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'COLLECTIVE CONSUMPTION' DURING THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN - PROPAGANDA AND REALITY (A LITTLE KNOWN BOLSHEVIK ABSURDITY)

100%

Kusnierz R.

Dzieje Najnowsze

2008

issue 2

37-48

In 1929 the Soviet Union embarked with great impetus upon the construction of a 'new' industrialized state. Soviet propaganda uninterruptedly reminded about the emergence of enormous industrial enterprises, built at a rapid rate. Bolshevik agitators incessantly stressed that modernisation is accompanied by a great improvement of the living standard enjoyed by workers and peasants. The construction of large enterprises was related to a growing number of workers in the cities. Since comrade Stalin was 'concerned with the welfare of each honest worker', the Party was to create the best possible work conditions and to take care of all amenities, including, obviously, food. The question of collective consumption (primarily in large workplace canteens) became an important element of Soviet propaganda, which treated it as one of the components of the progressing communisation of the country - the state provided the employee with everything and his only concern was to work 'at the frontline of socialist construction'. The fact that a state guarantees meals for workers is in no way unusual, but in the Soviet Union during the first five-year plan communal meals were envisaged as a dominating form that in time was supposed to totally replace traditional consumption, i. e. at home. Communist propagandists (the leading role being played by the daily 'Pravda') devised the notion that cooking at home, mainly by women, was a capitalist relic exerting an adverse impact on the Soviet economy - instead of cooking women should spend their time working in, e.g. factories or on the land (the kolkhoz, the sovkhoz). The propaganda image of canteens and the accomplishments of 'obshchestviennoe pitanie', as well as many other 'achievements of the Bolshevik paradise' did not come close to reality. The meals frequently did not meet the basic needs of the workers and in certain cases, by no means isolated, communal canteens were an outright mockery.

SOVIET PROPAGANDA DURING THE GREAT FAMINE IN UKRAINE (1932-1933)

100%

Kusnierz R.

Dzieje Najnowsze

2004

issue 4

29-46

For many years Ukraine remained one of the chief grain producers in Europe. The destructive agrarian policy initiated at the end of 1929 by the Stalinist leadership reduced Ukrainian agriculture to a state of ruin and condemned the local peasants to an atrocious famine which in Ukraine alone took the life of at least 3 million people. Throughout the time of the famine, the Ukraine and the Soviet Union as a whole were officially presented as free of hunger; more, the Bolshevik propaganda praised the magnificent life enjoyed by members of state farms and honestly working peasants in the Soviet state. Every Soviet newspaper of the period, regardless whether it was a local or a union publication (such as 'Pravda' or 'Izviestiya'), contained larger or smaller texts about 'comfortable life in the kolkhoz'. The Soviet press did make frequent mention of the famine, but only whenever it described the 'tragic plight of the peasants and workers starving in capitalist states. The Bolshevik propaganda, however, did not limit itself to negating the actual existence of famine in the Soviet Union, but made all possible efforts to prove to the world that information reaching the West was the mere product of the imagination of 'counter-revolutionary elements interested in discrediting the Soviet state'. In this respect, considerable successes of Soviet propaganda included the skilful presentation of Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus, i. e. areas most effected by the famine, to the French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot

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2 Dzieje Najnowsze

2 Kusnierz R.

1 2008

1 2004

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'COLLECTIVE CONSUMPTION' DURING THE FIRST FIVE-YEAR PLAN - PROPAGANDA AND REALITY (A LITTLE KNOWN BOLSHEVIK ABSURDITY)

SOVIET PROPAGANDA DURING THE GREAT FAMINE IN UKRAINE (1932-1933)