Soviet Control of Television and Film in the USSR: Propaganda and Censorship (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• From 1917, the Bolsheviks seized control of the press

  • Opposition papers were closed

  • Pravda became the voice of the Party

• Glavlit, created in 1922, censored publications

  • Agitprop directed the political message of all media

• Radio and cinema were used to reach a largely illiterate population

  • Radios had limited tuning

  • Films and newsreels spread Bolshevik propaganda

• Under Stalin, the media presented one official version of reality

  • Success was credited to Stalin

  • Purged figures were erased from the record

• Media propaganda helped build Stalin's cult of personality

  • The compulsory Short Course history, published in 1938, rewrote the Party's past

• Historians debate whether media control strengthened the regime or bred public cynicism

  • J. Davis argues propaganda reached a mass literate audience and deified Stalin

  • S. Davies argues that ordinary people often defeated censorship and sought alternative information

Illustration: Concept Map (new)

Soviet control of newspapers, magazines and the radio

Newspapers and magazines under Lenin

• The Bolsheviks treated the press as a political weapon

  • They closed down opposition newspapers within days of the October Revolution

  • They nationalised the printing presses

  • This removed independent publishing

• Pravda, meaning "Truth", became the Party's main newspaper

  • It promoted Bolshevik ideology and attacked class enemies

• Izvestia served as the official voice of the Soviet government

Glavlit and the censorship system

• Glavlit was the central censorship office

  • It stood for the Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs

  • It was created in 1922

  • Every book, article and film script needed approval from Glavlit and the GPU before release

• Its remit went beyond politics

  • It also covered sensitive scientific material

    • This included the sensitive emerging fields such as nuclear physics

• Banned or politically sensitive books were removed from general circulation

  • Some were held in closed library sections

  • These were open only to trusted officials and approved academics

  • They were also known as "Book Gulags"

• Agitprop, the Party's propaganda department, set the political line for every medium

The press under Stalin

• The press glorified Stalin and the regime

  • Newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestia reported the successes of the Five-Year Plans

  • Heroic workers were celebrated daily

• Bad news was deliberately hidden

  • Famines, purges and military setbacks were not published

  • If they were mentioned, they were blamed on saboteurs

• From 1928, Glavlit controlled access to economic data

  • This made failure harder to measure against official targets

Radio

• Radios were mass-produced from the 1920s

  • They were a cheap way to spread propaganda

  • Sets were deliberately built with limited tuning

  • This meant they could only receive state stations

• The radio was especially useful in rural areas

  • Literacy levels were often low

  • Broadcasts could reach people who could not easily read newspapers

• Loudspeakers were placed in public places

  • They broadcast news and Party speeches

  • Listening became a shared, public act rather than a private choice

Soviet control of television and film

Cinema under Lenin

• Lenin saw film as the most powerful medium available to the regime

  • He said: "Of all the arts, cinema is the most important"

  • Films could carry the Bolshevik message to the illiterate peasant audience

• Early films dramatised the revolutionary struggle

  • Silent films presented the Bolsheviks as heroes

  • They vilified the Whites in the Civil War

  • Newsreels spread news of Bolshevik victories in towns and villages

Cinema under Stalin

• Under Stalin, cinema came fully under state control

  • Films followed the Socialist Realism (opens in a new tab) formula

  • They presented an idealised and optimistic Soviet reality

• Directors worked within tight political limits

  • Eisenstein's film, October, released in 1927, portrayed the October Revolution as a popular uprising led by the masses

• Film glorified central projects of the regime

  • Workers appeared as heroes of industrialisation

  • Peasants appeared as heroes of collectivisation

• Stalin's cult of personality dominated cinema

  • He was shown as a wise and fatherly leader

  • Films such as The Fall of Berlin (1950) celebrated Stalin's leadership during the Second World War

Television

• Television was not yet a mass medium in the Lenin and Stalinist years

  • Broadcasting remained experimental

  • It reached very little of the population before 1941

• Television became a major propaganda tool only after the Second World War

What were the impacts of Soviet control of mass media?

It helped build the cult of personality

• Propaganda transformed Stalin into a god-like national figure

  • Stalin consciously developed his cult of personality from December 1929

    • This was the time of his 50th birthday

  • The cult is fully established between 1933 and 1939

• The regime rewrote the historical record to support the cult

  • The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published in 1938, became the set text in every educational institution

    • It sold 34 million copies by 1948

• Photographs were doctored to remove Stalin's enemies

  • The most famous example is the removal of Yezhov from a photograph with Molotov and Stalin

It manufactured a single official truth

• Citizens were offered only one permitted version of reality

  • Rival viewpoints were removed from the press

  • Radio and cinema repeated the same official message

  • Private life was treated as political

But, it bred scepticism

• A gap opened between propaganda and everyday experience

  • Citizens noticed that shortages, famine and repression were missing from official accounts

  • Many came to distrust the media even as they consumed it

• Unofficial sources of information grew to fill the gap

  • Rumour spread news that the state suppressed

  • Private letters carried alternative accounts

  • Later, samizdat circulated unofficial writing

Did controlling the media help or hinder the USSR?

• Media control was central to how the Soviet regime governed

  • Historians disagree whether it strengthened the state or quietly undermined it

Media control strengthened the regime

• Control of the press, radio and cinema helped the Party dominate public life

  • A single message reached the whole population

  • Achievements such as industrial growth were turned into propaganda victories

• Propaganda built loyalty and legitimacy

  • The cult of personality linked Stalin to every success

  • Stalin was presented as Lenin's heir

  • Rising literacy widened the audience for written propaganda

Key historian

• Davis argues that propaganda was effective and far-reaching

  • Rising literacy gave it a mass audience

  • The cult of personality tied Stalin to the regime’s achievements

  • This supports the view that media control strengthened the state

Media control ultimately weakened it

• Heavy censorship widened the gap between propaganda and reality

  • Citizens increasingly dismissed official media as unreliable

  • Cynicism spread as people noticed what the media left out

• Control was never complete

  • Ordinary people found alternative sources of information

  • These included rumour, private letters and foreign broadcasts

  • Suppressing rival ideas did not erase them

Key historian

• Davies takes a revisionist view

  • Her research suggests censorship was often evaded

  • The regime never controlled opinion as fully as it claimed

  • This supports the view that media control could be a weakness as well as a strength