"We know that the new forces of society, in order to act properly, need only one thing: they must be mastered by new people, and these new people are workers."
(K. Marx.
Speech at the anniversary of "The People's Paper"
spoken in London on April 14, 1856 )
Memories of the recent past. Today we publish the third article "about communist propagandists". Only now about how they acted after the collapse of the country and the abolition of the CPSU.
But before writing about this, I would like to draw attention to the layer of comments that I received on the two previous materials and share some, so to speak, observations. First of all, that I am very surprised how from the memory of some of our people everything bad is swept away by time, and only everything that is “free”, and therefore good, remains.
Commentary layer
But there are people who are honest and have a good memory. And here's a comment from one of them:
“I went to the comments. You are absolutely right. In the USSR, almost everyone who had at least something of value at hand stole. Before the army, I happened to work as a loader at a meat processing plant in the regional center. “Officially,” every working day, I and other employees of the plant openly carried in their hands packages wrapped in paper. The package could contain anything: meat, boiled pork, smoked sausage.
We, the movers, preferred peppercorns. In our area, it was sold by the piece by the pea. At the checkpoint, the packages were not opened, the guards weighed them on the hand, and very accurately caught up to 100 grams. If the package weighed no more than 1 kg, go quietly. In addition, good volumes of the stolen deficit were taken out of the plant by drivers who came to buy meat. They had hidden secrets in their cars, in which they hid scarce meat and smoked meats they received from us. The carriers paid half the price for the product, and we did not have to risk carrying out such volumes. Now imagine how many were stolen per day on a national scale. I, a loader, with an official salary of 150 rubles, went to and from work by taxi. And every other day I went with the young creatures to the tavern."
However, there are people who look differently at everyday theft in the USSR:
“You can steal from someone. You cannot steal from yourself. The workers got the factories, the peasants got the land. The means of production have become their own. Hard workers dragged home tools and blanks, metal from factories, peasants stole grain and potatoes to feed livestock. But were they thieves? No. They eliminated the shortcomings of the mechanism of distribution of benefits and remuneration”.
Everything is just like in the novel by Robert Sheckley "Ticket to the Planet Tranai" or in Moliere's "Tartuffe": "Whoever sins in silence, does not commit a sin!"
And here is a very interesting opinion of a woman. And it's amazingly wise:
“Perhaps the propagandists were the very last line of defense of socialism, that weak dam, which, having no tools to influence the policy of the top of the party, held back, as best as it could, the growing pressure of its opponents, both home-grown and foreign. But now - they could not, did not hold back, the pressure was too great. Life went on, they adapted to new conditions. Haven't we all adapted in accordance with the possibilities given to us by nature, that is, as best they could? Do we have a moral right to reproach these people? The propagandists did at least something, stood to the end, realizing that everything was in vain, that they had lost. We didn’t do anything.”
I am glad that more and more people are aware of what happened and just like that, with a concept, and write:
“And you ask yourself a question, can the conditional leader of the conditional West, whatever you like, destroy his country? And why did it work in ours? Who created this system, in which the probability of destruction was equal to one hundred percent? Does the leader of the country decide everything? Does it all depend on the personality? This is the answer to the question of why the Soviet Union collapsed. And you say - Gorbachev is not mine. Yes, he is common, common. Do you, in general, remember the euphoria that happened in 1985, when he came to the throne? Yes! And by the way, if he is to blame all around, how did he end up in power at all? Where is the Politburo, where is party control, where is the almighty KGB?"
The opinion of a person who worked in this "field" at the time:
“I am reading the article, Vyacheslav Olegovich, as if I were going back almost forty years ago. From 1984 to 1988, I was the Komsomol organizer of the shop and often replaced the Komsomol organizer of the plant. So I remember well the whole stream of agitprop guidelines that you described. Soviet agitprop of the late USSR can be considered a model of the useless waste of enormous resources."
And, by the way, a very good conclusion. At least put it in the article!
And this is criticism, or rather its level:
“For example, comparing the number of children born out of wedlock in the USSR and the USA, you deliberately omitted the reasons, and made the conclusion you need that the USSR is badly morally, worse than in the USA. Although this fact is not connected with morality."
The answer question is: what is it connected with? Poor quality rubber product # 2? Well, this is also an indicator … of the poor quality of the economy. Even the preziki and those we have, it turns out, were no good! But the answer of the same communist commentator simply struck me: “Our people were confident in the future, that the state would not leave them, well…” Illegitimate children were also “riveted” (this is my continuation). That is, cuckoo children thrown to the state is normal. But the Americans, yes, those illegitimate children were solely because of their immorality.
Be that as it may, whether someone likes it or not, we continue the topic.
Changes on the info front
And today the story will go just about what changes in the information space of Russia have occurred since 1991.
Indeed, tremendous changes have taken place: the universities of Marxism-Leninism have disappeared. Schools of agitators and propagandists, like themselves, also disappeared. There were no party organizers, scientific communists, historians of the CPSU. The Knowledge Society, politicized to the limit, also disappeared. No one else read lectures to the workers about the international situation and decaying capitalism. The slogans "People and Party", "Our Steering Party" disappeared overnight. However, life went on.
Although the society has become completely new. But … the workers, about whom Karl Marx was so concerned, calling them a new force, did not at all rush to rule this new society and did not stand at its information feed. Because they could not do any of this! And they did not have the appropriate education. Well, those who were ordered from above to read about the "party - the organizing force of our society" were immediately ordered to think and act differently. And they started to act!
So, already on November 13, 1991, the Penza regional administration, number 159, adopted a resolution “On the Political Consultative Council, the Council of Entrepreneurs and the Economic Council” [1]. That is, she invited all interested parties to the dialogue. The decisions recorded the creation of her image through the media. For this, it was decided to create the official newspaper of the Penza region administration "Penzenskie Vesti" [2].
As before, citizens applied to the administration, including in person. But many preferred to write to the newspapers. And the administration took this into account!
Then, on March 28, 1994, at a meeting of the board of the Penza region administration, a thematic plan of publications, radio and TV appearances for April-June 1994 was adopted.24 topics were identified, on which its corresponding committee was required to prepare informational mass events. The newspapers Penza Pravda, World of People, Penza Vesti, Nasha Penza, the Penza regional television and radio center were involved. It was planned to conduct a live TV broadcast, a "Round Table" in the editorial office, feedback in the form of answers to questions from residents of Penza. While in all newspapers, including regional, city and district press center of the regional administration had to submit statistical materials on the results of the quarter.
Let us name the following thematic blocks in providing information to the population: “Social protection of the population is the most important area of activity of the regional administration”; “Protecting the peace of mind of citizens”, “Foreign economic activity of the regional administration”, “Problems of employment of the population and the ways of their social and legal protection” (the spelling of the last paragraph has been retained unchanged); "Social and political parties and movements in the region." Television meetings with the head of the regional administration were provided monthly [3].
A Public Relations and Environmental Monitoring Committee was also established. [4] As you can see, a body that would allow the administration to dialogue with the public appeared in the region only seven years after 1991. That is, the authorities gave up the imperative management system very slowly. But … still, little by little she refused.
True, in the city such a body was created earlier - in 1996. Five people were supposed to work in it, whose task was constant feedback between the administration and the population: meetings, working with letters and appeals from citizens, searching in the press for responses to the speeches of the head of the city administration. Moreover, in fact, decisions on such work were adopted in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996. But the committee responsible for this work was created only in 1996! That is, in the previous time, all this was done by some completely random "new" people.
Polls
The most interesting thing is that the analysis of citizens' appeals to the regional administration from 1985 to 2000 shows that they mainly concerned … What do you think? That's right: housing and communal services problems. It was noted that by 1995 the number of repeated calls had decreased - from 18.6% to 6%. And every 12th visit had a positive result. Every 12th … Such was the efficiency of working with them.
From 1991 to 2000, the leadership of the Penza region has repeatedly made decisions to improve the awareness of citizens. Actually, there are dozens of them. But the problem is not completely resolved even today - 20 years later.
In connection with the obvious need to increase (again increase; well, how much could it be increased? - VO) the political and legal culture of citizens during the elections in the Russian Federation, resolutions were adopted, which indicated the mandatory and timely dissemination of relevant materials in the media.
However, despite the abundance of information in the central and local media, during the Duma elections in the fall of 1999, the awareness of a significant number of citizens of the city of Penza was unsatisfactory. A survey of citizens on the streets of the city was conducted. The number of respondents is 400 people. A solid sample. It consisted of just one single question: "Name the electoral blocs and associations known to you that are going to take part in the elections to the Duma."
It turned out that none of the respondents, among whom were people aged 18 to 35, knew that the electoral bloc of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is called "For Victory!", Although the very name of the party was known to 40% of the respondents. The electoral bloc "Fatherland - All Russia" was not named by any of the respondents, although 25% did name "Fatherland". And 90% is the Yabloko block. The electoral bloc of V. Zhirinovsky was not precisely named. Many of the respondents wrote only the names of the leaders instead of the names.
Thus, a significant part of the population in the Penza region was clearly apolitical. It is safe to say that in rural areas the indicators of such a survey would be even more depressing.
It was the same in the Saratov region.
10% of the respondents aged about 40 could not name a single electoral bloc or association at all. That is, all efforts to agitate and propagate parties and blocs at that time were generally ineffective. But it was not possible to "enlighten" very many people, despite all the efforts. But a lot of money went down for this. So, in 1997 in the Saratov region 500 million rubles were allocated for this [6]!
At the same time, the private Institute for Regional Policy in Penza conducted a study of the credibility of the source of information. And I got the following result:
1. Transmission of the Central Television - 47, 66%;
2. Publication in a central newspaper - 45, 79%;
3. Publication in a local newspaper - 26, 17%;
4. Transfer of local television - 25, 23%;
5. Rumors passed by word of mouth - 21.5%;
6. Communication on the Mayak radio - 7.48%;
7-8. Local radio message - 3.27%;
9-10. A leaflet on a post or a fence - 3.27% [7].
That is, even people believed in the authorities only half. And no wonder, after so many years of deception.
Another survey was conducted by students of the Penza University majoring in Public Relations. More than 600 people were interviewed. Bottom line: there is a "distrust of the majority of voters in the government as such" [8]. What conclusion can be drawn?
Output
The conclusion is this: one of the leaders of the Slavophiles, Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov, was right when he wrote that the majority of Russians, patriarchal in their mass, only express their opinion about power, but they do not want to rule themselves, create some kind of their own institutions for this and are ready to entrust power over themselves. any more or less legitimate ruler or even a daring impostor [9].
And since our society still for 80% consists either of peasants, or people from peasants in the first or second generation, it would be strange to expect something more.
Russians are a society ruled from above. And it will change very, very soon.
