Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (CC VKP(b))

[September 1952]

Draft
RESOLUTION OF THE CC VKP(b)
On shortcomings in the treatment of the struggle for peace by the press


The CC VKP(b) notes that serious shortcomings and mistakes have been permitted of late in the coverage of the struggle for peace in a series of central and local newspapers and journals.

Comprehensive and thorough propaganda of the struggle for peace and of the successes of the movement of supporters of peace is frequently substituted in the press by the publication of superficial materials full of pacifist arguments. The movement of supporters of peace is often portrayed in these materials as an organization of people who hate all war, and not as a force that is capable of averting imperialist war and of giving a decisive rebuff to imperialist aggressors. Certain newspapers and journals, in explaining the peaceful character of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, inadequately mobilize Soviet people to raise their vigilance against the intrigues of imperialist aggressors, weakly link the struggle for peace with the might of the Soviet Union, and are carried away by outward symbols, publishing images of doves, primitive drawings and pacifistic stories and poems that have little value.

In the press the basic theses of Leninism on the origin and character of wars under imperialism are explained in insufficient depth, the designs of the Americo-English imperialists who are conducting an aggressive policy of unleashing a new war are poorly unmasked, and the profound contradictions in the camp of the imperialist aggressors are not properly reflected.

The CC VKP(b) resolves:

1. To oblige the editorial staff of the central and local newspapers, and also the staff of social-political and literary-artistic journals, to eliminate the shortcomings in the propaganda of the struggle for peace noted in this resolution.

2. To require the editorial staff of newspapers and journals to improve the coverage of the struggle for peace, bearing in mind the necessity of raising the political and labor activity of the masses and their vigilance against the intrigues of imperialist aggressors, and of mobilizing the workers to selfless labor, overfulfilment of production plans, and improvement of work in all spheres of economic and cultural construction. In the press it is necessary to unmask the criminal machinations of the war hawks – their mendacious, ostensible peacefulness in word, their aggressive measures and plans in deed. The successes of the movement of supporters of peace and the growth of the forces of the international camp of peace, democracy and socialism should be fully reflected in the pages of newspapers and journals. It is necessary to explain that the Soviet peace-loving foreign policy relies on the might of the Soviet state and, that reinforcing its might with their creative labor, Soviet people are strengthening the security of the people of our country and the cause of peace in the whole world, and that a new world war, if it is unleashed by the imperialist aggressors, can lead only to the collapse of the capitalist system and its replacement by the socialist system.

3. To instruct the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the CC VKP(b) and the Foreign Policy Commission of the CC VKP (b) to carry out the following measures:

a) to conduct a meeting of editors of central newspapers and of social-political and literary-artistic journals, to discuss measures for eliminating shortcomings in the coverage in the press of the struggle for peace.

b) jointly with the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge to organize the reading of lectures explaining the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the character, sources and causes of wars, on the significance of an organized front of peace in the struggle for the preservation of peace against those who seek to ignite a new war, on the sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism in the post-war period, and on other subjects.

4. To oblige Gospolitzdat in the next one to two months to publish in mass editions works of Lenin and Stalin devoted to Marxist-Leninist teachings on wars, on the defence of the fatherland and on the struggle for peace.