Subscription and distribution of the periodic press as ideological actions of the totalitarian government (according to archival documents and materials of the subscription campaign of Bukovyna)

Abstract

The concept of totalitarian journalism in this article is considered in the context of political, economic and administrative control of mass media activities by the ruling state elite, which regulates all spheres of social-political, cultural-educational and personal life of citizens.

The origins, goals, main components and consequences of one of the permanent ideological actions of the Soviet government regarding the organization of annual subscription campaigns for party-Soviet newspapers and magazines of the entire system of totalitarian journalism are traced. This was done on the basis of documents of the State Archive of the Chernivtsi region and rare bindings of the local press.

It is about how the new government in the five oblasts of Halychyna, Northern Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia, which were annexed to Soviet Ukraine in 1939, in 1940, and Transcarpathia in 1945, trained the local population not only to read the new Soviet press, but also to subscribe to it en masse. A kind of anatomical section of the subscription campaign as an important part of the propaganda work of the ruling Bolshevik party is presented, the purpose of which was to regulate this matter according to the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the saturation of newspapers and magazines for each settlement, for each district, region, and republic.

The reasons for the unceasing growth in the initial stage of the formation of the new network of the party-Soviet press in these parts of the circulation of regional and district newspapers and a certain lack of trust in the republican and central Moscow newspapers have been clarified. In this regard, Moscow imposed restrictions on the local press by setting limits on paper for local printers, since Pravda and Izvestia were the priority. We are talking about the phenomenon of forced internationalism, when, under party coercion, communists in the districts were forced to subscribe to magazines from the countries of the socialist camp.

There are glaring facts of the inability of local authorities to organize an effective and convenient scheme for the delivery of press to remote areas and villages of the region. The inflexibility of the Soviet apparatus on the ground led to the fact that in the post-war period, newspapers and magazines were delivered to the hinterland several days after they were published. Separately, we talk about the problems of the post office in the Soviet village and excessive standards for rural postmen.