Agitprop is a technical term from the words agitation and propaganda and designates a central term of the communist political advertisement since Lenin. Agitprop was first the short form of Otdel agitatsii i propagandy (department for agitation and propaganda, 1920 in revolutionary Russia on all levels of the bolschewistischen party establishes). Agitprop stood later (and stands partially still) for the whole of the switching of communist policy for Leninistic development. The term is positively coined/shaped for Leninists.

In the further one the term is also today gladly used still, in order to designate devaluing, dissociating or also colloquially positively publicity campaigns for the own (link) party.

Definition of Lenin

Lenin defined the difference between agitation and propaganda as follows: "“Under propaganda we would understand the revolutionary lighting of the entire present social order or its divisor seeming, independently of whether in a form happens, which is accessible to the particular or the broad mass. By agitation in the strict sense of the word we would understand: the appeal to the masses to certain concrete actions, the promotion of the direct revolutionary interference of the Proletariats into the public life."”

Definition Plechanows

Georgi Plechanow, the founder of the Marxist movement in Russia, had defined the two terms still as follows: "“The propagandist place many ideas to one or more persons, the agitator however mediated only or only few ideas, but however arrange it them for a lot of persons."”

KPD and Agitprop

In the start time of the Weimar Republic the KPD held little from art and culture, but called this civil "“Klimmbimm"” only from the class warfare would divert. When the political situation stabilized 1923, also the KPD discovered the long-term value of cultural work, which should however always serve the party after Soviet model. Therefore art was always evaluated after its value for the agitation and propaganda. Prominent representative of a worker theatre in Germany was Erwin Piscator, which created 1920/21 in Berlin the proletarian theatre, a theatre only for workers.

With the worker correspondence movement workers were advanced to literature production and in the federation of proletarian-revolutionary writers developed novels of writers. Speech choirs, play troops of layman actors and revues spread their political ideas in unterhaltsame way.

Today's linguistic usage

Today the term in the western world is only used, in order to designate strongly ideological art from low quality to or around the statements opposing, not at all only more Leninistic to devalue politicians.

See also

• Politrock, Immendorff

Articles in category "Agitprop"

We found here 8 articles.