Soviet Media Control and Propaganda

• State control of mass media and propaganda were consistent features of Communist rule, aiming to free the working people of Russia from 'bourgeois ideas'.
• Press freedom was restricted by Lenin, and censorship and propaganda remained essential features of Communist rule until 1985, even with some attempts to liberalise Communism during Khrushchev's time.

Lenin and the press

• Lenin saw the press and media as central to advancing the revolution and maintaining Communist power.
• The Decree on the Press was established in 1917 and gave the government the power to shut down newspapers supporting 'counter revolution'.
• The Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press was established in 1918 and gave the state the power to censor the press; journalists and editors committing 'crimes against the people' risked punishment by the Cheka.
• The All-Russia Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) was established in 1918 and gave the state control over advertising and news reporting.
• Glavlit was established in 1922 and employed censors to examine all books for anti-Communist ideas.
• By 1921, the Communists had established control of the media throughout the Soviet Union, initially closing papers supporting the Tsar or the Provisional Government, and later outlawing opposition socialist papers.

Propaganda under Lenin

• Propaganda was often experimental.
• Radical artists used new artistic techniques to spread the Communist message.
• Gustav Klutsis used photomontage for posters advertising Lenin's electrification plan.
• El Lissitzky designed 'Beat the whites with the red wedge' using abstract art techniques
• ROSTA produced cartoon films to support the revolution.

Stalin's media

• Censorship was tightened, and works by Trotsky, Bukharin, and other rivals were banned.
• Lenin's works were 'edited' to remove complimentary statements about Stalin's opponents.
• From 1928, Glavlit controlled access to economic data
• The Soviet media were forbidden from publishing stories about natural disasters, suicides, industrial accidents, or bad weather to create the impression that the Soviet Union was a place in which only good things happened.
• Propaganda focused on idealised images of workers and peasants happily building socialism in modern factories and farms.

Media under Khrushchev

• Popular magazines were encouraged to publish readers' letters, allowing citizens to express thoughts on 'non-political' subjects.
• Letters to women's magazines exposed social problems like male alcoholism, inequalities in childcare and housework, and domestic violence.
• Soviet propaganda shifted to include satirical cartoons, like those in Krokodil magazine, which poked fun at public figures.
• Censorship was relaxed during cultural thaws.

Media under Brezhnev

• Brezhnev's media focused on the victory of the Second World War through posters, books, and films.
• Films set in contemporary Russia depicted fashionable citizens in luxurious apartments, stoking public desire for consumer goods.
• Khrushchev's cultural thaws were not repeated.
• Rich Russians were exposed to Western ideas through magazines available on the black market.

Cults of personality

• From 1918, the government used personality cults, similar to religious cults, to consolidate power.
• Leaders were presented as wise, humane, and benevolent to inspire personal loyalty.

The cult of Lenin

• From 1918, Lenin's image and sayings were regularly used in Soviet propaganda.
• Lenin was presented as a prophet leading the Soviet people to a better future, and as a saint willing to sacrifice his life for his people.

Stalin's personality cult

• The Stalin cult emphasised that Stalin was the legitimate ruler of the Soviet Union because he was the Lenin of today.
• Like Lenin, he was presented as a visionary leading the way to socialism
• The Stalin cult required the manipulation of history to suggest that Lenin and Stalin had led the revolution together since 1917.
• Stalin was presented as the 'vozhd' (leader with ultimate authority).
• From 1941, Stalin was presented as the 'Generalissimo', emphasizing his role as the military leader who led the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War.

Khrushchev's cult

• Khrushchev criticized Stalin's cult of personality; from 1955 to 1964, images of Stalin were largely dropped from the Soviet media.
• Khrushchev continued to use the cult of Lenin in propaganda.
• Image was not as widely used as Stalin between 1928 and 1953
• Khrushchev was presented as a disciple of Lenin, responsible for new successes such as the Soviet space program and rising harvests, a respected statesman, a hero of the Second World War, an authority on various subjects, and the great reformer..
• The smaller scale of the cult and Khrushchev's obvious policy failures undermined claims made about him, resulting in less public respect compared to Stalin and Lenin.

The cult of Brezhnev

• The Lenin cult persisted.
• References to Khrushchev dropped and references to Stalin were rare
• Brezhnev was presented as a great Leninist, a military hero, dedicated to world peace through detente, and a true man of the people.
• The cult was counterproductive as Brezhnev was clearly a privileged bureaucrat, leading to ridicule instead of respect or fear.

Attacks on religious beliefs

• Lenin viewed religion as an enemy of freedom and equality, and believed that religious people would not fully embrace Communist ideology.
• Policies tended to persecute the Church, but the Communists were prepared to compromise with religious groups.

Religion under Lenin

• The 1917 Decree on Land gave peasants the right to seize land belonging to the Church.
• The 1918 Decree Concerning Separation of Church and State took away the traditional privileges of the Orthodox Church.
• Lenin used the Cheka to terrorize the Orthodox Church, including murders and massacres of religious figures.

The Living Church

• In 1921, Lenin established the Living Church as a rival to the Orthodox Church, removing traditional leaders and decentralizing its structure.
• Lenin hoped that it would make it harder for the new Church to oppose the regime, however it was not prepared to support the regime, and the majority of Russians continued to believe in Christianity throughout the 1920s.

Lenin and Islam

• Government funded Islamic schools
• Communists were less antagonistic towards Islam than Russian Orthodox Christianity, because there had been no official link between Islam and Tsarism.

Religion under Stalin

• Many churches were turned into grain stores as a result of collectivisation.
• Stalin's terror destroyed Islamic groups, such as Sufi groups in Turkestan by 1936.

War and compromise

• During the Second World War, Stalin made a pragmatic alliance with the Church, asking leaders to support the war effort.
• Stalin ended Church censorship, anti-religious propaganda, and allowed some churches to reopen; 414 churches re-opened during the Second World War.

Religion under Khrushchev

• Khrushchev abandoned compromise and started anti-religious campaign in 1958 which included closure of churches, anti-religious propaganda, surveillance of Orthodox convents, and denying believers access to holy sites.
• Khrushchev used the Soviet space programme to attack religion; Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova argued that space travel disproved the existence of God.

Religion 1964-85

• Brezhnev ended Khrushchev's anti-religious campaigns, hoping scientific education would dissuade young people from believing in God.
• Under Brezhnev, the government supported anti-American Islamic groups in the Middle East, establishing the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan.
• Ideology shifted away from describing Islam as 'backward and barbarian' to a 'progressive, anticolonial and revolutionary creed'.

Attacks on opponents of the government

• From 1917 to 1985, the government's approach to opposition evolved, as did the nature of the opposition itself.

Control and opposition 1917-28

• Lenin introduced the Cheka in 1917 to target counter-revolutionaries, initially as a short-term measure.
• Lenin's definition of counter-revolutionary was extremely broad and targeted supporters of the former Tsar, trade unions, and socialists in rival parties.
• From 1921, the Cheka's activities included: requisitioning grain, closing opposition newspapers, torturing and executing opponents including black market traders, and executing deserters.
• During the NEP, the Cheka attacked those believed to be exploiting the freedom to trade, viewing rich traders, women wearing Western clothes/makeup, and young people dancing to Western music as 'class enemies'.
• The Cheka also organised show trials of former leaders of rival socialist parties.

The Roles of Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria

• Stalin used the secret police against the Party, employing terror more widely and sending millions to gulags.
• The secret police was under Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria.

Yagoda

• Genrikh Yagoda became head of Stalin's secret police in 1934 and played an important role in the Great Terror.
• Under Yagoda secret police officials tended to treat Communist officials with respect, occurring slowly and resulting in Stalin's criticism of Yagoda's leadership.

Yezhov

• Responsible for a massive escalation of the terror.
• Replaced Yagoda's agents with new officers more willing to use torture.
• Responsible for the worst years of the Great Terror, 1936-38.
• The Great Terror became known as 'Yezhovshchina, meaning that the whole of Soviet society was engulfed in Yezhov's terror.
• During this period, around 1.5 million people, approximately 10 per cent of the male adult population, were arrested by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police; around 635,000 of these were deported and over 680,000 people were executed.

Show Trials

• The Moscow Show Trials were the most obvious sign of the Great Terror.
• Trials removed leaders of Party factions that had opposed Stalin in the 1920s.
• The Trial of the 16, organised by Yagoda in 1936, led to the execution of Zinoviev and his allies.
• The Trial of the 17, organised by Yezhov in 1937, led to the execution or imprisonment of Trotsky's main supporters.
• The Trial of the 21, organised by Beria in 1938, led to the execution of Bukharin and his former allies, including Yagoda.
• The trials were designed to humiliate Stalin's opponents before punishing them.

Beria

• Beria took over Stalin's secret police in 1938 as the Great Terror was winding down.
• During the Second World War, Beria organised mass deportations and mass executions of ethnic groups whom Stalin did not trust.
• After the war, Beria was put in charge of Soviet efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
• Beria was highly successful, as the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb was tested successfully in 1949.

Dissidents and discontent

• Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinisation led to a scaling back of terror.
• Brezhnev emphasized controlling opponents, continuing until 1985 but without a return to mass terror.

Andropov's suppression of dissidents, 1967-82

• Andropov, like Brezhnev, was a conservative suspicious of Khrushchev's liberalisation.
• Andropov rejected mass terror preferring to target specific individuals, known as dissidents, and wanted to minimize the use of violence.

Andropov's strategies

• Andropov rejected show trials, preferring not to draw attention to the regime's repressive side.
• He allowed dissident artists to emigrate, with over 100,000 potential 'trouble makers allowed to leave the Soviet Union.
• He sent opponents of the regime to mental asylums for 'treatment' for their 'paranoid reformist delusions'.
• He invested in surveillance and pressured those believed dangerous to conform through formal warnings, with around 70,000 citizens receiving a secret police warning in the 1970s..
• He organised the demotion or sacking of dissidents, with many intellectuals ending up working as cleaners during the 1970s.
• He used intimidation tactics, such as destroying an illegal art exhibition in 1974, known as the 'Bulldozer Exhibition'.

Andropov's success

• Andropov failed to eliminate opposition; networks of dissidents published illegal samizdat magazines.
• Andropov was cautious against dissidents known in the West; pressure from Western governments meant figures like Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remained free.

Popular discontent, 1982-85

• Andropov became leader of the Soviet Union, drawing on secret reports on popular discontent.
• Citizens were anxious about slow improvement in living standards, dissatisfied with food and consumer goods, and resentful of Party member privileges and corruption.
• Loss of faith in the system led to increased social malaise, including alcoholism, poor labour discipline, increased black market trade, avoidance of military service, demand for Western goods, sympathy for strikes in Poland, increased Church attendance, and falling birth rate.

Dealing with discontent, 1982-85

• Andropov introduced anti-corruption measures, investigating senior Party officials who misused Soviet resources.
• Workers could be sacked for drunkenness in the anti-alcohol campaign
• Anti-drunkenness and anti-absenteeism campaign where KGB officers visited public places arresting drunks or absentees.
• Operation Trawl led to less absenteeism in the short term, but Andropov's illness prevented sustained campaigns.

The state and cultural change 1917-

• Soviet leaders saw art as powerful tool to win over the public.
• From 1917 to 1953, Soviet art shifted from radical avant-garde to traditional Socialist Realism.

Proletkult

• Following the October Revolution, some Communists tried to stimulate the growth of a truly proletarian form of art.
• Anatoly Lunacharsky, the new People's Commissar of Enlightenment, established Proletkult to nurture artistic talent among working people.
• By 1920, Proletkult set up 300 studios across Russia and published Gor (Furnace), showcasing proletarian artists.
• Lunacharsky hoped workers would make art reflecting their experiences and the values of the new society.

Lenin and the end of Proletkult

• Lenin argued that best culture was universal, reflecting the human spirit rather than class.
• Lenin believed the work that was being produced was too avant-garde for working people to understand.
• Proletkult was independent of Party control, concerning Lenin.
• In October 1920, Proletkult lost independence and became part of the Commissariat of Education; funding shifted to traditional arts like ballet.

The avant-garde

• Inspired by the revolution, they experimented with new styles and techniques designed to generate a new, revolutionary art.
• Avant-garde artists experimented with a variety of influences such as chance, geometric shapes, technology and the influence of dreams in order to create new kinds of art.
• Avant-garde artists collaborated with the Communist government to produce propaganda.
• Vladimir Mayakovsky made simple graphic posters during the Civil War.
• Alexander Rodchenko used photomontage to make posters celebrating the revolution
• Dziga Vertov used experimental techniques such as slow motion to produce a series of documentary films called Kino-Pravda (film-truth).

Socialist Realism

• Stalin wanted traditional techniques serving the government; this approach became 'Socialist Realism' in the early 1930s.
• In painting, this was realistic art depicting factory construction or workers producing raw materials.
• In literature, novels had to have plots that ordinary people could follow and related to building socialism.
• Fyodor Gladkov's 1924 novel Cement was held up as an example.
• Lenin and Stalin also became the focus of paintings and other forms of art
• Fedor Shurpin's Morning of Our Motherland (1949), for example, shows Stalin standing in a landscape transformed by collectivisation and industrialisation.

Soviet art, 1917-53

• From free, experimental, and independent art it shifted to government-controlled and conservative art.

The state and cultural change 195

• Khrushchev wanted more cultural freedom, initiating 'thaws' where critical work was tolerated, but his policy also had 'freeze' periods.
• Brezhnev fought artists and others who refused to conform.

Thaw and Non-conformity, 1954-64

• Khrushchev wanted an alliance between the Party and creative intellectuals and permitted more creative freedom in a series of thaws.
• 1953-54: followed Stalin's death; new literature was allowed, including Ilya Ehrenburg's 'The Thaws' which were critical of Stalin's terror.
• 1956-57: followed Khrushchev's Secret Speech; cultural liberalisation continued, including Vladimir Dudintsev's novel 'Not by Bread Alone', critical of Party bureaucracy under Stalin.
• 1961-62: following Stalin's body removal from Red Square; books critical of Stalin's rule published, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's short story 'One Day of Ivan Denisovich'. Artists often went further than tolerated, such as Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" (1954) being critical of Leninism. Khrushchev re-imposed restrictions once artists began going too far.

Nonconformity from the 1950s

• Khrushchev tolerated some freedom but challenged widespread nonconformity, such as alcoholism and lazy government officials.
• Khrushchev began a poster campaign encouraging citizens to challenge nonconformist behaviour, called popular oversight, used posters by designers such as Fomichev and Denisovsky.
• Used posters such as 'The Lazy Bureaucrat (1961) and 'The Alcoholic' (1959) to look our for nonconformist behaviour and to challenge it where it occurred.
• Khrushchev criticised nonconformist women, starting a campaign against 'stilyags' (style hunters) young women who wore Western fashion.

Clashes between artists and the government to 1985

• Brezhnev abandoned cultural liberalisation, authorising the trial of authors Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel in 1964.
• The Sinyavsky-Daniel Trial took place in 1966 was essentially show trials leading to sent to labour camps.

Dissident Artists

• Many artists produced work and took part in secret shows.
• In 1968, artist Nonna Goriunova performed Forest Ritual in a wood.
• In the 1970s, the Moscow Conceptualists published samizdat literature exposing the dullness of life under the Communists.
• The Mitki Collective put on secret shows in Leningrad exposing the hypocrisy of Communist officials.
• Some events were raided by the police, but others carried on without intervention.
• Soviet authorities remained suspicious of any group that championed freedom of expression.

Explore Soviet media control policies under Lenin and Stalin, including press freedom curtailment and Glavlit's censorship role. Discover how Stalin's propaganda differed from Lenin's and the use of art and ROSTA in propaganda efforts.