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One of my history teachers in high school had a large stack of 'Soviet Life' magazines that he said we could read if we wanted whenever we were done with our wo

One of my history teachers in high school had a large stack of 'Soviet Life' magazines that he said we could read if we wanted whenever we were done with our work but he warned they were propaganda. I was surprised by what I read because I was expecting it to be stories about the evils of capitalism and the mighty strength of communism but instead it was mostly 'slice of life' stories about average people in the various Soviet republics. Took me a while to figure out that was the propaganda. Part of that was due to my preconceived notions of what propaganda would look like because I had been primed by popular media in the US to expect it to be "you capitalist pigs" rants instead of one that pushed the narrative that the Soviets were peacefully trying to go about their lives without bothering anyone. I often wonder if that's why our teach made them available to us so we'd figure that out on our own.

hindsightbias 4y ago
I remember those. RT US was largely coverage of domestic policy/events and very little about Russia. You could watch the same topic coverage from the BBC, CBC, DW, Al Jazeera English or even Democracy Now and not see much, if any, difference. But of course everyone who had never actually watched an episode would screech propaganda while embracing other state-funded channels. The Beeb saying “America border policy bad” is ok, but Russia… totally different.
moistly 4y ago
> pushed the narrative that the Soviets were peacefully trying to go about their lives without bothering anyone To be fair, most Soviet citizens were just trying to go about their lives. Surely you don’t imagine your average Joe Blowkomarov is scheming nasty plans for crushing the evil capitalists. Poor dude was probably stuck in a bread line, wishing his toes were warm. If there was propaganda involved, it’s probably that the magazines weren’t showing the deprivations. Sunny outlook & all that, hardly unusual for a “Life” type of magazine.

hindsightbias 4y ago

I remember those. RT US was largely coverage of domestic policy/events and very little about Russia. You could watch the same topic coverage from the BBC, CBC, DW, Al Jazeera English or even Democracy Now and not see much, if any, difference. But of course everyone who had never actually watched an episode would screech propaganda while embracing other state-funded channels. The Beeb saying “America border policy bad” is ok, but Russia… totally different.

moistly 4y ago

> pushed the narrative that the Soviets were peacefully trying to go about their lives without bothering anyone To be fair, most Soviet citizens were just trying to go about their lives. Surely you don’t imagine your average Joe Blowkomarov is scheming nasty plans for crushing the evil capitalists. Poor dude was probably stuck in a bread line, wishing his toes were warm. If there was propaganda involved, it’s probably that the magazines weren’t showing the deprivations. Sunny outlook & all that, hardly unusual for a “Life” type of magazine.