last years of the Soviet Union and is a longtime collector of artifacts and images from the Soviet era, started Soviet Visuals to share her finds with small groups of friends. On July 26th, 2016, the sovietvisuals.com website was registered. In Bortsova's words, the project's purpose is:
For some, the project embodies the nostalgic aftertaste of a shared past; for others, a sneak peek behind the Iron Curtain and an opportunity to reflect critically on the social and cultural norms of the time.[1]
As of May 2022, Soviet Visuals has almost 400,000 Twitter[2] followers, 280,000 Instagram[3] followers and 827,000 followers on Facebook.[4]
Features
Soviet Visuals posts advertisements, photographs, propaganda and fashion from the era of the Soviet Union between 1922 to 1991, though it also shares examples of Soviet imagery from after its fall.