The funny thing is that in the 1950s, the Soviets definitely worked to project images of modernity, and people were shot for trying to smuggle such images out.

The funny thing is that in the 1950s, the Soviets definitely worked to project images of modernity, and people were shot for trying to smuggle such images out. These days, if you only look at the images concretely, without making use of political abstractions to understand the deep Stalinist repression those people were living under, it seems nostalgic. Am I looking at Russian propaganda? Why or why not?