“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken to a wise man who built his house on a rock; and the rain fell, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and rushed on that house, and it did not fall, because it was founded on a stone. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not fulfill them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand; and the rain fell, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and he fell, and his fall was great."
(Gospel of Matthew 7: 24-27)
As you know, in the staff of the regional committee of the CPSU - the main ideological center that implements the policy of the party in the regions of the country, there were propaganda and agitation departments, subordinate to which were lecturers, propagandists and agitators.
The cover is in a pleasant "color of maximum trust".
With their help, targeted dissemination of information was carried out and, accordingly, the impact on target audiences. By 1985, considerable experience had been accumulated in the field of agitation and propaganda activities, and personnel training had been established. The main direction in working with the population was considered to be the communist education of workers: “the formation of a Marxist-Leninist worldview, class consciousness, intransigence to bourgeois ideology, an organic need for mastering modern knowledge, raising the level of moral culture, developing high moral qualities, strengthening the fight against manifestations of individualism, - indiscipline, immoral behavior …”[1].
A total of 213 pages in A4 format. 119 archival documents have been introduced into scientific circulation, which is quite a lot for such a narrow topic.
Similar work was also carried out through the media, and it was supposed to be carried out by ideologically trained personnel. For the purpose of such training, the certification of media workers of other mass media was regularly carried out, while the main task of certification was considered: “improving the political, professional training, moral qualities of workers in the press, television and radio broadcasting, strengthening the role of the media and propaganda in the communist education of workers, solving national economic and social tasks, ideological work”[2]. Those. the press, subsidized by the state, was also controlled by it and was supposed to positively reflect the results of the activities of the party and the government.
On the other hand, the reaction of the working people to this or that party action was supposed to demonstrate how positively the working masses view it.
So, in the "Information on organizational and ideological activities" for 1985, the responses of the workers of the Penza region to the visit of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev were given, among which there is the following: M. S. Gorbachev to France, - said the locksmith of the locomotive depot Penza-Sh V. M. Burov, when American imperialism intends to transfer the arms race to outer space”[3].
A number of areas of such activities were very similar, but had different motivation, and most importantly, an economic basis. For example, lecture propaganda was recognized as an extremely important area of work with the population. So, in 1985 g.the lecturer group of the regional committee of the CPSU of the Penza region prepared such lectures as: "Developed socialist society - a society of true democracy", "Housekeeping and collective contracting - an important way to intensify animal husbandry", "On the tasks of collectives of enterprises and organizations for the further development of housing and communal services of the city Penza ". In 1986, lectures were given: "Labor accomplishment of workers of the region - to the XXVII Party Congress", "XXVII Congress of the CPSU and the tasks of the workers of the region", "Decisions of the XXVII Congress of the CPSU in the business and life of every work collective, every worker", "Time and without losses to harvest, to create a reliable fodder base - the main tasks of the agro-industrial complex worker”[4].
Most of these lectures were delivered on the so-called “Lenin's Fridays”. At the same time, an analysis of the archival funds of the regional committee of the CPSU of the Penza region makes it possible to establish that, starting in 1986, the propaganda and agitation department began to collect questions that were asked during the "Lenin Fridays". In 1985, there are no data on such questions at all, in 1986 they appear, but there are still few of them, and in 1987 their volume begins to grow sharply. Noteworthy is the COMPLETE DISCONFORMITY of the topic of the lecture with the questions that were asked to the speaker. Here, for example, is the topic of a lecture given on the Zheleznodorozhny District of Penza on August 3, 1987: "The June Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the tasks of the workers in the region to deepen perestroika." In addition to the main speaker, the lecture was attended by 2 speakers from the district party committee and 3 people from the city committee of the CPSU. And here are the questions that were asked to the speaker at this lecture: “What is the expression of restructuring at our precast concrete plant?”; “Why do buses No. 1 and 4 run badly?”; “When will the road to the settlement of Soglasie be asphalted?”; "Will the percentage of housing for piano factory workers be increased?"
In general, all the main issues revolved around the usual everyday problems that were supposed to be solved … by the local Soviets, and by no means by the party. They also asked “Who is to blame for the fact that there are no cookies, gingerbread, rice and other goods on the shelves of shops in our city?”; “On whom does poor transport work during peak hours depend?”; “In a bakery shop on the street. K. Zetkin small assortment of bread, and they bring it late … Will these shortcomings be eliminated?"
However, there were also very acute questions of a social nature at that time: “How can we explain the stagnation in our economy?”; “How many drug addicts are there in Penza?”; "Why isn't work being done to educate the population about AIDS?"
On August 19, 1988, on “Lenin's Friday,” they asked: “When will the local Soviets be the real power on the ground?”; “Where did the laundry detergent, caramel, items of women's toilet go? Why are there long queues everywhere?”,“What is the reason for the shortage of gasoline in the city?”,“How will each family get a separate apartment in 2000? Is it real in Penza?"
In Saratov in January 1986, in the plan of activities of the propaganda and agitation department of the regional committee of the CPSU, it was ordered to hold a single political day throughout the region on the topic "A world without wars, without weapons - the ideal of socialism", for which purpose propaganda groups consisting of lecturers of the regional committee of the CPSU and the regional organization of the society "Knowledge" from university teachers and researchers.
The best propagandists were awarded with diplomas and table medals of the regional committee of the CPSU, as, for example, was the practice in the Samara region, where in 1987 only one city of Chapaevsk was awarded 70 people [5].
At the same time, it was already noted then that in the state of the problem of Marxist-Leninist education in many regions a formal approach prevails. The subject matter of lectures delivered to youth audiences is narrow, little attention is paid to strengthening the counter-propaganda orientation of the media, and most of the youth are critical of the activities of the Komsomol [6].
For the purpose of ideological indoctrination of the population in the region, special training units were created to educate people passing through them in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. So, in 1985-1986. in the Penza region there were: schools for young communists - 92; political schools - 169; schools of foundations of Marxism-Leninism - 2366; schools of scientific communism - 1279; schools of party and economic activists - 31; schools of ideological activists - 62; theoretical seminars - 98; methodological seminars - 30; University of Marxism-Leninism - 1. 5350 people passed through all structures [7].
The regional committees of the CPSU constantly monitored the activities of this system in accordance with the resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU, and in particular the resolution of the Central Committee adopted in 1988 "On the restructuring of the system of political and economic education." It is interesting that among the shortcomings noted, for example, by the Samara OK KPSS, were: poor attendance at classes, insufficient number of round tables and business games, and this despite the fact that 8279 people received higher economic education through the UML in the previous five-year period. Only in the city of Syzran in 1987, more than 4 thousand young men and women studied Marxist-Leninist theory and topical issues of domestic and foreign policy [8].
The figure, as we can see, is quite significant, and, nevertheless, as already noted, the overall situation with youth work here was assessed as not entirely satisfactory.
The department of propaganda and agitation of the regional committee of the CPSU of the Penza region was in charge of organizing trips of Penza citizens to Hungary, the Bekesh region of which was twinned with the Penza region. In the 80s. there was a regular exchange of work collectives and specialists. Workers of health care, trade, a meat-packing plant, a glass factory in the city of Nikolsk, and pioneers went to Bekeshchaba for summer vacations. Guests from Hungary were received in the same way. At the same time, the department recommended to the Committee on Television and Radio Broadcasting under the Executive Committee of the Penza Regional Council of People's Deputies to provide broad and comprehensive media coverage of friendly relations and internationalism of Penza workers [9].
Interestingly, quite often the very fact of Soviet citizens leaving the border was considered as a propaganda move, as evidenced, for example, by the certificate on the work of the commission for traveling abroad under the Kuibyshev OK KPSS (1986): “It has not yet become a rule in the region to discuss every characteristic -recommendation in party organizations, labor collectives, to take into account their opinion on the business and moral and political qualities of workers nominated for a trip abroad. Often, when considering the characteristics, nothing is said at all about the disadvantages recommended, or the disadvantages are smoothed out.
The system of organizing the training of all categories of people traveling abroad has not yet developed, which reduces the effectiveness of travel and propaganda work. Often, all planned training is limited to superficial instruction, many tasks are poorly worked out, are not specific, people are not taught how to work abroad, how to borrow advanced experience. Many specialists do not have the necessary information to carry out propaganda work …”[10]
On the other hand, the organs of the CPSU provided special support to foreign correspondents who visited the regions of Russia during the years of perestroika. It is interesting to note that in the certificates addressed to the secretaries of the OK CPSU, the direction followed by the newspaper and its circulation was named [11]. At the same time, journalists from their own media were sent for training at the All-Union Institute for Advanced Training of Press Workers.
