Tag Archives: propaganda

Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet ‘Tiananmen’

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1962 maslo1 500x332 Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet Tiananmen

Meat, but­ter, pay rise!

Novocherkassk is a small town in the South of Rus­sia, also known as the unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of the Cos­sacks, the Slavic mil­i­tary com­mu­nity. Unfor­tu­nately this town was the place of a huge tragedy, when in 1962 the civil­ian demon­stra­tion was opened fire on.

The tur­moil started on June, 1 when the Soviet gov­ern­ment announced the gro­cery price increase of about 30 per cent. The riot began at the pro­gres­sive elec­tro loco­mo­tive fac­tory: just before the price increase, the salary had been low­ered, which already was below the liv­ing min­i­mum (about a hun­dred rub­bles). The work­ers demanded an expla­na­tion, and threat­ened to strike. Faced with an ulti­ma­tum, the CEO Kurochkin mounted the plat­form and demanded that peo­ple went back to work. ‘If you do not have enough money for meat, buy the liver pie’ answered Kurochkin with the snarl.

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The case of The Kremlin Doctors and its Consequences: the State of Anti-Semitism

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display diligence The case of The Kremlin Doctors and its Consequences: the State of Anti Semitism

Be Vig­i­lant! Dis­close an Enemy Under any Mask!

1953 was the last year of long and ter­ri­fy­ing gov­ern­ing of Stalin. In Jan­u­ary the huge coun­try although accus­tomed to repres­sions shud­dered from the new hor­ror –  this time the enemies-saboteurs were Krem­lin doc­tors of a Jew­ish ori­gin. The com­menced per­se­cu­tion also applied to ordi­nary doc­tors.  Soviet peo­ple who believed to the polit­i­cally edited sto­ries broad­cast in the media were scared to be patients of Jew­ish doc­tors. On March, 5 of 1953 Stalin passed away and the case of Krem­lin doc­tors was dis­missed. Humil­i­ated, maimed doc­tors were released. How­ever this was only the begin­ning of the polit­i­cal repres­sions of the Jew­ish spe­cial­ists and today we would like to intro­duce you to a strik­ing exam­ple — the story of my family.

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Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

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serov1918 provozlashenie sov vlasti 376x500 Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

The Announce­ment of the Soviet Gov­ern­ment. By Vladimir Serov, 1918.

The Soviet Union was offi­cially cre­ated in 1922, how­ever, if there was a date which could be con­sid­ered as a birth­day of the USSR, that would have had to be Novem­ber 7th of 1917  — this was the day when in St Peters­burg the Bol­she­viks — the organ­ised mil­i­tary rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, who later became the Com­mu­nist Party of the USSR — came to power. The Russ­ian Pro­vi­sional Gov­ern­ment which were the head of the coun­try after the Tsar Nicholas II had resigned, was over­thrown and the Sovi­ets, tak­ing the gov­ern­ment build­ings one by one, had finally cap­tured the town.

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Social Advertising on Soviet Matchbox Labels

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Matches in the Soviet Union were an impor­tant part of every­day life. Many apart­ments were not con­nected to the cen­tral gas, power or elec­tric­ity sys­tems, so peo­ple needed matches to light a stove to make food or to boil water to take a bath.

Thus, match­box labels served as a daily reminder of the socially accepted rules of behav­ior or life wis­dom advice, most com­monly in the form of a friend rec­om­men­da­tion from the Soviet state. So let’s have a look at this prim­i­tive yet very quaint form of social advertising.

95fbeb5541 Social Advertising on Soviet Matchbox Labels

Honey is good for doing sports. 1959.

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The Patriotic Education in the USSR. Part One: the October Kids.

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0 de34 9660ec72 XL 500x361 The Patriotic Education in the USSR. Part One: the October Kids.

Only those who like to work get suc­cess­ful in this world.

The young Soviet coun­try could not grow and flour­ish with­out the sup­port and patri­o­tism of its peo­ple. From the early days of the Soviet Union, the ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tions aimed to tar­get cit­i­zens of all ages, oblig­ing them to belong in order to do well in life. So the pes­ter­ing had to start early: when kids start school (the school age 7 years old in the USSR), the school ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tion would take them under the wing, with the prospect of nur­tur­ing the future mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Party.

The very first move­ment every child would belong to was called the Octo­ber kids, after the Great Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, after which the new gov­ern­ment came into power.

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Dirty Dancing Soviet Style

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Just like any­where else in the world, the Soviet young­sters wanted to social­ize, to lis­ten to the music and to dance. The night­clubs were unheard of – any­thing of that kind would have been announced as pro­mot­ing debauch­ery or morally wrong lifestyle habits. So the best one would hope for were the dis­cothe­ques – the spe­cial dance occa­sions, orga­nized by the offi­cials on a weekly basis. They always had a des­ig­nated super­vi­sor – a school prin­ci­pal or a city coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive in charge.

first 478x500 Dirty Dancing Soviet Style

A Soviet dis­cotheque, most likely late 1960s.

Often enough, espe­cially in the small cities, these dance events were the only source of enter­tain­ment. Movies were scarce and arrived in towns infre­quently; the cir­cus would visit once a year; and libraries just didn’t do it.

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