Agitprop

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Agit-prop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

For the record labels, see Agit-Prop Records and Agitprop! Records

Agit-prop is a contraction of "agitation and propaganda".[1] The term originated in Bolshevist Russia (future Soviet Union), where the term was a shortened form of отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy), i.e., Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department.

The term propaganda in the Russian language didn't bear any negative connotation at that time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas". In the case of Agit-prop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet State. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. "Agitation" meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together, thus giving rise to the cliché "propaganda and agitation".

In the western world, agit-prop has a negative connotation. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, for example, socialist elements of the political scene were often accused of using agit-prop to convey an extreme left-wing message via television programmes or theatre. However, in a more general sense, a television cartoon might be described as 'agit-prop' if it could be interpreted as a marketing ploy to sell toys.

The term is frequently used in the modern Russian language to describe information provided by mass-media, if it is considered biased.

After the Bolshevik revolution an Agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda. It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages. Trotsky implemented them during the civil war to produce Bolshevik propaganda.