New Propaganda: Remnants of Soviet Mass Media in Pro-Kremlin Popular Culture

Stewart, Sylvia M. (2014) New Propaganda: Remnants of Soviet Mass Media in Pro-Kremlin Popular Culture. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Dr. Joshua First from History, The University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

Russia has had a long history of propaganda produced by governmental bodies. The Soviet Union controlled entire sectors of media and used it to try to control the ideology and actions of their populace. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, Russian society was thrust into the wild west of capitalism. Once state-controlled industries, such as television, were purchased by private players in the system who wanted a say in the formation of the new Russia. However, when Putin was elected in 2000, the landscape of Russian popular culture began to change. Para-governmental and non-governmentally affiliated groups took over the task of producing pro-kremlin propaganda. Furthermore, the propaganda that these groups produce exhibits many of the same features and motifs of Soviet Propaganda. The goals of this thesis are twofold. The first is to trace the rise of these para-governmental groups and show the role they have in post-Soviet Russia. The second is to show that these new movements in propaganda are reflections of similar Soviet schools of propaganda, but are changed in form and effectiveness by the modern world. This thesis focuses on four categories of society: the cult of personality, youth groups, television, and mass media in the public sphere.

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