Imagined Community of Blood: Images of Blood Donation Campaigns in Soviet Lithuania

• In Event: The Look of Socialism: Nagliadnaia Agitatsia across the Post-War USSR and Beyond

Abstract

After the end of World War II and the beginning of the second Soviet occupation, several blood donation campaigns were conducted in Lithuania, the main medium of which, besides the printed press and film, was education through printed images. In this paper I will present these campaigns as seen through newsreels, illustrated magazines, and visual material produced for medical institutions explaining the benefits of blood donation and the specifics of the process.The aim of this paper is to show how these instructional images of blood donation participate in the construction of a new political loyalty and a new political body. In other words, my focus is on the imagined community of, literally, blood in Soviet Lithuania as it was shaped by the medical campaigns.

Author

• Natalija Arlauskaite, Vilnius U (Lithuania)