News from Moscow is a social and cultural history of Soviet journalism after World War II. Focusing on the youth newspaper Komsomol'skaia Pravda, the study draws on transcripts of behind-the-scenes editorial meetings to chart the changing professional ethos of the Soviet journalist. Simon
Huxtable shows how journalists viewed themselves both as propagandists bringing the Party's ideas to the wider public, but also as reformers who tried to implement new ideas that would help usher the country towards Communism. The volume focuses on both aspects of the journalists' role, from
propaganda editorials in praise of Comrade Stalin and articles lauding young heroes' exploits in the Virgin Lands, to revolutionary new initiatives, such as the country's first ever polling institute and clubs promoting the virtues of unfettered public debate. Soviet journalism, argues Huxtable, was
riven with an unresolvable tension between innovation and conservativism: the more journalists tried to promote new innovations to perfect Soviet society, the more officials grew anxious about the disruptive consequences of reform. By demonstrating the day-to-day conflicts that characterised the
press's activity, and by showing that the production of Soviet propaganda involved much more than redrafting orders from above, News from Moscow offers a new perspective on Soviet propaganda that expands our understanding of the possibilities and limits of reform in a period of rapid change.
Author(s): Simon Huxtable
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: Oxford
Cover
News from Moscow: Soviet Journalism and the Limits of Postwar Reform
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Note on Abbreviations and References
References to Komsomol’skaia pravda Editorial Meetings and Articles
Introduction: Reformers and Propagandists: The Paradoxes of Post-war Soviet Journalism
Overcoming the Past
Journalism and Thaw Media
Book Structure
SECTION 1: 1945–1957: Ritual Socialism
1: Rituals, Routines and Ideology in the Late Stalinist Press
Editorial Routines
Public Rituals: Supreme Soviet Elections
Campaign Messages
The View from Backstage
An Individual Approach
Epilogue: The Stalinist Roots of Thaw Journalism
2: Satire, Sensations, and Slander: Criticism and Self-Criticism from Stalin to the Secret Speech
Criticism and Self-Criticismin the Late Stalin Period
The Good and the Better
Self-Criticismafter the Twentieth Party Congress
Criticism and the Courts
Student Unrest and the Hungary Effect
Satire and Sensationalism
How Criticism was Extinguished
Epilogue: Criticism and Self-Criticismafter 1956
SECTION 2: 1956–1964: Romantic Socialism
3: Far from Moscow: Heroic Autobiographies and the Paradoxes of Thaw Modernity
The Virgin Lands Campaign
The Revolutionary Baton
Edited Subjects
Is It Easy to Be Modern?
Conclusion: Romantics ‘In’ and ‘Out’ of the Soviet System
4: From Word to Deed: The Communard Method and Thaw Citizenship
Formalism and the Problem of Boredom
Youth and Labour Education
The Frunze Commune
The Importance of Discussion
Raising the Scarlet Sail
The Communards and the End of the Thaw
SECTION 3: 1960–1970: Reforming Socialism
5: The Institute of Public Opinion and the Birth of Soviet Polling
How Sociology Became Soviet (Again)
Sociology as Plebiscite
Disciplining Public Opinion
Decline and Fall
Conclusion: Polling and the Thaw Public
6: From Technocracy to Stagnation: When Did the Thaw Freeze Over?
‘Don’t Whistle!’
‘More realistic, more sober, more dialectical’: Economic Reform and the Expert Public
The Kosygin Reforms and Reader Sociology
A Post-HeroicAge?
The Death of Brezhnev’s Thaw
Epilogue: Thaw Journalism after the Thaw
Journalistic Ethics after Communism
Bibliography
Archives and Collections
Online Archives and Sources
Newspapers and Journals
Document Collections, Memoirs and Interview Collections
Published Sources
Unpublished Sources
Index
