Bolshevik and Soviet agit-props and agit-trains

Agitprop_Train. — Agitprop Train.

The "Lenin" agit-prop train of literature and propaganda.

The plan[]

The term agitprop originated in the Russian SFSR (which later joined the Soviet Union), as a shortened form of отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy, English :The Department for Agitation and Propaganda), which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department. They were a form of early and at first ad-hock Bolshevik come Soviet propaganda outlet.

The propaganda events and tools[]

Newspapers and posters[]

Plakat mayakowski gross — Agitprop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky titled: "Want it? Join"
"1. You want to overcome cold?
2. You want to overcome hunger?
3. You want to eat?
4. You want to drink?
Hasten to join Udarnik shock brigades of exemplary labour!"

KruglikovaLikbez — Top: Woman, learn to read and write! Bottom: Oh, Mummy! If you were literate, you could help me! A poster by Elizaveta Kruglikova advocating female literacy dating from 1923.

Lenin took control of the socialist newspaper Pravda, making it an outlet to spread Bolshevik agitprop, articles, and other media. It later became the official Soviet Communist Party newspaper of the USSR. Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Russian: Телеграфное агентство Советского Союза, Tyelyegrafnoye agyentstvo Sovyetskogo Soyuza; acronym TASS), was established on 25 July 1925 by a decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet as the central agency for collection and distribution of internal and international news for all Soviet newspapers, radio and television stations. It had a monopoly on official state information which was delivered in the form of a 'TASS Report' (Russian: Сообщение ТАСС, Soobshchyeniye TASS). Ria Novosti was created in 1961 to supplement TASS, mainly in foreign reporting and human-interest stories.

The Soviet Information Bureau (Russian: Советское информационное бюро (Sovetskoye informatsionnoye byuro), which was commonly known as Sovinformburo (Совинформбюро)) was a leading Soviet news agency from 1941 to 1961. In 1961 Sovinformburo was transformed into Novosti Press Agency which was then succeeded by RIA Novosti in 2013 and finally by the International Information Agency Russia Today

Cinema and cinema newsreels[]

This was a leading media of the day and was naturally politicly slanted and full propaganda films and ideological bias newsreels.

Early radio[]

Radio was a new media and Lenin wanted to use it to spread his ideals and beliefs.

The first regular pan-Soviet station was the Comintern radio station station was under the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, was opened upon Lenin's initiative (for a "newspaper without a paper" as the best mean of public information) on November 23, 1924 the first regular broadcast was produced in Moscow on the Comintern radio station.

The Radio Commission of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party was organized for overall supervision and if need be censoring of it's radio broadcasting.

The USSR's Radio Moscow began broadcasting on the 29th October of 1929.

On 30 October 1930, MASSR, started broadcasting anti-Romanian propaganda in the Romanian language over most of Moldova and Radio Basarabia from a 4 kW Soviet radio station in Tiraspol. The then fascist Romanian state broadcaster started in 1937 to build Radio Basarabia, to counter Soviet propaganda and help revive the region's nationalist tendencies.

When the Cold War started, Americans launched the station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty while Western broadcaster launched aimed at the Eastern bloc nations' audiences. Cold War radio jamming and Cold War radio propaganda were commonplace on both sides.

By word of mouth[]

Word of mouth, or viva voice, is the spoken passing of information from person to person by oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication and is ultimately the origin of what is known as oral tradition is cultural material and traditions transmitted by word of mouth through successive generations.

People told others stories and accounts of real event or something made up by propagandists that was meant to sound like a politically slanted real personal experience. It was the political attempt at the word-of-mouth marketing of a political belief.

Buzzwords, slogans, taglines, political agents who were like ideology's attempt at de facto 'sales reps' and a politicised attempt at early PR consultants all played a role. Soon Hitler would take up these advertising and promotional ideas, and then American politics would finally make there political use a global phenomena by the late 1980s. It is now known in the UK, Ireland, Canada and the US as 'spin' and 'spin doctoring'. American 'big busyness' had made their commercial use a commercial phenomena in the Western World by the mid 1970s.

Agitprop plays[]

They were a type of far left wing mix up of the morality play and political theatre concepts The Blue Blouse Troupe (Russian: Синяя блуза, Sinyaya Bluza) was an influential early Soviet agitprop theatre collective created by Boris Yuzhanin under the auspices of the Moscow Institute of Journalism in 1923 and by 1927 there were more than 5,000 Blue Blouse troupes in the Soviet Union with more than 100,000 members.

Hijacked literacy campaigns[]

Lenin had a crafty plan to hijack state run literacy campaigns with with the use of books that both overtly taught literacy and covertly taught communism at the same time.

Propaganda trains and ships[]

1923 Bolshevik propaganda train — Bolshevik Propaganda Train.

They basically travelled around the nation with Bolsheviks in them, disseminating the above propaganda tools and events.