Matt Taibbi: The Sovietization of the American Press blacklistednews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from blacklistednews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have
Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a
Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of
Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.
These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any
Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a
Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of
Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.
These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any
Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?