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SUMMARY:Newspapers\, Readers and the “Managed Public Sphere” during th
 e Soviet Sixties - Dr Simon Huxtable (Loughborough) 
DTSTART:20150217T170000Z
DTEND:20150217T190000Z
UID:TALK57013@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mel Bach
DESCRIPTION:Scholars have not often associated Soviet newspapers with news
 . In a climate where the press was seen as a collective propagandist\, agi
 tator and organiser (Lenin)\, information was strictly controlled from abo
 ve. But after Stalin's death\, journalists began to rethink the fundamenta
 l tenets of the Soviet newspaper. They saw news both as a means for attrac
 ting readers\, but also as a prerequisite for civic engagement. Yet they e
 qually wanted to avoid the 'sensationalism' and 'vulgarity' of western new
 s. This paper investigates journalists' attempts to create a new form of S
 oviet news after Stalin's death. Based on archival documents from a number
  of newspapers\, debates within the Union of Journalists\, as well as the 
 newspapers themselves\, the paper will show that the momentum for change w
 as met with an equally strong belief that news was positive information in
  the service of constructing communism.\n\nThis talk is part of the CamCRE
 ES Lent Seminars on Russian and Soviet Mass Culture.\n\nAbout the author: 
  Simon Huxtable is a Research Associate at Loughborough University. His re
 search focuses on the development of mass media and communications in post
 -war Eastern Europe. A central goal of his work is to understand how modes
  of communication – both vertically between Party and public\, and horiz
 ontally between members of society – changed with the advent of new tech
 nologies and the emergence of new social norms. His doctoral thesis\, whic
 h he is preparing for publication\, investigated the changing professional
  climate of journalism in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death\, and sh
 owed how this impacted on the style and content of newspapers. He is curre
 ntly working on a Leverhulme Trust funded project exploring the culture of
  television in socialist Eastern Europe\, entitled 'Screening Socialism': 
 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/screening-socialism/
LOCATION:Latimer Room\, Clare College
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