The Soviet methods of mobilization

The Bolsheviks built an extraordinary propaganda apparatus and spent a great deal of time, energy, and scarce resources to indoctrinate the Soviet people. But did they make the correct investment? Did the huge indoctrination apparatus make a difference? Did the hundreds of thousands of agitators, the unabashedly biased newspapers, the innumerable “volunteer” organizations, the repetitious mass meetings help to influence the course of history? Although many contemporaries believed that the indoctrination campaigns failed to achieve their purpose, the majority of observers, on the contrary, have been greatly impressed by Soviet methods. Indeed, some hostile commentators have regarded the very essence of the Soviet evil as insidious brainwashing.

There can be no easy answers to the questions posed. The basic difficulty is that it is impossible to separate the results of indoctrination from the consequences of other aspects of the Soviet system. Who can say to what extent the people endorsed their government because they agreed with the goals of the regime and came to regard them as their own and to what extent they did so because they were afraid of the consequences of dissent? Similarly, did the Soviet people accept the goals of the regime because they found those goals attractive, or, did they support the regime to the extent they did as a result of clever manipulation of opinion? Such matters can never be fully resolved.

It can be stated with assurance, however, that the particular, Leninist-Stalinist methods of mass mobilization and indoctrination came to be essential aspects of the propaganda state.