It was impossible to win the war without democratizing society.
The first few issues of “Dneprovskaya Pravda” in the autumn of 1943 were published on translucent paper, they announced the first decisions of the restored Soviet authorities. There was a lack of everything, and most of all – of journalists, some of whom died on the fronts, the rest continued to fight in the active army.
Thus, for the first time, it was very difficult for the local press to work effectively in the occupied territories. Instead, the central press in Moscow systematically and widely shows the experience of conducting these works both in the deep rear and in areas recently liberated from temporary occupation. And, of course, many publications, even talentedly and truthfully written, were characterized by “varnishing”. party press of those years.
Although the collective farms have not yet been rebuilt and it is unlikely that the collective farmers have been acquainted with this resolution, the correspondent does not want to ask awkward questions to people or to himself. He reports on what is expected of him in the editorial office:
“… The collective farm assembly has developed a detailed plan for further construction ….”.
This phrase is not so much a statement of fact as an example of how to act on the ground. This was a characteristic feature of the party press. It was called, “Show people how to work.”
Instead, the image of life as it is not acceptable: the editors found in it unnecessary naturalism, social pessimism. And they, according to party dogma, were alien to the Soviet people. Thus, the biased but more truthful press of the years of the Civil War was replaced in such post-war times by a cynical coloring of life.
Here is another striking example. Less than a year has passed since the liberation of the district from the occupiers, and the newspaper cheerfully reports:
“… Construction in the Lenin Artel has already been completed … Now all collective farm families have their own houses …”.
The eloquent titles of newspaper articles of that time: “Liberated areas of the region are being revived”, “People undertake to work with fighting zeal”, “The task of the Communists is to organize the Soviet people”, “The real masters of the Stalinist region “.
A characteristic feature of that time – the party approved economic plans for coal mining, grain growing, steelmaking. She decided what to be a newspaper column. Then it was considered the norm.
Thus, the newspapers of the post-war period paid a lot of attention to the implementation of the “Law on the Five-Year Plan for the Reconstruction and Further Development of the National Economy of the USSR for 1946-1950.”
In fact, it was a program of action for each edition – the plan listed the main areas of work, forms and methods, ultimate goals and more. In addition, this law was specified in each region, similar plans were drawn up in each district or city – and therefore, each part of the country’s media, from all-Ukrainian to grassroots, had its own program.
In the postwar period, the party’s leadership of the press did not change, it even became more demanding. The political regime did not change, it was the same cult of the same person with its inherent features of tough, uncompromising, relentless leadership.
The best proof that after the war society began to return by Stalin’s will to the practice of repression and struggle against “enemies of the people” was the adoption of the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Volga Commune ”(Kuibyshev) and “Kursk Truth”.
At that time, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) ceased to exist. All normative documents that established the rules of conduct of newspapers in any situation, again began to issue the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
In essence, it was a devastating resolution, reminiscent of two other well-known and adopted almost simultaneously in 1848 resolutions – on literature and opera. In fact, it was a series of decrees related to the goal, which meant the end of the period of forced democratization of party life in the extreme conditions of war and the subsequent restoration of peaceful life and return to totalitarian methods of governing the country and the press.
It was impossible to win the war without democratizing society. People had to show examples of mass heroism not from under the stick, but at the behest of the soul, both in the rear and, especially, at the front.
But then came a new – postwar – era. The war is won, the euphoria of victory is over. The winners, seeing Europe, returned home. The party nomenklatura had to return the country to the old order. Fiction, theater and journalism were chosen for this purpose with accurate and precise calculation.
But the higher party bodies were not limited to them. Scientists also got their way, in particular as part of the famous struggle against the Weissman-Morganists. Cybernetics was recognized as a “servant of bourgeois science.” The party declared whole directions in science harmful, and then, many years later, it turned out that these were genetics, cybernetics, from which many current achievements of world science germinate.
First, the decree removed the editors, and second, they criticized the way newspapers lived and worked in the early postwar years. However, these measures allowed to reconsider editorial practice, staff training of journalists, but they also led to centralization of management, strengthening ties between party committees and editorial offices, creating a monolith of the party bureaucracy and the party-Soviet press, strengthening authoritarianism.
On the example of the regional newspaper “Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda” it is possible to trace how this resolution was executed. It revived both thematic diversity and genre palette, introduced some innovative approaches to topics, “large-scale actions in the newspaper.” Here is an example of a successful, in general, campaign – a bimonthly construction and repair of housing.
Here is a quote from “Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda”, which summarizes information about the consequences of the war for the region, gives the general public material for further analysis, more in-depth information:
“The Nazi invaders … burned and destroyed more than 151,000 square meters of housing in our region, depriving tens of thousands of workers of their homes” (June 29, 1949).
It is as if she is starting a large-scale newspaper campaign.
The newspaper then announces the beginning of the bimonthly and presents the experience of successful problem solving in such complex genres as problem essay, which was practically non-existent in wartime. An example is the publication “New in the Red Ray” (August 7, 1948). There is even a demanding, emotionally colored criticism of the head of the Soviet institution,
“… through whose fault the Hero of the Soviet Union, a student of the Teachers’ Institute Comrade. Derevyanko has been trying in vain for the second year to get an apartment. The widow of the deceased veteran had to experience incredible hardships. The chairman of the City Council is not up to them, he is busy with personal activities “(July 10, 1948).
Of course, the object of criticism was the chairman of the city council in agreement with the highest authority in the region – the regional committee of the party.
The newspaper “Voroshilovgradskaya Pravda” also publishes theoretical materials, ie continues to build its own creative potential. For example, the propaganda article “The Rise of the Material and Cultural Situation of the Workers” (August 12, 1948) informs readers about the successes in restoring what was broken by the war:
“The volume of capital works on housing construction in the past quarter to 142 percent compared to the same period last year.”
The same regional newspaper supports the appeal of the workers of Leningrad for the restoration, construction and commissioning of residential buildings (June 29), conducts a raid on the construction sites (July 6), prepares a review article in which an in-depth analysis of the situation made by the head regional party committee, gives the author grounds for criticism of the heads of coal enterprises for neglect of housing and cultural facilities (September 26).
The editorial board widely published miners’ letters with complaints and suggestions, and the housing topic was organically intertwined in letters with others – providing workers with vegetables, potatoes, fuel for the winter (see issues for 17, 18, 19, 21, 26 September and beyond), submitted their own comments (July 10), insisted on the need to rely on deputies, women’s councils (September 19), responded to criticism (August 7) and feuilleton (June 21).
Thus, the newspaper restores the experience of combining its own creative editorial and Robsilkor forces gained in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result of the bimonthly, the audience was presented with a broad panorama of housing construction and even criticized the heads of coal companies for ignoring the issues raised.
There can be no doubt that the materials for the critical speeches were either given directly by the relevant department of the party’s regional committee, or, found by correspondents or slaveholders, were agreed upon there. Thus, the highest party in the region authorized the guilty leaders, who were necessarily members of the party, to be exposed to the general public in the press.
Strictly included in the system of mono-party social management, the newspaper brought a very high social effect precisely because of the ability to accumulate efforts on something specific and coordinate their own actions with the governing center. But this was also its weakness: the press did not provide opportunities for the struggle of ideas, the free circulation of various opinions, proposals, and so on.
In the theory of https://123helpme.me/write-my-lab-report/ party building, everything was fine: at the stage of considering the problem, the free circulation of opinions should be allowed – and after the decision was made, the decision had to be implemented democratically (by a majority of votes). In fact, all decisions were made behind the scenes, made through the press in a ready form and executed through a system of party discipline. The press also remained only a “cog” of a very large machine, at that time well-tuned and almost faultless.
Here is an assessment of the Volyn press given by A. Bortnikova, a researcher from Lutsk, in the collection “Ukrainian Periodicals: History and Modernity”: newspapers focused on the publication of materials on the reconstruction of the national economy. Cases in the field of industry were most fully covered. “