Everyone knows that June 22, 1941 was a turning point in the life of our country. The Great Patriotic War began, and the Soviet media immediately began to carry out tasks corresponding to the wartime. The volume of peripheral publications has significantly decreased. For example, such a regional newspaper as "Stalin's banner" began to appear on only two pages, and its circulation decreased from 40 to 34 thousand, and only 4800 copies were sold at retail [1]. True, this practically did not affect the central newspapers, which at that time became the main mouthpiece of propaganda in the USSR.
Since the newspaper had been prepared in advance for the new day, on June 23, 1941, the Bulletin of the newspaper Stalin's banner was urgently published, where the radio speech of the Deputy Chairman of the State Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs comrade. V. M. Molotov "of June 22, 1941, which announced the attack of Nazi Germany and the beginning of the war. Soviet citizens were called to solidarity, discipline, and dedication to ensure victory over the enemy. The speech ended with the words: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours". Together with the speech of V. M. Molotov, decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were published on the establishment of martial law in some areas of the USSR and on the mobilization of military districts liable for a number of military districts [2].
The "Bulletin …" also reported on the first reaction of the residents of the Penza region to the enemy invasion. Everywhere there were crowded rallies of representatives of local authorities, intelligentsia, workers, peasants, patriotic resolutions were adopted, and residents of the city and the region declared their readiness to volunteer for the front. Local materials, of course, were immediately supplemented by TASS materials.
The English "Matilda", and even on the first page of the November issue of "Pravda" and of this size … This was significant at that time, and Soviet citizens, who had become adept at reading between the lines, understood well why this was so.
Of course, all the "political correctness" of Soviet newspapers and pro-German rhetoric that took place in relation to Nazi Germany after the signing of the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" were immediately discarded. Now the German fascists were compared to dogs, Hitler from the chancellor of the German people again turned into a cannibal, the German attack on the Soviet Union was portrayed as a terrible crime, and the examples of Russian history showed that the Russian people always gave the aggressor what he deserved [3]. But not so long ago, the same newspapers published government statements that “we can quite calmly watch how this fascism is being used for the hopeless cause of saving the capitalist system” and that “our own proletarian cause is being done through fascism itself”, and that "fascism helps the growth of the class consciousness of the working class" [4].
The usual practice of the pre-war Soviet periodicals was that practically every page of the newspaper was opened with a slogan or quotation from the speeches of I. V. Stalin or V. M. Molotov. However, now many headlines began to bear the character of "incantations", for example: "For the Motherland, for Stalin!" [5], "The Soviet people will respond to the enemy's provocative blow with a mighty triple blow" [6], "Led by the Great Stalin, the mighty Soviet people will sweep the fascist barbarians off the face of the earth!" [7], "Under the leadership of Stalin - to defeat the enemy!" [8] etc. The first report of the Red Army High Command for June 22, 1941 was also published here, in which it was reported that our troops shot down 65 enemy aircraft that day, and his attacks were repelled almost everywhere [9].
Churchill's radio speech, published on the fourth page, should have inspired the confidence that they will help us, where it was said that “we will render Russia and the Russian people any help we can” and that “the danger for Russia is also ours. danger and danger for the USA … "[10]. A day later, a statement by US President Roosevelt was published on aid to the Soviet Union and on the withdrawal of the sequest from Soviet funds [11], introduced after the Soviet Union attacked Finland in the fall of 1939 with its simultaneous expulsion from the League of Nations. And "very timely" there were notes that the plight of peasants was observed in Romania, wheat crops were flooded with water in Hungary, and food was speculated in Italy [12].
The first front-line correspondence also appeared - reprints from central newspapers, testifying, first of all, to the extremely low professional level of their authors. So, in the article "Attack of Tanks" by M. Ruzov dated June 25 (reprint from the newspaper "Izvestia") it was reported that our tank machine gunner, being in the tank, was wounded by a shell fragment, but the battle continued (!) [13]. Meanwhile, this should not have been written about, if only because tanks, in principle, should not be penetrated by shell fragments. And this would be exactly the same "truth" about which one could completely remain silent!
Soviet pilots on British aircraft. There was no need to write such articles. Any comparative information in the context of political and economic confrontation is harmful!
Here was also published the story of a captured German pilot, who said that "we do not want to fight the Russians, we are forced to fight, we are tired of the war, we do not know what we are fighting for" and data on the losses of the Red Army for June 22, 23 and 24, where it was reported that Soviet aviation lost mainly 374 aircraft at airfields, while the enemy destroyed 161 aircraft in the air and 200 at airfields [14]. According to the report of the Red Army High Command for June 23, "during the day the enemy tried to develop an offensive along the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea", but "had no success." This was followed by comforting news that "the enemy, who wedged into our territory in the morning, was defeated by the counterattacks of our troops and thrown back across the state border in the afternoon, while our artillery fire destroyed up to 300 enemy tanks in the Shauliai direction." Aviation "fought successful battles, covering troops, airfields, settlements and military facilities from enemy air attacks and facilitating the counterattacks of our troops." It was also reported that "On June 22 and 23, we captured about five thousand German soldiers and officers" [15].
The manner in which the materials were presented remained the same as when covering the events in Spain in 1936-1939. That is, our troops were successful everywhere, the soldiers and officers of the Red Army acted en masse with high efficiency, and the enemy everywhere suffered huge losses. It was reported that the losses of the German army in the first three weeks of the war were truly threatening: “Soviet aviation, which Hitler's boasters declared defeated in the first days of the war, destroyed more than 2,300 German aircraft according to updated data and continues to systematically destroy enemy aircraft … German troops have lost more than 3000 tanks. During the same period, we lost 1900 aircraft and 2200 tanks”[16]. However, it became unclear how, after all these successes, the Soviet troops were retreating further and further, and the German army, consisting mainly of soldiers who did not "want to fight", continued to successfully advance on Soviet soil further and further! It is not clear why information about our losses was given at all. People would easily understand that this is classified information. It would not even have occurred to them to be interested in this, but it could have been written in such a way that now it is not possible to take into account all the losses of our troops, but after the Victory everything will be done, and no one will be forgotten!
The cellars of the fourth page were often reserved for short stories and journalistic essays. Moreover, in these materials, as before, criticism of fascism sounded again as a phenomenon that completely disappeared from the content of Soviet newspapers after August 23, 1939: "The hidden thoughts of the working people of Germany" [17], "Country-prison" [18], "Famine in Nazi Germany”[19] painted an exceptionally gloomy and hungry picture of the life of the German people, which, on the one hand, of course met the aspirations and hopes of Soviet citizens, but on the other hand could not but generate“questions without answers”. At the same time, it was immediately reported about the abundance of products in the Kiev markets [20], which by and large was a mistake of Soviet propagandists, since such information was published in the hope of a quick victory over the enemy, and this was not destined to come true soon. Moreover, with reference to newspapers and magazines in Germany (!), The Soviet press reported how the German press praised horse meat, dog and cat meat, "paraffin oil" and "wood margarine"! Meanwhile, extremes are good in the stories of the "OBS agency" ("one grandmother said"). In the press, especially the state one, it should have been more streamlined and extremes should not be allowed. On them it is always easy to catch who wrote later and … to accuse the entire press of deceit!
Here, under this photo, something completely different should have been written, namely, that our industry develops excellent automatic rifles, which the Germans do not have. It was necessary to name their brand, creator, take and place his interview in the newspaper, and so that in it he would tell what impression he personally made on him by the summons to the Kremlin to Comrade Stalin, and how he was interested in his work and warmly responded both about himself and his team. workmates, including the locksmith Ostapchuk and the cleaning lady Aunt Glasha! And only then write about the successes of the actual snipers.
Or, for example, the article "The Beastly Face of German Fascism." In it, the author narrated about the horrors of beatings and executions in Germany, but for some reason only until the fall of 1939, although he noted that the terror there intensified with the outbreak of war [21]. But it did not explain why for two whole years our press did not mention a word about these atrocities, which undoubtedly undermined the credibility of propaganda as a whole. For example, the article that "the Hitler regime is a copy of Russian tsarism" [22] was also a mistake, because there were still many people who lived under the tsarist regime and understood that there was an obvious "overlap", he can lie in big!
The newspaper paid great attention to maintaining the spirit of the people through the publication of materials on historical topics. Such articles as "The People's Commander" (about AV Suvorov), "The Defeat of Napoleon", "The Feat of Susanin", "The Battle of the Ice" told about the victories of Russian weapons in past wars and the heroism of the Russian people. Moreover, the last article described how ordinary peasants and artisans, armed with house axes, spears, bows with wooden arrows, beat the “knight-dogs” [23], which was a clear distortion of historical realities even at that time. Similarly, the entire victory over the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald was attributed exclusively to the Russian troops, since “the Lithuanians fled from the battlefield” and “the Polish troops hesitated” [24]. The rise of the patriotic spirit was also supposed to contribute to the published in the newspaper the texts of such songs as "Semyon Budyonny", "Hit from the sky, planes!", "Clicks the army of Voroshilov." Even "an excerpt from the" folk tale "" Chapaev is alive! " [25], since a very similar film plot was shown on the screens of cinemas at that time.
