control of the people 1917-1985

• How did Lenin view newspapers in 1917?

  As mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie
• What happened to newspapers in 1917?

  all non-Bolshevik newspapers were banned
• What had happened to newspapers by 1920?

  All non-Bolshevik newspapers had been eliminated
• Who did all editors and journalists work for?

  The government
• What was the censorship office called?

  Glavlit
• What was the function of Glavlit?


  All articles needed approval by the Glavlit before publication
• What were the most popular daily newspapers

  Pravda (truth) the communist paper and Izvestiya (News) the government paper
• What increased the audience of the papers?

  they were cheap and posted on boards and in workplaces
• What were the figures for newspaper circulation in 1983?


  The Pravda had a circulation of 10.7 million and the Trud (trade union paper) had 13.5 million
• What kind of things did papers report on?

  Endless details on triumphs of socialism, production figures that exceeded targets, expeditions to the arctic and Northern Russia in search for gold
• What is an example of an important event that papers neglected to report?

  A nuclear disaster in July 1972 which killed at least 200 people and 270,000 were exposed to dangerous radiation levels - it took 2 years to evacuate effected areas
• What were local newspapers more likely to do?

  publish critical views (on minor party bureaucrats but not Party Leaders)
• Who were the target audiences for magazines?

  many aimed at specific workers, farmers, soldiers and teachers as well as children, sports fans and particular hobbyists
• What areas were off limits in Magazines?

  Sex, pornography, crime and religion
• What magazine was hugely popular?

  Red sport (established in 1924) and (after 1946) its successor Sovetskii sport as newspapers covered very little sport
• Why was radio easier to control?

  it was a fairly new development
• What year did scientists develop voice radio programmes?

  1921
• What did the Spoken Newspaper of the Russian Telegraph Agency feature?

  news, propaganda and very little music
• What was done to make radio more accessible?

  Loudspeakers were placed in public places.
• Where was the control of radio broadcasts centralised to?

  The Commissariat for posts and Telegraph
• What percentage of the population was illiterate in 1922?

  65%
• Why was the development of Radio so important?

  It allowed the government to give messages to the illiterate people
• What were official messages conveyed alongside in the 1920s?

  classical music
• What significance did radio have just before the German invasion of 1941?

  the germans were 50 miles from moscow and Stalin delivered a speech to boost morale and remind citizens that not all was lost
• What was radio wiring like in new apartment blocks?

  most were wired for radio but the range only extended to government stations
• What radio station did Brezhnev extend access to?

  Radio Maiak which played some foreign music and was popular with the youth
• How did the government try to restrict access to foreign stations?

  by mass producing cheap radios with a limited reception range and jamming foreign broadcasts
• Why was it important to limit the information the public received?

  It restricted public debate
• In what decade did TVs become a key method of government message?

  1950s
• How many TV sets were there in the Soviet union

  10,000 in 1950 and 3 million by 1958
• What made TV sets accessible to the population?

  Mass production in the 60s made them cheap and by the early 80s most of the rural population had access to them
• What TV programmes were available?

  A mix of news, documentaries on socialist achievements, cultural programmes, childrens programmes
• How were western and soviet cultures presented by government TV stations?

  Soviet life was always joyous and life under capitalism was riddled with crime, homelessness and violence
• How many TV stations were there by 1985 and what was programming like?

  2 stations that focused more on lighter entertainment
• What were the positive parts of USSR TV?

  Local programmes often featured local languages
• What were the key results of Censorship of the Media?


  public got used to reading between the lines, favoured party members got more screen time, technology changed but propaganda kept up, gov tried to distract from the sad realities of soviet life
• What impact did growing technology have on censorship?

  It became harder for the government to monitor and restrict access to information
• What did members of the Soviet encyclopaedia have to do in 1953?

  tear out a page on Beria and replace it with extra pictures of the Bering Sea, this was the first sign to the public that he had been arrested.
• What is a cult of personality?

  The adoration of an individual through the use of art and popular culture. Used by Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
• Why was a cult of personality used?

  Reinforce the power of the individual leader and detach them from the politburo