“On the first road to go - to be married;
On the second road to go - to be rich;
On the third road to go - to be killed!"
(Russian folktale)
We continue to publish chapters from the monograph "The Poisoned Feather" and, judging by the responses, these materials arouse keen interest in the VO audience. This time we will consider the issue of informing citizens through newspapers after the victory of the October Revolution. This issue was partially considered in one of the articles here on VO three years ago, but this material, firstly, is more voluminous, and secondly, it is provided with links to primary sources and therefore, of course, more interesting.
Since with the liquidation of the non-communist press in 1918, Pravda became the main newspaper in Russia, since the early 1920s such newspapers began to appear everywhere. So, in 1921, on the territory of the Penza region began to publish the daily newspaper "Trudovaya Pravda" - the organ of the Penza Gubkom and the City Committee of the RKP (b). An important task of the press was to ensure the restoration of the economy destroyed by the war, to create the material, technical and cultural basis for building socialism, promised to the people by the new government. But, as in the years of the Civil War, even this problem was considered in the press exclusively in connection with the impending world revolution, about which the same Trudovaya Pravda wrote in its editorial that “every item released from the factory is the best, the most convincing proclamation about the inevitable victory of the proletariat throughout the world. … And she needs to be believed! Comrades to work! " [1. C.1]
This cover of Sciences of Europe did not appear here by accident. Now excerpts from the monograph "The Poisoned Feather" will gradually be published in this scientific journal.
At the same time, it is interesting that the period 1921-1927 may well be called the time of maximum democratization and freedom of speech for the Soviet press. Newspapers wrote which states and public organizations of foreign states help the starving people of the Volga region and to what extent. That in the Samara region all the gophers have been eaten and people are eating up cats and dogs [2. C.1], and that hungry children abandoned by their parents wander the streets in search of a piece of bread. They wrote openly about the plight of Soviet workers and employees, for example, about the fact that workers live in appalling conditions, and "employees of universities and scientific institutions - professors, teachers and technical employees are in the last place in terms of their wages" [3]. Frequent manifestations of "labor desertion" were reported, for which in Penza they were punished by imprisonment in a concentration camp (!) For a term of one to four months. Moreover, the number of such deserters for some reason was especially large among the workers of the Penza-I depot, where in August 1921, 40 people were sent to the camp, and others were sent to the penalty team for correctional work. At the Penza stationery factory from June 1 to September 13, 1921, the comrades' court also considered 296 cases of embezzlement, fights and other misconduct, for which 580 people were sent to this camp.
And here is one of the articles previously published on VO and now published on the pages of this magazine.
The introduction of the NEP in the country, adopted on March 15, 1921, was practically not commented on in this newspaper for a long time - a tradition that has survived since 1861 and has not been explained. And the speech of V. I. Lenin's "On the New Economic Policy" appeared in it only in the fall of the same year [4]. But at the same time, in the article "They Creep Out", a certain G. Arsky immediately wrote that the demands of the returning bourgeoisie to return the apartments and property taken from it are unfounded. "At the same time, many are trying to rely on the new economic policy and cap (so in the text - S. A. and V. O.) new laws of practical workers." The author warned that nothing would come of this and that “if the bourgeoisie is partially restored in our property rights, this does not mean that it has always enjoyed these rights and we must compensate it for the damage caused by the decrees and decrees of the Soviet government. We gave her a finger, and she is going to grab the whole hand! " [5. C.3] is a very revealing passage of a purely Bolshevik attitude towards the new economic policy on the ground. The visit to Penza of representatives of the ARA to combat hunger was also described in great detail, that is, in reports about life in the country, the Soviet press was fairly objective both in 1921 and later. But it was only possible to write about life abroad in an appropriate way. So, in the newspaper Trudovaya Pravda it was the section “In the countries of gold and blood” - an obvious propaganda cliché aimed at forming a negative attitude towards everything that happens there.
In the political report of the Central Committee at the XII Congress of the RCP (b) [6. S.3], everything that happens abroad was viewed as "a competition between two main forces: the international proletariat, which rises upward, on the one hand, and the international bourgeoisie, on the other." Although this struggle "has been going on for a number of years," but "it will invariably end in our victory."
According to the publications of Soviet newspapers, strikes broke out everywhere, so that readers could not help giving the impression that a world revolution was just around the corner. And here are the titles of articles on this topic: The situation of workers in England // Pravda. April 19, 1923. No. 85. C.6; Under the yoke of capital // Pravda. April 22, 1923. No. 88. C.8; Capital is coming // True. April 24, 1923. No. 89. C.2; Strike movement // Pravda. April 27, 1923. No. 92. C.1. A strike of textile workers in France. // Labor truth. August 12, 1921. No. 2. C.2; The strike continues // Trudovaya Pravda. August 14, 1921. No. 4. C.1; General strike in Danzig. // Labor truth. August 17, 1921. No. 6. C.1; Strikes in Poland // Trudovaya Pravda. August 25, 1921. No. 12. C.1; The strike in Germany is spreading // Trudovaya Pravda. August 26, 1921. No. 13. C.1; The movement of the foreign proletariat // Trudovaya Pravda. August 27, 1921. No. 14. C.1; The movement of the Polish proletariat // Trudovaya Pravda. August 28, 1921. No. 15. C.1; The Uprising of India // Trudovaya Pravda. August 31, 1921. No. 17. C.1; On the Eve of the Strike of American Railway Workers // Trudovaya Pravda. September 2, 1921. No. 19. C.1; The Japanese proletariat began to stir // Trudovaya Pravda. September 6, 1921. No. 22. C.1. As you can see, “there” everything was very bad, “very revolutionary”, although our party leaders themselves noted that there was an economic revival in the West.
However, the topic of "military concerns" also continued to be heard in the speeches of government leaders throughout the entire period of the 1920s. On the pages of Pravda, speeches of party leaders appeared every now and then, declaring that "the capitalists would gladly destroy our first proletarian republic," and these statements were immediately backed up by "necessary" publications in the Soviet press. Today we know for sure that there was little truth in all this, but how could our people verify all this then?
Only in 1925, at the XIV Congress of the RCP (b), in his report, Stalin recognized the stabilization of the political and economic situation in the capitalist states and even spoke about the "period of ebb of revolutionary waves" in Western countries. At the 15th Congress of the CPSU (b), he again noted the growth of the economy of the capitalist countries, but despite the facts and figures cited by him, he insisted that "the stabilization of capitalism from this cannot become durable."On the contrary, according to his speech, precisely because “production is growing, trade is growing, technical progress and production capacities are increasing, this is precisely where the deepest crisis of world capitalism grows, fraught with new wars and threatening the existence of any stabilization. ". Moreover, I. V. Stalin concluded that "out of stabilization grows the inevitability of new imperialist wars between the powers." That is, he saw the result, but were these their reasons - that's an interesting question?
It turns out that the leaders of our country considered even the years of successful economic development of Western states as one continuous crisis of capitalism and a step towards the collapse of the entire capitalist system, which was to take place due to the world revolution raised by the international proletariat. Accordingly, the press immediately responded to this with Pravda articles: "Bourgeois terror in France," "Conspiracy against British miners," "New reduction in the wages of Italian workers" [7], etc. However, the dangerous consequences of such a distortion of events abroad were already realized in those years. So, G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, wrote in a letter to Stalin in June 1929 that this trend of coverage in Soviet newspapers of events abroad was "outrageous nonsense", that false information from China led to the mistakes of 1927, and false information from Germany "will bring still incomparably greater harm”[8. C.14].
But the absence of a "class enemy" and "class struggle" was perceived at the same time as nonsense (it was simply impossible to live, it was necessary to fight with someone or with something - V. O.), and the press called to "fight against impersonal "," open fire on gravity and opportunistic appeasement "," hit the opportunists who disrupt the ensiling plan ", or a repair company [9. C.2].
Coverage of the "party work" in the press has become mandatory. “First of all, we restructured the party work,” the correspondents of the Mayak Revolution factory reported on the pages of the Rabochaya Penza newspaper, “since there was no owner on the car, the party organizer of our brigade was a net worker, senior worker comrade. Troshin Egor. We re-elected the party organizer, because the grid operator, in our opinion, should be one of the corners of the triangle on the machine”[10. C.1].
In the 1930s, as is known, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialization, and 1932 was marked by a monstrous famine that claimed several million lives of Soviet citizens. It broke out in the Volga region and in the Ukraine, but proceeding from the materials of Soviet newspapers of that time, if hunger raged anywhere, then only not in our country, but in the "countries of capital". In the same 1932, this topic was constantly heard on the pages of the Soviet press. Pravda published a series of articles about the heavy share of the ordinary population in capitalist countries, which spoke for themselves: "Hungry England", "The President of Hunger is on the Podium." According to the Soviet press, the situation was no better in the United States or the USA, where "hunger is stifling and the anxiety of the masses is growing by leaps and bounds: a hunger march on Washington threatens to surpass the size and determination of the veterans' march." But the worst of all for ordinary people was in Germany, where "the German unemployed are doomed to death by starvation" [11].
And, of course, in the Soviet newspapers of that time not a single word was printed about how many children in our country suffered from the effects of the famine, and how many peasants had already starved to death. Those. In just 10 years of the existence of Soviet power, its attitude towards its own people has changed almost to the diametrically opposite. There was no more talk from the pages of newspapers about any fight against hunger, as it was in 1921, no offers of aid to the starving from abroad were reported! The consequences of the famine, which was caused by the unbridled industrialization of the country, were masked by articles on the fight against all sorts of pests and fists, which, based on the materials of publications, were the main reason for the deplorable state of agriculture in our country. Newspapers wrote about persons who committed criminal negligence in keeping the harvest, about unbroken kulaks who steal sheep and collective farm bread, and spoil cows through incomplete milk milk.
Accordingly, local terrorist kulaks killed collective farm activists, and former saboteurs thwarted plans to extract peat and even … managed to "destroy aphids on 16 hectares of peas" in the Penza region, which seems to be an absolutely fantastic form of sabotage [12]. True, it was not clear where so many kulaks suddenly appeared in the country and why they hated the Soviet regime so much, if they were fattening with it, but … such thoughts were dangerous to health at that time and therefore were not expressed aloud.
In general, if you believe the then Soviet newspapers, then the world revolution was literally on the verge, and it is not surprising that Makar Nagulnov in M. Sholokhov's novel Virgin Soil Upturned began to study the English language. He clearly sensed by the tone of the Soviet newspapers that it would literally start not today or tomorrow, and that was when his knowledge would come in handy!
The information presentation scheme was purely black and white: “there” everything is bad, everything is terrible and the world revolution will begin just about, while here everything is fine, everything is fine. But despite the assurances of the newspapers, year after year passed, and the world revolution still did not begin and almost everyone saw it! As a result, the Soviet press parted with the theme of the world revolution only after the start of the Great Patriotic War, when the main yesterday's objects of its origin - Britain and the United States literally the next day after its start - together announced their all-round support for the USSR. Well, as you know, you have to pay for everything good! However, how all these "fluctuations" were reflected in the pages of Soviet newspapers, will be told in the next sequel.
List of used literature
1. Labor truth. August 11, 1921. No. 1.
2. Ibid. September 17, 1921. No. 32.
3. See: Please review // Truth. May 23, 1924. No. 115. C.7; Eliminate the flaws // Truth. June 8, 1924. No. 128. C.7; We are waiting for an answer // True. June 25, 1924. No. 141. C.7; Give the workers housing! // Truth. June 26, 1924. No. 142. C.7; Workers are waiting for an answer // Pravda. July 18, 1924. No. 181. C.7; It is necessary to pay attention to the position of scientists // Pravda. May 16, 1924. No. 109. C.1; Educators. On unemployment // Trudovaya Pravda. March 28, 1924. No. 71. C.3.
4. On the new economic policy (speech of Comrade V. I. Lenin) // Trudovaya Pravda. No. 61. C.2-3. It is interesting that the material "On the implementation of a new economic policy in the industry of the Penza province" (signed by "Temkin") appeared in "Trudovaya Pravda" even later, in Nos. 80 and 81, only on November 5, 1921. P.2-3.
5. Trudovaya Pravda. October 16, 1921. No. 57.
6. Twelfth Congress of the RCP (b). Political report of the Central Committee. Report by Comrade Zinoviev // Pravda. April 18, 1923. No. 84.
7. True. October 4, 1927. No. 226. C.2, ibid. October 5, 1927. No. 227. С.1, ibid. October 6, 1927. No. 228. C.1
8. Quoted. Quoted from: Sokolov V. V. Unknown G. V. Chicherin. From the declassified archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation // New and Contemporary History. 1994. No. 2. P.14.
9. Working Penza. July 22, 1932. No. 169.
10. We will fulfill your victory conditions, Comrade Stalin! // Working Penza. February 27, 1932. No. 47.
11. USA - towards a hungry winter // Pravda. October 19, 1932. No. 290. C.1. The Ruhr miners continue to fight // Pravda. August 22, # 215. C.5; Polish textile workers are preparing for a general strike // Pravda. September 11, 1932. No. 252. C.1. Strikes and movements of the unemployed abroad (materials from France, England, USA // Pravda. October 17, 1932. No. 268. P.4.
12. Kulak agents steal collective farm grain // Rabochaya Penza. July 26, 1932. No. 172. С.1; “On the fight against the theft of grain in state and collective farms. Resolution of the regional executive committee of July 28, 1932 // Rabochaya Penza. August 1, 1932. No. 177. C.4. Fists destroy collective farm cattle // Pravda. October 15, 1932. No. 286. C.3. The murder of comrade Golovanov - revenge of the class enemy // Rabochaya Penza. 1932.28 August # 200. C.1. Pests disrupted the peat extraction plan // Rabochaya Penza. July 26, 1932. No. 172. C.3. Take bread from the fist // Rabochaya Penza. September 2, 1932. No. 204. С.3.
