20.12.2025, Aleksandrovskoye.
The cooling was so evident that it manifested even in the May Day slogans, where it seemingly should have been hidden. However, one cannot hide what one does not understand. And there are serious doubts that the Soviet leadership fully comprehended what was happening.
An extremely interesting study was conducted by S. Jacobson and H. Lasswell on the content analysis of Soviet May Day slogans from 1918 to 1943 and the investigation of their evolution. Judging by the last date, the work was completed towards the end of the war, when almost all sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists in the USA were “mobilized” for work that was supposed to help the USA in its struggle against its potential (and, within just five years, real) main adversary—the USSR. In other words, the work on May Day slogans was conducted for “military purposes“—there is no doubt about that.
It must be said that one of the authors, Harold Lasswell, is a world-renowned founding figure of propaganda theory, and indeed of modern political science, and the founder of the Chicago School of Sociology. Lasswell believed that propaganda is “the management of social attitudes of people and groups through the manipulation of significant symbols.” From his point of view, propaganda is “psychological manipulation, deliberately carried out by an individual or a group of individuals, aiming to change the opinions and beliefs of other people, to prompt them to act in a certain direction desired by the propagandist.” The goal of propaganda, according to Lasswell, is to implant political mythology. For him, propaganda is a type of weapon, more “economical” than traditional ones: it is “an instrument of total policy, together with diplomacy, economic arrangements and armed forces. … the aim is to economize the material cost of world dominance. “
During World War II, Harold Dwight Lasswell headed the Division for the Study of War Communications at the Library of Congress of the United States. Its work was funded by the military department, the State Department, and the Department of Justice, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, which granted the division $85,000 (which, for that time, was a very considerable sum, equivalent to several million today). The main focus of the division’s work was content analysis of the propaganda of the warring sides. They also prepared technical personnel in case the USA took a more active part in propaganda activities.
Lasswell was one of the first, if not the first, to massively apply content analysis to study the content and direction of mass media. He developed methods that are still in use today. In particular, he was the first to use symbols (rather than personalities or economic indicators) as units of content analysis, as he believed that “symbolic relationships organize relationships between people.” By highlighting symbols as the main semantic units, it is possible, in his opinion, to discover not only patterns in the use of propaganda stereotypes but also the main motives and even hidden intentions of communicators. Thus, using the symbol as the most important analytical unit of content analysis, H. Lasswell during World War II proved, for example, that the then-published American newspaper The True American was pro-fascist, which served as grounds for its prohibition.
Lasswell applied this same method to analyze Soviet May Day slogans.
For classifying key symbols, 11 categories were used:
I. Revolutionary symbols — key terms approving or foretelling revolution (e.g., socialism, world revolution, World October, etc., communism, red, proletarians, dictatorship of the proletariat, Soviet power, etc.).
II. Anti-revolutionary symbols, implying the existence and defining enemies of the revolution (e.g., fascism, capital, dictatorship, imperialism, counter-revolution, anti-Soviet, foreign aggression, social democrats, reaction, militarism, feudalism, intervention, kulaks, saboteurs, landowners, liberals, civil war, etc.).
III. “National” symbols — “describing the USSR more as a ‘national’ community than as a state with separate doctrines and institutions” (e.g., Motherland, our land, patriotism, security, enemy, aggression, encirclement of the USSR, peace, peaceful policy, etc.).
IV. Universal symbols (e.g., international, internationalism, humanity, globe, Communist International, etc.).
V. Symbols of internal policy, dependent on current problems and therefore often changing (e.g., culture, plan, planning, five-year plan, etc., technology, production, collective farms, power stations, industrial nation, self-criticism, bureaucracy, constitution, cooperatives, front, rear, etc.).
VI. Symbols of foreign policy, describing or approving official actions of the USSR towards foreign powers. They duplicate most of the “national” symbols. Additionally, the names of all countries and regions featured in the slogans are added.
VII. Symbols of social groups — identifier words used to address social groups (e.g., poor peasants, proletariat, workers, peasants (except kulaks), Red Army, miners and other professions, collective farmers, intelligentsia, non-party members, Stakhanovites, Chekists, landowners, NEPmen, etc.).
VIII. Names (e.g., Lenin, Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Stalin, Kolchak, Denikin, Thälmann, Uritsky, Chiang Kai-shek, etc.)
IX. “Liberal” symbols “from past times, fixed in pre-proletarian ideology of freedom” (e.g., sons, brothers, brotherhood, freedom, citizen, ideal, honor, heroic, responsibility, democracy, blood, death, etc.)
X. Symbols of “morality” (e.g., solidarity, discipline, opportunism, loyalty, honesty, duty, morality, justice, etc.).
XI. Symbols of “action” — “verbs and expressions requiring audience participation” (e.g., Victory, victorious, Success, Long live..! Down with..! etc.).
Furthermore, six stylistic categories were identified:
A. Description: “May 1 is the holiday of working people.”
B. Approval: “Long live the Communist Party of Russia!”
C. Accusation: “Down with the armies of imperialism!”
D. Appeal: “Watch carefully for the conspiracies of our enemies.”
E. Address: “Workers, peasants, Red Army soldiers…”
F. Self-identification: “…The Communist Party of Russia is the party of the working class, the party of Lenin.“
Figures 1–6 present some results of the Jacobson and Lasswell study. The figures are based on data provided in the same article.
The patterns visible in the figures are quite indicative and speak volumes to anyone with even a slight knowledge of USSR history, for whom, for example, “the year 1920” or “the year 1932” are not empty sounds but more or less imaginable times, situations, contexts (see Figs. 1-6).
Unfortunately, we do not have data on where the researchers sourced the slogans for analysis: from which specific newspapers, whether their sample of newspapers and the slogans themselves was sufficiently representative. However, since in Soviet times the decision on May 1 slogans was made at the very highest level, and Soviet newspapers essentially repeated each other in terms of slogans, we can generally hope that the researchers’ results reflect reality and not researcher error.
Next, the authors describe the data in detail, correlating them with the domestic and foreign political situation characteristic of each year taken for analysis (while, naturally, their understanding of the political situation in the USSR is not always correct and precise: the researchers are Americans).
Here are some of the most interesting conclusions of the authors themselves (with our comments):
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A noticeable decrease in “universal-revolutionary” symbols was recorded: from more than 12% in 1919 to less than 1% in 1943. If in the first years of Soviet power revolutionary symbols predominated, they later declined. The article’s authors explain this by suggesting that the Soviet elite gradually “understood” that establishing relations with the outside world was possible only by removing explicit claims to revolution. Furthermore, they note the role of intra-party polemics on the topic of world revolution and the sharp change in slogans after the victory of Stalin’s viewpoint over Trotsky’s: “After Trotsky’s defeat and the adoption of the theory of ‘Socialism in One Country,’ formulated by Stalin, such a significant and serious term as ‘world revolution’ disappeared from the May Day slogans of 1926 and was replaced by ambiguous terms—such as ‘world union of the proletariat,’ ‘united front of working people of all countries,’ as well as such old slogans as ‘world trade union movement’ or ‘union of European and American proletariat with the enslaved peoples of the East.’“
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Less and less attention in slogans is paid to references to enemies of the revolution (“counter-revolutionary” symbols). Overall, looking at Figure 1, we see that not only did revolutionary intentions diminish, but so did enemies. That is, in total, one could probably say that the motif of struggle, of war, gradually disappeared (or almost disappeared). In the first years after the revolution, it was constantly present and accordingly framed in a certain “militarized” lexicon. “The international proletariat was called the world ‘army’ of workers. A single ‘front’ of the world proletariat against capitalism was created. The Soviet Union was declared the ‘vanguard’ of world communism. The international communist party was called the ‘headquarters’ organizing the ‘advanced troops’ of the world proletariat. There was also other vocabulary on military themes.” But gradually this motif of struggle began to weaken, wither, and almost disappear. To put it straightforwardly (only for greater logic of exposition), one could say that they abandoned the Struggle—in its high meaning.
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The trend towards using “national” symbols in slogans, conversely, intensified: from less than 1% in 1920 to more than 7% in 1940 and 1942.
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The trend of including symbols of “internal policy” in slogans, as opposed to “foreign policy” ones, also intensified, despite clear ups and downs. That is, “the revolutionary
love-boat crashed against everyday life“: internal (mostly economic in one way or another) issues absorbed all the attention of both the leadership and the masses. Of course, this was most likely related to the gigantic complexity, almost insolubility, of the tasks facing the USSR, which nevertheless had to be solved, and not at all by someone’s “decision” to switch to internal affairs to the detriment of foreign policy. However, it is very indicative that this is noticeable even from the study of May Day slogans. -
The frequency of “accusation” symbols decreases from 1918: the highest peak of activity is 3%. Naturally: if there are no (or almost no) enemies, whom to accuse?
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A similar trend is observed in the analysis of “expectation” symbols (peak activity—more than 12% in 1920). That is, the “expectations,” one must assume, were not confirmed or not fully confirmed. This primarily concerns hopes for world revolution. Meanwhile, the frequency of “self-identification” terms grows and reaches its highest point—approximately 9%—towards the war. And, of course, this is also very indicative.
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A special analysis of the usage of the expressions “Communist Party (of the Soviet Union)” and “Soviet power” shows that after 1926, the frequency of mentions of the “Communist Party” clearly decreases, and the percentage of using the combination “Soviet power” increases. This is also an exceptionally indicative conclusion. At a minimum, it means that the role of the party as a generator of meaning and ideology in the minds of the party leadership itself (which generated the May Day slogans) gradually became less important than the role of the party as the “inspirer and organizer” of production and other economic victories.
Characteristically, the work of Jacobson and Lasswell virtually lacks conclusions. More precisely, in the 30-page article, this is presented as the conclusion: “Overall, May Day slogans ultimately represent different variations on the same theme. Their leitmotif is the security of the Soviet regime. This applies even to cases when Moscow undertakes or pretends to undertake revolutionary activity abroad. The mixing of foreign and domestic policy slogans, as well as the multi-year changes occurring in their interrelationships, can also be explained by the Soviet regime’s struggle for survival.“
Apparently, the gentlemen researchers cut off the conclusions and handed them over to the customers—to the State Department, for example—while refraining from conclusions in the open publication.
However, the data presented in the article are quite sufficient for at least some conclusions. The main one seems to be that the cooling of the Red Flame in the USSR was such an evident process that it manifested even in the May Day slogans, where it seemingly should have been hidden. However, one cannot hide what one does not understand. And there are serious doubts that the Soviet leadership fully comprehended what was happening.
In any case, the Jacobson and Lasswell study is an excellent example of how sociological methods, honestly applied even by enemies, allow for the identification of processes not at all obvious even to the main actors performing in them.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
