Printed media in the Soviet Union

Printed media in the Soviet Union, i.e., newspapers, magazines and journals, were under strict control of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. The desire to disseminate propaganda is believed to have been the driving force behind the creation of the early Soviet newspapers. Newspapers were the essential means of communicating with the public, which meant that they were the most powerful way available to spread propaganda and capture the hearts of the populace. Additionally, within the Soviet Union the press evolved into the messenger for the orders from the Central Committee to the party officials and activists. Due to this important role, the Soviet papers were both prestigious in the society and an effective means to control the masses. However, manipulation initially was not the only purpose of the Soviet Press.

Early Soviet Union

*'' Bednota'', (The Poor Folk): a daily newspaper for peasants, issued by Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moscow, Russia, 1918–1931.
*'' Zhizn' Natsional'nostei'', (Life of the Nationalities): a journal published by Narkomnats in Moscow, 1918–1924.

Newspaper

Beginnings

The Soviet newspaper industry began in the underground movements that created ''Pravda'', meaning 'truth', which on 5 May 1912 was published as a political newspaper. ''Pravda'' did not start as a political publication, but instead was a journal on social life. Yet in 1912 Vladimir Lenin would decide that the party needed a voice in the news industry and that ''Pravda'' could convey the party wishes.

Distribution

The government subsidization allowed the newspapers to be priced low and distributed widely. Newspapers were distributed by government administrations, and had three streams of revenue. One stream were subscriptions that people would pay to read. A second was advertisements, with some papers having more than others, an example being that evening newspapers in the major cities, which were popular advertisement vehicles because they had the widest audience base. Lastly, newspapers received very substantial subsidies from their parent organization. Subsequently, the Soviet system had no capital costs, as subsidies would cover them. Thus if the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to publish a paper it would build the plant, equip it, and then turn it over to the Newspaper company. Yet, there were attempts to achieve economies of scale, and major publications would produce smaller more class-oriented papers because the parent government administration publishing the paper would cover the capital investments. This capital investment cost coverage, which was not limited to a single production plant, allowed papers such as Pravda, to be distributed across the entire Soviet Union in one morning, a feat which Western papers such as ''The New York Times'' would not achieve for twenty-five or more years. On the down side, the Soviets had set up a system in which everyone would receive their news at relatively the same time. Most of these stories came from the Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union, making it both a news agency and the main distributor of government information. And so, the Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union was similar to the United States White House Press Secretary heading the Associated Press. A side effect of the Telegraphic agency being the most important source was that many stories could not be covered until the agency itself had covered it. Also, this distribution of news by the government meant that not everyone could read the same publications. Governmental clearances thus dictated who could read what.

Staff

The time period from the New Economic Policy of 1921 to 1928 to the "Great Break" of 1928 to 1932 comprises the period of large soviet press transformations. In the 1920s, during the New Economic Policy period, the Soviet Press was concerned with the education of the poorer classes. To achieve that, a broadly educated newspaper staff would be necessary. Yet, at the beginning of the 1920s, the Soviet Newspapers were not only under staffed, the journalists were themselves undereducated and they lacked any journalistic skill. Because of this, the Press Corps strived to raise the standards of the press, while at the same time maintaining strong party support from the journalists. During this time the Soviet Press's main objective was to disseminate party ideology to the lower classes, but it also intended to act as the watchdog to protect the people from rising corruption, and as the emissary from the people to the party regime. This resulted in an apparent conflict of purpose. Soviet journalists prided themselves in their professionalism at this time, all while accepting the Bolshevik Party as the ruling authority. However, the Press Corps distrusted anyone who was a white-collar employee, or a member of the academia, believing that an individual's class would predetermine their attitude towards the Bolshevik Party (the assumption being that white-collar professionals and academics looked unfavorably on the ruling Bolsheviks). Due to this assumption, the Press Corps had a preference for training members of the proletariat, or more specifically the poor or middle class peasants as journalists. Thus, a conflict arose between the desire to hire people the press corps trusted, and finding skilled journalists who could succeed in the goal of educating and equalizing the masses. However, the denial that this conflict existed led to the Soviet Newspapers to being staffed by persons with an uncomfortable combination of ideologies. The conflict ended when a large movement favoring party ideology and background emerged, culminating in 1924, when the State Institute of Journalism determined they would train only those with trusted ideological backgrounds to be journalists for the Soviet Newspapers. In reality, this was only a façade, as the institute continued to train members of academia and the white-collar class, with 29 percent of the admitted applicants having less than one year with the party Stazh (qualification course), which was the required minimum for former Komsomol (young communist) members. The supply of journalist students that fit the proper ideological background could not meet the demand for professional and competent journalists for the prestigious spots, which explains the large number of party switchers. Yet the façade was needed to convey party propaganda. The State Institute of Journalism broke its own ideological rules in order to meet its professional standards and goals by accepting better educated but less ideologically centered students.

The interesting and conflicted mix that occurred from the government's need for party propaganda to be conveyed by individuals with journalistic skill was the true beginning of the professional Soviet News Media. Throughout the 1920s the State Institute of Journalism would continue to produce a standardized curriculum to meet their goals of producing competent and professional journalists, however, this led to a curriculum in a constant state of flux. Additionally, a clear class distinction developed between editors and journalists that would continue throughout the 1920s and even through the 1928 Shakhty trial, the beginning of "charges against class enemies." The distinctions that began to form underlined the Communist parties fear of professionals and class systems. All of this culminated in the 1930s when the State Institute of Journalism ended its drive for professional journalism and standards purged the old faculty at the Institute of Journalism, and government officials revised the entire curriculum to meet propaganda goals.

Late Soviet Union

Newspapers

Circulation

In 1988 the Soviet Union published more than 8,000 daily newspapers in approximately sixty languages, with a combined circulation of about 170 million. Every all-union newspaper was circulated in its Russian language version. Nearly 3,000 newspapers, however, reached the population in non-Russian languages, constituting roughly 25 percent of the total circulation, although non-Russians made up almost 50 percent of the population.

Press technology in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s was based upon hot-type lead, which was behind that of their western counterparts, which had transitioned to cold type, photo type settings. This was largely due to the subsidy program, which took away from the news industries incentive to produce new technology by reducing competition. Although the technology in the Soviet Union print media was less advanced, the shortcomings were made up for by brute economic force. Working at a subsidized scale not present in the US allowed the Soviet press to widely distribute publications across the USSR.

Staff

Most of newspaper reporters and editors belonged to the Communist Party-controlled Union of Journalists, composed of nearly 74,000 members. In 1988 some 80 percent of the union's reporters and editors were party members. Inevitably, assignments of editors had to be approved by the party. In the late 1980s, all the central editors in chief of major all-union newspapers belonged to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The party also sought to control journalists by combining higher education and Higher Party Schools with schools of journalism. Reporters and editors thus were trained under the aegis of the professional party elite. For newspaper journalists and television and radio reporters, newspaper photographers, and literary editors, Moscow University's School of Journalism provided a main conduit to party positions concerned with the media. In the 1980s, some 2,500 graduate, undergraduate, evening school, and correspondence students annually graduated from the School of Journalism. Students were taught party strictures within the following eight departments: Theory and Practice of the Party-Soviet Press, History of the Party-Soviet Press, Television and Radio Broadcasting, Movie-making and Editorial-publishing Work, Foreign Press and Literature, Russian Journalism and Literature, Stylistics of the Russian language, and Techniques of Newspaper Work and Information Media. By the late 1980s, Moscow University's School of Journalism had graduated approximately 100,000 journalists.

Late developments

In the late 1980s, newspapers gradually developed new formats and new issues. Under Yuri Andropov, ''Pravda'' began to print short reports of weekly Politburo meetings. Eventually, other major newspapers published accounts of these meetings as well.

Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Politburo reports expanded to provide more details on the leadership's thinking about domestic and foreign affairs. Before Gorbachev's assumption of power, Western sources had identified a partial list of proscribed topics, which included crime, drugs, accidents, natural disasters, occupational injuries, official organs of censorship, security, intelligence, schedules of travel for the political leadership, arms sales abroad, crime or morale problems in the armed forces, hostile actions against Soviet citizens abroad, and special payments and education for athletes. After 1985 Gorbachev's policy of openness gave editors a freer hand to publish information on many of these subjects.

In the 1980s, regional newspapers differed in several ways from all-union newspapers. The distribution of regional newspapers varied from circulation at the republic level to circulation in a province, city, or district. The party allowed many regional newspapers to print most of their issues in the region's native language, which reflected the Stalinist policy of "national in form, socialist in content." Local newspaper circulation remained restricted to a region. These publications often focused on such issues as local heroes who contributed to the good of the community or significant problems (as expressed in letters to the editor) relating to crime or natural disasters. By contrast, after Gorbachev came to power, most all-union newspapers began to report on societal shortcomings. However, in the late 1980s regional papers continued to contain more personal advertisements and local merchant notices than the all-union newspapers, if the latter carried any at all.

Letters to Editor

Originally, Vladimir Lenin argued that criticism should be channeled through letters to the editor and would assist in cleansing society of its problems. He believed that public discussion would facilitate the elimination of shortcomings and that open expression of problems would create a significant feedback mechanism for the leadership and for the country as a whole. Lenin's ideas in this regard were not carried out by Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, who apparently believed the party needed no assistance from the people in identifying problems. But in 1981, Leonid Brezhnev created the Central Committee Letters Department, and later Andropov called for more letters to editors to expose corruption and mismanagement. Konstantin Chernenko advocated that greater "media efficacy" be instituted so that newspapers, for example, would carry more in-depth and current analyses on pressing issues. Gorbachev expanded the flexibility allowed by giving newspapers leeway in publishing letters critical of society and even critical of the government.

Newspaper letters departments usually employed large staffs and handled extremely high volumes of letters daily. Not all letters were published because they often dealt with censored subjects or their numbers simply posed too great a burden for any one newspaper to handle. The letters departments, however, reportedly took their work very seriously and in the late 1980s were used by the press to encourage the population to improve society.

Letters to editors on a great number of previously forbidden topics also elicited responses from the population that could be manipulated by the Soviet newspapers to influence public opinion in the desired direction. Because party members made up the majority of active newspaper readers, according to polls conducted in the Soviet Union, they wrote most of the letters to the editor. Thus, their perspectives probably colored the newspapers' letters sections.

Publications

Major newspapers

Translations of names given in parentheses.

Of all the newspapers, ''Pravda'' (Truth), an organ of the CPSU Central Committee, was the most authoritative and, therefore, the most important. Frequently, it was the bellwether for important events, and readers often followed its news leads to detect changes in policies. With about 12 million copies circulated every day to over 20 million citizens, Pravda focused on party events and domestic and foreign news.

Other newspapers, however, also commanded wide circulation. ''Izvestiya'' (News), the second most authoritative paper, emanated from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet