Communism -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- Economic conditions -- 1917-1945; Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1917-1936
I have had an opportunity of seeing two of the propaganda trains, the
object of which is to reduce the size of Russia politically by bringing
Moscow to the front and to the out of the way districts, and so to
lessen the difficulty of obtaining that general unity of purpose which
it is the object of propaganda to produce. The fact that there is some
hope that in the near future the whole of this apparatus may be turned
over to the propaganda of industry makes it perhaps worth while to
describe these trains in detail.
Russia, for purposes of this internal propaganda, is divided into
five sections, and each section has its own train, prepared for the
particular political needs of the section it serves, bearing its own
name, carrying its regular crew-a propaganda unit, as corporate as the
crew of a ship. The five trains at present in existence are the "Lenin,"
the "Sverdlov," the "October Revolution," the "Red East," which is now
in Turkestan, and the "Red Cossack," which, ready to start for Rostov
and the Don, was standing, in the sidings at the Kursk station, together
with the "Lenin," returned for refitting and painting.
Burov, the organizer of these trains, a ruddy, enthusiastic little
man in patched leather coat and breeches, took a party of foreigners-a
Swede, a Norwegian, two Czechs, a German and myself to visit his trains,
together with Radek, in the hope that Radek would induce Lenin to visit
them, in which case Lenin would be kinematographed for the delight of
the villagers, and possibly the Central Committee would, if Lenin were
interested, lend them more lively support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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