Truth, Etc.

P: Nikolai Lenin decreed the functions of the Communist press long before Russia's revolution. The press was to be "propagandist, agitator and organizer."

P: Joseph Stalin, a founder of the Bolshevik press, shaped it to Lenin's formula.

Last week Russia celebrated Press Day, 32nd anniversary of the birth of the Soviet press in the revolutionary underground. Florid editorials proclaimed the press's role anew. Writers, editors, correspondents got official awards.

The Soviet press is thousands of town, village and factory papers, shop wall newspapers, group publications for trade unions, the Party, youth, the Army. But most important are the three big Moscow dailies, Pravda, Izvestia, Red Star, and two magazines, Crocodile and War and the Working Class.

The Big Three rarely appear in Moscow before midmorning. They are sold out almost at once. Lines form at kiosks for them. Nonbuying Muscovites stand in line to read displayed pages. Mats are flown to principal cities for limited reprints. Factories often call special gatherings to discuss the news.

The Big Three are cut from the same pattern. Their page size is the same as that of standard U.S. papers. Each costs 20 kopecks (a subway ride costs 40, a trolley ride 15). There are no comic strips, no columnists, no crime or scandal, few pictures, only a stick or so of sports news about such things as chess championships. Readers do not miss them. The newly literate Russian masses have so vast an appetite for the written word that they are fascinated by news reports which U.S. readers would find dust-dry. The most that the reader gets in the way of entertainment is an occasional sardonic cartoon --usually aimed at Fascism. He finds a back page largely filled with cut-&-dried foreign news from the official agency, Tass. The front-page formula rarely varies: a Stalin Order of the Day (prikaz) in the two left columns, plus another two columns on military operations (svodka). The two inside pages are devoted to feature articles from the front and to uplifting or critical reports from the collective farms and factories--sometimes written by soldiers and workers.

The Party Line. Press Day marks the anniversary of the founding of Pravda (Truth) at St. Petersburg in 1912. In 32 years Pravda has become the world's biggest daily, with over 3,000,000 circulation, though in wartime its circulation is being held to about 2,000,000.* Its two Moscow buildings spread over the equivalent of two New York City blocks and contain a clinic, restaurant, theater for press workers. Its 21 rotary presses (mostly U.S.-made) can print 1,000,000 copies an hour. The Pravda plant also produces many a book and other publication, notably Komsomolskaya Pravda for Communist youth.

In Pravda the Russian reads what the Central Committee of the Communist Party wants him to read. It is the official Party organ. Stalin, as General Secretary of the Party, is always interested in the tone which Pravda sets for the rest of the Soviet press. Too busy now to give it close personal attention, he is represented in its management by 43-year-old Alexander Sergeevich Shcherbakov, head of the Soviet Information Bureau, member of the all-powerful Politburo.

Pravda's prewar editorial staff of 250 is now whittled to 50 or 60. It has correspondents with every branch of the Red Fleet and with every army commander in the field. (At least 50 Russian press correspondents have been killed at the fronts.) And when it wants to, Pravda can draw on the best of contemporary Russian writers: Gregory Riklin, Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Simonov. The staff writer best known in the U.S. is the one who has most often criticized U.S. citizens: David Iosifovich Zaslavsky, author of Pravda's recent cracks at Wendell Willkie (TIME, Jan. 17), at William Randolph Hearst for "spilling poisoned ink," at the New York Times's Military Expert Hanson W. Baldwin as "admiral of an ink pool." Zaslavsky, dour and 65, is one of Russia's most prolific and popular writers.

The Kremlin Line. Izvestia (News) is the official Government organ, as such is scarcely distinguishable from Pravda. On a given day it will carry with Pravda, an identical Stalin prikaz and an identical svodka in the same type and positions. When there is no Stalin Order, Izvestia and Pravda fill their two left columns with a peredovitsa (leading editorial).

When there are long Government documents to record, Izvestia produces some extraordinary issues. Example: during the last meeting of the Supreme Soviet, Izvestia reported proceedings and the complete text of Viacheslav Molotov's speech in all 16 major languages of the Soviet Republics. Since it speaks for the Government,

Izvestia cannot be the vehicle for "unofficial" attacks on foreigners such as Zaslavsky's, or for such items as the Cairo "separate peace" rumor that recently perturbed the Allied world (TIME, Jan. 31). When Izvestia called the Vatican "pro-Fascist" (TIME, Feb. 14), it presumably spoke with the full weight of the Government. This is one of the few clues by which confused foreigners seeking to read the Stalin mind can decide what is "official" and what "unofficial" in the Soviet press. In general, U.S. correspondents say, Soviet editors are now free to report routine domestic news without consulting higher authority. But press pronouncements bearing on policy are still presumably carried by official direction.

The Front Line. Each army, each front, each division has its own newspaper. These are accompanied by numerous "fighting leaflets," ranging from pure instruction ("How to Fight German Tanks") to first-person narratives ("How I Destroyed Four Tanks").

Red Star sets the tone for all military papers. Red Navy and Stalin Hawk--for the air force--are closely modeled on it. Red Star's battle reports are the Soviet Union's most reliable and most colorful. Since all Russians get military training, all correspondents have military rank. Most of Red Star's are majors, who wear no insignia to distinguish them as newsmen. Red Star's star correspondent is greying Ilya Ehrenburg, 53, whose dispatches are frequently cabled to the U.S. Pravda and Izvestia also run his highly colored, hate-filled dispatches.

Ehrenburg is not a Communist Party member, but is nonetheless one of the Soviet Union's best-paid, most honored writers--winner of a Stalin prize, the Red Banner of Labor, and, last week, the Order of Lenin, Russia's top civilian honor. Incredibly prolific, he writes pamphlets, radio broadcasts, recently published a volume of lyric verse. His only rival in popularity is stocky Mikhail Sholokhov, 39, author of And Quiet Flows the Don (TIME, July 2, 1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (TIME, Aug. 4, 1941). Pravda has been serializing his new epic They Fought for Their Country.

The Comic Line. Crocodile is little known in the U.S.; few copies leave Russia. But it is more important than any other humorous magazine is elsewhere. LIFE-sized, it is the Soviet Punch. Its prewar circulation of 500,000 is now down to 100,000. Most of its cartoons are political or military, and most of its humor is about as subtle as a sledge hammer.

The Class Line. Russia's newest and increasingly important publication is the 32-page, semimonthly Voina i Rabochi Klass (War and the Working Class), started eleven months ago as a forum for discussion of foreign affairs. It proclaims itself free of official Government or Party influence, declares that its articles represent only its writers' views. But U.S. correspondents frequently find War and the Working Class a rich source of clues to future Soviet action.

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