Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928

Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928Author(s): Jeffrey BrooksSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 16-35Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2498683 .

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JEIFFREY BROOKS

Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928

The Bolsheviks created a new system for the production and distribution of the printed word to replace the prerevolutionary print media. This innovation was in many respects the most remarkable of the early revolutionary years, since it led to the radical dichotomy between public and private codes of behavior that has plagued Soviet society ever since.

The central feature of the new information system was a publishing monopoly, with corresponding prepublication censorship of all reading material. The link between producers and consumers that the market had provided was cut, and Bolshevik publishers did not have to offer what consumers wished to read. The result was to alter abruptly the flow of printed information and particularly the flow to and from the lower levels of the reading public. Before the revolution, the print media had evolved along typically western lines, and publishers competed to identify and satisfy the tastes of different groups of readers. Newly literate common people were drawn to a popular culture created in response to their demands, and they purchased what they found appropriate and interesting. The result was not democratic expression in a political sense, since the tsarist government suppressed unwelcome viewpoints, but did include a measure of representativeness. The popular culture became intelligible and interesting to a large audience of inarticulate but literate common people. Public values, that is the values expressed in the widely circulated printed material, evolved in tandem with the private values of common readers. Public and private imagining tended to coalesce.

The Soviet media lacked the broad representativeness of prerevolutionary popular culture. Unchecked by the need to sell what they produced, Soviet publishers ignored popular taste and produced materials unsuitable for the least-educated readers. The se- riousness and difficulty of the Soviet mass publications, as well as the message they conveyed, put them beyond the range of the common readers. Bolshevik publishers replaced popular fiction and religious texts, which had made up most of popular prerevolutionary reading matter, with newspapers, and the mass press became the most accessible form of printed material during the early Soviet era. Although they recognized the popularity of light fiction, they published little, because they wished to in- struct rather than to entertain.' The novels and stories they did publish were generally more difficult than prerevolutionary equivalents, and readers of lubok tales or newspaper serials were likely to find popular Soviet publications, such as Fedor Gladkov's Cement or the novels of H. G. Wells, overly challenging. Newspapers were more challenging than light fiction, and the language the Bolsheviks used, with its array of new words, abbreviations, acronyms, and other difficulties also put off the casual or un- initiated reader.

This essay draws on a paper presented at the "Conference on Popular Culture-East and West" at Indiana University (1986) and my final report to the National Council for Soviet and East European Research (1985). Research was supported by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research (contract number 628-7) and by the International Research and Exchange Board.

1. M. I. Slukhovskii, Kniga i derevnia (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), 109.

Slavic Review 48, no. 1 (Spring 1989)



Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928 17

These problems were heightened by the material difficulties of producing and dis- tributing printed material after the revolution and by a lack of information about what readers wanted to read and could read. Without competition and attention to profit and loss, Soviet publishers usually could not identify popular demand even when they wished to address it. Experiments with reader surveys and other means of adjusting texts to potential audiences did not bring quick results. Under such conditions, only a determined reader would seek out scarce newspapers day after day. Until the New Eco- nomic Policy (NEP) was fully in force, newspapers were free and distributed with little attention to consumer demand. When payment was introduced, however, newspaper circulation in the Russian Republic plummeted from an estimated 2.6 million copies a day in January 1922 to just under a million copies a day in August 1923 (RM 5/5/ 1923). The quantity of printed material did not reach prerevolutionary levels until late in the decade.2

The Bolsheviks' discovery of the remoteness of the common readers, that is the mass of ordinary people with a year or two of primary schooling, was gradual and incomplete. The circle of people who found the new media unintelligible, uninterest- ing, and largely irrelevant shrank gradually during the 1920s as the Soviet state grew in strength, and the language of public life penetrated private and working lives. Yet the dichotomy of public and private codes of behavior remained, albeit with different meanings for those at the periphery of the information system and for those who used the public codes regularly.

The mass newspapers directed at the common reader were on the cutting edge of the new public culture in the 1920s, even though they missed their target. Prerevolu- tionary Pravda was intended for both workers and party activists, but Soviet publishers created more specialized publications soon after the October Revolution. Milestones in the campaign to draw semiliterate peasants and workers into a new Soviet popular print culture included the founding of such newspapers as Bednota (1918-1931), Rabo- chaia gazeta (1922-1939), Rabochaia Moskva (1922-), and Krest'ianskaia gazeta (1923- 1939).3

These newspapers, despite the difficulties the authorities had in producing and dis- tributing them, represent the Soviet government's greatest success in promoting the new public culture. At a time when radio was not yet a medium for mass communication, they were the government's most important means of communicating with large numbers of people. As late as the spring of 1925, the editors of Rabochaia gazeta estimated that no more than 100,000 people in the entire country listened to radio (RG 4/11/1925). The central newspaper, therefore, was the only reliable means the government had for disseminating standardized information. Although other newspapers, such as Vecherniaia Moskva (1923-) and Gudok (1917-), the newspaper for workers in transport, were widely read, they were relatively sophisticated and reached an audience that extended into the intelligentsia. In fact, these newspapers contained a great deal of information about Russian intellectual life during the 1920s. Mass newspapers,

2. Jeffrey Brooks, "Studies of the Reader in the 1920s," Russian History, nos. 2-3 (1982), 187-202; "The Breakdown in the Production and Distribution of Printed Material, 1917-27" in Bolshevik Culture, ed. Abbott Gleason et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 151-174. Citations to newspapers are given by the month, the day, and the year. B is for Bednota, RG is for Rabochaia gazeta, RM is for Rabochaia Moskva, KG is for Krest'ianskaia gazeta, and G is for Gudok.

3. Rabochaia Moskva began as the organ of the Moscow Soviet, was reconstituted as Rabochaia Moskva in 1922, and bore this name until 1939; subsequently, it became Moskovskaia Pravda.



18 Slavic Review

on the contrary, were self-consciously intended for the lowest levels of the reading public. My emphasis in discussing these newspapers is on content rather than on the Bol- sheviks' policy or intentions.

Bednota was the first Soviet newspaper designed primarily for the lower-class or common reader, and it was intended initially as a Soviet successor to the cheap prerevolutionary boulevard newspapers. It was actually printed on the confiscated press of one of the oldest of the boulevard newspapers, Moskovskii listok (B 3/27/1923). The editors proclaimed in the first issue that the newspaper would serve "the urban and rural poor" (B 3/27/1918), but 75 percent of all copies issued during the civil war went to the Red Army (see Appendix A for circulation figures). After the civil war, the paper was redirected toward peasants. The editors' confusion about their readership was reflected in the format, which alternated several times between a tabloid and a full-sized layout before the less-popular and larger size was finally adopted.

The Bednota editors' difficulties in appealing to the common reader showed in the tumultuous drop in circulation following the introduction of paid subscriptions at the outset of NEP in 1921. Until that time the newspaper had been distributed free, and the editors assumed that it reached its intended audience. The size of the edition of Bednota rose from 50,000 copies a day in 1918 to perhaps as many as 800,000 in 1921, on the eve of the NEP. When readers were compelled to pay for the newspaper, however, circulation tumbled. Only 35,000 copies a day were printed in 1923.

Party leaders noted this failure to gain a large audience, and they founded Kres- t'ianskaia gazeta in late 1923. Bednota was recast to serve rural activists. In the words of its editors, it became a newspaper for "the advanced stratum" of village society, "those who worked in the party and the Soviets," whereas Krest'ianskaia gazeta was a paper for those who were "not ready for more serious material" (B 3/12/1925). Kres- t'ianskaia gazeta began as a weekly tabloid and became a biweekly in October 1928. During, the 1920s it was the single most important publication for the common reader, far outdistancing all rivals. Circulation approached half a million in the first year of publication and more than a million in late 1928 (KG 9/4/1928).

A proletarian version of Bednota did not appear for several years, perhaps because Pravda and Izvestiia were still considered appropriate for the working class. When the Bolsheviks realized that ordinary workers could not or would not read Pravda and Izvestiia, they created Rabochaia gazeta and Rabochaia Moskva. As the editors of Rabochaia gazeta explained to their readers in the spring of their second year of publication, before Rabochaia gazeta appeared, "the working proletariat of factory and plant did not have its central workers' organ" (RG 3/9/1923). The circulation of Rabo- chaia gazeta rose steadily to 315,000 by mid-1927; almost a third of the subscribers were inhabitants of Moscow. Nevertheless, the editors considered their paper national and ignored such topics as Moscow sports and cultural events. Rabochaia Moskva was begun for Moscow workers in 1922 and appeared in 125,000 copies by 1926.

Despite the substantial circulation of the two tabloids, many of the least-educated workers read neither. The editors of Rabochaia gazeta in late 1926 described their prime reader as "the middling worker" [sredniak], who was growing culturally and was, at least by implication, politically active (RG 12/12/1926). According to a survey, their audience was a mixture of white-collar employees and workers.4 The con- centration of newspapers in the two capitals excluded many potential provincial readers. According to a commentator in Gudok, the single-issue circulation of the 70

4. Ia. Shafir, Rabochaia gazeta i ee chitatel' (Moscow, 1926), 91-108.



Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921 -1928 19

Moscow and Leningrad newspapers was 4.6 million copies in 1925, compared with 3.4 million for the 521 provincial newspapers, including the one-day press runs of weeklies (G 1/1/1926).

The press commented on the problem of the passive and uninterested common reader but could find no solution. Staff journalists wrote frequently of the difficulty of appealing to the peasants and workers who were entering or reentering the urban labor force as industry revived. The editors of Rabochaia gazeta complained in late 1926, citing a Central Committee report that "the existing network of newspapers cannot serve the culturally and politically backward strata of the proletariat either in form or content" (RG 12/12/1926). Five months later they returned to this theme, admitting that "the existing mass newspapers (Rabochaia gazeta, Krest'ianskaia gazeta), the trade union newspapers, and others, have not penetrated into the thick of this enormous stratum" (RG 5/29/1927). The reason for the newspapers' weakness was clear to them. "They do not reflect the special demands of these groups in their content, and the content does not correspond to their low cultural level." The answer to the dilemma was also simple: to found a new "mass kopeck newspaper," a reference to Gazeta kopeika of the prerevolutionary period, which catered to the taste of lower-class urban readers. No such newspaper was established, however, and the idea of using what they considered the sensational methods of Gazeta kopeika was rejected. "For us, Commu- nists," wrote I. Vareikis, a Soviet publishing official in 1926, "such methods of win- ning popularity among readers are unavailable. " 5 In fact, the Bolsheviks rarely printed the crime stories, human interest features, or feuilleton novels typical of popular prerevolutionary newspapers.

The editors' and journalists' ability to reach beyond an audience of sympathizers was also thwarted to a certain extent by party control. Each newspaper was officially a party publication, a fact that determined the staff's first loyalty. As the editors of Rabochaia Moskva explained in response to Anatolii V. Lunacharskii's complaint about their lack of sensitivity to cultural issues, "there is a control over our newspaper, Comrade Lunacharskii, the control of the Moscow Soviet, of the Moscow Provincial Soviet, and the main control of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist party, of which Rabochaia gazeta is an organ" (RG 10/28/1922).

Party guidance explains the difference between the content of the Soviet and prerevolutionary newspapers. Successful prerevolutionary editors found formulas for sat- isfying readers' demands and for selling advertisements, and they stuck to them if they worked. Soviet editors received directions from the party, rather than signals from consumers in the marketplace. When a policy was announced, such as the one to promote the air force in 1923, the newspapers reacted quickly with a spate of articles about airplanes and pictures of airplanes. Although readers were interested in airplanes, there had been little coverage until the campaign began. Similarly, the attention given to such subjects as law and taxes varied enormously, depending on whether or not party leaders were openly promoting the decrees. Even the basic distinction between workers' and peasants' newspapers was an artifact of planning rather than readers' interests, since judging from the prerevolutionary era peasants were fascinated by cities, and the workers were interested in the countryside.

The new information system was not a failure, however. Although the Bolsheviks lost the common readers, they gained an alternative audience of activists, enthusiasts, and government employees, who were eager to understand the new public culture that

5. I. Vareikis, Zadachi partii v oblasti pechati (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), 11.



20 Slavic Review

counted for much in their lives. Such people needed to master the language of popular communication to participate effectively in Soviet organizations and institutions. The genius of the new information system was that it was accessible to these people. The formation and dissemination of a new system of public values in the 1920s depended on their participation. Without their understanding of new codes of behavior, the So- viet system could hardly have functioned.

The orientation of Soviet newspapers toward a special audience of informed and sympathetic readers explains a large measure of their seeming inconsistency and even incoherence. Herbert J. Gans has argued that United States correspondents make im- plicit contracts with their audiences, and a similar logic can be used to illuminate the activists' role.6 The operations of Soviet journalists suggest three distinct approaches to readers, each with a different kind of journalism and a different sort of information. The three spheres of information are the active sphere, which is designed to engage the attention of participants in Soviet institutions, members of the party, and other enthusi- astic supporters of the government; the informational intended for ordinary readers; and the inspirational, which is more vague than the others, is designed to inspire all who would heed the message (see Appendix D).

The activist sphere contained not only the leaders' and staff journalists' messages to the activists, but also the activists' responses in the form of letters and local correspondence. The dialogue, if one can call it that, between the newspaper staff and the activists was highly structured and unequal. The staff selected topics for discussion, chose and edited the letters, commented upon them, and also captioned them. The result had little to do with the mass of letters received, but the number of letters attests nevertheless to people's willingness to join this discourse (see Appendix B).

The informational sphere was very different and contained no discussion. In the 1920s, and until recently, the big informational story was foreign affairs, many ordinary readers began with foreign affairs, whereas party members turned first to the lead editorial and the section on party life. Foreign news was the most popular section of the newspaper, according to a 1925 survey of the readers of Rabochaia gazeta.7 The editor of Krest'ianskaia gazeta gave foreign affairs priority for additional coverage when that publication became a biweekly in 1928 (KG 9/11/1928). The editors of Rabochaia Gazeta, Rabochaia Moskva, and Bednota devoted a fifth of their space to this subject, and coverage in Krest'ianskaia gazeta was 15 percent.

Emphasis on foreign affairs as the subject most likely to attract the common reader reflected the editors' unequal contract with passive and uninformed common readers. The world abroad was an important subject in the prerevolutionary print media, and war, revolution, and civil war stimulated further curiosity. Soviet journalists tried to portray Bolshevik leaders as Soviet Russia's defenders against a hostile and depraved capitalist world in order to address this interest. During the war scares of 1923 and 1927 rumors of war sold newspapers.

The last sphere of information was iconographic as well as inspirational. The subject was not the news but the ideals of the leaders, ideals that animated some readers as well. Journalists wrote patriotic texts and ideological explanations for this sphere; these items corresponded in a sense to the inspirational articles, poems, and fiction in holiday issues of prerevolutionary newspapers. Yet the function of the inspirational material

6. Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News (New York: Pantheon, 1979), 241. 7. Ellen Propper Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public (New York, 1981), 58, 121; Shafir,

Rabochaia gazeta, 100.




was much more important in the Soviet press. The editors expressed an inspirational message in the very design of the newspapers, which seem to herald the future instead of the present when displayed on walls and in factories. Perhaps this fact explains the significance of the photographs, still common today, of smiling workers and peasants, whose faces have little to do with the events of the day. Such images began to crowd out the daily news in the early 1920s, and their appearance on the first page lent a special meaning to campaigns to put a newspaper in every household (KG 9/25/1928).

The distinct categories of information in the newspaper were recognized by contemporary readers. In 1923 a factory worker in Voronezh explained, summing up his attitude to sections of the newspaper with different captions:

We rarely read "In the Trade Unions," "In the Komsomol," "Party Life"-these do not concern us. "How to Fight Malaria"-it is generally interesting to read about sicknesses. "Life of Schools"-I look at it rarely, we don't study any more; "Social Insurance"-that is necessary; "The Book Shelf"-that is for information, who needs it; "During the Day"-this article interests everyone, but there is little in it.I

According to a survey by Rabochaia gazeta in 1925, which was answered by 7,483 readers out of a circulation of roughly 150,000, the Party Life section of the newspaper was of most interest to party members, whereas the lead editorial attracted managerial personnel, party members or not.9

The different spheres were probably read in different ways, and usually by different people, but their simultaneity in the newspaper was important since each sphere served as a larger context for the others. The meaning of statements in one sphere was enhanced or restricted by the treatment of similar issues elsewhere in the newspaper. Moreover, a multiplicity of meanings tended to reinforce the legitimacy of the medium as a whole and of all the messages it contained. Readers uninterested in the world of the activists or in the moral strictures of the leaders involuntarily legitimized these spheres when they turned to the newspaper for other information.

The active sphere was the most innovative aspect of the early Soviet press and the most important. It served as a theater in which new Soviet public values were superim- posed on the actualities of daily life in a language partly provided by the most active readers. A range of topics was criticized and the result was considered public opinion or a Soviet equivalent of what Jurgen Habermas described as the bourgeois "public sphere"-the public space between the state and private life within which critical and independent opinion may flourish.'0 Limits on the Soviet public sphere greatly ex- ceeded those Habermas found in both the classical liberal model and the contemporary welfare state, but a limited public discussion of public issues was nevertheless presented. The public sphere of the mass press was largely restricted to local activists, but other groups had some access to other media.

The notion of the newspaper as a means to gather the opinions of readers, sample public attitudes, evaluate policies, and identify abuses suggested the critical function of an independent press. The Soviet public sphere was very different, however, from the public sphere Habermas had in mind. Its character reflected not only the state monop-

8. Ia. Shafir, Gazeta i derevnia, (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), 68. 9. Shafir, Rabochaia gazeta, 91- 108. 10. Peter Hohendahl, "Jiirgen Habermas: 'The Public Sphere' (1964)," New German Critique 1

(1974): 45-55; a translation of a Habermas article labeled, "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964)," follows Hohendahl's article.



22 Slavic Review

oly of the press and official constraints on opinion, but also the interests of those with access to the media. The principle that the active sphere was open to all peasants and workers was often stated in Krest'ianskaia gazeta and Rabochaia gazeta, but these statements only underlined the extent to which activists and employees had usurped the function of public opinion generally. These newspapers were the most accessible national forum for the opinions of this earnest minority, and these readers dominated this public space within the guidelines and under the control of the editors. During the 1920s the big state monopoly over all publishing was replicated by the activists' little monopoly over the public sphere in the mass newspapers.

Soviet editors received a steady stream of letters from activists and readers, and the editors emphasized the openness of the press to critical comments and opinions. Stress on whistle-blowing by local correspondents was another way this public sphere was defined. "Rabochaia gazeta provided," the editors wrote, summing up their first year of existence, "mainly in its letters, denunciatory material: complaints about 'mis- management'; about petty tyranny and willfulness by all types of authorities; about a multitude of defects in our order" (RG 3/1/22). Likewise, the editors of Krest'ianskaia gazeta claimed that on the basis of more than 80,000 letters they had received during 1925 and early 1926, they satisfied nearly 60,000 requests, called 673 people to account, brought 948 to trial, fired 769 from their jobs, and expelled 139 from the party or the Komsomol (KG 5/24/26).

Government officials widely assumed, during this period, that letters to the newspaper were an accurate reflection of public opinion, and readers' letters were frequently used to evaluate policies. Two confusions surfaced.11 First, the authorities confused letter writers' and correspondents' opinions with those of large groups of the popula- tion. The correspondents often abetted this confusion by claiming to speak for workers and peasants, and the authorities genuinely seem to have misunderstood, at least on occasion, the limits of these opinions. Second, the letter writers were considered a dis- interested source of information about local conditions, although their letters increasingly showed the hallmarks of letters to a boss. In fact, the quality of all reports to the center declined sharply during the 1920s, although there is little evidence that party leaders were aware of what was happening.

Letters and correspondents' reports may have been self-serving, but they came from real people and were an important voice in early Soviet society. Such participation was a key feature in the Bolsheviks' design for a new press. Party leaders saw the newspaper as an organizing tool and as an instrument of social criticism. They hoped that politically active workers and peasants would contribute. The idea that the press was a participatory institution stemmed from prerevolutionary experience, when letters to Pravda were highly prized contributions. After the October Revolution, the Bolshe- viks formalized and expanded ties with readers through networks of worker and peasant correspondents, who were paid for occasional notes and articles, usually on local social and economic issues.

The first organizational conference of worker correspondents was held in spring 1923; the number of worker, peasant, and soldier correspondents grew rapidly, reach- ing a half million by 1928.12 Their situation was nevertheless ambiguous. Correspon- dents were urged to be independent and critical of local authorities, particularly in the early years, and some operated covertly, signing their contributions only with a num-

11. Brooks, "Studies of the Reader in the 1920s." 12. Iu. M. Steklov, Sovetskaia demokratiia (Moscow, 1929), 203.




ber. A journalist observed in Rabochaia Moskva that local officials were often hostile to correspondents (RM 7/27/22). Correspondents gradually lost their adversary role, however, when they were urged to come out into the open and act constructively. "You are not informers," explained one party official in early 1924, "you are organizers of the workers' affairs" (RG 2/12/24). "We cannot describe workers life in the Soviet Republic as we would describe it in the west," admonished Kalinin in the same year; "among us, what is required most of all is support" (RG 2/20/24). Even so, correspondents retained some critical functions until the 1930s. The same official who told the correspondents they were not informers claimed for them the whole function of critical expression. "You are public opinion" (obshchestvennoe mnenie), he wrote, "workers' opinion" (RG 2/12/24). The permissible distance between the central authority and the correspondents shrank in the 1920s, but some space remained.

The social complexion of the correspondent movement and of the letter writers in general suggests that these were for the most part ambitious young people. According to a study of letters sent to Krest'ianskaia gazeta during the 1920s, in the period up to 1926 55 percent of the letter writers were between 14 and 25 years of age and 81 percent between 14 and 37.13 Although most official correspondents identified themselves as workers or peasants, and it was in their interest to do so, the presence of government administrators in their midst suggests that the movement was part of the larger flow of people of common origins into places of authority and influence during the 1920s. Writing newspaper reports was one of a number of things ambitious people could do to distinguish themselves from their fellows. A staff journalist for Krest'ianskaia gazeta in 1926 identified 65 percent of their correspondents as peasants, 13 percent as rural laborers, 15 percent as government administrators and employees, and 6 percent as members of the intelligentsia (KG 4/27/26). Most of the nonintelligentsia had no more than a primary education. The presence of party members can also be read as fore- shadowing a closer relationship to the state and, therefore, a contraction of the public sphere. Among the correspondents of Krest'ianskaia gazeta in 1926, 7 percent be- longed to the party and 20 percent to the Komsomol at a time when rural party members were few (KG 4/27/26). Of the correspondents of Rabochaia gazeta, 60 percent were party members in 1924, but' only 38 percent in May 1925, because of a flood of new correspondents who were not party members (RG 5/5/25).

During the 1920s worker and peasant correspondents became increasingly identified as upwardly mobile. Bukharin told the first All-Union Conference of Worker Corre- spondents that the state should train them to be professional journalists (RG 11/ 15/23), and correspondents occupied all new places at the State Institute of Red Journalists in Moscow in 1923 (RG 11/6/24). The author of a 1926 handbook for the rural correspondents of Krest'ianskaia gazeta stressed the correspondents' responsibilities but also hinted at possible rewards when he answered the question, "who is the rural correspondent?" with the statement "he is most of all the advanced peasant, who has defi- nitely understood that Soviet power is his own power; he is not afraid to give his life for it, and he actually helps it rejuvenate and remake the village with his labor and advice." 14

These were active participants in Soviet society. They were people with a future, and presumably they knew it. Contributing to the newspaper made sense for them, as did work in local organizations and institutions. Although they were likely to report what they thought "the center" wanted to hear, as one dissenting observer pointed out

13. A. Meromskii and P. Putnik, Derevnia za knigoi (Moscow, 1931), 37. 14. A. Glebov, Pamiatka sel'kora (Moscow, 1926), 13.



24 Slavic Review

in 1924,11 they also had their own perspectives, which they could not entirely disguise. They represented a Soviet equivalent to the prerevolutionary "intelligentsia from the people," and they shared many of the distinctive traits of this older group. 16

The formal correspondents were not the only ones who wrote to the newspapers. Unofficial letter writers and circles of friends of the newspaper promoted the press, subscribed in common, and sometimes acted as correspondents. Contributions by ordinary proletarian and peasant readers were a welcome sign of participation in social and political life. "What does 1,000,000 readers mean," the editors of Rabochaia gazeta asked optimistically in 1923 as they set their target for future circulation; the answer was " 1,000,000 contributors" (RG 9/16/23). Unsolicited letters meant important material for the newspaper and, the editors hoped, would attract new readers. "The more articles and comments by workers in the newspaper," wrote the editor of Rabochaia Moskva, Boris Volin, in early 1923, "the more working people will read it" (RM 2/7/23). Unofficial letter writers were perhaps less self-interested than official correspondents, but they too were likely to be active in Soviet institutions and organizations. During the 1920s party membership soared to nearly a million and a half, the number of Komsomol members topped 2 million, and trade union membership reached 11 million.'7 All the activists of these organizations were supposed to read newspapers.

The restricted character of the Soviet public sphere was partly a question of language. When the Bolsheviks began their effort to create a new information system, they relied upon a vocabulary and inventory of ideas unfamiliar to common readers. They employed this new language of politics freely in the newspapers and coined the term political literacy to connote understanding of it. The press served as a primer, and the inspirational sphere of the mass newspapers contained explanations and texts for study. The editors of Bednota explained in 1923, for example, that "we have decided to present a series of articles on basic questions of political knowledge with the aim of facilitating the liquidation of political illiteracy among the least prepared members of the party" (B 1/24/23). This aim was all very well for those eager to learn, but per- plexing for those who were not. Learning the new language was a price participants paid to be active in Soviet society, and possibly the Bolsheviks did little to simplify it in order to keep the price high.

The Bolsheviks had to depend on a new vocabulary to communicate new concepts they wished to promote, but the use of foreign words, abbreviations, and acronyms lent the press an exclusiveness that thwarted many potential readers and bolstered the activists' little monopoly over the public sphere."8 A telling comment on what the language

15. Shafir, Gazeta i derevnia, 134. 16. For discussions of this group in the prerevolutionary era see

Allan K. Wildman, The Making of a Workers' Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); S. Kanatchikov, A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, ed. Reginald E. Zelnik (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986); and Jeffrey Brooks, "Popular Philistinism and the Course of Russian Modernism" in Literature and History, ed. Gary Saul Morson (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986), 90- 110. For the Soviet period see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-34 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 3-4, 50-51, 239-243; Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) and, more generally, Regine Robin, Le Realisme socialiste: Une aesthetique impossible (Paris: Payot, 1986); Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1985); and Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

17. Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 4, part 1 (Moscow, 1970). 18. For a discussion of the new language, see A. M. Selishchev, lazyk revoliutsionnoi epokhi (Moscow,

1926), and Patrick Seriot, "Officialese," Sociocriticism 2, no. 1 (1986): 195-219.




of political literacy meant to the common reader was made by workers at a sugar refin- ery in Voronezh in response to a 1923 survey.19 The workers were given a copy of Rabochaia gazeta, which most of them had never seen, and then asked about it. They were also given a list of forty-eight words and phrases, taken from one issue of a provincial newspaper designed for peasants and also from Bednota, and asked informally to pick out those they did not know. A 54-year-old worker, who claimed to have read newspapers from the age of 18, including Russkoe slovo, the Moscow newspaper of I. D. Sytin, liked the format of Rabochaia gazeta but found forty-two words he did not understand in the list of forty-eight. "My God," he exclaimed, "you need a translation." A 24-year-old former Red Army soldier identified forty-five words he did not understand-including USSR, Soviet, and socialist. A 45-year-old former reader of Gazeta kopeika, who complained about the antireligious propaganda and poor printing, failed to understand twenty-two words.

Soldiers, who had read newspapers during World War I but were not members of the party, also had great difficulty with the vocabulary. Such terms as element, authority, project, initiative, and plenum were missed by roughly half of the sixty-four who were questioned. A study of the readers of Krest'ianskaia gazeta at the end of 1923 revealed similar problems. Workers' correspondents, however, had a consider- ably better grasp of the new terminology than unaffiliated readers. Out of thirty-six workers, of whom twenty were worker correspondents and thirteen were party members, very few missed any of the forty-eight words and phrases.20

The subject of the active sphere was the common enterprise of the party and the government and their supporters. These people could understand, even if haltingly, the new language of Russian public life. Articles and even whole pages in the newspapers were captioned with commands or instructions from above. "Firmly Stick to the De- cree" reads the heading of an article about collecting back taxes from peasants in Bed- nota in 1922 (B 2/12/22). "Organize the Poor and Strengthen the Link with the Middle Peasant" reads a caption in Rabochaia gazeta (RG 10/23/25). Articles under these headings, like the lead editorials in the newspaper, were likely to interest participants in Soviet institutions and organizations.

Staff journalists or Bolshevik leaders wrote lead articles for this section, but the local correspondents filled most of the space. The usual subjects in this sphere were success and failure in the workplace, the party, and government institutions. Here rank and file participants in the building of Soviet society voiced their suggestions, questions, and objections. These voices from below were orchestrated, but they were real voices. The dialogues presented between the local correspondents and the center, although artificial, were nevertheless a mechanism for the translation of abstract ideas and policies into a workable ideology; that is, an action-oriented set of beliefs.

The staff journalists simplified and abbreviated their presentation of Soviet values in the active sphere because of the subject matter and the character of the discussion. The semi-educated local correspondents and letter writers brought this public culture down to a still lower level when they tried to apply abstract values to specific issues. The transition was necessarily an imperfect one, since local correspondents were un- able to replicate the public culture expressed by the staff journalists. Even as packaged and presented in the active sphere, the local correspondence evinced a distinct range of perspectives and vocabulary.

19. Ia. Shafir, Gazeta i derevnia (Moscow, 1924), 33-35. 20. Ibid., 75-89, 65.



26 Slavic Review

Exchanges between staff journalists and correspondents, as between the Soviet leaders and their followers, were not entirely one-sided. The staff journalists set the tone of a discussion, but the local correspondence had its own flavor. In discussing social mobility, for example, the lead articles in the section often concerned the oppor- tunities for advancement, whereas complaints about undeserved advancement were more common in local reports. "The worker-peasant republic can say to its sons: the road to knowledge is open to you," wrote a journalist in 1922 (B 12/19/22). "We need new people, and the path to this end is Communist education," wrote another colum- nist in 1923, on the anniversary of the establishment of the Sverdlov Communist Uni- versity (RM 6/20/23). The message from above was "the devil take the hindmost." As Kalinin replied in Krest'ianskaia gazeta to a disgruntled former soldier who requested a post in return for his service, youth and a lower-class background was capital enough to make a career. "If you do not know how to do something with your riches," he quipped, "then blame yourself" (KG 4/13/1926).

Official correspondents and local letter writers replied to such cues with revela- tions of misdeeds and stories about the people who should be sacked for them, as well as with accounts of their own achievements and aspirations. A student at a rabfak (a workers' program at a university) explained in 1921 that the existence of the rabfak meant that "any peasant straight from the plow can become an agronomist, an engineer, a doctor, or, in general, any kind of scientist or scholar" (B 2/8/21). Such letters legitimized the author's success and implied that those who did not succeed got what they deserved. Calls for a strict accounting according to merit and class were also typical of the local reports. The choice of a prosperous peasant to head a local cooperative was condemned at the height of the NEP under the caption "Don't Stand on Ceremony With Thieves" (KG 10/5/24). Specialists and factory directors were also criticized. "Engineer Udal'tsov Plunders the Soviet Factory" was the caption of a letter that con- cluded, "will he stay free much longer? When will he find himself behind bars? We await an answer" (RG 3/14/24). Red factory directors who were not alert to the dan- gers of the old specialists were chastised in another local report, and the author ap- pealed for "red specialists to replace them" (RG 4/6/24). Attacks on the old specialists were common in the newspapers; they began to appear in letters and correspondence during the early 1920s, but only toward the end of the decade was this an important theme for the staff journalists. The local activists had an interest in opening up new positions, and they made their case in the newspapers.

The party brought mobility to many people, and this was a big topic in the active sphere. Staff journalists stressed the value of membership, although they were cautious about linking it with personal prosperity (RM 2/11/23). "Active, Soviet party and professional employees, having a secondary education, ought to be sent to the rabfaks," read an article in 1922 (RM 8/15/22). The editors of Bednota asked their readers in an insert in bold type in 1923: "Is there a cell of the Komsomol or the Communist party in your village? If you write that the youth want to study and develop themselves, but there are no activists who could satisfy their wish, then turn to the nearest volost Com- munist party cell" (B 6/23/23). The meaning of this message was driven home by letters from local correspondents, who recounted their experience and aspirations. The story of a factory girl, who was passed over by her factory committee for the rabfak but who eventually convinced her mentors and got a place anyway, was captioned "A Thirst for Knowledge" (RM 10/6/22). A letter from a woman eager to join but as yet unsuccessful was titled "Why I Knock at the Door of the Leninist Family" (KG 1/25/27).




In these dialogues the new public values were transformed into intelligible and mundane codes of behavior. The party emerges from the mosaic of local progress in the active sphere as an enormous corporation in which those with merit advanced and those without it fell back. Captions such as "A Good Secretary-A Good Cell" (KG 1/6/25) and "The Bolshevik Shumilova at Work" (KG 5/17/26) call out for promotion, whereas "The Mistakes of Our Cell" (KG 12/21/24) and "Everything is Not All Right with Us" (KG 12/21/24) convey the opposite message. These stories were not news, but a chronicle for insiders to whom the success or failure of an unknown colleague was part of a fascinating larger story. Such reports differed from the articles of staff journalists, who usually stressed the functions and activities of the party rather than its corporate existence.

The inherent bias of the local reports was most evident in the treatment of the NEP itself, and in particular in the choice between public and private management of the rural economy. Although the government promoted private peasant agriculture, the active sphere was monopolized by people eager to organize collective endeavors. Despite the failures of collective farming, local correspondents proclaimed its success through- out the NEP. "There, where the lord's oats whispered, the village sovkhoz has grown up like a mushroom," wrote one author in Bednota in 1922 (B 9/6/22). "If You Want to Escape from Need-Form Agricultural Collectives" was the title of another article (KG 7/7/25). The success of collective ventures satisfied ideological needs if not economic ones. "Now the peasants no longer laugh at collective labor, and they believe that much can be gained collectively" wrote a local correspondent in 1927 (KG 8/30/27).

The NEP was a period of fundamentally ambiguous policy in agriculture, but in Krest'ianskaia gazeta the active sphere tilted toward collective ventures. Peasants were granted the right to choose among the traditional commune, private farming, or some sort of collective agriculture in 1922, but in early 1924 the readers were told by local correspondents that "the prosperous muzhik is for the most part the one who wishes to separate," since "there beyond the eyes of the peasant commune and of the authorities he can do what he wants to with the agricultural laborer" (KG 5/1/24). Peasants were encouraged to improve production but were warned of the machinations of kulaks, particularly in letters. The effect of these reports was to blur the difference between "strong," "prosperous," and "rich peasants" on the one hand and the kulaks, on the other. By 1927, when the articles by staff journalists turned increasingly against private farming, the path had been well blazed in the letters and local reports.

The ideas and values developed in the active sphere also lent meaning to information presented elsewhere in the newspaper, and that information enhanced the active section. An important informational feature in Krest'ianskaia gazeta was the section on agronomy. Here readers were told repeatedly to listen to the voice of science and to farm according to modern methods. If peasants took "the path indicated by science, then we would quickly restore our economy and catch up with other countries," observed one commentator (B 9/14/22). Peasants were promised a good crop and a fist full of rubles if they took the advice. "Let Clover Go to Seed and Earn Big Money" was the caption of a typical article (KG 6/23/25).

The logic of science as well as self-interest seemed clear in the newspapers, but peasants clung to their old ways. For activists interested in the management of agriculture, the conclusion was obvious: The peasants failed to heed the agronomists because they were incapable of farming scientifically, and only new managers, such as themselves, could organize agriculture effectively. From this perspective it was tempting to



28 Slavic Review

focus on the obstinacy of the peasants and conclude, as did one local correspondent in the spring of 1923, that "the business can be settled only with the help of the state organs" (B 5/24/23). The activists' contempt for the farming peasants was summed up by a local correspondent, who complained on the eve of collectivization that "the peasants live closely together, but they think separately, each one about himself" (KG 11/29/27). In this way, the newspapers tended to subvert rather than to promote the economic policies associated with the NEP.

The discussion of the rural economy in the active sphere of the newspapers typified both the strengths and weaknesses of the new system of public information. The new media failed the common readers, whose taste and interests were ignored; public values diverged sharply from those that were truly popular. The results of this dichotomy were brutally apparent in the compulsory collectivization, when explanations were aban- doned and force replaced discourse. The divergent private values of ordinary people mattered at that moment, for peasants slaughtered their livestock rather than transfer them to a collective, and the ensuing disaster marked Soviet society for many years.

The Bolsheviks had succeeded, all the same, in making the print media the mechanism of a new public culture that was understood by a significant minority of the popu- lation, although in a somewhat bowdlerized form. Such people were a natural consti- tuency for the press. They wanted to become involved in the new institutions and organizations, and they were serious about learning the new language of public life. Their success was necessarily limited, but the mass newspapers served to mediate between their intellectual world and that of the Bolshevik leaders, who operated the con- trols of the system. The vulgarity and crudeness of the mass newspapers is a testimony to the extent of the mediation.

Although the more elite and refined Soviet print media had room for diversity and pluralism in literature, the arts, and even social life, the public sphere in the mass newspapers was filled with appeals for more restrictive policies. Here arguments for didactic and strictly political values in art and literature were expressed primitively, alongside fawning praise for leaders alive and dead and much else associated with the Stalin era. The politics of art, according to Bednota, was summed up in an article about the checkered career of a peasant sculptor who succeeded in attending a Moscow art school. Although he had never touched clay before, the sculptor produced a bust of Lenin on the first try (B 8/17/1926). When asked later why he chose Lenin as a subject, he explained, "because he is always before my eyes; I love him." His career began when he presented busts of Lenin and Kalinin to party members at the district center, who sent him to study in Rostov, the provincial capital. There he again demon- strated his skill, this time on local notables, who sent him on to Moscow.

The values conveyed in such articles necessarily differed from those of the elite as well as those of ordinary people, even though the editors presumably considered them an acceptable vulgarization of the public culture. In a sense, the information system replicated not only the restrictiveness of the emerging political system, but its openness to certain people with energy and ambition. They became the lowest common de- nominator for the new information system, and the media gradually accommodated their limited understanding of its message. Karl Mannheim argued in Ideology and Utopia that the governing values of a society may change during times of instability, when there is "a infiltration of the modes of thought of the lower strata" of society into the higher.2' In such cases, he suggested, the thinking of the lower strata acquires va-

21. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1936; reprint, New York: Mentor, n.d.), 6-7.




lidity and prestige, and the ideas of the dominant strata are open to challenge. Mann- heim's argument is intriguing with respect to the Soviet experience, since the active sphere of the newspapers seems to have been a mechanism for such an "infiltration."

Yet the effect of the local activists on the new Soviet public culture as a whole was limited since their comments were restricted to issues presented in the active sphere and their opinions tailored to a narrow range of permissible viewpoints. Beyond this limited public terrain, the information system operated with few checks from even this special audience. Whether the subject was life abroad or personal morality, the simi- larities between public information and private beliefs were often slight. The result was a kind of double vision and a widely shared sense of duplicity that persists to this day.

APPENDIX A. Circulation of Soviet Mass Newspapers

Circulation of Bednota Sources *

1918 50,000 Brooks, "The Breakdown." 1919 240,000 Brooks, "The Breakdown." 1920 570,000 Brooks, "The Breakdown." 1921 350,000 1921 (end) 275,000 Brooks, "The Breakdown." pre-NEP 600-800,000t 3/27/1923/1477 11/21 600,000 11/2/21/1065 1/22 375,000 1/13/22/1123 12/22 75,000 12/19/1922/1399 23/ 30,000 5/4/24 low point in NEP 5/23 50,000 5/23/1923/1521 2/24 50,000 2/15/1924/1740 5/24 60,000 4/5/24 Circulation of Krest'ianskaia gazeta Sources after three months 50,000 11/17/25/101 six months 240,000 11/17/25/101 one year 480,000 11/17/25/101 two years 600,000 11/17/25/101 1/24 600,000 1/13/1924/59 3/24 120,000 3/23/26/12 11/24 480,000 11/17/1924/101 1/25 600,000 1/13/25/59 12/25 600,000 2/2/1926/5 (112) 1/26 800,000 2/2/1926/5 (112) 2/26 916,000 2/2/1926/5 (112) 3/26 980,000 3/9/26/10 (117) 3/26 1,015,000 3/23/26/12 4/26 956,926 4/27/26/17 6/27 850,000 6/7/27/23 11/28 1,070,000 11/16/28 12/29 1,465,000 12/25/29 Circulation of Rabochaia gazeta Sources 7/22 23,000 2/11/1923 10/22 41,000 2/11/1923 12/22 110,000 2/11/1923 2/23 120,000 2/11/1923 5/23 145,000 5/5/1923 9/23 100,000 9/4/1923



30 Slavic Review

APPENDIX A. (continued)

Circulation of Bednota Sources *

5/24 200,000 5/4/1923 4/24 270,000 5/5/1925 2/27 315,000 2/6/1927 5/27 315,000 5/5/1927 Moscow sales = 145,000 copies (10/30/25), 100,000+ (2/6/27). Circulation of Rabochaia Moskva Sources 2/22 24,000 2/7/23/27 (299) 10/22 35,000 10/21/22/212 1/23 62,000 2/7/23/27 (299) 5/26 125,000 WN5/9/26

* Sources refer to the given newspaper unless otherwise indicated. t Of these 75 percent went to the Red Army.

Appendix B. Newspaper Support Networks Numbers of Worker and Peasant Correspondents for All Newspapers

1923 50,000 5/4/24 15,000 worker correspondents (14/5/24) 1925 156,000 5/5/25 160,000 worker and peasant correspondents (P5/5/25) 5/4/25 80,000 peasant correspondents (15/4/25) 1926 216,000 worker and peasant correspondents 1926 250,000 1928* 500,000

Sources: Sovetskaia demokratiia. Sbornik, ed. Iu. M. Steklov (Moscow, 1929), p. 203; is the source for 1923, 1925, 1926, and 1928. I. Vareikis, Zadachi partii v oblasti pechati (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), p. 12 is the source for 1926. All other sources are as indicated.

*In 1928, 116,000 were identified as workers, 193,000 as peasants, and 73,000 as soldiers.

Number of Worker Correspondents and Letters Sent to Rabochaia gazeta

Worker correspondents Letters Sources

8/22 85 500 2/14/1923 10/22 225 1,002 2/14/1923 12/22 800 3,051 2/14/1923 1/23 820 3,020 2/14/1923 2/23 800 3/1/1923 4/24 1,735 5/5/1925 5/25 10,500 5/26 41,557 5/5/1926 (breakdown) 1926 70,000 2/6/27

Number of Peasant Correspondents and Letters Sent to Krest'ianskaia gazeta

Year Correspondents Letters Sources

3/24 * 400 156,000 3/23/26 3/25 * 2,600 480,000 3/23/26




Appendix B. (continued) Number of Peasant Correspondents and Letters Sent to Krest'ianskaia gazeta

Year Correspondents Letters Sources

3/26* 5,637 780,000 3/23/26 5/26 6,350 618,000 5/24/26 27 12,214 708,000 11/16/28 10/28 15,229 450,000 11/16/28 to 10/1

*Figures for March 1924 through March 1926 are derived from the monthly total for March 1924, 1925, 1926, and they are apparently inflated by the occasions for letter writing in that month.

APPENDIX C. The Content of the Newspapers Content of Bednota

(percentage of column inches in each issue)

1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

Workers 14.5 2. 4. 2.5 3. 5.5 6. 8. 4.5 4. Peasants 17.5 20. 21.5 24. 19. 23.5 13. 18.5 34. 36. Party, local 0. 0. 2. 2.5 4.5 6. 3. 0. 4.5 4. Party, national 0. 0. 1. 0. 0. 5.5 0. 15. .5 10.5 Government, local 6. 2. 1.5 3. 12. 7.5 7. 3.5 4. 2. Government, national 3. 1. 1. 1. 0.5 8.5 7.5 5. 1. 0. Child education 1. 2. 0. 0.5 0. 0. 1. 0. 0 0.5 Adult education 3.5 2. 0. 1.5 2. 1 1.5 1. 0 2.5 Revolution 1. 0. 0. 0 2. 0 0. 2. 0 0 Army 17. 14. 2. 7. 2.5 3. 0.5. 1. 0. 0.5 Tax and law 4. 28. 14. 6.5 5. 2.5 1. 1. 4.5 0. Religion 0. 0. 1.5 4. 0. 0. 4. 0. 0. 1. Crime, general 0. 0. 0. 1. 2. 1.5 2. 5. 1. 0. Crime, economic 0. 0. 1. 0. 0. 3. 1. 0. 4. 6. Crime, political 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.5 2. 0. 0. .5. 1.5 Minorities 0. 0. 0. 1. 0. 1.5 1. 0. 0. 0 Human interest 0. 0. 0. .5 0. 0 2. 1.5 1.5 0 Art and culture 0.5 2. 1. 0.5 1. 4. 2. 3.5 2. 0. Science 5. 15. 14. 13. 21. 3. 11. 11. 9. 5. Question and answer 0. 0. 0. 0. 1.5 1. 1.5 0. 0.5 0. Specialist 0. 0. 0. 0. 2. 1. 4. 0.5 4. 0. Advertisements 0. 0. 0.5 4. 4. 2. 1.5 1. 2. 6. Fiction 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 2. Poetry 3. 0. 1. 1. 0. 1.5 0. 0. 0. 0. Miscellaneous domestic 0. 1. 0. 0. 2.5 3. 4. 1. 3. 2. Foreign 23. 14. 32. 23. 14. 14. 24.5 22.5 17.5 15.

Totals 99.0 103.0 98.0 96.5 99.0 100.5 99.0 101.0 98.0 98.5

Sources: A sample of four issues was taken for each year when available. Issues were taken from the 15 February, May, August, and November. Sundays and Mondays were excluded.



32 Slavic Review

APPENDIX C. (continued) Content of Krest'ianskaia gazeta

(in percentage of column inches in each issue)

1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 total

Workers 4. 3. 3.5 4. 5.5 8. 28 56.0 Peasants 16. 19. 16. 21. 21. 25.5 23 141.5 Party, local 0. 4.5 1. 9. 2. 1. 0. 17.5 Party, national 0. 0. 8. 0. 11. 7. 0. 26. Government, local 1. 8.5 10. 7. 10. 4. 5.5 46.0 Government, national 4. 3. 10.5 0. 5. 4. 0. 26.5 Child education 8. 0. 0. 0. 1. 1. 0.5 10.5 Adult education 4. 5. 1. 0. 0. 3. 3. 16. Revolution 0. 2. 0.5 1. 4. 1. 0. 8.5 Army 4. 1. 4. 8. 2. 0.5 0. 19.5 Tax and law 16. 5.5 6. 9. 1. 2. 0. 39.5 Religion 1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 4. 5. Crime, general 0. 0. 2. 6. 0. 3.5 0. 11.5 Crime, economic 2. 0.5 1. 0. 2. 7. 6. 18.5 Crime, political 0. 0. 2.5 0. 2. 0. 0. 4.5 Minorities 0. 0. 3. 0. 0. 0. 0. 3. Human interest 0. 0.5 0. 2. 0.5 1. 10.5 14.5 Art and culture 0. 0. 0. 2. 0. 0. 0. 2. Science 10. 9.5 6. 8. 4.5 10. 4.5 52.5 Question and answer 5. 2. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 7. Specialist 0. 5. 1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 6. Advertisements 4. 11. 10. 7. 13.5 10. 8. 63.5 Fiction 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Poetry 3. 0. 0. 0. 1. 0. 0. 4. Miscellaneous domestic 0. 4. 0.5 1. 0. 0. 0. 5.5 Foreign 16. 15. 15. 16. 11. 11. 6.5 90.5

Totals 98.0 99.0 101.5 101.0 97.0 99.5 99.5

Sources: A sample of four issues was taken for each year when available. Issues were taken from the 15 February, May, August, and November. Sundays and Mondays were excluded.

Content of Rabachaia Gazeta, 1922-1928 (in percentage of column inches per issue)

Percentage 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 of total

Workers 20. 21. 16. 9. 9. 9. 11. 14. Peasants 1. 1. 5. 1.5 1. 0. 3 2. National economy 5. 3. 4. 14. 6. 15. 7.5 8. Party, local+* 1. 0. 4. 9.5 2.5 1. 2. 3. Party, local- 0. 0. 0. 1. 3. 0.5 0. 0.5 Party, national+ 0. 3.5 1. 1. 5.- 11. 0. 3. Party, national 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Government, local' 1. 0. 1. 2. 0. 0. 2. 1. Government, local- 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Government, national+ 1.5 2. 4. 2. 4. 8. 2. 3. Government, national 0. 0. 6. 0. 0. 0. 0. 1.




APPENDIX C. (continued) Content of Rabachaia Gazeta, 1922-1928 (in percentage of column inches per issue)

Percentage 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 of total

Komsomol 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Military 2. 0.5 1. 0. 0. 0.5 0. 0.5 Tax and law 1.5 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Police or court 7. 2. 4. 3. 5. 3. 3. 4. Economic crime 1.5 0. 2. 3. 0. 2. 5. 2. Spies 0. 0. 0. 2. 0. 0. 0. 0. Opposition 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 4. 0. 0.5 Other crimes 8. 3. 1.5 7. 11. 6. 5.5 6.0 Higher education 3. 1. 1. 0. 0. 1. 1. 1. Adult education 1. 1. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 1.5 Child education 3. 1. 0.5 2. 1. 0. 0. 1. Science and technology 1.5 8. 5. 6. 2. 3. 5. 4. Art and culture 4. 2. 4. 2. 2.5 4. 4. 3. Fiction 2. 3. 2.5 5. 5. 3. 4. 3.5 Poetry 3. 1. 0. 1. 0. 0. 0. 1. Press 2. 2. 9. 1. 2. 2.5 1.5 3. Sport and chess 0. 1. 1. 0. 1. 1. 4. 1. Human interest 4. 1. 3. 4. 2.5 2. 2. 3.5 Question and answer 0. 1. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.5 0. Religion 0. 1. 0.5 1.5 0. 1. 6. 1.5 Rev. and past 1. 1. 0.5 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Dead Lenin 0. 0. 2. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Minorities 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Advertisements 11. 9. 1. 4. 11. 12. 11.5 9. Miscellaneous domestic 1. 2. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. Foreign 12. 26. 21.5 15. 22. 7. 15. 17.

Totals 98.0 97.0 102.0 98.5 98.5 97.5 97.5 98.5

Source: A sample of four issues a year when available. Issues were taken from the fifteenth of February, May, August, and November. Sundays and Mondays were excluded.

*A plus indicates that the coverage was positive or neutral; a minus indicates that it was negative.

The Content of Rabochaia Moskva (in percent of column inches per issue)

1922 1923

Workers 25. 9.5 Peasants 5. 0. Local party 6. 4.5 National party 2. 0.5 Local government 7. 3.5 National government 2. 3.5 Child education 0.5 1. Adult education 3. 7. October Revolution 0. 0. Army and civil war 4. 3.



34 Slavic Review

APPENDIX C. (continued) The Content of Rabochaia Moskva

(in percent of column inches per issue)

1922 1923

Tax and law 0. 0. Religion 0. 10. Common crime 3. 1. Economic crime 3. 1. Political crime 0.5 0.5 Nationalities 0. 0. Human interest 0. 0. Art and culture 1. 0.5 Science 2. 6. Question and answer 0. 3.5 Specialists 0.5 0. Advertisements 12. 13. Fiction 0. 0. Poetry 1 . 4.5 Miscellaneous domestic 0.5 2. Foreign subjects 21.5 25.5

Totals 99.5 100.0

Sources: A sample of four issues a year when available. Issues were taken from the fifteenth of February, May, August, and November. Sundays and Mondays were excluded.

APPENDIX D. Summary Definitions of Three Spheres of Meaning

A. Active: practical significance or action-oriented materials. 1. Orders and instructions from above: the use of a command in the caption or in the first two

paragraphs. Also includes implied orders, the use of such forms as "let's do it." Implied orders: "Now it is time to think of this or that."

2. Information linked with desired action: detailed discussion of laws, texts of laws, and information about other rules of operation for local administration and local managers in the economy.

3. Reports from below about the success of local organizations; information about career progress and rules of the game in the emerging bureaucracies of the party, the state, local government, army, and the economy.

4. Criticism from below; queries and appeals for intervention from above; "the eye of the center is needed."

B. Mass informational: materials for passive consumption. 1. News: refers in the caption or the first two paragraphs to an event, a decision, or something

that happened within the past week, or to background to such an event. Includes important policy speeches but not timeless pronouncements.

2. Human interest: something extraordinary about ordinary people or something about celebrities.

3. Information of common interest: radio, weather, approaching holidays, transportation, health, popular science, agronomy, as well as fiction, poetry, and materials about art and culture.

4. All other information that is not linked with a specific desired action and that does not fall into sphere C.

C. Inspirational iconographic: the realm of abstract values. 1. Patriotic texts, laudatory articles about leaders, and explanations of ideology. This section




also includes inspirational articles on the occasions of holidays, anniversaries, memorials, including real holidays, such as May Day, International Women's Day, January 1, and the anniversary of the October Revolution, as well as more artificial occasions, such as the anniversary of the Cheka.

2. Future oriented: articles in which the future tense is used in the caption or in the first two paragraphs.

3. The new: emphasis on the new versus the old; the use of the word new in this sense in the caption or in the first two paragraphs of the article.

4. Ideal types in visual material or feature stories: the unremarkable but remarkable. Illustra- tions in which things are shown as they ought to be, rather than as they are. People who are doing a remarkable job but have no promise of mobility.



Documents

Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921-1928