Agitprop

Origins and early structure

Agitation and propaganda work was codified at the 8th Congress of the RCP(b) (18–23 March 1919), which for the first time raised 'the development of the widest propaganda of communist ideas and the use of the apparatus and means of state power for this purpose'. An Information Department created in the Central Committee in April 1919 was reorganized into the Information-Statistical Department in early 1920 and abolished by the end of 1920, its functions transferred to the Organizational-Instructor Department. The Agitation-Propaganda Department itself was formed in the Central Committee in June 1920 under R. P. Katanyan, coordinating Gosizdat, Tsentropechat, the Red Army Political Directorate and other bodies, and by September 1920 it had 13 staff.

The 9th All-Russian Conference of the RCP(b) (22–25 September 1920) instructed it to embrace and unite agitation-propaganda and cultural-enlightenment work of all kinds, including Narkompros, Gosizdat, Tsentropechat and PUR, and to bring the rural work department, the Zhenotdel and nationality-minority sections under its direct leadership, a sign of party and state organs merging. The department was repeatedly renamed: Department of Agitation, Propaganda and the Press (1928–1930), Department of Culture and Propaganda (1930–1934), Department of Culture and Propaganda of Leninism (1934–1935), Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation (1935–1938), Department of Propaganda and Agitation, oral and printed (1938–1939), Administration of Propaganda and Agitation (1939–1948), Department of Propaganda and Agitation (1948–1956), and Ideological Department (1988–1991).

From January 1930 its functions passed to kultprop, the Department of Culture and Propaganda. In May 1935 Stalin dissolved the department and created several separate Central Committee departments, which in 1938 were again brought together into the agitprop department.

Forms and examples

During the Civil War, agitprop worked through the press (the Bolshevik Pravda resurfaced in 1917 and became the dominant written source in Red Army-controlled regions), oral-agitation networks sent to the peasantry, and agit-trains and ships carrying agitators with leaflets and posters. Train cars carried motorcycles and cars, radios and their own printing press, and agitprop stations with propaganda libraries; the activity extended into Eastern Europe. Because the peasant society of 1917 Russia was largely illiterate and hard to reach by printed agitprop, a literacy campaign was waged: the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment spearheaded it, instructors were trained in 1919, a network of literacy centres was built, new textbooks explained Bolshevik ideology to the newly literate, and literacy training in the army was expanded. By a decree of the Soviet Council of Defense of 13 May 1920, agitation points (agitpunkts) were created in cities with rail connections to explain the meaning and tasks of Soviet power to the population. In the early years avant-garde artists, particularly those associated with the Constructivists such as El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, contributed to agitprop work, especially poster design.

The English-language source states the department was set up in 1920 by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and was thereafter an omnipresent activity in the USSR, taking forms such as palaces of culture, agit-trains and cars covered with slogans and posters, poster campaigns, countless agitation centres and libraries.

Agitation and propaganda distinguished

Plekhanov defined propaganda as the promulgation of a number of ideas to an individual or small group, and agitation as the promulgation of a single idea to a large mass. Expanding on this in What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin held that the propagandist, working primarily through print, explains the causes of social inequities, while the agitator, working primarily through speech, seizes on their emotional aspects to arouse the audience to indignation or action.

Britannica characterizes agitation as the use of political slogans and half-truths to exploit public grievances and mold opinion, and propaganda as the reasoned use of historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate educated, 'enlightened' members of society such as party members. Both the label and the preoccupation were specific to Soviet Marxism, and the English word typically carries a negative connotation reflecting Western distaste for the overt use of art for political goals.

Agitprop theatre, which grew out of the term, was a highly politicized theatre originating in 1920s Europe and spreading to the United States, with Bertolt Brecht's plays a notable example; it was known for cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil and for coarse ridicule, and the term came to describe any kind of highly politicized art.

Standing and foreign propaganda

According to N. A. Mitrokhin, the department ranked as the 'second' department in the Central Committee apparatus by importance, after the Orgdepartment, which handled organizational-party work. On 1 April 1949, after NATO's creation, the writer Konstantin Simonov sent Central Committee Secretary Malenkov a draft 'On measures to strengthen anti-American propaganda', and agitprop approved a 'Plan of measures to strengthen anti-American propaganda for the near future'.

Heads of the department

Heads included Ye. A. Preobrazhensky (04.1920–06.1920), R. P. Katanyan (06.1920–10.1921), L. S. Sosnovsky, A. S. Bubnov, S. I. Syrtsov, V. G. Knorin, A. I. Krinitsky, A. I. Stetsky, A. A. Zhdanov (11.1938–09.1940), G. F. Alexandrov, M. A. Suslov (09.1947–07.1948 and 07.1949–10.1952), D. T. Shepilov, L. F. Ilyichev, A. N. Yakovlev and Yu. A. Sklyarov, among others.

The sources diverge here. The English source states the first head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department was Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, while the Russian source lists him as head from April to June 1920 and Katanyan from June 1920, with Katanyan heading the department created in June 1920. This documentation conflict should be cross-checked rather than asserted as a single clean chronology.

Institutional continuity

The Russian source presents the institutional line as running from 1920 to 1991 and treats the 1935 dissolution as a reorganization rather than a permanent end: from the June 1920 founding it passed through successive names to the Ideological Department of 1988–1991.