New Formula for Soviet Propaganda:

...As if to drive the point home...

...Both the character of the subsequent "destalinization" program as such, with its condemnation of the "cult of the individual" and the denunciations of "dogmatism," as well as the response of the people (particularly the ferment among youths and intellectuals) seemed to presage an end to the mystique of Communist ideology as an all-embracing philosophy of life and as a guide to action...

...And the repercussions of the 20th Party Congress, instead of hastening the death of indoctrination, in fact provided the most vigorous impetus to it...

...For as Soviet Russia grows, so does the aversion of the average man or woman to the devastatingly tedious ideological demands to which they are subjected, the meaningless formulas, the tortuous explications—and so does the Party's determination to press on with these demands, to repeat the formulas, to go on with the "revolution from above," for only in this revolution and only in the ideology in which it is dissembled is its self-preservation and self-perpetuation to be found...

...To this end the Party (which, unlike the state, is apparently not destined to "wither away" even under Communism) has been fashioned into a tool of absolute control over every single aspect of social activity in the Soviet Union...

...How valid the inferences drawn from it...

...And finally there came the era of "the struggle for peaceful coexistence...

...when Khrushchev throws dogmas to the winds (which he often does), he couches his "revisionism" in simple, homely language, in commonsense terms rather than exegetical ones...

...The campaign, it is safe to predict, will go on and so will the complaints, the criticisms, the mea culpas...

...Apparently there is to be no escape whatever from the long arm of the Agitprop...

...Two months earlier (September 4), the Central Committee of the Komsomol issued a pronunciamento outlining a stepped-up "system of political education" in Soviet schools (one-year political schools, "circles and seminars on the history of the Party," "circles and seminars for the study of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism," "Communism: Practical Task of Our Generation circles" and the like), deploring the recent "lack of attention to methodology in propaganda work," and demanding that the latter be converted into a "mass movement...

...It was high time, said a verbosely self-critical editorial in the leading philosophical journal, Voprosy Filosofii (September 1959), to pay attention to "scientific propaganda" and to "molding of the Communist world view of the working people...

...how to produce bigger and better sputniks...

...Soon the very term "capitalist encirclement," which had been used by Stalin to justify both a militant stance vis-a-vis the outside world and the most severe repressions against "enemies of the people" and "foreign agents" at home, was dispossessed of its honored position in the Soviet lexicon...

...It is also true that Soviet leadership is now far legs obsessed with ideological concepts, or with the necessity to rationalize every single policy in ideological terms, than was Stalin...

...Hardly a week has passed without the appearance of an article in one paper or another, calling for more attention to ideological matters, or for a more determined struggle against "capitalist vestiges in the minds of the people...

...Domestically, too, there seemed to be less and less of a preoccupation with ideological issues and more with practical ones: how to satisfy the people's hunger for consumer goods...

...Leonid Ilyichev, head of the Central Committee's Agitation and Propaganda Department (Agitprop), supplied the following "theoretical" formula a month after the propaganda decree (Pravda, February 24) : "The struggle for an increase in labor productivity is a process in which Communist morality is confirmed and in which new mutual relationships between people are established...

...how to reorganize agriculture...

...The propaganda campaign, then, will continue, and the situation which it seeks to remedy will probably become again more and more alarming, until a new and more forceful resolution will have to be passed, once more urging more vigorous efforts, again exhorting the Party functionaries to eradicate the lingering "survivals of capitalism," to fight, to struggle, to proselytize...

...With your work," said Khrushchev genially to writers assembled for the Second Congress of Soviet Writers in May 1959, "you must wash people's brains and not litter them...

...A few months later (November 14), he was addressing the First Ail-Union Congress of Soviet Journalists: "Dear comrade journalists...

...Surely such attitudes are incompatible with the Soviet view, which explicitly elevates the interest of the state or "society" over that of the individual...

...To improve the guidance of Party propaganda, to "raise . . . the ideological requirements of Party education," to make propaganda "varied and interesting," (the list of targets is long), and so on...

...Because you are really always at hand to assist the Party...

...To be sure, this vision is a far cry from the humanist image of a free society which inspired Marxist socialists of the 19th century...

...A few reasons might be offered in answer to these questions...

...Whether under Malenkov, or later under Khrushchev, common sense did indeed seem to take precedence over dogma...

...First, what is the current state of propaganda work in the USSR and what has impelled the Party to take such vigorous steps to improve it...

...the publication of political literature "for millions of workers and peasants" must be stepped up...

...And in fact, many of the developments in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death tended to confirm it...

...and Soviet citizens were informed in no uncertain terms that whatever the "mistakes and distortions" of the past, the principles of Communism remained sacred and unbesmirched, that it was their duty to study them ever more diligently, and apply them more successfully to the task of "socialist construction...

...That the indoctrination and propaganda drive is bound to go on is beyond doubt...

...On this subject the resolution minces no words: Soviet society, it states, still abounds in "capitalist survivals: nationalism, cosmopolitanism, lack of political interest...

...Revisionism began to be attacked in ever more virulent terms...

...But "de-ideologization," in the ultimate sense, there has been none of...

...and, finally, there must be efforts "to intensify ideological and education work among working people at their place of residence...

...Ever since the 21st Party Congress in January 1959, at which Khrushchev triumphantly announced that the Soviet Union had entered the stage of "transition to full communism" ("socialism" having ostensibly been already established under Stalin's aegis), this theme has been sounded again and again in Soviet writings...

...The answer is startlingly simple: "to eliminate the shortcomings noted in this resolution...

...and that the indoctrination drive hardly demonstrates the role of ideology in determining or influencing the policies of the regime...

...been insufficiently impressed with the "principle of 'he who does not work does not eat.' " It fails to tailor its output to the specific needs of persons of different ages, nationalities, sexes and educational background...

...A summary of its essential points is therefore very much in order...

...how to rationalize the economic system...

...In fact, it would seem as if "oral and printed propaganda . . . continues to be addressed basically and primarily to members and candidate members of the Party," and that "some groups of the population are in general not reached" by it...

...In foreign relations, the entire non-Soviet world was no longer pictured as being bent on destruction of the "socialist motherland...

...What has happened is that ideology has been linked, more firmly and more seriously than ever before, with both the current and the long-range goals of the Soviet leadership: with "socialist construction" and the realization of "Communism...

...The level of training of propagandists is low (they still do not "love their work," complains the resolution) ; effectiveness is gauged by "the number of measures carried out rather than by its results...

...And it would be incredible if the huge propaganda drive, on which so much time and energy is being expended, were being conducted purely for reasons of self-preservation and not for the sake of real social and political—that is, ideological—goals...

...With the ranks of dogmatic "Stalinists"—or, for that matter, "Leninists"—steadily diminishing, a new generation of Soviet-born, Soviet-bred and Soviet-educated men would come into being, On June 27, 1960, Pravda printed a 2500-word editorial on "The Decisive Field of Ideological Work," noting the failures of Party indoctrination and propaganda, and demanding more intensive efforts to imbue Soviet citizens with the "spirit of Communist morality...

...In fact, the need to keep the ideological fires burning has been evident since Stalin's death in 1953...

...Even circus clowns were enlisted into the cause: Soviet clowns, said an editorial in Soviet Culture (December 3), are "called upon to educate Soviet people, to battle for the traits of our society's morality, and they must expose with all means available to them everything that is old, obsolete, conservative and reactionary"—that is to become good propagandists...

...The propaganda resolution is hardly circumspect about it, since during this period, it states, there is to be no compromise in "the sphere of ideology...

...Coming six months after a decree which called for a massive upsurge of agitprop activity, it was further demonstration of the regime's preoccupation with the issue...

...For if peaceful coexistence is to be primarily—as Khrushchev has stated so often, before and after the abortive summit —a "struggle between ideologies," then what graver task for Soviet propagandists than to make sure Soviet citizens are capable of waging it effectively...

...intellectuals were told to keep in line (Vladimir Dudintsev in 1957, Boris Pasternak in 1958) ; the Communist Youth League, Komsomol, was ordered to strengthen its ideological influence over Soviet youth...

...The more realistic concepts of a "world system of socialist states" (incorporating the USSR, Communist China and the East-European "People's Democracies") and a "peace zone" (embracing both Communist and non-Communist neutral states) began to crop up in Soviet writings...

...Accordingly, the ideological screws were tightened once again...

...Please do not take offense if I say that you journalists are not only faithful helpers but literally right-hand assistants of our Party...

...True...

...The outside world was served notice that the leadership remained faithful to the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism (however it chose to interpret them...

...When Stalin revised either Marx or Lenin, he was careful not to make it obvious that this was indeed what he was doing...

...The intransigent and paranoic dictator having breathed his last, the new leaders of the Soviet state would give increased attention to the rational requirements of running a modern industrial system, rather than to the frequently irrational requirements of a political and semi-religious doctrine...

...In this article, Abraham Brumberg, editor-in-chief of Problems of Communism, traces the history of the current Soviet campaign and discusses its relation to what has been regarded as the "de-ideologization" of Soviet Communism...

...This is borne out by the constant complaints in the Soviet press about "capitalist survivals in the minds of people," a term embracing anything from "bourgeois nationalism" to a peasant's excessive interest in his own private plot of land...

...how to modernize the labor force—all these and many more issues now preempted a Soviet scene once rife with cries for more vigilance, hosannahs to Stalin and scholastic disputations on the "role of the superstructure in socialist linguistics...

...Yet the vision is there—the vision of a well-regulated, smoothly functioning and perfectly coordinated social system in which every individual knows his place and to which he willingly and enthusiastically subordinates himself—a vision, in short, of authoritarianism without coercion, in which freedom is indeed what Engels called (though in an entirely different context and with a different connotation) "the recognition of necessity...

...For the drive has indeed been huge, steady, ubiquitous...

...Physicists are no longer required to preface their published works with weighty quotations from Engels, bona-fide genetics is quietly staging a comeback, Western culture (with exceptions such as can-can and "bare backs") is no longer considered wholly decadent and intellectual gadflies such as Ilya Ehrenburg can even permit themselves to utter the most heretical— albeit veiled—statements (e.g., the remark he made at a recent press conference in Rome that "no one would suggest that it was Marxist ideology which had enabled man to reach the stratosphere...

...The answers, regrettably, are that the picture is distorted and that the inferences are, at best, only partially valid...

...the armed forces' attempt to shake off Party control was firmly rebuked (Marshal Zhukov's ouster in 1957) ; Party schools were instructed to improve their methods of indoctrination...

...Nor is the content of the ideology on which this vision is based seriously regarded by Khrushchev et al (who, like their late predecessor, have never hesitated to alter or jettison it in accordance with the political needs of the moment...

...the role of the "propaganda departments of newspapers must be enhanced...

...The rise of Khrushchev and the concomitant enhancement of the Party's power in all spheres of public life (which is a crucial phenomenon of Soviet political life under Khrushchev) exacerbated this tendency—a tendency that found its most significant expression in the increased emphasis on ideological training and propaganda...

...that the regime's efforts to control the intellectuals stem from its instinct of self-preservation, rather than from its adherence to any set of ideological dogmas...

...And when Khrushchev created an explosion by his attack on the "Stalin cult" at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, there seemed to be no further reason to doubt its validity...

...Such are the dialectics of Soviet life...

...Faced with the pressing need to put their own house in order (an over-centralized and cumbersome bureaucracy, a sagging agriculture, an exhausted and fear-ridden population— to mention but a few of the problems), the compulsion to "export" revolution would of necessity lose its high priority in the Kremlin's scheme of things and would finally disappear altogether...

...a passive, defensive stand with respect to idealistic, religious ideology . . . gross violations of labor discipline," and the Soviet propaganda machine, despite its long and honorable service in the cause of socialism, has hardly begun to cope with these manifestations in an efficient and effective manner...

...Surely all this must signify a lack of irrational fear of the capitalist countries, so characteristic in Stalin's reign, a more relaxed and self-assured leadership, a willingness to jettison ideological precepts in favor of more realistic goals and more levelheaded appraisals...

...HERE, INDEED, in the equation of productivity and morality (an equation which would undoubtedly have come as quite a surprise to Marx) lies the key to the current ideological drive—as well as to the essential role of ideology in the USSR...

...In the highest councils of the Soviet state, the rational requirements of running a modern industrial state have taken precedence over the irrational requirements of a political and semi-religious doctrine...

...First, there is little doubt that in spite of 40 years of incessant indoctrination (and perhaps, to some extent, because of it) the "Soviet man"—as he is wont to be referred to in official writing—is still far from imbued with the values and attitudes of "Communist morality...

...Indeed, it was precisely evidence of this kind that has been employed in its support...

...Clearly, if lip service was still being paid to it, Soviet leaders would sooner or later be bound to relinquish it, lock, stock and barrel...

...By teaching him discipline, by impressing him with the need to work harder and better, by turning him, in short, into a more efficient and productive agent of "socialist construction...

...Third, despite the erosion of ideology as a policy-making factor (a process hardly unique to the Khrushchev period), the fact remains that the current leadership—as indicated before—is still very much animated by the vision of the "perfect society" it seeks to achieve...

...Its shortcomings are grave and numerous: It is "detached from life and from the practice of Communist construction"—that is, it operates with abstract and theoretical formulas, is loath to stray from the beaten path of "quotationism" (some Marx, lots of Lenin, a modest dash of Stalin and a healthy dose of Khrushchev), and is inadequately engaged in concretely unmasking "shirkers and remnants of parasitic elements" in Soviet society, people who have thus far (after 40 years...

...not enough Party and Government officials take an active interest in propaganda...

...Furthermore, Party propaganda is apparently not reaching enough people (in Communist jargon, it has a "weak mass character...

...fuller use" must be made of radio and television...

...But the resolution does not content itself with mere cliches and presents a number of more practical suggestions, all of which illuminate the wide range of weak spots still present in Party propaganda and the Party's awareness of them...

...Why-is so much ink being spilled again on restating what had been said already ad nauseum in countless pamphlets, leaflets, articles, editorials, speeches and lectures for the past two or three decades...

...For that matter, it is doubtful whether Marxist-Leninist indoctrination ever made much of a dent on the thinking of the average man or woman in the Soviet Union— with certain notable exceptions (such as the official image of capitalism, which could hardly be challenged by direct experience...

...NOW IT MAY be maintained that the evidence adduced thus far does not necessarily disprove the "de-ideologization" prognosis...

...Secondly, in the minds of the Soviet leaders the new era of "peaceful coexistence" imposes new and important requirements in the field of indoctrination...

...their sights fixed on practical and every-day goals rather than on teleological formulae, most of which they had come to distrust and disdain...

...What is made perfectly explicit, in fact, is that the Party has embarked on a veritable saturation campaign destined to penetrate every single area of Soviet life...

...The Party's struggle for supremacy and the increased attention to indoctrination do not of themselves illustrate the relationship between ideology and practice (a relationship, incidentally, which is far too intricate and complex to be dealt with in this article...

...Philosophers were called to task for having failed to take "a leading place in the scientific treatment of topical questions of Marxist-Leninist philosophy," for having "relaxed" the struggle against "idealism...

...how to grow larger and more succulent corn...

...HOW TRUE IS this picture...

...Why assistants...

...and all along the line a more vigorous, dynamic and pervasive propaganda drive was brought into being...

...The trend of developments, then, seemed to correspond to the "de-idaologization" prognosis...

...ON JANUARY 10 of this year, the Central Committee of the Party released a 10,000-word resolution, "On the Tasks of Party Propaganda in Present-Day Conditions," which in turn gave rise to an even more imposing flood of printed matter on this subject...

...The regime wanted an end to sterility and "dogmatism," but didn't the events of 1956 and 1957 prove that skepticism, if left unhampered, might turn into outright opposition...

...What, then, does the Party propose to do about it...

...We call the writers the Party's helpers...

...Yet whether this massive effort will yield the desired results is very much in question...

...WHY, THEN, it might be asked, this renewed upsurge of propaganda and indoctrination activity...

...All Party members must be enlisted in propaganda work—"workers, scientists, specialists in all fields, innovators of industry and agriculture and workers in literature and the arts...

...And to this end, too, ideology has again been called upon to perform the "sacred task" of "educating the Soviet man...

...The press has already come up with the usual complaints, all of which read very much like the complaints voiced in the propaganda resolution, once again harping on the apathy of propagandists, the "primitive and simple interpretations of theoretical and political problems," the failures at "linking propaganda with life...

...How...

...With Stalin's death (so ran the argument), with the emergence of Russia as the second largest industrial country in the world, with the security it had won after decades of Sturm und Drang, and finally, with the rise of a managerial "New Class," tired of the ravages of cold and hot wars, far removed from the revolutionary romanticism of the early 1920s, and yearning for material comfort above all else, the ideological and proselytizing zeal of Soviet Communism was bound to decline...

...To this end, all manner of peculiar institutions—so called "voluntary public organizations"—have arisen in the past few years, all of which are charged with combatting manifestations of "anti-social" behavior, such as hooliganism, drunkenness, idleness and "parasitism," and all of which, needless to say, are under the firm control of Party organizations...

...For the belief in the power of the word—the power to influence, to control, to mold—of necessity implies (as will be shown subsequently) some belief in the ends to which the power is directed...

...the educational system must improve its Marxist-Leninist curriculum...

...The scope of activities it has already sparked may be gauged, say, from a recent article in Sovetskaia Rossia (March 30), which reports that in one oblast (region) alone "a total of 843 women's councils" have been organized, and that in another as many as 5000 (!) "agitator's clubs" have arisen, "in each [of which] there is an agitator who works with the inhabitants of 10 or 15 rural households...

...The theory, of course, did have much to recommend it...

...what to do about the incredibly dismal housing shortage and how to rescue architecture from the rut into which Stalin's obsession with wedding-cake monumentality had driven it...

...And to the extent that the more impressionable youth or certain segments of the Soviet intelligentsia believed, say, in the theory of the "withering away of the state," or the tenets of "socialist realism," or the infallibility of the Party (i.e., Stalin), they had been largely disabused of their beliefs as a result of the disclosures made by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress, the anti-Soviet revolts in Eastern Europe and the growing contacts with the Western world...

...For didn't the shock produced by Khrushchev's revelations demonstrate to the regime how shaky was the basis of its own claim to legitimacy...

...the "role of social sciences in propaganda work" must be "increased...

...As a document revealing—nolens volens—the lack of ideological elan of the population on the one hand, and the leadership's grim determination to correct that state of affairs on the other, the resolution probably has no equal in recent annals of Soviet history...

...It is true, of course, that by and large the Soviet people are immune to ideological exhortations...

...it is essential to wage an active offensive against bourgeois ideology, against its right-wing socialist and revisionist preachers, and constantly to raise the political vigilance of the Soviet people...

...Yet to maintain that there is no relationship between the two whatsoever, that the regime's frenzied preoccupation with indoctrination is purely manipulative and bears no relation to real values and ideas, makes little sense— politically, or, for that matter, psychologically...

...As soon as any decision has been explained and carried out, we turn to you, and you, as the most faithful transmission belt, take the Party's decision and carry it into the very midst of our people...

...Yet it is also true that while the regime no longer seems to be compelled to engage in incessant refinements and reinterpretations of the official doctrine, it has far from renounced it in toto...

...It is this vision—and not merely self-preservation, or the "struggle for power," or something called "Soviet nationalism"—that provides the ultimate raison d'etre for the Party's effort to assert its supremacy over the rest of society and to shape, control and direct the thoughts of its 200 million subjects...

...The regime had already made it clear then that it had no intention of relaxing its ideological warfare either against the outside world or against its own citizens...

...For how would it be possible to cling to theory while denouncing its application in practice...

...Some Marx, lots of Lenin, a dash of Stalin, a big dose of Khrushchev' New Formula for Soviet Propaganda By Abraham Brumberg OF THE NUMEROUS prognostications on Russia's future advanced in recent years, few seemed as reasonable and attractive, few appealed as successfully to deep-seated cravings for an end to the cold war as what might be termed the "de-ideologization theory of Communism...