How did the people of the Soviet Union overcome the Communist propaganda?

[Hardkill]

As damaging as the radical right-wing propaganda machine and the extreme anti-mainstream propaganda machine have been to the United States, the pervasive and deeply ingrained Communist propaganda that permeated every aspect of life in the Soviet Union was far more destructive. This propaganda apparatus systematically manipulated public opinion, employing a range of tactics – from outright disinformation to subtle psychological manipulation – to indoctrinate Soviet citizens with the idea that authoritarianism, if not totalitarianism, was essential to achieving communist ideals. As a result, the Soviet people were left with deeply entrenched beliefs that were resistant to change, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

1. Control of media: Communist regimes tightly controlled all forms of media, including newspapers, radio, television, and film, to ensure that only approved messages were disseminated. The Soviet government jammed foreign radio broadcasts to prevent the spread of dissenting ideas.

2. Censorship: Strict censorship was enforced to suppress any dissenting voices, opposition views, or sensitive information that could undermine the regime. Books deemed counter-revolutionary or anti-Soviet were censored, confiscated, or burned.

3. Ideological indoctrination: Communist ideology was deeply ingrained in education, from primary schools to universities, to shape young minds and ensure loyalty to the regime.

4. Public events and rituals: Communist regimes organized public events, parades, and rituals to promote their ideology, showcase their power, and foster a sense of community and shared values. Sports events and achievements were used to promote communist ideology and Soviet patriotism.

5. Propaganda through science: Scientific achievements and discoveries were promoted as evidence of the Soviet Union's superiority and the power of communist ideology.

6. Personality cults: Communist leaders often created personality cults, presenting themselves as infallible, wise, and benevolent leaders, to consolidate their power and authority.

7. Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop)

• Agitprop trains and ships: Special trains and ships traveled throughout the Soviet Union, spreading propaganda and promoting communist ideology.
• Agitprop brigades: Mobile teams of agitators and propagandists performed plays, songs, and other cultural events to promote communist values.

8. Symbolic Propaganda

• Red flags and banners: Red flags and banners with communist symbols were displayed prominently in public spaces.
• Monuments and memorials: Monuments and memorials were erected to honor communist leaders, events, and ideals.

9. Repression and Intimidation

• Show trials: Public trials were staged to demonstrate the Soviet government's power and to intimidate potential dissenters.
• Forced labor camps: Millions of people were imprisoned in forced labor camps, often for perceived counter-revolutionary activities or thoughts.

 

Despite being subjected to intense Communist propaganda throughout their lives, enough people in the USSR ultimately resisted its influence. They demanded an end to communist rule and successfully advocated for the independence of every Soviet republic.

I've searched extensively for explanations online of how this happened, but none of the sources I've found provide a clear answer. It still is unclear to me how people were able to overcome the extremely intense and pervasive propaganda and groupthink that had shaped their worldview for so long.

Edited January 2 by Hardkill

[puporing]

You can say this about a lot of kinds of groups, ways of thinking (in hindsight and after the fact).

The only way to become crystal clear about all of that is to keep on awakening.

[Leo Gura]

I grew up there. I don't even think the groupthink was much worse than FoxNews.

The bottom line is that you can't really control free speech. It like water finds it's way through every crack. Repressing a large population with disinfo is exhausting.

Gorbachev passed some pretty bold liberalizing reforms in the mid 80s when I was born. Gorbachev was a pro-Western liberal. Which is why Putin hates him.

People who lived under communism saw how ineffective it was. You can't bullshit people about their daily lived experience. Well, unless you're  North Korea.

Edited January 2 by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

I grew up there. I don't even think the groupthink was much worse than FoxNews.

The bottom line is that you can't really control free speech. It like water finds it's way through every crack. Repressing a large population with disinfo is exhausting.

Gorbachev passed some pretty bold liberalizing reforms in the mid 80s when I was born. Gorbachev was a pro-Western liberal. Which is why Putin hates him.

People who lived under communism saw how ineffective it was. You can't bullshit people about their daily lived experience. Well, unless you're  North Korea.

Ah, okay. I gotcha.

So, how do you think the groupthink in the USSR back then compared to what we've had going in our country for many years? 

Edited January 2 by Hardkill

[nerdspeak]

USSR had serious flaws, but if you account for where Russia was in 1917, and all of the war and craziness, by the 1970s they accomplished a lot. 
 

Most Soviet citizens had guaranteed access to basic food, shelter, medical care, and education, which we still haven’t achieved in the USA. 

[Bobby_2021]

Soviet style communism had too much corruption and lies that it crumbled from it's own weight. I don't think anyone really defends it and the world has come to accept this reality.

But I would like to have seen happening is a genuine reform from the inside out of USSR that could have saved it from dissolution. But Chernobyl disaster and Afghanistan quagmire in the midst of failing economy was the nail in the coffin for the great USSR.

2 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

Most Soviet citizens had guaranteed access to basic food, shelter, medical care, and education, which we still haven’t achieved in the USA. 

After the USSR collapse, Russian citizens got what is not a fully capitalist neoliberal system nor a centralised communist system but something that is neither but is not as good as either. They got trapped in a limbo. 

They had genuinely good stuff that we never got to see. Perhaps their collective was too underdeveloped and had poor vision and understanding of human nature.

[nerdspeak]

@Bobby_2021 instead of breaking up they should have done things more like Deng in China.

But with the spike in oil prices the Soviet leaders got greedy, and Gorbachev was very naive. 

China also learned a lot from the USSR breakup. Hindsight is 20:20.

Edited January 3 by nerdspeak

[Husseinisdoingfine]

 

[Bobby_2021]

5 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

@Bobby_2021 instead of breaking up they should have done things more like Deng in China.

But with the spike in oil prices the Soviet leaders got greedy, and Gorbachev was very naive. 

China also learned a lot from the USSR breakup. Hindsight is 20:20.

Unfortunately China is also heading in the same direction. Back then there were several factions within the communist party all of which has to be catered to. And the dynamics of the society and political climate that led to explosive growth is no more.

Xi Jinping is going full on dictator mode and they only care about the CCP, not China nor the people of China. 

China did their best to learn from the USSR but they are treading a thin line now. The decisions they make in the next 4 years are going to make or break them. 

[Emerald]

My husband is from Hungary which was under Soviet rule when he was born. He was born in 1977, so he experienced growing up under Soviet rule until he was 12 or 13.

He said that the Soviets were already pretty weak by the time the 80s rolled around. And he says that everyone knew it was bullshit. He didn't know anyone who was idealogical in their allegiance to the Soviet Union.

But they had parades and Soviet rituals stuff in school. Everyone complied but no one really took it seriously.

The thing with the Soviet Union is that there was a lot of top-down force to pressure people into being patriotic. And less so in the later days. And so, it didn't quite take hold of people. It was just the government that was enforcing the allegiance.

At least that was evident from his perspective... which may have been limited since he was a kid when all the Soviet stuff was happening.

He moved to America in the year 2000, and he was really shocked at how nationalistic we are with every other house having an American flag out front because he wasn't used to people being patriotic by choice. And he thinks that America is a far more effective in its nationalist propaganda in that sense.

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Emerald said:

My husband is from Hungary which was under Soviet rule when he was born. He was born in 1977, so he experienced growing up under Soviet rule until he was 12 or 13.

He said that the Soviets were already pretty weak by the time the 80s rolled around. And he says that everyone knew it was bullshit. He didn't know anyone who was idealogical in their allegiance to the Soviet Union.

But they had parades and Soviet rituals stuff in school. Everyone complied but no one really took it seriously.

The thing with the Soviet Union is that there was a lot of top-down force to pressure people into being patriotic. And less so in the later days. And so, it didn't quite take hold of people. It was just the government that was enforcing the allegiance.

At least that was evident from his perspective... which may have been limited since he was a kid when all the Soviet stuff was happening.

He moved to America in the year 2000, and he was really shocked at how nationalistic we are with every other house having an American flag out front because he wasn't used to people being patriotic by choice. And he thinks that America is a far more effective in its nationalist propaganda in that sense.

Oh, very interesting.

So, did he say that the people in his country really hated the whole USSR regime?

[Emerald]

21 hours ago, Hardkill said:

Oh, very interesting.

So, did he say that the people in his country really hated the whole USSR regime?

They either disliked it or were neutral about it. But I don't ever recall him saying that they hated it. They just didn't believe in any of the pageantry around it and saw through it.

Though, lots of older folks had a hard time transitioning away from Communism because they'd gotten used to the way it worked. 

My sense is that, by the 80s, all the Soviet stuff had become background noise in Hungary.

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Emerald said:

They either disliked it or were neutral about it. But I don't ever recall him saying that they hated it. They just didn't believe in any of the pageantry around it and saw through it.

Though, lots of older folks had a hard time transitioning away from Communism because they'd gotten used to the way it worked. 

My sense is that, by the 80s, all the Soviet stuff had become background noise in Hungary.

I see. So, it was the younger generations of the people back then who were more inclined to move on to a new modern system for their country.

[sholomar]

16 hours ago, Hardkill said:

I see. So, it was the younger generations of the people back then who were more inclined to move on to a new modern system for their country.

That seems to be human nature. The old generation are always the ones who talk about how great the "good old days" we're and how things are going to hell, while the young generation embraces the change. That's part of the reason change is so difficult when for example, the 80 year olds that have ran things for the past 40 years are still in office.  That said, change for the sake of change isn't always a good thing.   Humans are creatures of habit though... routines we develop in our youth tend to persist throughout adulthood... "it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks."

[Lyubov]

They had way too many territories to manage that were just so different. This was always an existential threat. They were autonomous republics. Even today Russia could still lose parts of its south like Dagestan or Chechnya. China has managed this by doing insane ethnic cleansing. The Chinese really took their population control to another level than the USSR, even though the ussr was quite repressive. China also gradually introduced a new standard of living while the ussr bankrupted itself keeping up with the Cold War. In addition Russians still had a connection to their ancestral orthodox way of life so there was that undercurrent of those elements being the true de facto culture. Russia is largely an orthodox authoritarian tsar run ethnic state that funds itself through natural resources. It’s really not that different from hundreds of years ago, only the military tech is better. Tsar culture runs deep there. Russians love their tsar. There will have to be some fundamental break in the Russian identity for this nation to be anything other than a tsar ran ethnic state that wants to expand its borders to historic territories going back hundreds of years. They consider everything up to the border of Germany and Sweden theirs. 

[nerdspeak]

On 1/4/2025 at 11:47 PM, Hardkill said:

I see. So, it was the younger generations of the people back then who were more inclined to move on to a new modern system for their country.

Hard for me to swallow the claim that neoliberal shock therapy is more “modern” than really-existing socialism (despite its flaws). But it’s your thread so I don’t want to hijack it. 

[Bobby_2021]

5 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

Hard for me to swallow the claim that neoliberal shock therapy is more “modern” than really-existing socialism (despite its flaws). But it’s your thread so I don’t want to hijack it. 

This is tough. Neoliberal shock therapy was a failure in Ukraine, Russia and many Eastern European states. But so as socialism. Shock therapy will not work in large States who has a history of centralised control.

What do you refer to existing socialist systems? Is it Scandinavian style or USSR style socialism? 

USSR style socialism was effectively giving women more rights amd freedom to work atleast in its initial stages. But to me it feels so contrived and inorganic since they were an an abso failure in sustainin the larger economy. 

Scandinavian style social democracy is more of an offshoot of capitalism than actual socialism.

[nerdspeak]

On 1/6/2025 at 11:09 PM, Bobby_2021 said:

What do you refer to existing socialist systems? Is it Scandinavian style or USSR style socialism? 

"Really existing socialism" is a Brezhnev-era term that refers to the Eastern bloc in the 60s and 70s.  

I would expand it to include socialism in Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, China, some African states in the 60s. 

[Bobby_2021]

15 hours ago, nerdspeak said:

"Really existing socialism" is a Brezhnev-era term that refers to the Eastern bloc in the 60s and 70s.  

I would expand it to include socialism in Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, China, some African states in the 60s. 

Totally agree. There is a strong case to be made for successful communism is small states, because they could sustain the cost of communist lies which would have blown up in big setup like USSR. 

Communism does work in small communities, and smaller states. 

[Daniel Balan]

On 02/01/2025 at 5:59 AM, Leo Gura said:

I grew up there. I don't even think the groupthink was much worse than FoxNews.

The bottom line is that you can't really control free speech. It like water finds it's way through every crack. Repressing a large population with disinfo is exhausting.

Gorbachev passed some pretty bold liberalizing reforms in the mid 80s when I was born. Gorbachev was a pro-Western liberal. Which is why Putin hates him.

People who lived under communism saw how ineffective it was. You can't bullshit people about their daily lived experience. Well, unless you're  North Korea.

Then why do all my elderly family members (now in their 40's and 50's )hate me for saying that communism was a plague upon Romania. They say that Nicolaie Ceaușescu's regime was bringing them a lot of national pride and factories and jobs and mines for miners to work etc) I nearly got beaten by them for contesting everything soviet communism brought upon Romania. They were Russia's bitch for 5 decades, yet they call that being sovereign, not being under the boot of the evil decadent west. I hate my relatives so much. It begins to feel unbearable to have conversations with stage red sociopaths.