Russia- Theme 3- Control of the people
State control of mass media and propaganda
- Lenin viewed the press and the media as important in advancing the revolution and maintaining
communist power
- Prior to rev- Lenin announced his intent to close down bourgeois newspapers
- He believed revolutionary success required control of communications in Russia
- Controlled the press and media by
o Decree on press Nov 1917- emergency powers to close any newspaper supporting counter-
revolution
o State monopoly of advertising in November 1917- only the gov published adverts
o Nationalising the Petrograd telegraph agency- Nov 1917- control of electronic
communication
o Revolutionary tribunal of the press Jan 1918- power to censor the press
o All Russia telegraph agency- distributed news
- Lenin closed down newspapers that supported the Tsar or prov gov
- Mid 1918 outlawed opposition socialist papers
- By 1921- closed 2000 newspapers and 575 printing presses
- Pravda- communist party newspaper gained circulation- early 1920s best selling publications in the
soviet union
- Soviet control of Sovnarkom gave them control of the newspaper of the soviets Izvestia
The initial cult of Lenin
- Initially com regime pluralistic
- High degree of debate and disagreement
- Pluralism reflected in propaganda produced in the first few years of the revolution
- Lenin didn’t approve of all the images
- The cult of Lenin- emerged early in the regime
- Pictures of Lenin used to promote the government
- January 1918 saw the first publication of Lenin’s photograph- increasing in august
- Lenin was described in religious terms following an assassination attempt
- Survival described as ‘miraculous’ ‘modern day Christ’
- Lenin disapproved of the cult despite it flourishing- during civil war statues of Lenin produced
- Lenin’s name with titles saying ‘leader of the revolutionary proletariat’
- 1919- pictures wearing a cap- down to earth and approachable
- Lenin was depicted as humane and a man of the people
- He allowed the cult to go on as it gave the communist party a face and someone they could identify
with the party
Cartoons and photomontage
- The gov collaborated with avant-garde artists to produce posters promoting the revolution
- ‘a spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of communism’ – early poster, determined and grim
Lenin standing in front of a red banner pointing to the west
- Gustav Klutis used photomontage to create posters advertising Lenin’s electrification plan
Media and the NEP
- Lenin’s initial press censorship regime continued through the civil war
- 1922- Felix Dzerzhinsky introduced Glavlit- oversaw a more systematic regime
o GPU put in charge of policing every publication available in the soviet union
o Professional censors employed
o All books investigated for anti-communist bias
, o GPU compiled a list of banned books
- Soviet libraries purged of politically dangerous books
- ‘book gulags’ for banned books
Stalin’s media
- Censorship was tightened
- Works of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky were purged from soviet libraries
- Lenin’s own works edited- removing statements about Stalin’s competitors
- Rewritten works to emphasise his role in the revolution
- 1928- Glavlit controlled access to economic data
- Restrictions placed on ‘bad news’ – natural disasters, suicides accidents etc
- Propaganda focussed on Stalin- semi-divine figure
- Focussed on the workers- socialist realist art- sculptures like ‘the worker and the collective farm
woman’ 1937- muscular and heroic workers
Growing media pluralism
- Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev the media changed
- Magazines proliferated and radios and TV sets
Consumer magazines
- Magazines changed the soviet union from 1950-60
- Magazines were encouraged to publish readers’ letters
- These readers letters often exposed the problems with the soviet regime
- Readers complained about the quality of consumer goods
- Letters to women’s magazines like Rabotnista exposed problems like inequalities at home and male
alcoholism, childcare etc
- Khrushchev responded with its own campaign against worthless men- focused on male hypocrisy
and lack of devotion to communism
- Krokodil, satirical magazine, poked fun at men who arrived late, drunk or not at all
Soviet cinema and television
- Khrushchev wanted a cultural ‘thaw’ so soviet cinema changed a lot under his rule
- Many films focused on traditional themes like the soviet victory in WW2 and the communist
victory in the second world war
- Films like
o The forty first (1956)
o The cranes are flying (1957)
o Ballad of a solder (1959)
- They focused on the role played by ordinary people
- Television was new in Khrushchev’s final years- 1960-64- television was successful in supporting the
regime
- It celebrated the soviet unions triumphs in the space race
- 1961- millions of viewers watched the five hour programme celebrating Yuri Gagarin’s space flight
- 1963- focused on Valentina Tereshkova- first woman in space- stressed her ordinariness
- 1961- first news show- Estafeta Novosteo
- Under Brezhnev the culture changed with film and cinema
o More films focussing on working people and their daily lives
o Soviet film makers focused on fashionable citizens living in luxurious apartments, done to
stoke public desire for consumer goods and fashion
- Soviet gov kept tight control of footage from agfan war which kept the truth about the horrors
secret from the soviet citizens
- His speeches were transmitted in full- centre of lots of domestic media coverage
, - 1970- didn’t work to his advantage as viewers could see him slowly become more ill in health and
unable to rule the soviet union
- Under Brezhnev soviet leaders lost control of the print media
- KGB still policed political publications
- Western magazines increasingly became available in main cities like vouge
Personality cults
- 1918-24- the media had created a cult of Lenin
- It led to public trust in Lenin and a legacy that would be referred to throughout the whole soviet
union
- Stalin’s personality cult projected him as the second Lenin, ‘The Lenin of today’
- Used media to turn his face into the regime, a person that the people could have complete faith in,
used propaganda to turn him into an all powerful semi divine figure ‘leader, teacher, friend’
The cult of Stalin
- Bigger than the cult of Lenin
- Required more elaborate techniques in order to make the past fit with the myth created around
Stalin
Purpose of the cult
- Stalin’s cult served a specific political purpose
- Emphasised Stalin’s legitimacy to take over leadership of the party
- Stalin was fit to rule because he was carrying on Lenin’s work
- Created a figure that the soviet citizens could trust, respect and even worship
The myth of two leaders
- Stalin’s cult bound up in the ‘myth of two leaders’
- Led the soviet people to believe that the October revolution, victory in the civil war and the
foundation of the soviet union had been masterminded by a duumvirate of Lenin and Stalin
- The myth required soviet history to be rewritten
- To remove Trotsky and other leaders from the story
- He achieved this by
o Editing both of the two histories of the communist party 1938
o Socialist realist paintings were created showing Stalin and Lenin working closely together
o Altering photographs and removing Trotsky from photographs along with other leaders with
Lenin
Lenin’s heir
- Stalin implied that he was continuing Lenin’s path
- Painters used many techniques to show that Stalin was Lenin’s true heir
- Grigory Shegal’s ‘leader, teacher, friend’ shows Stalin standing immediately in front of a bust of
Lenin
- Gustav Klutsis photomontages are different- showing a row of figures running from Marx though
Lenin to Stalin implying that Stalin is the latest revolutionary leader \
The Vozhd
- Stalin was known as the Vozhd
- Which means leader
- Pravda praised the vozhd’s knowledge and wisdom daily
- His birthday was a national celebration with parades
State control of mass media and propaganda
- Lenin viewed the press and the media as important in advancing the revolution and maintaining
communist power
- Prior to rev- Lenin announced his intent to close down bourgeois newspapers
- He believed revolutionary success required control of communications in Russia
- Controlled the press and media by
o Decree on press Nov 1917- emergency powers to close any newspaper supporting counter-
revolution
o State monopoly of advertising in November 1917- only the gov published adverts
o Nationalising the Petrograd telegraph agency- Nov 1917- control of electronic
communication
o Revolutionary tribunal of the press Jan 1918- power to censor the press
o All Russia telegraph agency- distributed news
- Lenin closed down newspapers that supported the Tsar or prov gov
- Mid 1918 outlawed opposition socialist papers
- By 1921- closed 2000 newspapers and 575 printing presses
- Pravda- communist party newspaper gained circulation- early 1920s best selling publications in the
soviet union
- Soviet control of Sovnarkom gave them control of the newspaper of the soviets Izvestia
The initial cult of Lenin
- Initially com regime pluralistic
- High degree of debate and disagreement
- Pluralism reflected in propaganda produced in the first few years of the revolution
- Lenin didn’t approve of all the images
- The cult of Lenin- emerged early in the regime
- Pictures of Lenin used to promote the government
- January 1918 saw the first publication of Lenin’s photograph- increasing in august
- Lenin was described in religious terms following an assassination attempt
- Survival described as ‘miraculous’ ‘modern day Christ’
- Lenin disapproved of the cult despite it flourishing- during civil war statues of Lenin produced
- Lenin’s name with titles saying ‘leader of the revolutionary proletariat’
- 1919- pictures wearing a cap- down to earth and approachable
- Lenin was depicted as humane and a man of the people
- He allowed the cult to go on as it gave the communist party a face and someone they could identify
with the party
Cartoons and photomontage
- The gov collaborated with avant-garde artists to produce posters promoting the revolution
- ‘a spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of communism’ – early poster, determined and grim
Lenin standing in front of a red banner pointing to the west
- Gustav Klutis used photomontage to create posters advertising Lenin’s electrification plan
Media and the NEP
- Lenin’s initial press censorship regime continued through the civil war
- 1922- Felix Dzerzhinsky introduced Glavlit- oversaw a more systematic regime
o GPU put in charge of policing every publication available in the soviet union
o Professional censors employed
o All books investigated for anti-communist bias
, o GPU compiled a list of banned books
- Soviet libraries purged of politically dangerous books
- ‘book gulags’ for banned books
Stalin’s media
- Censorship was tightened
- Works of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky were purged from soviet libraries
- Lenin’s own works edited- removing statements about Stalin’s competitors
- Rewritten works to emphasise his role in the revolution
- 1928- Glavlit controlled access to economic data
- Restrictions placed on ‘bad news’ – natural disasters, suicides accidents etc
- Propaganda focussed on Stalin- semi-divine figure
- Focussed on the workers- socialist realist art- sculptures like ‘the worker and the collective farm
woman’ 1937- muscular and heroic workers
Growing media pluralism
- Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev the media changed
- Magazines proliferated and radios and TV sets
Consumer magazines
- Magazines changed the soviet union from 1950-60
- Magazines were encouraged to publish readers’ letters
- These readers letters often exposed the problems with the soviet regime
- Readers complained about the quality of consumer goods
- Letters to women’s magazines like Rabotnista exposed problems like inequalities at home and male
alcoholism, childcare etc
- Khrushchev responded with its own campaign against worthless men- focused on male hypocrisy
and lack of devotion to communism
- Krokodil, satirical magazine, poked fun at men who arrived late, drunk or not at all
Soviet cinema and television
- Khrushchev wanted a cultural ‘thaw’ so soviet cinema changed a lot under his rule
- Many films focused on traditional themes like the soviet victory in WW2 and the communist
victory in the second world war
- Films like
o The forty first (1956)
o The cranes are flying (1957)
o Ballad of a solder (1959)
- They focused on the role played by ordinary people
- Television was new in Khrushchev’s final years- 1960-64- television was successful in supporting the
regime
- It celebrated the soviet unions triumphs in the space race
- 1961- millions of viewers watched the five hour programme celebrating Yuri Gagarin’s space flight
- 1963- focused on Valentina Tereshkova- first woman in space- stressed her ordinariness
- 1961- first news show- Estafeta Novosteo
- Under Brezhnev the culture changed with film and cinema
o More films focussing on working people and their daily lives
o Soviet film makers focused on fashionable citizens living in luxurious apartments, done to
stoke public desire for consumer goods and fashion
- Soviet gov kept tight control of footage from agfan war which kept the truth about the horrors
secret from the soviet citizens
- His speeches were transmitted in full- centre of lots of domestic media coverage
, - 1970- didn’t work to his advantage as viewers could see him slowly become more ill in health and
unable to rule the soviet union
- Under Brezhnev soviet leaders lost control of the print media
- KGB still policed political publications
- Western magazines increasingly became available in main cities like vouge
Personality cults
- 1918-24- the media had created a cult of Lenin
- It led to public trust in Lenin and a legacy that would be referred to throughout the whole soviet
union
- Stalin’s personality cult projected him as the second Lenin, ‘The Lenin of today’
- Used media to turn his face into the regime, a person that the people could have complete faith in,
used propaganda to turn him into an all powerful semi divine figure ‘leader, teacher, friend’
The cult of Stalin
- Bigger than the cult of Lenin
- Required more elaborate techniques in order to make the past fit with the myth created around
Stalin
Purpose of the cult
- Stalin’s cult served a specific political purpose
- Emphasised Stalin’s legitimacy to take over leadership of the party
- Stalin was fit to rule because he was carrying on Lenin’s work
- Created a figure that the soviet citizens could trust, respect and even worship
The myth of two leaders
- Stalin’s cult bound up in the ‘myth of two leaders’
- Led the soviet people to believe that the October revolution, victory in the civil war and the
foundation of the soviet union had been masterminded by a duumvirate of Lenin and Stalin
- The myth required soviet history to be rewritten
- To remove Trotsky and other leaders from the story
- He achieved this by
o Editing both of the two histories of the communist party 1938
o Socialist realist paintings were created showing Stalin and Lenin working closely together
o Altering photographs and removing Trotsky from photographs along with other leaders with
Lenin
Lenin’s heir
- Stalin implied that he was continuing Lenin’s path
- Painters used many techniques to show that Stalin was Lenin’s true heir
- Grigory Shegal’s ‘leader, teacher, friend’ shows Stalin standing immediately in front of a bust of
Lenin
- Gustav Klutsis photomontages are different- showing a row of figures running from Marx though
Lenin to Stalin implying that Stalin is the latest revolutionary leader \
The Vozhd
- Stalin was known as the Vozhd
- Which means leader
- Pravda praised the vozhd’s knowledge and wisdom daily
- His birthday was a national celebration with parades
