The way that Government gained control of the Media

Control of the Media

• Decree on Press in November 1917 which meant that the government could shut down any counter-revolutionary newspapers
• Only the government could publish adverts
• Petrograd telegraph Agency in November 1917 had control of electric communication
• Revolutionary tribunal of the Press January 1918 that censored the press
• All-Russia Telegraph Agency which distributed images

Cult of Lenin

• Propaganda centred around Lenin was produced
• Lenin didn't approve of all of the pictures
• After an assassination attempt he was seen as more than a man by some
• This continued with statues and posters being made
• During 1919 and 1920 Lenin was depicted as a man of the people

• In the first years event-garde artists produced pro-revolutionary posters
• In 1922 Dzerzhinsky introduced Glavlit which monitored a more organised censorship regime
• - Got rid of "bad" books

Commissariat of Popular enlightenment

• Tried to recruit poets, artists, musicians and teachers
• Teachers for example shared enthusiasm for literacy and numeracy for all
• But teachers only paid and given rations if they conformed
• Artists would also be given money, rations etc if they cooperated it was this that brought them into line rather than censorship
• Supported Proletkult - art by the proletariat

• 1926 onwards clamp down on American culture
• Only one radio station
• Put loud speakers in public places

Proletkult

• 1920 - 84,000 people involved in 300 studios
• Bukharin promoted through Pravda
• Lenin wasn't keen - liked art of the past - did't like self expressive art
• Gorn (meaning furnace) - magazine 

Glavlit

• A way of getting intellectuals on side
• Set up by Dzerhinsky (Cheka)
• Mayakovsk - a futurist poet that wrote eulogies for factories (part of Glavlit)
• Yesenin - Wrote about virtues of peasantry but drank and smoked cigars in 1921 wrote confessions of a hooligan - In 1925 committed suicide

Agit-prop

• Agitational Propaganda
• Agit-trains, agit-steamships
• Speeches at every stop on journey
• Department of Agitational Propaganda set up in 1920 to manage the agitprop

Self improvement of workers

• Literacy, numeracy, punctuality
• Lenin thought it was essential to help understand propaganda
• Consiouness
• Hygiene
• Common good over self