Book of the month for May 2006

Page date:1 May 2006

Thomas C. Wolfe. 2005. Governing Soviet Journalism: The Press and the Socialist Person after Stalin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

The Soviet project of creating a new culture and society entailed a plan for the modeling of "new" persons who embodied and fulfilled the promise of socialism, and this vision was expressed in the institutions of government. Using archival sources, essays, and interviews with journalists, Thomas C. Wolfe provides an account of the final four decades of Soviet history viewed through the lens of journalism and media. Whereas most studies of the Soviet press approach its history in terms of propaganda or ideology, Wolfe's focus is on the effort to imagine a different kind of person and polity. Foucault's concept of governmentality illuminates the relationship between the idea of the socialist person and everyday journalistic representation, from the Khrushchev period to the 1990s and the appearance of the tabloid press. This thought-provoking study provides insights into the institutions of the Soviet press and the lives of journalists who experienced important transformations of their work.

Thomas C. Wolfe is Assistant Professor of History and Anthropology and in the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on Sources
Prologue

Introduction
Chapter One: Journalism and the Person in the Soviet Sixties
Chapter Two: Agranovskii's Essays
Chapter Three: Journalism against Socialism, Socialism against Journalism
Chapter Four: Perestroika and the End of Government by Journalism
Chapter Five: Teaching Tabloids
Afterword

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Cloth 256 pages, 15 b&w photos, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
ISBN: 0-253-34589-8