state control of the mass media and propaganda

• Introduction


  -Highly significant

  -Control of media was essential for sustaining regime as it prevented public opposition

  -Sustain means to ensure the regime kept control

  -Criteria: consistently and effectively used

  -Media and propaganda, terror, cult of personality
• Media and Propaganda

  -Decree on Press 1917, Lenin could shut down opposition news, prevent circulation of opposition

  -Stalin set up glavit in 1928 for censorship, news couldn't even report bad weather

  -Khrushchev had thaws of of allowing for more freedom in press but often reversed them after heavy criticism of Stalin

  -Brezhnev kept media from showing horrors of war in Afghanistan

  -Consistent and effective
• Terror

  -Cheka founded in 1917 to crush opposition and torture opponents, closed down constituent assembly in jan 1918

  -Stalin's great terror arrested 1.5m killed 680 000 at its peak 1937-38

  -Khrushchev ended mass terror instead using repressive psychiatry (unsound mind quote)

  -Brezhnev's KGB focussed on dissidents but no mass terror, official warnings used to prevent 2000 subversive groups

  -Effective but no consistent
• Cult of Personality

  -First picture of Lenin published in 1918, wore a cap, man of the people, rejected luxury made him likable

  -Stalin used myth of 2 leaders to sustain power, the vozhd made his power personal and generalissimo depicted his military might

  -Khrushchev based his cult on his success but with the failure of the corn campaign and VL scheme doomed it

  -Brezhnev's cult was a running joke, tried to depict himself as military hero but wasn't taken seriously

  -Consistently but not effectively used