Worker-Peasant Correspondents and Their Tasks in the 1920s. The Experience of the Rabotnitsa and Krestyanka Magazines

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Olga D. Minaeva

Doctor of Philology, Head of the Chair of History and Legal Regulation of Domestic Media, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: iprosmi@yandex.ru

Section: History of Journalism

The purpose of this article is to consider the tasks of the worker-peasant correspondent movement, which developed in the USSR in the 1920s. The historical conditions of the establishment of the press by the Bolshevik Party are examined. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that in the 1920s the audience of the Soviet press was almost illiterate. Despite this, great efforts were made to attract workers and peasants to work in the press as assistants. The analysis of the documents of the Bolshevik Party (including the interview of I.V. Stalin in 1924) made it possible to identify the tasks that were set before the worker-peasant correspondent movement. The study is based on the examination of the experience of the well-known women's magazines Rabotnitsa and Krestyanka, which actively created a network of their readers in the 1920s, who acted as non-professional journalists. As a result, the author of the article was able to collect data on how the editorial boards of these magazines trained non-professional journalists, what methods were used to attract them to work, what difficulties were overcome. The study made it possible to formulate some conclusions. Part of the tasks of the worker-peasant correspondent movement relates to the performance of the Soviet system of agitation and propaganda, created in the 1920s. This movement helped to create channels of communication between authorities and representatives of the people, it simultaneously formed and expressed public opinion. Part of the tasks of the movement relates to the operation of Bolshevik and Soviet newspapers and magazines. For example, it helps to evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of press publications.

Keywords: history of the Soviet press, worker-peasant correspondents, women's magazines
DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.2.2022.2149

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