page_title: Propaganda in the Soviet Union
section_title: Anti-fascism
hierarchical_section_title: Propaganda in the Soviet Union / Themes / World War II / Anti-fascism
caption_attribution_description: English: British and Russian servicemen over body of swastikaed dragon
context_page_description: Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxist–Leninist ideology to promote the Communist Party line. Propaganda was one of the many ways the Soviet Union tried to control its citizens. In the Stalin era, it penetrated even social and natural sciences giving rise to the pseudo-scientific theory of Lysenkoism, whereas fields of real knowledge, as genetics, cybernetics and sociology were condemned and forbidden as "bourgeois pseudoscience".
  The main Soviet Union censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item". In the Stalin era, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. In the post-Stalin era, these punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work and loss of citizenship. "Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head", said writer Isaac Babel privately to a trusted friend.
context_section_description: Anti-fascism was commonly used in propaganda aimed outside the USSR during the 1930s, particularly to draw people into front organizations.  The Spanish Civil War was, in particular, used to quash dissent among European Communist parties and reports of Stalin's growing totalitarianism.
caption: British and Soviet servicemen over body of swastikaed dragon
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