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Soviet Union [USSR] POLITICIZATION OF THE MASS MEDIA AND THE ARTS
The CPSU used the mass media and the arts to enhance its
control over society. The justification for such controls was
developed by nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary writers who
sought to transform Russia through the politicization of
literature. Literature and literary criticism were to provide means
to challenge tsarist authority and awaken the political
consciousness of the population. Specifically, radical writers and
artists used "critical realism" (the critical assessment of
society) in literature, theater, music, and other forms of creative
expression to denounce the authoritarian system. Later, the early
Soviet government integrated "critical realism" into its policies
to serve as a foundation for the politicization of the media and
literary worlds in the early Soviet government.
When Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders governed the
country, however, they employed the concept of critical realism to
exercise political control over culture rather than to inspire
writers and artists to question Bolshevik rule. In its early years,
the government established political guidelines for media and the
arts. In the late 1920s, the regime determined that its enforcement
of stringent publication criteria would be executed by an
organization formed by the government. The regime chose to use
literature as its model for politicization of the media and the
arts and in 1932 formed the Union of Writers to enforce the
doctrine of socialist realism over all writing. All modes of
creative thought and artistic expression required approval by the
regime's authoritative bodies, rigidly structured after the Union
of Writers, for every kind of mass media and form of art. Under
Stalin's leadership, socialist realism dictated the content and
form to which writers and artists had to adhere. Since Stalin's
death in 1953, successive regimes had relaxed the restrictions of
socialist realism. In the period after Leonid I. Brezhnev, hitherto
prohibited articles and literary works passed CPSU regulations. In
the late 1980s, socialist realism was more liberally interpreted;
it still, however, retained the basic tenets instituted by the
Bolshevik leadership.
Data as of May 1989
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