Authors

Discussion

This paper examines the perception of propaganda among Red Army service members in the military press – front, army, and divisional newspapers. The Soviet military press was the primary propaganda tool in the Red Army during World War II, targeting exclusively Soviet armed forces personnel. Examining the Soviet military press, the question of its effectiveness cannot be ignored. Although academic literature often describes Soviet wartime propaganda as limited and unconvincing, our sources do not unequivocally support this conclusion. Instead, this paper argues that responses were shaped by a combination of factors that enhance or weaken the effectiveness of propaganda.

Positive factors included the soldiers' appreciation of publications by Soviet writers in the military press, primarily works of Ilʹia Erenburg and Alexandr Tvardovskiĭ. Some servicemen note the importance of pre-war propaganda campaigns, mentioning that wartime propaganda was perceived as understandable and familiar. The subjective factor played a crucial role in the dissemination of the propaganda. If a political worker who delivered the newspaper’s content shared all the risks of combat operations on an equal footing with soldiers, then he enjoyed authority, and his information deserved attention. There was also a pragmatic attitude, which was expressed in the use of newspaper materials as a source of information about presenting a serviceman with an award or notifying relatives of the death of a Red Army soldier.

Among the negative factors outlined were the following: (1) excessive glorification of front-line realities and exaggeration of German losses in newspaper discourse, which created a misleading representation of the war; (2) lack of newspaper copies in military units, resulting in limited access to information among servicemen; (3) a contradiction between the narrative constructed by military newspapers and actual conditions, a contradiction that became particularly clear abroad during the Red Army’s European campaign in 1944-1945; (4) the limited demand for hate propaganda, since servicemen who personally witnessed German atrocities did not request additional material of this type. A significant factor was the distrustful attitude of soldiers toward the political apparatus workers, who appeared on the front line only during periods of calm and returned to the rear without accompanying the soldiers into battle. Because soldiers perceived this behavior as a lack of solidarity, the authority of these political workers suffered. As a result, propaganda efforts failed to achieve their intended effect. Ultimately, this disconnect is reflected in numerous diaries, memoirs, and oral history testimonies, which note that newspapers – intended as tools for information and morale – were instead used for practical needs such as making self-made cigarettes, heating, or as improvised bandage material.