A wall newspaper or placard newspaper is a hand-lettered or printed newspaper designed to be displayed and read in public places both indoors and outdoors, utilizing vertical surfaces such as walls, boards, and fences.
A wall newspaper or placard newspaper is a hand-lettered or printed newspaper designed to be displayed and read in public places both indoors and outdoors, utilizing vertical surfaces such as walls, boards, and fences.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War, which followed, the use of wall newspapers came into vogue in Soviet Russia. These so-called "placard newspapers" are said to have begun due to a chronic shortage of newsprint paper resulting from war conditions, blockade, and economic dislocation. [1] The papers were first used in military barracks as a means of disseminating official government information, but their use was soon common in factories, schools, and other locations where large numbers of people congregated. [1]
These wall poster newspapers soon came to be seen as efficient vehicles for publicity and propaganda in a factory setting even after the end of the newsprint shortage, as one early account noted: [1]
It is by no means the ambition of the placard newspaper to supplant the printed periodical. Its object is rather to throw light on such questions as cannot be treated in the columns of the general newspapers, for lack of space. ... Each labor community ... has found it advisable to encourage a public discussion of the current problems of its specific production, and to induce all its workers, even the most backward,to take part in this discussion. The placard newspaper is particularly devoted to these specific interests of each industry.
Early Soviet wall newspapers were frequently produced by an editorial board of 3–5 people, who frequently made use of the news reports of so-called "worker-correspondents". [1]
Wall poster newspapers were also used in small or remote villages in Soviet Russia, in which no other news source was available. [1] These village wall papers sought to build literacy among a largely illiterate population and to inculcate pro-regime values among the rural population. [1]
Wall newspapers were frequently used in factories of Communist East Germany during the second half of the 20th century as a mechanism for publicity and propaganda. The form of these publications was at times more akin to a bulletin board than a formal newspaper.
Under the reign of Mao Zedong, wall newspapers were "forward and full of pathos-filled propaganda about current events" and the "large victories for our grand nation", according to Qiu Xiaolong. [2]
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong, the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to 1979 and widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution.
From November 1978 to December 1979, thousands of people put up "big character posters" on a long brick wall of Xidan Street, Xicheng District of Beijing, to protest about the political and social issues of China; the wall became known as the Democracy Wall. Under acquiescence of the Chinese government, other kinds of protest activities, such as unofficial journals, petitions, and demonstrations, were also soon spreading out in major cities of China. This movement can be seen as the beginning of the Chinese Democracy Movement. It is also known as the "Democracy Wall Movement". This short period of political liberation was known as the "Beijing Spring".
Likbez was a campaign of eradication of illiteracy in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was also used for various schools and courses established during the campaign. Nowadays, this term is sometimes used in Russian as a slang for teaching an unprepared audience the basic concepts of any science, process or phenomenon.
Big-character posters are handwritten posters displaying large Chinese characters, usually mounted on walls in public spaces such as universities, factories, government departments, and sometimes directly on the streets. They were used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication. A form of popular political writing, big-character posters did not have a fixed format or style, and could appear in the form of letter, slogan, poem, commentary, etc.
Propaganda in China refers to the use of propaganda by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or historically the Kuomintang (KMT), to sway domestic and international opinion in favor of its policies. Domestically, this includes censorship of proscribed views and an active promotion of views that favor the government. Propaganda is considered central to the operation of the CCP and the Chinese government, with propaganda operations in the country being directed by the CCP's Central Propaganda Department.
Printed media in the Soviet Union, i.e., newspapers, magazines and journals, were under strict control of the CPSU and the Soviet state. The desire to disseminate propaganda was believed to had been the driving force behind the creation of the early Soviet newspapers. Newspapers were the essential means of communicating with the public, which meant that they were the most powerful way available to spread propaganda and capture the hearts of the population. Additionally, within the Soviet Union the press evolved into the messenger for the orders from the CPSU Central Committee to the party officials and activists. Due to this important role, the Soviet papers were both prestigious in the society and an effective means to control the masses; however, manipulation initially was not the only purpose of the Soviet Press.
Communist propaganda is the artistic and social promotion of the ideology of communism, communist worldview, communist society, and interests of the communist movement. While it tends to carry a negative connotation in the Western world, the term propaganda broadly refers to any publication or campaign aimed at promoting a cause and is/was used for official purposes by most communist-oriented governments. The term may also refer to political parties' opponents' campaign. Rooted in Marxist thought, the propaganda of communism is viewed by its proponents as the vehicle for spreading their idea of enlightenment of working class people and pulling them away from the propaganda of who they view to be their oppressors, that they claim reinforces exploitation, such as religion or consumerism. Communist propaganda therefore stands in opposition to bourgeois or capitalist propaganda.
Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication aimed at promoting class conflict, proletarian internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself.
The Blue Blouse was an influential agitprop theatre collective in the early Soviet Union. Boris Yuzhanin created the first Blue Blouse troupe under the auspices of the Moscow Institute of Journalism in 1923. Their example encouraged similar workers' theatre companies across the country and worldwide; by 1927 there were more than 5,000 Blue Blouse troupes in the Soviet Union with more than 100,000 members. In the autumn of that year, the original troupe began a tour in Erwin Piscator's theatre in Berlin that provoked a rapid growth of agitprop troupes across Weimar Germany.
Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev was part of the Russian avant-garde: A painter, a political cartoonist and a poster artist, with an experimental style influenced by Russian folk art, lubki, futurism, constructivism, suprematism, productionism and cubism. A pioneer in the field of children's illustration, he would later acknowledge his role in inventing a new illustrative style, created in the "language of cubism."
A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be used for many purposes. They are a frequent tool of advertisers, propagandists, protestors, and other groups trying to communicate a message. Posters are also used for reproductions of artwork, particularly famous works, and are generally low-cost compared to the original artwork. The modern poster, as we know it, however, dates back to the 1840s and 1850s when the printing industry perfected colour lithography and made mass production possible.
Operation Antyk, also known as Department R, was a complex of counter-propaganda activities of Polish resistance movement organisation Home Army, directed against pro-Soviet and pro-communist circles in Polish society, mostly members of the Polish Workers' Party. The operation was initiated by Office Antyk of the Home Army’s Bureau of Information and Propaganda. Begun in November 1943, it was directed by Tadeusz Żenczykowski.
Propaganda is widely used and produced by the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Most propaganda is based on the Juche ideology and on the promotion of the Workers' Party of Korea.
The British Worker was a newspaper produced by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress for the duration of the 1926 United Kingdom General Strike. The first of eleven issues was printed on 5 May and publication stopped on 17 May after the official cessation of the strike. The principal objective of the newspaper was to circulate information and maintain the strikers' morale throughout the stoppage.
The Revolutionary Age was an American radical newspaper edited by Louis C. Fraina and published from November 1918 until August 1919. Originally the publication of Local Boston, Socialist Party, the paper evolved into the de facto national organ of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party which battled for control of the Socialist Party throughout the spring and summer of 1919. With the establishment of the Left Wing National Council in June 1919, the paper was moved from Boston to New York City gained status as the official voice of the nascent American communist movement. The publication was terminated in August 1919, replaced by the official organ of the new Communist Party of America, a weekly newspaper known as The Communist.
Beijing Daily is the official newspaper of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Founded on October 1, 1952, it has since 2000 been owned by the Beijing Daily Group, which also runs eight other newspapers. It has a circulation of about 400,000 per day, making it one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the city.
Valentina Kulagina, full name Valentina Nikiforovna Kulagina-Klutsis was a Russian painter and book, poster, and exhibition designer. She was a central figure in Constructivist avant-garde in the early 20th century alongside El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko other and her husband Gustav Klutsis. She is known for the Soviet revolutionary and Stalinist propaganda she produced in collaboration with Klutsis.
The history of Russian journalism covers writing for newspapers, magazines, and electronic media since the 18th century. The main themes are low levels of literacy, censorship and government control, and the emphasis on politics and political propaganda in the media.
Anti-Bolshevik propaganda was created in opposition to the events on the Russian political scene. The Bolsheviks were a radical and revolutionary wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which came to power during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The word "Bolshevik" (большевик) means "one of the majority" in Russian and is derived from the word "большинство" which means "majority" in English. The group was founded at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party when Vladimir Lenin's followers gained majority on the party’s central committee and on the editorial board of the newspaper Iskra. Their opponents were the Mensheviks, whose name literally means "Those of the minority" and is derived from the word меньшинство.
Visual depictions of Kim Il Sung have been commonplace in North Korea since the 1940s following the example of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. The display of Kim Il Sung portraits was made mandatory at homes in the 1970s. In the past, they were mandatory in certain public places as well, such as factories, airports, railway stations, and rail and subway carriages. At present, they no longer appear in means of transport, not even in some new buildings. Portraits of Kim Jong Il have been hung next to Kim Il Sung since the late 1970s. A portrait of Kim Jong Un was displayed for the first time in public in 2018.