By Grace Farrell
OXFORD, OH, October 13, 2025 —Is the narrative of a “propaganda state” too russocentric? This past Monday, Dr. Jonathon Dreeze, the third speaker in the Havighurst Colloquium’s fall lecture series, presented his research on Soviet propaganda in Kazakhstan. Dreeze daringly argued that instead of being “nationalist in form, socialist in content” propaganda was “problematic in form and irrelevant in content.” Challenging the model other historians have adopted to interpret the USSR, Dreeze claimed that the term “propaganda state” does not take into account Soviet regions such as Kazakhstan.
Propaganda in the Soviet Union is regarded as a tangled web with no clear or consistent dissemination tactics. “Agitprop,” a combination of promotion of Marxist ideologies (propaganda) with fiery emotions (agitation), was the central form of propaganda, aiming to simultaneously rouse emotion while indoctrinating the people with Marxist/Leninist ideology.
While authorities in Moscow had the ability to disseminate agitprop in the city, other Soviet states such as Kazakhstan were not taken seriously. With “no Soviet Goebbels,” propaganda was largely left up to the individual propagandist, no matter how monolingual or illiterate. In Dreeze’s introduction to his dissertation, he points out the fact that, “there were many Slavic propagandists who did not speak Kazakh and could not communicate with a large portion of the populace.” How can a loyal Soviet propagate without the linguistic capabilities of the region?
Mistakes and mistranslations ran rampant. In his lecture, Dreeze presented the example of the Kazakh Mukhamet Shayakhmetov, explaining “that the propagandist responsible for teaching him the various components of the Stalin constitution could not read. Lack of linguistic and literate capabilities left some stranded in a pool of misinformation and distrust.”
Confusion was common among those disseminating the messages, and was equally prominent among the recipients of agitprop. Dreeze’s second point, that propaganda was “irrelevant in content” attests to the fact that the higher-ups did not know how to communicate effectively with those outside the major Soviet cities in Russia. Pointing again to Mukhamet Shayakhmeto, Dreeze explains that in Shayakhmeto’s childhood, people read “newspapers one syllable at a time.” Now, they were expected to “understand…empirio-criticism.”
Riddled with unrealistic expectations, the Soviet “propaganda state” did not spread information in an effective manner. In Kazakhstan, Dreeze explained how there appeared to be a stark disconnect between the Kazakhs and those in Moscow. He pointed out that, “while Soviet leaders in Moscow…worked to accommodate and incorporate Central Asia into its domain, it…destroyed parts of…Kazakh society.” Seemingly stuck in an “endless bureaucratic feedback loop,” the Soviet state never made attempts to address problems plaguing the Kazakh people, thus, Dreeze argues, making propaganda “irrelevant in content.” After all, collectivization caused around “a quarter of all Kazakhs in the Soviet Union” to starve to death. Why should they try to decipher propaganda from the state that brought about destruction?
Similarly, on the frontlines of World War II, historian Roberto J. Carmack has argued in his article “History and Hero-Making” that the Red Army Political Division leadership had no data on the exact numbers of non-Russian soldiers and sergeants serving in the Red Army Agitprop workers could “only guess as to how many…propaganda materials to print in non-Russian languages.” With an almost complete disregard for the people who were allegedly equal pieces in the Soviet puzzle, propaganda indeed appeared to be “problematic in form.” In this way, Dreeze argued that the mechanics of delivering propaganda were more important than some of the content itself.
The historian Paula A. Michaels in her article “Medical Propaganda and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Kazakhstan,” shares the perspective of propaganda dissemination through untraditional methods: the spread of medicine. Promoting medicine and sanitation is a valiant cause; however, when put in the context of the USSR, it was a blatant attempt to exert influence. Strategically, the Soviet state sewed in Marxist theory to their rationale behind promoting hygiene, claiming that “illnesses are connected with the workers’ adverse living conditions under capitalism.” By putting down the Kazakh way of life and promoting the Soviet “new man,” new biomedical institutions, as Michaels concluded, brought “Soviet power into the farthest corners of the USSR.”
In this light, it appears as though the Soviet Union truly is a propaganda state, intertwining new innovations with complex Marxist ideology, blaming the Kazakh’s relatively poor hygiene on capitalism. However, despite this attempt at promoting Soviet ideals, it did not succeed in the end. In fact, Michaels points out that many medical facilities were inaccessible, “thus, even if health propaganda did reach Kazakh women and convince them of the benefits of biomedicine, they had little opportunity to avail themselves of any biomedical services.” Seamlessly, this ties into Dreeze’s argument that the most important aspect to propaganda dissemination were the mechanics. Without a centralized, systematic approach, propaganda can be rendered ineffective.
Despite the decentralized and poor efforts of Moscow to prioritize propaganda in Central Asia, Michaels argues that “official propaganda nonetheless shaped the Kazakhs’ collective consciousness.” Even during WWII, “troops identified strongly with the core messages disseminated by [the Red Army].”
Unrealistically, the USSR pursued a blanketed approach to propaganda, not accounting for individual differences between states. Dreeze pointed out that propaganda was not necessarily related to Kazakhstan, as many of the statements that contain “Kazakh” or “Kazakhstan” could
easily be replaced with another nationality. While some may have been influenced, agitprop appeared to be relatively “irrelevant in content,” creating confusion and unattainable expectations for the effectiveness in disseminating. Or perhaps they were completely aware of this ineffectiveness but simply did not care about anything outside of populous cities. Highlighting this indifference towards small villages and towns, Dreeze argued that this inconsistency does not allow for the USSR to be considered a full propaganda state.
There was a clear lack of effort when it came to propaganda in anywhere other than Russia. With such heavy emphasis on Russia and lack of anything else, can the USSR be classified as a propaganda state? Perhaps just the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic? Or perhaps not at all?