Is the Zampolit Effective?

Abstract

Alex Inkeles writing one hundred years after Schnitzler admitted the great frustration encountered in trying to erect any hypothesis about Soviet public opinion is the near impossibility of testing it.² Thirty years on from Inkeles the position is virtually unchanged. The riddle is still wrapped in the enigma. Gathering information to supply even partial validation for answers to the questions, ‘Does political indoctrination work? ‘Is the Zampolit effective?’, has proved no less ‘an immense difficulty’ than Schnitzler’s. The Soviet media provide no satisfactory answers and, for reasons of that vigilance discussed in the preceding chapter, the military world is even more difficult to observe than the rest of their society. The author makes no apology therefore for putting forward some of his own experience of life in the Soviet Union to provide a little support for tentative answers to these questions.

In many respects Russia may be considered as still a closed country. I have therefore attempted to aid the interests of science and literature by giving in my notes and appendices much varied information, not easy to be procured, on account of the rigour of the press and the paucity of Russian publications. My own difficulty in obtaining materials has been sometimes immense but perseverance has enabled me to attain my end.

J. H. Schnitzler, 1849¹