STUDY OF COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY: USSR AND USA

Abstract

The article analyzes two prominent researches of the 1920–30th (World revolutionary propaganda by H. D. Lasswell and D. Blumenstock and The Language of the Red Army Soldier by I. N. Shpil’rein et al.) and proposes an attempt to look at certain aspects of Soviet science, particularly at the study of linguistic mechanisms of propaganda, not within the framework of a revisionist approach, but including it in the broader scientific and cultural and historical context. The analysis focuses on basically linguistic approaches used by the psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists of the USSR and the USA. The choice of these researches is conditioned, on the one hand, by the mutual interest of the two countries, on the other hand, by the fact that the problem of studying propaganda as a way of spreading communist ideas was equally acute for both countries, albeit with mirror-opposite goals underlying this interest. The analysis of the selected studies demonstrates similarities in study design and methodology. Refs 22.