Abstract
The author reviews mass media as one of the instruments of Soviet propaganda in the time of the “Thaw” period. The author emphasizes several methods of mass consciousness manipulation, which were used exclusively in press and were supposed to be “the voice of the Party” and reach every Soviet citizen. Newspapers related every major matter stated in the Third Programme of the Communist Party. The titles of the Programme articles were used as one of the manipulation methods, as well as reputable surnames of authors – well known economists, party offi cials. Existence of different feuilletons, poems, verses can be designated as another method of propaganda. Authors of such articles in newspapers were ordinary Soviet citizens of highly wide professional range – from milkmaid to jet fi ghter test pilots. Of course, a large part of these articles were written only on their behalf, but a real initiative part of citizens writing for newspapers existed indeed. Special attention should be paid to printed wholly Khrushchev’s performances during offi cial events. And essential parts of newspaper propaganda were caricature images of the future, which gave vision of how the Soviet Union would be in 20 years. Simultaneously a perfect picture of Communistic every day life was created, showing different details of not only the whole country’s but every citizen’s dream implementation, involving him into the process of Communistic dream achieving. Newspapers, which were necessarily subscribed in every family, brought appropriate for the government information to every Soviet citizen who could read. Thus, press was a highly effective method of mass consciousness manipulation of population, and government did not spend additional funds on large scale ideological events.
Keywords
Third Party’s programme, mass consciousness formation, ideology, propaganda, press, “Thaw”
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