agitprop

View more History, Politics, Society videos

For more information on agitprop, visit Britannica.com.

agitprop [aj‐it‐prop], a Russian abbreviation of ‘agitation and propaganda’, applied to the campaign of cultural and political propaganda mounted in the years after the 1917 revolution. The term is sometimes applied to the simple form of didactic drama which the campaign employed, and which influenced the epic theatre of Piscator and Brecht in Germany.

Agitprop, the agitation (speech) and propaganda (print, film, and visual art) section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, was established in August of 1920, under the direction of R. Katanian to coordinate the propaganda work of all Soviet institutions. Agitprop was originally divided into five subsections, the two most important being the agitation subsection, which directed propaganda campaigns and supervised local press, and the political education subsection, which developed curriculum for Party schools. The three remaining subsections were concerned with publishing Central Committee works, addressing problems with the distribution of propaganda in literature, and coordinating work among the parties of the national minorities. Agitprop, whose activities reached their fullest height during the Stalinist era, was one of the most important Central Committee sections by 1946. The role of Agitprop during the Brezhnev years and beyond included overseeing publishing, television, radio, and sports, directing agitation and propaganda work, guiding political education within the Party, and conducting cultural work with trade unions.

Agitprop techniques, based on the political education of the immediate postrevolutionary period, were basically solidified in the 1920s. Early Agitprop in the cities included parades, spectacles, monumental sculpture, posters, kiosks, films, and agit-stations, located at major railroad stations, which had libraries of propaganda material, lecture halls, and theaters. These varied activities continued throughout the Soviet period. Agitation and propaganda were taken to the countryside during the civil war by agit-trains and agit-ships, a unique Bolshevik method for the political education of rural citizens and front-line troops. These modern conveyances functioned like moving posters with exterior decorations of heroic figures and folk art motifs accompanied by simple slogans. The trains and ships brought revolutionary leaflets, agitators, newsreels, and agitki (short propaganda films), among other items. Agit-trains were reinstituted during World War II to convey propaganda to forces at the front. After the civil war, and throughout the Soviet period, propaganda continued to be exported to the countryside via radio, traveling exhibitions, posters, literature, and film. Agitprop, like other Central Committee departments, had become relatively stable in its organization by 1948, and remained so until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Bibliography

Kenez, Peter. (1986). The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917 - 1929. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Stites, Richard. (1995). Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900. New York: Cambridge University Press.

—K. ANDREA RUSNOCK

• Theatrical Forms and Venues - agitprop: informal drama supporting radical leftist ideology

For other uses, see Agitprop (disambiguation).

Agitprop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky titled: "Want it? Enter."
"1. You want to overcome cold?
2. You want to overcome hunger?
3. You want to eat?
4. You want to drink?
Hasten to enter shock brigades of an exemplary labor!"

Agitprop ( /ˈædʒɨtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп [ɐɡʲɪtˈprop]) is derived from agitation and propaganda,^[1] and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message.

The term originated in Soviet Russia (the future USSR), as a shortened form of отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy), i.e., Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department.

The term propaganda in the Russian language did not bear any negative connotation at the time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas".^{[citation needed]} In the case of agitprop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. Agitation meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together, thus giving rise to the cliché "propaganda and agitation".

The term agitprop gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly-politicized leftist theatre originated in 1920s Europe and spread to America; the plays of Bertolt Brecht being a notable example.^[2] Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule.^[3] Gradually the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art.

In the Western world, agitprop has a negative connotation. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, for example, socialist elements of the political scene were often accused of using agitprop to convey an extreme left-wing message via television programmes or theatre.

After the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda.^[4] It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages.^[5]

See also

Look up agitprop in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Propaganda of the Soviet Union

• The Blue Blouse
• Communist propaganda
• Propaganda in the Soviet Union
• Left Column

References

1. ^ Definition by dictionary.com
2. ^ Richard Bodek (1998) "Proletarian Performance in Weimar Berlin: Agitprop, Chorus, and Brecht", ISBN 1-57113-126-4
3. ^ Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, p303, ISBN 978-0-394-50242-7
4. ^ "Agitprop Train". YouTube. 2007-06-15. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-7wqD2Zf0. Retrieved 2009-05-09. 
5. ^ Paul A. Smith, On Political War, p. 124, National Defense University Press, 1989

Further reading

• The Soviet Propaganda Machine, Martin Ebon, McGraw-Hill 1987, ISBN 0-07-018862-9
• Rusnock, K. A. (2003). "Agitprop". In Millar, James. Encyclopedia of Russian History. Gale Group, Inc. ISBN 0-02-865693-8. http://www.answers.com/topic/agitprop#Russian_History_Encyclopedia. 
• Vellikkeel Raghavan (2009). Agitation Propaganda Theatre. Chandigarh: Unistar Books. ISBN 81-7142-917-3

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - agitprop

Nederlands (Dutch)
(communistische) propaganda in kunst

Français (French)
n. - la propagande et l'agitation

Deutsch (German)
n. - Agitprop , (Verbreitung kommunistischer Propaganda)

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - υποκίνηση ταραχών και προπαγάνδα

Italiano (Italian)
reparto propaganda

Português (Portuguese)
n. - propaganda (f) política

Русский (Russian)
советская агитационная литература, песни и пр.

Español (Spanish)
n. - agitación y propaganda

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - propaganda

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
煽动与宣传

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 煽動與宣傳

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 선동과 선전

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - アジプロの活動家
adj. - アジプロの

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) أحدى دعاوى ألشيوعيه ألروسيه , نشرت عن طريق ألأدب والموسيقى والفن‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הפצת תעמולה קומוניסטית בעיקר באמצעות סרטים, מחזות, ספרים וכו' (מיושן)‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.