“Internacional’naja literatura”, 2, 1934 - [S019]

The post-revolutionary periodical press is characterised by a vivid and explicit manifestation of the ideological conflict between ‘our people’ and ‘the outsiders’. The following is a 1923 quote from the newspaper ‘Pravda’: “A true communist article – not only in newspapers but also in magazines, not only propagandistic but also scientific – is characterised by exceptional clarity and stylistic precision. Our enemies say it is harsh and crude, elementary and vulgar. It is truthful, sincere, bold, frank, ruthless…” (I. Vardin, ‘Pravda’, No. 56, 1923 – cited in Vinokur 1923: 110). In the texts of the ‘International Chronicle’ section we find rhetorical figures such as antithetical structures that effectively emphasise the opposition of two worlds (the reactionary and the revolutionary, the bourgeois and the proletarian), underlining their irreconcilability. As the cited example shows, ‘our people’ and those whom one intends to win over to one’s cause (blue-collar and white-collar workers, intellectuals) are pitted against outsiders (‘the curious and concerned bourgeoisie’). As can be seen from the cited example, the ideology of Marxism, which belongs to US, is presented as the only ideology possible, as well as the only one capable of freeing workers from exploitation, while that of the OTHERS, fascism, is rejected because life in a fascist state would guarantee repression, moral and material hardship for its citizens.