page_title: Agitprop
hierarchical_section_title: Agitprop
caption_attribution_description: AgitProp Plakat Majakowski / große Version Verwendung: "You are allowed to download and use these images as you desire." (Public Domain)
context_page_description: Agitprop is political propaganda, especially the communist propaganda used in Soviet Russia, that is spread to the general public through popular media such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly political message.
  The term originated in Soviet Russia as a shortened name for the Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Within the party apparatus, both agitation and propaganda were the responsibility of the agitpropotdel, or APPO. Its head was a member of the MK secretariat, although he or she ranked
  second to the head of the orgraspredotdel. Typically Russian agitprop explained the ideology and policies of the Communist Party and attempted to persuade the general public to support and join the party and share its ideals. Agitprop was also used for dissemination of information and knowledge to the people, like new methods of agriculture. After the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda.
context_section_description: Agitprop (/ˈædʒɪtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп, tr. Agitpróp, portmanteau of agitatsiya, "agitation" and propaganda, "propaganda") is political propaganda, especially the communist propaganda used in Soviet Russia, that is spread to the general public through popular media such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms with an explicitly political message. 
  The term originated in Soviet Russia as a shortened name for the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (отдел агитации и пропаганды, otdel agitatsii i propagandy), which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Within the party apparatus, both agitation (work among people who were not Communists) and propaganda (political work among party members) were the responsibility of the agitpropotdel, or APPO. Its head was a member of the MK secretariat, although he or she ranked
  second to the head of the orgraspredotdel. Typically Russian agitprop explained the ideology and policies of the Communist Party and attempted to persuade the general public to support and join the party and share its ideals. Agitprop was also used for dissemination of information and knowledge to the people, like new methods of agriculture. After the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda. It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows as it passed through villages.
  It gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly politicized theatre that originated in 1920s Europe and spread to the United States; the plays of Bertolt Brecht are a notable example. Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule.  Gradually the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art.
caption: Agitprop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky titled: "Want it? Join" 
  "1. You want to overcome cold?
  2. You want to overcome hunger?
  3. You want to eat?
  4. You want to drink?
  Hasten to join shock brigades of exemplary labor!"
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