Sowiecka propaganda gazetowa na okupowanej przez Niemców Białorusi 1941-1944
The Soviet Press Propaganda in German-Occupied Belorussia 1941-44

Summary/Abstract: The Soviet propaganda in Belorussia was totally subordinated to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belorussia. In the first stage of the war, it was to offer a clear answer to the questions: Who the Germans were? What was the actual combat for the inhabitants of the USSR? And what should be the attitude of the Soviet citizen? Propaganda, defining the occupiers as ‘murderers’, ‘bloodthirsty beasts’, and ‘monsters’ programmed to kill, violate, and rob Soviet people, was to convince that a biological war for the survival of the Belarussian nation was being waged. The only chance to win was to exterminate the ‘monsters’. The simplest way to fulfil one’s duty towards the nation and the country was a military struggle in guerrilla formations or support for those who conducted such struggle. A vast majority of newspapers and all propaganda materials were published in Belarusian. There were 165 titles of Russian papers distributed throughout the occupied Belarusian territories, including 3 central ones, 3 republican, 14 district, and 145 regional. The greater part was a single-leaf papers. The most popular and influential was the Soviet Belarus, the organ of the Central Committee of the CP(B). The most appealing to the imagination were satirical papers, with a special place among them occupied by the Let’s Crush the Nazi Reptile. In 1943, editorial boards were ordered to publish such materials as to reconstruct the trust in the Soviet state among the people under the German occupation. These activities were given the same importance as the motivation to the struggle against the occupiers before.

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