Soviet-era health campaigns relied heavily on posters. Soviet-era health posters can be viewed as social advertising, aiming to attract interest and to motivate behavior change. Health-related posters from major Russian and US collections were analyzed in terms of their themes and the types of appeals used. These posters, promoting cleanliness and better infant and child care and attacking smoking and drunkenness, used a variety of appeals, including use of statistics and graphs, testimonials, appeals to authority, appeals to fight the enemy, and bandwagon, rational and shame appeals. The Institute for Health Education, founded in Moscow in 1928, played a leading role in creating and distributing health posters. The process of identifying themes, selecting artists, reviewing and pretesting posters, and undergoing censorship review is described.
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