About Postcolonialism
How do Soviet posters complicate or fit in Postcolonial Studies?
Soviet posters reproduce many visual and discursive patterns associated with classical colonial discourse, while at the same time articulating a distinct Soviet logic. This dual structure explains why the Soviet both fits and complicates postcolonial frameworks.
FIT
From the images and slogans, we can clearly observe the logic of Orientalism. It remains applicable to Soviet posters insofar as the East is coded as backward and Moscow as modern. In Posters #1, #2, and #6, the “East” is depicted as in need of Soviet liberation. These images repeat the visual grammar of Orientalism, directing subjects westward and symbolically guiding ethnic minorities toward the light of Western modernity away from darkness.
In Poster #1, the Muslim women are rendered passive, shadowed, and in need of liberation by the Soviet state positioned as Western and progressive.
Poster #2 presents a rider galloping rapidly toward the West while explicitly framing the “East” as slow, stagnant, and backward. This constitutes a classic imperial/colonial discourse. The bilingual use of Russian and local languages (such as Azerbaijani) reflects colonial linguistic strategies, in which imperial language gradually displaces local ones under the guise of pedagogy. Concepts such as “liberation” and “speed” also function as metaphors through which Soviet modernity exerts control over peripheral regions. As Mignolo argues, there is no modernity without coloniality (Mignolo, 2009).
Poster #6, depicting multiethnic groups visiting Moscow, visualizes a clear center–periphery hierarchy, positioning Moscow as a civilizational center and Central Asia/Caucasus as backward, thereby producing symbolic equality alongside structural inequality. In all the cases mentioned, Soviet ideology fits colonial logics.
COMPLICATE
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At the same time, however, Soviet visual culture also complicates postcolonial frameworks through its distinctive ideological grammar. The posters construct an image of the Soviet as a progressive force through women’s emancipation, modernization, de-racialization, the “Soviet big family,” and socialist internationalism, promoting values of peace, labor, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. These representations function as technologies of political legitimacy, aestheticizing power and masking domination. As Tlostanova argues, “In post-Soviet postcolonialism a more complex intersectionality is at work, where ideological Soviet discourses are superimposed on more straightforward imperial or colonial ones… This specific meaning of mind colonization always works against the background of global coloniality through the discourses of modernity (including socialist ones).” Similarly, David Chioni Moore highlights how the Soviet empire avoided overt racial hierarchies in favor of the rhetoric of brotherhood and internationalism, destabilizing classical postcolonial binaries while maintaining imperial control.
Posters #1 and #7 exemplify the Soviet civilizing mission, particularly through state-led women’s liberation. The Soviet positions itself as a global emancipator, turning feminism into Cold War soft power, enabling the Soviet to perform a self-appointed role as the “global liberator. Gender equality functions less as emancipation than as a technology of governance and ideological export. This constitutes a clear form of colonial feminism, whereby women’s rights are instrumentalized to legitimize imperial rule. Colonial feminism does not liberate women; it uses “liberation” as a language of empire, framing itself as “communism saving Muslim women.” This strategy is similar to British campaigns against sati in India and French unveiling campaigns in Algeria exemplify how women’s bodies became symbolic battlegrounds upon which colonial modernity was staged. What is absent is an explicit representation of colonial violence; instead, legitimacy is constructed through narratives of education, labor, and reform. Many observers therefore perceived Soviet reforms as authentic emancipatory practices rather than colonial instruments. This absence further complicates postcolonial theory.
Posters #6, #8, and #9 visualize the myth of multiethnic “friendship” and the construction of Soviet harmony. Poster #6 constructs the image of the “Soviet big family”: multicultural groups touring Moscow symbolize peace, harmony, and shared access to the imperial center. These representations enforce both symbolic and visual equality and diversity while concealing structural inequalities in political and economic power, and the Soviet concept of Orientalism.
Poster #8, with slogans “Peace, Labor, Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood, Happiness,” constructs the Soviet as a utopian space of universal harmony, universalizing Soviet values and transforming them into moral absolutes as linguistic technologies of domination, masking concrete histories of repression.
Poster #9 similarly uses “Peace! Friendship!” to obscure forced assimilation and cultural repression. Slogans operate as political sedatives, reducing complex power relations to visual harmony. Here, intersectionality operates through superimposed ideological discourses, where modernization, liberation, and unity become the dominant registers through which domination is naturalized.
These ideological deployments of brotherhood function simultaneously as domestic pacification and international propaganda. “Friendship” becomes a discursive smoke screen for inequality, coercive assimilation, and repression. This is precisely why these posters complicate postcolonial frameworks: the Soviet governed through the language of liberation rather than conquest, and through ideological universality rather than explicit racial hierarchy.
This logic mirrors the rhetoric of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which similarly framed imperial domination as Eastern-Asian liberation. Both regimes employed anti-Western rhetoric while naturalizing center–periphery hierarchies through narratives of equality and co-prosperity. Soviet colonialism differs stylistically from British and French empires by avoiding explicit racial hierarchy and overt colonial violence, instead relying on narratives of modernization, internationalism, and liberation. Yet these differences do not negate its colonial character.
Conclusion
Back to the text, I agree that postcolonial studies should foreground the essence of domination rather than be distracted by propaganda that aestheticizes violence. Soviet posters reveal how liberation, modernization, and internationalism can function as instruments of imperial rule, masking center–periphery hierarchies without relying on classic racial binaries. Additionally, I argue it should not be excluded just because it was a “land empire” or socialist risks excusing comparable practices of surveillance, cultural erasure, and violence. To accept that logic would dangerously approximate contemporary justifications of Chinese repression in Xinjiang. Territorial adjacency does not legitimize surveillance, cultural erasure, or genocide.
In conclusion, although the Soviet does not fully align with existing frameworks of traditional colonial models, incorporating the Soviet case enriches postcolonial analysis by extending its analytical range to regimes that legitimize domination through emancipatory rhetoric. It is academically necessary if postcolonial studies is to remain faithful to its core concern with power and subjugation.
