Poisoned feather. Paradoxes of the Soviet press of the era of the Great Patriotic War ... (1)
For a long time, we didn’t address the topic of publications in Soviet newspapers of the 30-40s of the last century, that is, the materials of the Poisoned Pen series. For those who see the material of this series for the first time, we will explain that they, in examples from a number of Russian pre-revolutionary newspapers and Soviet newspapers, are talking about the fact that our domestic journalists, due to some truly fatal circumstances, did not strengthen their writings their country and state (while in his service!), how many ... they fell apart. Well, well, before the revolution, they had, let's say, for this reason. But why this tradition continued in the era of the USSR? And people seemed to be trying their best, but it turned out “as always!”
True, there is such a good saying: “make the fool pray to God, he will break his whole forehead”. That is, it is about the fact that when a not very intelligent and knowledgeable person is taken to do something, then do not expect anything good. For example, a journalist can be taught to write, why not? But if he does not have a common culture or the intellect is “so-so”, then he will not write anything good. She will try, but only spoil everything, because “crazy is the head of a shabal”! This introduction, and specifically on this topic, we will consider this time how our Soviet newspapers wrote about the events of the Great Patriotic War ...
Everyone knows that 22 June 1941 was a turning point in the life of our country. The Great Patriotic War began, and the Soviet media immediately began to perform the relevant wartime tasks. Significantly reduced the volume of peripheral editions. For example, such a regional newspaper, as the “Stalin flag,” began to appear on only two pages, and its circulation was reduced from 40 to 34 thousand, and only 4800 copies were sold at retail [1]. True, this had practically no effect on national newspapers, which at that time became the main mouthpiece of propaganda in the USSR.
Since the newspaper was prepared in advance for the new day, the 23 of June 1941 was urgently printed in the “Stalin banner” newspaper bulletin, where the “Speech on the radio of the vice-president of the State Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Comrade T. V.M. Molotov ”from 22 June 1941 of the year, which announced the attack of fascist Germany and the beginning of the war. Soviet citizens were called for solidarity, discipline, and dedication to ensure victory over the enemy. The speech ended with the words: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours". Together with the speech of V.M. Molotov published the decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the establishment of martial law in some areas of the USSR and on the mobilization of military service in a number of military districts [2].
The "Bulletin ..." reported on the first reaction of residents of the Penza region to the enemy invasion. Everywhere there were crowded meetings of representatives of local authorities, intellectuals, workers, peasants, patriotic resolutions were adopted, and residents of the city and region declared their readiness to go to the front as volunteers. Local materials, of course, immediately supplemented with TASS materials.
The English "Matilda", and even on the first page of the November issue of Pravda and of such a size ... That was significant at that time, and the Soviet citizens, who were reading between the lines, understood well why this was so.
Of course, all the "political correctness" of Soviet newspapers and pro-German rhetoric that occurred in relation to Hitler Germany after the signing of the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" were immediately dropped. Now the German fascists were compared with dogs, Hitler from the chancellor of the German people again turned into a cannibal, the German attack on the Soviet Union was depicted as a terrible crime, and in examples of domestic stories It was shown that the Russian people always renounced to the aggressor according to the merits of [3]. But more recently, the same newspapers published government statements that “we can watch quite calmly how this fascism is used for the hopeless work of saving the capitalist system” and that “with the help of fascism itself our own proletarian cause is being done”, and that “fascism helps the growth of the class self-consciousness of the working class” [4].
The usual practice of the prewar Soviet periodicals was that virtually every strip of the newspaper was opened with a slogan or a quote from the speeches of I.V. Stalin or V.M. Molotov. However, now many headlines began to have the character of “slogans-spells,” for example: “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” [5], “The Soviet people will respond with a provocative blow of the enemy with a mighty triple blow” [6], “Mighty the Soviet people will sweep the fascist barbarians off the face of the earth! ”[7],“ Under the leadership of Stalin - to defeat the enemy! ”[8], etc. It also published the first report of the Red Army High Command for 22 June 1941 of the year, which reported that our troops shot down 65 enemy planes on that day, and its strikes were reflected almost everywhere [9].
Confidence that they would help us should have been instilled by the “Churchill's speech on the radio”, published on the fourth page, which said that “we will provide Russia and the Russian people any help we can” and that “the danger to Russia is ours danger, and danger to the United States ... "[10]. A day later, US President Roosevelt issued a statement on assistance to the Soviet Union and on removing the sequest from Soviet funds [11], introduced after the USSR attacked Finland in the fall of 1939, while excluding it from the League of Nations. And “very timely” notes appeared that the plight of the peasants is observed in Romania, wheat crops are flooded in Hungary, and food speculation is in Italy [12].
The first front-line correspondence appeared - reprints from central newspapers, testifying, first of all, to the extremely low professional level of their authors. So, in the material “Attack tanks"M. Ruzova on June 25 (reprint from the Izvestia newspaper) it was reported that our machine gunner, being in the tank, was wounded by a shell fragment, but the battle continued (!) [13]. Meanwhile, this should not have been written, if only because tanks, in principle, should not break through shell fragments. And this would be the very “truth” that could have been completely silent!
Soviet pilots in the British aircraft. It was not necessary to write such articles. Any comparative information in the context of political and economic confrontation is harmful!
Here was published the story of a captured German pilot who stated that “we don’t want to fight with the Russians, we fight tired, we are tired of the war, for which we don’t know” and data on the losses of the Red Army for June 22,23 and 24, which reported that Soviet aviation it lost mainly 374 aircraft at airfields, and 161 aircraft in the air and 200 at airfields were destroyed by the enemy [14]. According to the report of the High Command of the Red Army for June 23, “during the day the enemy sought to develop an offensive along the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea”, but “had no success”. This was followed by comforting news that “in the morning the enemy, who had wedged onto our territory, was defeated and thrown out of the state border by counterattacks of our troops, while up to 300 enemy tanks were destroyed by our artillery fire in the Šiauliai direction.” Aviation "conducted successful battles, covering troops, airfields, settlements and military facilities from enemy air attacks and assisting our troops' counterattacks." It was also reported that “On June 22 and 23 we captured about five thousand German soldiers and officers” [15].
The presentation of materials remained the same as when covering events in Spain in 1936 - 1939. That is, our troops everywhere had success, the soldiers and officers of the Red Army acted in droves with high efficiency, and the enemy everywhere suffered huge losses. It was reported that the losses of the German army in the first three weeks of the war were truly threatening: “The Soviet aviation, which Hitler's boasts declared to be broken in the first days of the war,” according to updated data, destroyed more than 2300 German aircraft and continues to systematically destroy enemy planes ... German troops lost more Xnumx tanks. During the same period, we lost 3000 aircraft and 1900 tanks ”[2200]. However, it was not clear how after all these successes, the Soviet troops retreating farther and farther, and the German army, consisting mainly of soldiers who do not “want to fight,” continues to successfully advance on Soviet soil further and further! It is not clear why information about our losses was given at all. People would easily understand that this is secret information. They wouldn’t even have wondered about this, and it was possible to write so that now there is no possibility to take into account all the losses of our troops, but after the Victory everything will be done and no one will be forgotten!
The cellars of the fourth strip were often set aside for short stories and journalistic essays. Moreover, in these materials, as before, criticism of fascism as a phenomenon that completely disappeared from the content of Soviet newspapers after 23 August 1939 of the year again sounded: “The hidden thoughts of the working people of Germany” [17], “Prison country” [18], “Hunger of fascist Germany ”[19] painted an extremely dark and hungry picture of the life of the German people, which on the one hand certainly met the aspirations and hopes of Soviet citizens, but on the other could not but generate“ questions without answers ”. At the same time, it was immediately reported about the abundance of products in the Kiev markets [20], which by and large was a mistake of the Soviet propagandists, since such information was published in the hope of a quick victory over the enemy, and just this was not destined to be realized in a short time. And with reference to newspapers and magazines in Germany (!), The Soviet press reported on how the German press praised horse meat, dog and cat meat, “paraffin oil” and “woody margarine”! Meanwhile, the extremes are good in the stories of the “OBS Agency” (“one grandmother said”). In the press, especially the state, it was necessary to write more streamlined and avoid extremes. It is always easy to catch on them who wrote later and ... blame the entire press for lying!
Here, under this photo, it was necessary to write something completely different, namely, that our industry produces excellent automatic rifles, which the Germans do not have. It was necessary to name their brand, creator, to take and place his interview in the newspaper, and that in him he would tell what impression he personally made the call to the Kremlin to Comrade Stalin, and how he was interested in his work and warmly responded about himself and his team fellow workers, including locksmith Ostapchuk and cleaning lady Aunt Glushu! And only then write about the success of snipers proper.
Or, for example, the article "The bestial face of German fascism." In it, the author told about the horrors of beatings and executions in Germany, but for some reason only until the autumn of 1939, although he noted that the terror there intensified with the start of the war [21]. But it did not explain why for two whole years our press did not mention a word about these atrocities, which undoubtedly undermined the credibility of propaganda as a whole. An error was, for example, the article that “the Hitler regime was a copy of the Russian Tsarism” [22], because there were still many people who lived under the tsarist regime and understood that there was an obvious “overlap” and who would lie in the small , he can lie and in big!
The newspaper paid much attention to maintaining the national spirit through the publication of materials on historical themes. About Russian victories weapons in past wars and on the heroism of the Russian people, such articles as “People’s Commander” (about AV Suvorov), “The defeat of Napoleon”, “The feat of Susanin”, “The Battle of the Ice” were told. Moreover, the last article narrated how “armed with domestic axes, spears, bows with wooden arrows” simple peasants and artisans beat “knight-dogs” [23], which was a clear distortion of historical realities even at that time. Similarly, the entire victory over the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald was attributed exclusively to the Russian troops, since “the Lithuanians from the battlefield fled”, and “Polish troops began to hesitate” [24]. The rise of the patriotic spirit should also be promoted by the texts of such songs published in the newspaper as “Semyon Budyonny”, “Beat from the sky, airplanes!”, “Clicked Voroshilov's army”. There was even a “passage from the“ folk tale ”“ Alive Chapaev! ”[25], because at the time a very similar plot was shown on the screens of cinemas.
1. GAPO.F.554. Op.1.D. 69.L.16
2. Bulletin of the newspaper "Stalin's banner" June 23, 1941 p.1
3. Ibid. C.1.
4. XII Moscow Provincial Party Conference. Comrade's speech Kameneva // True. May 16, 1924. No. 103. C.4
5. Stalinist Banner. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.1
6. Ibid. C.3
7. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.2
8. Ibid. July 21, 1941. No. 170. C.1
9. Ibid. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.1
10. Ibid. C.4
11. Stalin's Banner. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.4.
12. Ibid. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.4.
13. Ruzov. M. Tank Attack // Stalin's Banner. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.1
14. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.1
15. News. June 24, 1941. No. 147. C.1; Stalin Banner. June 25, 1941. No. 147. P.1
16. Ibid. July 15, 1941. No. 153. C.1
17. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.4
18. Ibid. July 1, 1941. No. 152. C.4
19. Lidin Yu. Famine in Nazi Germany // Stalin's Banner. July 29, 1941. No. 174. C.2
20. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.4
21. Lorin K. Animal face of German fascism // Stalin's Banner. July 13, 1941. No. 163.S.2
22. Demidov K. Hitler's regime - a copy of Russian tsarism // Stalin's Banner. January 31, 1942. No. 28. C.4
23. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.3
24. Reuben. C. The defeat of the Germans near Grunwald // Stalin's Banner. June 13, 1941. No. 163. C.4
25. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.3
To be continued ...
True, there is such a good saying: “make the fool pray to God, he will break his whole forehead”. That is, it is about the fact that when a not very intelligent and knowledgeable person is taken to do something, then do not expect anything good. For example, a journalist can be taught to write, why not? But if he does not have a common culture or the intellect is “so-so”, then he will not write anything good. She will try, but only spoil everything, because “crazy is the head of a shabal”! This introduction, and specifically on this topic, we will consider this time how our Soviet newspapers wrote about the events of the Great Patriotic War ...
Everyone knows that 22 June 1941 was a turning point in the life of our country. The Great Patriotic War began, and the Soviet media immediately began to perform the relevant wartime tasks. Significantly reduced the volume of peripheral editions. For example, such a regional newspaper, as the “Stalin flag,” began to appear on only two pages, and its circulation was reduced from 40 to 34 thousand, and only 4800 copies were sold at retail [1]. True, this had practically no effect on national newspapers, which at that time became the main mouthpiece of propaganda in the USSR.
Since the newspaper was prepared in advance for the new day, the 23 of June 1941 was urgently printed in the “Stalin banner” newspaper bulletin, where the “Speech on the radio of the vice-president of the State Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Comrade T. V.M. Molotov ”from 22 June 1941 of the year, which announced the attack of fascist Germany and the beginning of the war. Soviet citizens were called for solidarity, discipline, and dedication to ensure victory over the enemy. The speech ended with the words: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours". Together with the speech of V.M. Molotov published the decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the establishment of martial law in some areas of the USSR and on the mobilization of military service in a number of military districts [2].
The "Bulletin ..." reported on the first reaction of residents of the Penza region to the enemy invasion. Everywhere there were crowded meetings of representatives of local authorities, intellectuals, workers, peasants, patriotic resolutions were adopted, and residents of the city and region declared their readiness to go to the front as volunteers. Local materials, of course, immediately supplemented with TASS materials.
The English "Matilda", and even on the first page of the November issue of Pravda and of such a size ... That was significant at that time, and the Soviet citizens, who were reading between the lines, understood well why this was so.
Of course, all the "political correctness" of Soviet newspapers and pro-German rhetoric that occurred in relation to Hitler Germany after the signing of the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact" were immediately dropped. Now the German fascists were compared with dogs, Hitler from the chancellor of the German people again turned into a cannibal, the German attack on the Soviet Union was depicted as a terrible crime, and in examples of domestic stories It was shown that the Russian people always renounced to the aggressor according to the merits of [3]. But more recently, the same newspapers published government statements that “we can watch quite calmly how this fascism is used for the hopeless work of saving the capitalist system” and that “with the help of fascism itself our own proletarian cause is being done”, and that “fascism helps the growth of the class self-consciousness of the working class” [4].
The usual practice of the prewar Soviet periodicals was that virtually every strip of the newspaper was opened with a slogan or a quote from the speeches of I.V. Stalin or V.M. Molotov. However, now many headlines began to have the character of “slogans-spells,” for example: “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” [5], “The Soviet people will respond with a provocative blow of the enemy with a mighty triple blow” [6], “Mighty the Soviet people will sweep the fascist barbarians off the face of the earth! ”[7],“ Under the leadership of Stalin - to defeat the enemy! ”[8], etc. It also published the first report of the Red Army High Command for 22 June 1941 of the year, which reported that our troops shot down 65 enemy planes on that day, and its strikes were reflected almost everywhere [9].
Confidence that they would help us should have been instilled by the “Churchill's speech on the radio”, published on the fourth page, which said that “we will provide Russia and the Russian people any help we can” and that “the danger to Russia is ours danger, and danger to the United States ... "[10]. A day later, US President Roosevelt issued a statement on assistance to the Soviet Union and on removing the sequest from Soviet funds [11], introduced after the USSR attacked Finland in the fall of 1939, while excluding it from the League of Nations. And “very timely” notes appeared that the plight of the peasants is observed in Romania, wheat crops are flooded in Hungary, and food speculation is in Italy [12].
The first front-line correspondence appeared - reprints from central newspapers, testifying, first of all, to the extremely low professional level of their authors. So, in the material “Attack tanks"M. Ruzova on June 25 (reprint from the Izvestia newspaper) it was reported that our machine gunner, being in the tank, was wounded by a shell fragment, but the battle continued (!) [13]. Meanwhile, this should not have been written, if only because tanks, in principle, should not break through shell fragments. And this would be the very “truth” that could have been completely silent!
Soviet pilots in the British aircraft. It was not necessary to write such articles. Any comparative information in the context of political and economic confrontation is harmful!
Here was published the story of a captured German pilot who stated that “we don’t want to fight with the Russians, we fight tired, we are tired of the war, for which we don’t know” and data on the losses of the Red Army for June 22,23 and 24, which reported that Soviet aviation it lost mainly 374 aircraft at airfields, and 161 aircraft in the air and 200 at airfields were destroyed by the enemy [14]. According to the report of the High Command of the Red Army for June 23, “during the day the enemy sought to develop an offensive along the entire front from the Baltic to the Black Sea”, but “had no success”. This was followed by comforting news that “in the morning the enemy, who had wedged onto our territory, was defeated and thrown out of the state border by counterattacks of our troops, while up to 300 enemy tanks were destroyed by our artillery fire in the Šiauliai direction.” Aviation "conducted successful battles, covering troops, airfields, settlements and military facilities from enemy air attacks and assisting our troops' counterattacks." It was also reported that “On June 22 and 23 we captured about five thousand German soldiers and officers” [15].
The presentation of materials remained the same as when covering events in Spain in 1936 - 1939. That is, our troops everywhere had success, the soldiers and officers of the Red Army acted in droves with high efficiency, and the enemy everywhere suffered huge losses. It was reported that the losses of the German army in the first three weeks of the war were truly threatening: “The Soviet aviation, which Hitler's boasts declared to be broken in the first days of the war,” according to updated data, destroyed more than 2300 German aircraft and continues to systematically destroy enemy planes ... German troops lost more Xnumx tanks. During the same period, we lost 3000 aircraft and 1900 tanks ”[2200]. However, it was not clear how after all these successes, the Soviet troops retreating farther and farther, and the German army, consisting mainly of soldiers who do not “want to fight,” continues to successfully advance on Soviet soil further and further! It is not clear why information about our losses was given at all. People would easily understand that this is secret information. They wouldn’t even have wondered about this, and it was possible to write so that now there is no possibility to take into account all the losses of our troops, but after the Victory everything will be done and no one will be forgotten!
The cellars of the fourth strip were often set aside for short stories and journalistic essays. Moreover, in these materials, as before, criticism of fascism as a phenomenon that completely disappeared from the content of Soviet newspapers after 23 August 1939 of the year again sounded: “The hidden thoughts of the working people of Germany” [17], “Prison country” [18], “Hunger of fascist Germany ”[19] painted an extremely dark and hungry picture of the life of the German people, which on the one hand certainly met the aspirations and hopes of Soviet citizens, but on the other could not but generate“ questions without answers ”. At the same time, it was immediately reported about the abundance of products in the Kiev markets [20], which by and large was a mistake of the Soviet propagandists, since such information was published in the hope of a quick victory over the enemy, and just this was not destined to be realized in a short time. And with reference to newspapers and magazines in Germany (!), The Soviet press reported on how the German press praised horse meat, dog and cat meat, “paraffin oil” and “woody margarine”! Meanwhile, the extremes are good in the stories of the “OBS Agency” (“one grandmother said”). In the press, especially the state, it was necessary to write more streamlined and avoid extremes. It is always easy to catch on them who wrote later and ... blame the entire press for lying!
Here, under this photo, it was necessary to write something completely different, namely, that our industry produces excellent automatic rifles, which the Germans do not have. It was necessary to name their brand, creator, to take and place his interview in the newspaper, and that in him he would tell what impression he personally made the call to the Kremlin to Comrade Stalin, and how he was interested in his work and warmly responded about himself and his team fellow workers, including locksmith Ostapchuk and cleaning lady Aunt Glushu! And only then write about the success of snipers proper.
Or, for example, the article "The bestial face of German fascism." In it, the author told about the horrors of beatings and executions in Germany, but for some reason only until the autumn of 1939, although he noted that the terror there intensified with the start of the war [21]. But it did not explain why for two whole years our press did not mention a word about these atrocities, which undoubtedly undermined the credibility of propaganda as a whole. An error was, for example, the article that “the Hitler regime was a copy of the Russian Tsarism” [22], because there were still many people who lived under the tsarist regime and understood that there was an obvious “overlap” and who would lie in the small , he can lie and in big!
The newspaper paid much attention to maintaining the national spirit through the publication of materials on historical themes. About Russian victories weapons in past wars and on the heroism of the Russian people, such articles as “People’s Commander” (about AV Suvorov), “The defeat of Napoleon”, “The feat of Susanin”, “The Battle of the Ice” were told. Moreover, the last article narrated how “armed with domestic axes, spears, bows with wooden arrows” simple peasants and artisans beat “knight-dogs” [23], which was a clear distortion of historical realities even at that time. Similarly, the entire victory over the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald was attributed exclusively to the Russian troops, since “the Lithuanians from the battlefield fled”, and “Polish troops began to hesitate” [24]. The rise of the patriotic spirit should also be promoted by the texts of such songs published in the newspaper as “Semyon Budyonny”, “Beat from the sky, airplanes!”, “Clicked Voroshilov's army”. There was even a “passage from the“ folk tale ”“ Alive Chapaev! ”[25], because at the time a very similar plot was shown on the screens of cinemas.
1. GAPO.F.554. Op.1.D. 69.L.16
2. Bulletin of the newspaper "Stalin's banner" June 23, 1941 p.1
3. Ibid. C.1.
4. XII Moscow Provincial Party Conference. Comrade's speech Kameneva // True. May 16, 1924. No. 103. C.4
5. Stalinist Banner. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.1
6. Ibid. C.3
7. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.2
8. Ibid. July 21, 1941. No. 170. C.1
9. Ibid. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.1
10. Ibid. C.4
11. Stalin's Banner. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.4.
12. Ibid. June 24, 1941. No. 146. C.4.
13. Ruzov. M. Tank Attack // Stalin's Banner. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.1
14. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.1
15. News. June 24, 1941. No. 147. C.1; Stalin Banner. June 25, 1941. No. 147. P.1
16. Ibid. July 15, 1941. No. 153. C.1
17. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.4
18. Ibid. July 1, 1941. No. 152. C.4
19. Lidin Yu. Famine in Nazi Germany // Stalin's Banner. July 29, 1941. No. 174. C.2
20. Ibid. June 26, 1941. No. 148. C.4
21. Lorin K. Animal face of German fascism // Stalin's Banner. July 13, 1941. No. 163.S.2
22. Demidov K. Hitler's regime - a copy of Russian tsarism // Stalin's Banner. January 31, 1942. No. 28. C.4
23. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.3
24. Reuben. C. The defeat of the Germans near Grunwald // Stalin's Banner. June 13, 1941. No. 163. C.4
25. Stalinist Banner. June 29, 1941. No. 151. C.3
To be continued ...
Information