Soviet PropagandaThe Soviet Communist Party, or the Bolsheviks, always knew that strong propaganda was essential to raising mass consciousness. As the Encyclopedia of Propaganda states, "Propaganda was central to Marxist-Leninist ideology long before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917."(675) The power of persuasion and coercion was exercised with great force by Soviet leaders. The two leaders who used propaganda to influence public opinion in the USSR were Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Both men used different facets of media to spread their propaganda. They also used the troubled social climate as well as the ignorance of the masses to fashion a tailor-made regime that lasted for more than seven decades. The Russian Revolution was the moment when the Bolsheviks proved that their propaganda machine worked. The communists took power over an empire that was suffering a gradual fall. At the time of the revolution, Russia was a dilapidated, “barely functioning” version of itself. (Encyclopedia of Propaganda, 675). A disastrous world war, civil war and foreign occupation opened the door to Lenin's propaganda. Will Lenin gain power over the working class? “The working class was very suspicious of intellectuals.” (Pipes 43) Lenin did not present himself as an intellectual. Rather than preaching politics as the intellectuals had done, Lenin chose to use agitational propaganda or “agitprop” to sensitize workers to the need for political action. He understood that by showing how workers were exploited by their employers, he could gain their support. Lenin hoped that with this strategy he could initiate industrial strikes. Once these workers went on strike, they would surely see that middle of paper ... until the dissolution of the USSR, propaganda was frequently used. The art of persuasion and coercion is what anchored the rise and fall of the communist regime.Bibliography:Works CitedEllul, Jacques. Propaganda. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Encyclopedia of Propaganda. Volume III, editor: Robert Cole. P675-680. New York: Sharp Reference, 1998. Getty, J. Arch and Roberta T. Manning. Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pipes, Richard. Revolutionary Russia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. Shlapentokh, Dmitry and Vladimir Shlapentokh. Soviet cinematography 1918-1991.New York: Aldene De Gruyter, 1993.Treadgold, Donald W. Russia in the Twentieth Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Von Laue, Theodore H. Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Philadelphia: JB Lippingcott, 1964.