How did the Soviet Union use propaganda as a tool to foster nationalism in its population?
How a nation forms a national identity that can be related to a sense of nationalism may take different methods as varied as a shared history, culture and language, and political institutions. But how does a whole new type of nation build nationalism when they have overthrown the previous incumbents and embarked on a new type of government that has never been tried on such a large scale? This was the challenge for the Soviet Union following the 1917 Revolution that saw the Bolsheviks seize power from the monarchy. Not only did a civil war arise from this revolution but there was also a need to bring the people of this vast country to a new sense of national identity that would require a complete overhaul of the previous regime. Propaganda was one method that was widely utilized by the leaders of the new USSR through strict control of the media, arts, cultural storytelling, and school textbooks, to name a few. In this article, I will argue how the propaganda used contributed to the Soviet Union realizing a new form of nationalism within its population. The focus will be on the years through to the death of Stalin in 1953.
It is important to understand the definitions of the two main concepts of this argument: nationalism, and propaganda. How well did the fledgling Soviet Union fit with the definition of nationalism, given that the plan of the early Bolsheviks was to do away with the civil structures that existed in Russian society pre-1917. Benedict Anderson defined a nation as an imagined political community that is both sovereign and limited. There is an obvious immediate issue with this when trying to define the early days of the Soviet Union in so much as a civil war took place after the 1917 revolution as any sovereignty was being disputed internally. Limited is also questionable as the extent of its boundaries were still being defined. If we look at nationalism in the context of the Soviet Union, it is important to look at how Stalin defined it also as he was the architect of many of the nation building policies as he took control of the nation. He defined the nation as historically constituted, stable community with a common language that is manifested through a common culture. This is somewhat cliched and problematic when looking retrospectively at what was carried out to achieve these goals but does highlight how propaganda would be required as a means to bring this definition about. Defining propaganda can be difficult as it can be ideological, appeal to intelligence and/or emotions through being overt or covert. For the purpose of this article, I will use Peter Kenez’ definition that it is nothing more than an attempt to transmit political and social values in the hope of affecting people’s emotions, thinking and behavior.
As shown in the definition above for nationalism as being an imagined political community, even before the Bolsheviks came to power, there was disagreement amongst ruling elites about what it meant to be Russian and even worse at the peasant level who identified more with their local province than any national identity. This was in contrast though to how Lenin viewed nationalism, particularly Russian nationalism, in respect to the spread of communism, which was more focused on class consciousness than a national consciousness. Lenin, and Stalin in those days, were more interested in internationalism and how socialism would unite workers, wherever they may be. This ideology would influence Soviet propaganda for at least the first 15 years of the communist’s rule. To further influence how propaganda could be used in the early period, there was an urgent need to increase literacy across the country. Even though Imperial Russia had a strong and rich literary history, which was in contrast the mass illiteracy of the overall population. If the use of propaganda was to be fully realized, there would need to be a campaign of educating the population.
This is not to say that propaganda was not used or didn’t play an important part in the early days after the 1917 revolution. Lenin understood that propaganda could be used to agitate the masses by showing how national issues were caused by global threats, for example, he would link unemployment, poverty and hardship to global capitalism and the need for a complete societal transformation. To help spread the message to the population, the Soviets confiscated cinemas almost immediately after the revolution and through their monopoly on foreign trade, ended the importing of foreign films. The use of posters would also take on an important role as they were easy to produce and sent to all parts of the Soviet Union. They were adopted early as a means to start to educate the population on socialism and Marxist-Leninist ideology as the mass population had to be become educated on socialist principles. Lenin viewed this step an important one as a way of preparing the masses for communism and his goal of a true classless utopia. By 1918, and still in the midst of a civil war, the Soviets had set up a distribution agency for all type of propaganda that was being produced in order to control content. Lenin would then utilize this centralized agency to focus on education and culture as major themes.
This focus on educating the populace would be broad and encompass many different subjects. In particular, was the focus on changing society from one of a backward agrarian one to a more cultured society that would not only understand the benefits of socialism but improve their quality of life. This is seen in the early 1920’s posters of the period that focus on taking proper care of babies, becoming more cultured and educating parents, needed to be addressed. Both themes would be major topics throughout early posters. The use of Lenin and Stalin in propaganda was also a way of stylizing them as cult leaders looking to ‘drain the swamp’ and build a new culture within the Soviet Union. This allowed the Bolsheviks to further separate the Tsarist past and distance the new regime by promoting the coming together of the soviet people under a new leader.
In the 1930’s, Soviet propaganda would undergo a shift in focus as Stalin consolidated his power. His first five plan was almost complete; the land had been partly collectivized and there was a need for a push to further modernize the country through increased productivity. In 1932, a resolution was passed that would see tightening of the arts to conform with the central tenets of the Soviet leadership, this was known as Resolution 32, ‘On the reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations’. It was during this time also that propaganda was becoming more reliant on the press as a means to achieve a greater distribution to the population, in turn due to the preceding decade of investment in educating the nation. This didn’t mean that other forms were not used and posters would still remain vital to the leadership.
It was during this period that a new sense of nationalism would start to be seen in Soviet propaganda as not only industrialization was a theme, but also the countering of the growing Fascist ideologies that were starting to build in Europe. However, contradictions would still exist as Soviet bureaucracy introduced internal passports for its citizens in 1932 that contributed to identifying individuals by their ethnic backgrounds. It could be argued that this is in contrast with Stalin’s overarching plan to create a national identity while at the same time partitioning ethnic groups. The term ‘Motherland’, Rodina, also started to reappear in propaganda during this time. This was an important move as the word had previously been associated with Imperial Russian values. It was a sign that the leadership believed that the old Russian identity had been replaced by the new Soviet identity and even saw old Russian symbols come to be used as part of this transformation.
By the late 1930’s, the Soviet Union was swept with a wave of terror as Stalin clamped down on any anti Soviet sentiment and any element of society that he deemed a threat, whether real or perceived. It was at this time that a shift occurred in the propaganda being produced as what may have been previously tolerated was now viewed as suspicious. Any autonomy that may have been used within the Soviet Union by the political, cultural, and institutional organizations in forming a national identity, was removed as the center took even more control over what could be produced. This was done through increased iconography being used in the propaganda at the time with a clear focus on the past heroes and their achievements, although this was done using more recent figures as Stalin was cautious about any links back to historical figures. If we look back to the definition of propaganda being used in covert and overt forms, we see both at work at this time. The use of film, posters, and arts to mold the minds of the people but also the ongoing purges and the ‘terror’ that it caused at a covert level.
World War Two would have a devastating impact on the Soviet Union in terms of loss of lives. Stalin had purged a considerable amount of his military leaders in the late 1930’s and had too much faith in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union and an ongoing peace. After signing this, Soviet propaganda started to show a pro-Nazi element and the use of the term fascist was all but removed from the press. With the invasion by Germany in 1941, the Soviet Union shifted again. Propaganda now focused on nationalism for the first time as it sought to mobilize all citizens able to fight in the war. Even Stalin recognized that the focus on the people was critical at this time as he acknowledged that citizens could have turned their backs on the government and insisted on a peace deal with Germany.
Following the end of World War Two, Stalin had cemented himself as the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union and due to the propaganda used during this time, a renewed sense of nationalism and national identity emerged. The Stalin period ended with his death in 1953. With thirty years of leadership behind him, a devasting war and new generations born that only knew Stalinism, his leadership had resulted in a sense of Russian national consciousness that was independent of any Soviet socialist identity. It could be argued that the longitudinal nature of the propaganda the people underwent did more to secure this than any specific topic or government intention. Comparative studies on propaganda in China have shown that anti-foreign sentiment is a key area where its use can be beneficial, this could be seen as timely during the 1941 German invasion when a shift from pro-Nazi to anti-German sentiment intensified. Interestingly, the same report tried to measure how a governments performance can be influenced through propaganda and found that there was no evidence to support this and that other forms of control, such as repression, are more effective.
The creation of the Soviet Union in 1917 following revolution led to the need for a new form of ideology, socialism. With a largely illiterate population, there was a need to quickly implement education campaigns that could be sent to all corners of the vast empire. Through centralized control of all forms of media and the arts, this message would start to become all pervasive in Soviet life. The Bolsheviks utilized propaganda in all its form to initially avoid any nationalism and focus on the benefits of the new society they were building. The colliding factors of the purges and World War two required a major shift to mobilize the population against the German army. The Soviet use of propaganda under Stalin’s long reign initially continued Lenin’s theme of internationalism, however, by the time the war had ended, a new Russian identity had emerged. I have looked at how different forms of propaganda at different times was used to foster nationalism and it can be seen that although the internal attempts were ongoing for many decades, it was an outside force that led to propaganda assisting in forming this nationalism.
