“With Little Blood Shed and a Mighty Blow…”: The Peculiarities of Designing an Image of the Red Army in Soviet Prewar Newspaper Discourse

Abstract

This article examines the influence of the ideologised social and political environment of prewar Soviet Russia on newspaper texts about the Red Army, its tactical efficiency, class principle of formation, key political principles of teaching and upbringing, and the ability to protect the country from internal and external enemies. The author analyses aspects conditioning the determination of publications about the Red Army by Bolshevist ideology and establishes the main concepts of Soviet prewar newspaper discourse forming the image of the Army in the military and civilian reader. Referring to numerous examples from materials of the main newspapers of the country, the author demonstrates features of these concepts functioning in the discourse of mass media of the prewar period. For the purpose of the article, the author employs methods of critical discourse analysis revealing, classifying and characterising conceptualised definitions and political metaphors used in publications of the Soviet newspapers between 1937 and 1940. The article refers to issues of the Soviet newspapers Krasnaya Zvezda, Pravda, Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Literaturnaya Gazeta devoted to various aspects of the development of the Red Army between 1937 and 1940. Overall, the author considers over fifty publications containing the keywords “army”, “war”, “defense”, “Bolshevism”, and “enemy”. Based on the analysis of newspaper publications, the author draws some conclusions about the propaganda nature of texts about the Red Army. In these texts, the real journalistic analysis of progress and issues of battle training is replaced with concepts of political propaganda. They are presented as axioms with no need for proof and are designed to create an ideal image of the Army ready to defeat any enemy suffering insignificant losses and in the enemy’s territory.

Keywords

• армия
• война
• дискурс
• оборона
• большевизм
• враг
• партия
• народ.