History Internal Assessment - Stalin's propaganda during the war

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Francesca Parisi

12th Grade

September 2012

How effective was Stalin propaganda during the war?

Stalin developed a cult of personality like no other leader in history through an exponential use of propaganda, like media, public events, and alteration of historical materials. Stalin was personified in\as a hero, the creator and father of the USSR.

He achieved this cult of personality by advertising himself and his actions as a leader, through visual images like pictures, movies or posters; but also through psychological pressure taking away the privilege of freedom, personal opinion, religious beliefs, and press; the only thing people could discuss of was him, but not his private life.

One very famous picture used as propaganda portraits joseph Stalin with a little girl (Gelya Markizova) who brought him a bouquet of flowers.

The story of this girl after the picture was taken is dramatic. Her parents were killed just one year later. Her father second secretary of the Buryat Mongol ASSR was accused of spying for Japan and shot

 Stalin’s campaign started on newspapers, it was the quickest way to spread his message.

Speeches about the successes of his domestic policies as the Five Year Plans were printed in Pravda (Russian political newspaper associated with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.) and even on posters around the streets.

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Yet the workers who actually built huge factories and electric power plants could see with their own eyes that the Soviet Union was industrializing, and, as a consequence, catching up with other capitalist powers.

Workers and non-workers were told that the conditions in the capitalist countries were alarming, and that this was the era of the great depression.

What the Soviet citizens didn’t know, of course, was that in the Soviet Union prison camps were overloaded with people who were there for no particular reason (stealing, murder.. etc.) but only because their name was on a list.

As ...

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