Taken from the interviews and historical accounts contributing to the RED FILES, read through the quotes and notable excerpts presented below.

Boris Efimov, Cartoonist
Propaganda used music, and poetry and songs and paintings and cartoons.

What alternative did they have? Not believing? That would lead to certain death. You had to live under the conditions that existed all over the country. That's what Propaganda is.

Propaganda was born together with the Soviet Regime in 1917 and through all 70 years of its existence Propaganda helped to consolidate society, held it in some kind of unified, strong community.

And when the Soviet Union disappeared and Propaganda disappeared with it, there was left a sort of emptiness.

Joe Adamov, Radio Moscow journalist
The point of censorship is that you wouldn't deviate one word from the official party line.

They spent about as much money on jamming foreign stations as on broadcasting from here.

Propaganda was a sort of machine to mould your thought according to one style, one mould, one idea.

Alexander Haig, Secretary of State, 1981-82.
Propaganda was an important arm of the Soviet diplomacy, very important.

More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

I think Ronald Reagan was a very happy exception, because in the area of propaganda he was a master.

Tatiana Vorontsova, Russian housewife
We were always so proud of our motherland, that we had the best of everything. We ended up with the worst of everything in the end, not needed by anybody. That's what I'm ashamed of.

I don't even want to look back at my life. Because they led us, yes, they led me. They said turn left and I turned left. They said to the right, I turned right. I practically didn't have my own brain. If I let out a thought, I was afraid that I would be punished for that thought.

Vladimir Pozner, Russian TV commentator
There was a wonderful American folk singer by the name of Woody Guthrie. He said: for the five-year-old child who doesn't want to go to bed a lullaby is propaganda. Yes, I certainly was out there trying to put the Soviet Union best forward.

If we compare the United States and the Soviet Union, the fact of the matter is that the average Russian had a tremendous interest in the outside world that was blocked. He couldn't get that access, but he wanted it. He read everything he could get his hands on; he tried to get through that jamming and listen. If there was a foreign movie, you had a line of people standing just to get to see it no matter what it was. There was tremendous interest.

Soviet people never thought they could protest, because they knew that was terribly dangerous. Pictures, television pictures of protests in the United States, which were put on for a propaganda effect to show that the people of the United States are against this terrible war, Imperialist war that is being waged against the people of Vietnam, in one sense worked. But in the other sense back-fired in that we looked at this, and said "Yeah, they're against the war, and they're protesting, they don't seem to be afraid."

Also see:
Quotes from Soviet Encyclopedia (1958), Philosophical Dictionary (1958), Program of the Communist Party (1975)