Labor Propaganda and the Gulag Press: The Case of Putevka

ABSTRACT

Soviet propaganda extended beyond the general Soviet population to include prisoners who were sent to Gulag camps and special settlements. Newspapers produced in camps by prisoners were common and presented Soviet labor propaganda to camp residents. Research into the “Gulag press” is recent and with the discovery of Gulag newspapers, the area has continued to develop. This research provides an overview of Gulag newspapers and examines Putevka, a newspaper published at Karlag, a large set of Gulag camps and special settlements in central Kazakhstan. The authors were given official permission to examine surviving copies of Putevka and used content analysis to determine its propaganda role as a camp newspaper. While the larger Soviet propaganda mission was to educate workers toward rehabilitation, in reality Putevka’s role was to promote a constant need for increased and improved labor productivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Gulag newspapers
• propaganda
• Soviet media

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror, 1927-1941 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 1; Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4.

2. Matthew Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1-6; Galina Ivanova, Donald Raleigh, Galina Mikhailovna, and Carol Flath, Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 2.

3. Randall Marlin, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, 2nd ed. (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2013), 1-13; Charles Hoffer, “A Sociological Analysis of Propaganda,” Social Forces 20 #4 (1942): 445-48.

4. Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 7^th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2019) 1.

5. Jay Black, “Semantics and Ethics of Propaganda,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 16, no. #2-3 (2001): 133-34.

6. Brandenberger, Propaganda State, 6.

7. Lenoe, Closer to the Masses, chapter 1.

8. Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (Oxford, UK: Oxford Press, 2007), 1-7; Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 86-88; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1973), 93-143.

9. Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 33-41; Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 91-113.

10. Alla Gorcheva, Pressa Gulaga: 1918-1955 (Moscow, Russia: Spiski È.P. Peskovoj, 2009), 113-163. This is a reprint of an earlier edition published in 1996.

11. Viola, The Hidden Gulag, 186.

12. Barnes, Death and Redemption, 1.

13. Dolinka Museum for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression, Dolinka, Kazakhstan.

14. Barnes, Death and Redemption, 254-58. Rehabilitation was a legal designation. It was frequently done posthumously which removed guilt from surviving immediate family members whose rights were restricted by association.

15. Gorcheva, Pressa Gulaga, 113.

16. Andrea Gullotta., “A New Perspective for Gulag Literature Studies: The Gulag Press,” Studi Slavistici VIII (2011): 95-111.

17. Wilson Bell, “One Day in the Life of Educator Khrushchev: Labour and Kul’turnost’ in the Gulag Newspapers,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 46 #3&4 (2004): 289-313.

18. Gorcheva, Pressa Gulaga, 20-40.

19. “Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives,” Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, <gulaghistory.org/items/show/311> (accessed January, 2019).

20. Applebaum, Gulag, 221.

21. Putevka, Sep. 22, 1934.

22. Barnes, Death and Redemption, 162.

23. Thomas, “On Guard at BAMlag: Representations of Guards in the 1930s Gulag Press,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 41, no. #1 (2014): 6; Applebaum, Gulag, 221.

24. Gorcheva, Pressa Gulaga, 50-55.

25. Thomas, On Guard, 3-32.

26. Gorcheva’s initial work in 1996 examined a number of individual newspapers. Additional Gulag newspapers, including collections like Putevka, have been located since her first examinations.

27. Bell, “One Day,” 289-313.

28. Vladislov Hedeler, “Forging ‘New People’: Putevka—The Camp Newspaper of the Karlag,” Yearbook for Historical Communism Research (Berlin, Germany: Aufbau Verlag, 2012), 27-46, <kommunismusgeschichte.de/jhk/jhk-2012/article/detail/vom-schmieden-neuer-menschen-putevka-die-lagerzeitung-des-karlag>, (accessed May 2019); Barnes, Death and Redemption, 62, 63.

29. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, vol. 3 (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publisher, 1976), 46.

30. Applebaum, Gulag, 220.

31. “Order #167, May 23, 1935,” Karlag camp document, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, <gulaghistory.org/items/show/738> (accessed Feb. 10, 2019).

32. Alan Barenberg, Wilson Bell, Sean Kinnear, Steven Maddox, Lynne Viola, “New directions in Gulag studies: a roundtable discussion,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, no. #3&4 (2017): 387-88.

33. Hedeler, “Forging ‘New People’,” 33.

34. Hedeler, “Forging ‘New People’,” 27-46.

35. Nurlan Dulatbekov, Karlag in Black Pencil (Karaganda, Kazakhstan: Karaganda University “Bolashak”, 2015), 27. Dulatbekov mentions graphic artist Irina Borkhman who studied art in Russia and Germany, and later designed wall newspapers and posters while interred at Karlag.

36. A. Suleimenov, “What Did the Karlag Newspapers Write about?” Karaganda University  “Bolashak” news release, <kubolashak.kz> (accessed January 2018), np; Barnes, Death and Redemption, 62.

37. Hedeler, “Forging ‘New People’,” 32.

38. Putevka, Oct. 11, 1934.

39. Putevka, Dec. 28, 1934.

40. “Order #88, Mar. 28, 1935,” Karlag camp document, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, <gulaghistory.org/items/show/737> (accessed Feb. 10, 2019).

41. Suleimenov, “What Did the Karlag Newspapers Write about.”

42. Nurlan Dulatbekov, Karlag Press 1 (Karaganda, Kazakhstan: Karaganda University “Bolashak”, 2017), 3-275.

43. The English language version: Gorky, M., Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea (New York, NY: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1935).

44. Ruder, C., Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1998).

45. Thomas, On Guard, 13.

46. Viola, The Hidden Gulag, 91-113.

47. Bell, “One Day,” 289-313.

48. Thomas, On Guard, 3-32; Bell, One Day, 289-313; Hedeler, “Forging ‘new people’,” 35.

49. A. Bryant and K. Charmaz, The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007). Grounded theory uses “codes”, specific language and concepts, to organize content into categories. These categories are used to define and analyze content.

50. Putevka, March 6, 1935.

51. Barnes, Death and Redemption, XX.

52. Putevka, Jan. 31, 1935.

53. Dulatbekov, Karlag in Black Pencil, 21.

54. Putevka, Nov. 30, 1934.

55. Putevka, Jan. 27, 1935.

56. Putevka, Feb. 19, 1935.

57. Putevka, Feb. 6, 1935.

58. Putevka, Jan. 27, 1935.

59. Putevka, Sep. 22, 1934.

60. Putevka, Jan. 31, 1935.

61. Putevka, Oct. 27, 1934.

62. Putevka, Nov. 11, 1934.

63. Putevka, Oct. 16, 1934.

64. Putevka, Sep. 14, 1934; Wilson Bell, “The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953,” (PhD Thesis, University of Totonto, 2011), 92.

65. Putevka, Oct. 7, 1934.

66. N. Dulatbekov, Special Camps in Kazakhstan (Karaganda, Kazakhstan: Karaganda University “Bolashak”: Almaty, 2015) 29.

67. Putevka, Dec. 19, 1934.

68. Putevka, Feb. 19, 1935.

69. Putevka, Feb. 13, 1935.

70. Hedeler, “Forging ‘new people’,” 25.

71. The Dolinka museum lists the following ethnicities as residents over the life of the camp: 440,000 Germans, 102,000 Koreans, 89,900 Chechen/Ingush, 81,500 Japanese, 75,000 Poles, 53,000 Ukrainians, and 45,500 Kazaks.

72. S. Barnes, Death and Redemption.

73. Karlag: Endless Pain of Hard Times (Karaganda, Kazakhstan: Karaganda University “Bolashak,” 2010). This is a two-CD set of survivor stories from Karlag that provide direct information about Gulag life. There is a stark difference between the stories of survivors and the images created by Putevka.

74. “Otto Linin,” <timenote.info/en/Otto-Linin-50325dc511bb4> (accessed May 2019); Dulatbekov, Karlag in Black Pencil, 154.

75. Michael Wanner, Kazakhstan Memorial Book (Nurnberg, Germany, 2015). The book lists prisoners in Kazakhstan who were German in nationality including their date of rehabilitation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karlyga Myssayeva

Karlyga Myssayeva, Vice-Dean for Innovation and International Relations with al-Farabi Kazakh National University, teaches in the international journalism department. Her research interests include civic journalism and democracy. Michael Brown is emeritus professor with the Communication and Journalism Department at the University of Wyoming. His research explores media history, particularly radio and visual communication. All photographs are by authors (Michael Brown).

Michael Brown

Michael Brown is emeritus professor with the Communication and Journalism Department at the University of Wyoming. His research explores media history, particularly radio and visual communication. All photographs are by authors (Michael Brown).