Printed media in the Soviet Union

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 population.

Additionally, within the Soviet Union the press evolved into the messenger for the orders from the CPSU Central Committee to the party officials and activists.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Izvestiya (News), the second most authoritative paper, emanated from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and in the late 1980s circulated to between 8 and 10 million people daily.

A publication of the Central Committee, Sovetskaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia), was the Russian Republic's most widely distributed newspaper, with a circulation of nearly 12 million.

A weekly regional newspaper, Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), appeared in both Russian and English editions and reported on domestic and international events.

In the mid-1980s, under the regime's less-restrictive censorship policy, both magazines and journals published articles and stories to fill in historical "blank spots."

As a result, in the late 1980s the number of subscribers to periodicals climbed considerably, and magazines and journals frequently sold out at kiosks within minutes.

Krokodil (Crocodile), one of the most popular magazines with a circulation of approximately 6 million, contained humor and satire and featured excellent artistic political cartoons and ideological messages.

Such journals as Ogonyok (Little Fire), a weekly that became more popular in the late 1980s because of its insightful political exposes, human interest stories, serialized features, and pictorial sections, had an audience of over 2 million people.

In 1986 it published excerpted works by the previously banned writer Nikolai Gumilev, who was shot in 1921 after being accused of writing a counterrevolutionary proclamation.

Sovetskaya Kultura (Soviet Culture), a journal with broad appeal, published particularly biting indictments of collectivization, industrialization, and the purges of the 1930s.

For example, a worker might send a letter to a local paper describing how his place of business could build more widgets per day if the factory kept more replacement parts in stock.

Then if that letter had been written clearly enough, or could be edited easily, and the content was considered to have enough value, and the censors approved, it would be published in the local paper for the entire community to read rather than merely being brought-up in an improvement meeting held within the business.

Following World War II the Soviet press became more concerned about the "stylistic perfection" of journalists and started to reduce the number of published letters from actual workers in favor of more professionally written articles.

Young journalists working as editors of these submissions from workers and villagers had complained that the "re-writing" was a type of "donkey-work" and was less dignified than writing for other departments.

From Schlesinger's writing on the subject it is clear that the journalists he reviewed felt that this was not always done in the best manner and that the time and energy required to sort through criticisms from such a broad field of correspondents resulted in important content being lost in the melee.

Add to that the problem that the editorial staff and party secretary often had no education on the subject they were tasked to vet, and important content was often completely lost.

As a case in point, Romanov noted that Stroitelnaya Gazeta received no replies to the 112 critical articles or the 575 forwarded letters to the institutions regarding the "pleas for relief."

For example, because the press wanted to convey faith that offenders would be caught and punished, the papers would not publish articles on crimes where no perpetrator had been identified.