State control of mass media and propaganda

Newspapers: Lenin: censorship

• Lenin moved quickly to stamp on any signs of freedom of the press, viewing newspapers as mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie

• A decree in November 1917 banned all non-socialist newspapers and, by the early 1920s, all non-Bolshevik papers were eliminated

• The printing press was nationalised, with access restricted to those working in the interests of the workers and the Socialist order

• All editors and journalists were employees of the government, members of the Union of Soviet Joumalists and expected to be Party members

• Even within this set-up, the government felt it needed to ensure the press spoke with one voice. Approval from Glavlit, the censorship office, was needed for every article written for publication.

Newspapers: Lenin: different types of papers

• Daily newspapers included Pravda (Truth) and Izvestiya (News)

• Pravda was the newspaper of the Communist Party, while Izvestiya was the paper of the government; both were used as vehicles of propaganda, highlighting the achievements of the government and socialism

• Their purpose was to act as an instrument of propaganda, agitation and organisation

• The guiding principle of the Soviet press was partinost (party-mindedness)

• To ensure a high readership, these papers were cheap to buy and widely available

• Copies were posted on boards along pavements and at workplaces, enabling people to read them for free

• In the absence of non-government papers, Pravda and Isvestiya were mass newspapers: Pravda had a circulation of 10.7 million in 1983. The paper of the government-controlled trade unions, Trud (Labour), was even more popular, with a print run of 13.5 million.

Newspapers: Stalin

• Newspapers carried endless details about the achievements of socialism, with production figures related to meeting or, better still, exceeding targets of the latest economic plan

• This fixation was especially true of the 1930s, under Stalin's push to industrialise

• Favoured topics also included successful expeditions to the Arctic and northern Russia in search of gold and oil that were part of a theme which struck a chord with many Soviet citizens: the triumph of technology over nature

• The aviators who flew over the North Pole were presented as conquering heroes

• They represented bravery, adventure and the pushing back of frontiers

• Prohibited topics, or those subject to delayed reporting, included plane crashes and natural disasters.

Newspapers: secrecies on events

• In July 1972, a vast fire got out of control outside Moscow, but the city's population had to wait one month before the blue haze over the city was explained- By that time, the fire had been put out

• at Kyshtym, in September 1957, was simply ignored by the government's press agencies

• A nuclear waste storage tank exploded, resulting in at least 200 fatalities and over 270,000 people being exposed to dangerous radiation levels

• The Soviet public only became suspicious when keen map readers noticed that over 30 small communities had disappeared from Soviet maps between 1958 and 1991

• In the absence of any acknowledged disaster, the government took two years to evacuate unsafe areas

Newspapers: criticisms

Local newspapers were more likely to publish views critical of the authorities, although limits were imposed on what was permissible. It was acceptable to print letters criticising minor bureaucrats, and complaints about poor housing became an increasingly common subject in the 1970s. However, criticising Party leaders was not allowed

Magazines

• Alongside the diet of daily newspapers was a vast selection of magazines and journals to cater for an ever-increasing range of interests

• Many of these were aimed at specific groups of workers, such as farmers, soldiers or teachers

• Others were aimed at young children, sports fans and those with a particular hobby

• Some areas of interest were off-limits: sex, pornography, crime and religion were among those topics the government had no wish to encourage

• Newspapers often gave sports coverage little attention and the gap for sports fans was filled by Red Sport, established in 1924, and (after 1946) by its successor Sovetskii Sport

• Sovetskii Sport was a hugely popular magazine that gained respect for its accuracy and honesty in sports coverage, even if it had to carry political news praising the government on its front page

Radio: Lenin

• In 1917, radio was a fairly recent development and therefore easier for the Bolsheviks to influence

• It did not have a long tradition of independent activity

• Radio had broadcast news of the Revolution in October 1917 in Morse code

• Soviet scientists quickly developed voice radio and by 1921 programmes were being broadcast

• The Spoken Newspaper of the Russian Telegraph Agency featured news and propaganda material, with little emphasis on music

• Radio receivers were expensive, and in order to get their message to the people, the Bolsheviks installed loudspeakers in public places, factories and clubs

• Group listening also resulted in a collective response that ensured everyone got the intended message

• By 1922, Moscow had a well-developed broadcasting station

Radio: Stalin

• Radio was an especially useful medium because it enabled the government to get its message across to the 65 percent of the population who were illiterate

• Radio stations were controlled by the government, and by the 1920s they conveyed the official message alongside light or classical music to make it more palatable

• The speed by which the government could convey its message through radio was to prove invaluable during the German invasion of 1941

• With German forces less than 50 miles from Moscow, Stalin gave a speech live on radio from Red Square, in the centre of Moscow, to commemorate the October Revolution

• It was to prove highly effective in reassuring the Soviet population that not all was lost in the war.

Radio: Brezhnev and Khrushcev

• Most new apartment blocks were wired for radio reception, thereby access was restricted to government stations only

• Until 1964 there was only one Soviet radio station

• Under Brezhnev, the range was extended to three, including Radio Maiak (Lighthouse), which played some foreign music and was popular with Soviet youth

• The government tried to restrict access to foreign stations by mass-producing cheap radios with a limited reception range, but they also had to rely on jamming foreign broadcasts and threatening to arrest those that listened to stations such as Voice of America or the BBC

• Although these threats rarely succeeded, the limits on the amount of information received by the Soviet population were important in restricting the level of public debate

Television: 50s

• By the 1950s, television was becoming a key method by which the government got its message to the Soviet public

• In 1950, the USSR had 10,000 sets; by 1958 this number had risen to almost three million

The government stations provided a mix of news, documentanes on the achievements of socialism, and cultural programmes on ballet and the classical arts. Children's programmes were also provided and feature films made up a considerable proportion of the output.

Life in the Soviet Union was presented as joyous, whereas life under capitalism was rife with crime, homelessness and violence.

It was pretty uninspiring fare that failed to spark much enthusiasm in the population. By 1985, there were two television channels and greater emphasis on light entertainment. This was undemanding but more popular. In the 1970s, the Soviet singer Eduard Khil (Trololo) became a noted and popular celebrity, although his easy-listening style was not to everyone's taste. More positive features of Soviet television output included the broadcast of local programming for the regions of the USSR, often in local languages. Folk dancing was hardly cutting edge, but it made a change from the usual imposition of Russian culture on national minorities.

Television: 60s

• Mass production of televisions in the 1960s brought their price within the range of most of the population, even if availability failed to keep pace with demand

Television: 60s

Mass production of televisions in the 1960s brought their price within the range of most of the population, even if availability failed to keep pace with demand

Television: 80s

By the early 1980s, most of the rural population had access to television

Results

• The Soviet public got used to reading between the lines

• News of the heart problems of a member of the Politburo was interpreted as a fall from favour, as was someone's continued non-appearance in the press

• Favoured and rising stars of the Party received more news space

• In 1953, Soviet citizens who subscribed to the Soviet encyclopedia received a package that instructed them to remove pages from their collection that had details of Beria, the head of the secret police, and replace them with the insert provided (which contained extra pictures of the Bering Sea)

• It was the first sign the public had that Beria had been arrested

• By the 1980s, technology was advancing further

• Video recorders were being mass-produced by the state, making the sharing of information among the public easier, but the rise of increasingly sophisticated technologies, including computers, was likely to provide a much more demanding challenge to a government wishing to restrict its population's access to information