No attempt is made to evaluate the total film and television programmes. Comprehensive usage reports are called for each year from overseas posts on a sample range of films. In the television field, user stations are asked to report times and frequency of use.

The Federal Republic of Germany

The Federal Press and Information Office in the Federal Republic of Germany cooperates closely with several quasi-official and private organizations. Inter-Nationes, the German association for the promotion of international relations, is a non-profit institution primarily responsible for cultural programs. Official government missions abroad maintain inventories of films listed in the Inter-Nationes catalogue. Those missions thus act as clearing houses for a wide range of German organizations. They include: Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film, and Deutsches IndustrieInstitut. The only limitations imposed by the missions before they will pass requests along to Inter-Nationes are that the clients order no more than four films from any one organization at a time, and that the order be placed a month ahead of the screening date.

Following other leading Western powers, the West German government maintains film archives in key cities abroad and film depots to serve regional interests. "Kultur" institutes in seven less developed countries also serve as presentation centers for television and film works.

Trans-Tel, the only non-government TV organization partly sponsored by the federal government, is headquartered in Cologne. Its statutes forbid Trans-Tel to distribute in Europe, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Television companies, acting directly through their commercial agents, deal with those markets.

Trans-Tel does not produce anything itself but, from the two German networks, merely selects, edits, and dubs TV programs that promise to be of cultural, instructional, or public relations value in the developing countries. The fees are relatively low.

Because there is no governmental television agency in the Federal Republic, this joint undertaking of the two major and rival West German television services, ARD and ZDF (Arbeits-gemeinschaft der Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), is of prime importance in the success of foreign relations.

For the international market, Trans-Tel "employs international teams of experienced film editors and commentators whose job it is to adapt and tailor the films, synchronizing them in English, French, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish." By and large, adaptations of TV programs are handled by the staff of Deutsche Welle.3

France

The French government's film and television overseas enterprise in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs works closely with other government organizations such as the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Francaise

(ORTF) and the Office Francais de Techniques Modernes d'Education, and private companies.

In scope, the program ranges as widely as the American, British, and German, emphasizing distribution of film magazines, cultural films, television program series, theatrical films (several subtitled in English, Arabic, and Spanish), newsreels (Great Britain is the other main supplier of newsreels), educational films, and courses of instruction in the French language.

During 1970, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the help of private firms sent out the magazines France: Panorama, Chroniques de France, and Aux Frontières de l'Avenir (on scientific subjects), while ORTF produced Pour Vous, Madame and a magazine devoted to literature. Most of these productions were also prepared for audiences speaking English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. France: Panorama was prepared in a Russian language version in addition to the other languages. ORTF productions form the mainstay of the general program. Variety, documentary, dramatic, and musical programs are sent to Frenchspeaking countries in the same versions as seen at home, while other countries receive dubbed or subtitled versions. A strong effort is made in the area of education. The Service de la Radio-Télévision Scolaire emphasizes the sciences.

The volume of programming is impressive: approximately 8,500 hours of film and television magazines a year; 5,783 of ORTF domestic productions in 1969; and, in terms of copies sent out, approximately 1,600 copies of educational programs sent to 69 countries in 1969.4

Estimating or speculating about the effectiveness of French television and film work is difficult. In the past few years governmental sensitivity seems to have increased in proportion to the increasingly important role France tries to play as a mediator between and manipulator of powerful opponents. In short, French reticence on the subject of program evaluation is at this time a fact of lifes

THE DEVELOPING NATIONS

Films and television programs have been instruments for useful propaganda exchanges between the "have" and the "have-not" peoples. Cutural news has been the main ingredient in those exchanges, and this will continue. Unfortunately, cultural news is primarily one-sided, the "have" nations not learning much, if anything, about the people they communicate with.

However, some small insight as to foreign effectiveness with films is obtained from a limited recent survey (those interviewed were mainly young people considered to be potential technological change-agents), conducted in South America and Middle America. The results which follow (see Table) are in response to the question, "From what country or countries are the films which you see most?"5

NOTE: The respondents in many cases named more than one country, which accounts for total of answers being larger than number of persons interviewed.

At the very least, provisions must be made for film and television propaganda to be mutual, if the general interest is to be served.

In a significant way, film and television propaganda constitutes schooling in development. Will it be effective? Perceptive students are skeptical. Here are a few reasons:

1. For a developing world torn by political difficulties, there is precious little use of films and television to warn emergent nations about the perils of repeating dreadful twentieth-century experiences of the advanced countries. The newsreels available from abroad have too little relevance to the local needs for news; much so-called news is documentary gloss and is lacking in truly educational information. It is a fact that "underlying causes of recurring crises are rarely explored ... no account is given of what might be done to avoid or alleviate these crises." For both the developing and developed nations, there is a lack of adequate reporting about really serious problems like starvation and brutality. Coverage of the Biafran revolt or its aftermath in Nigeria, or about South African apartheid, are cases in point. . . . [One of the] savants produced by the American television industry, says "As journalists, we are not keeping pace with the realities; we report them but we do not truly understand them, so we do not really explain."8

2. Not enough study has been devoted to why development films fail to "contribute vitally to organic progress." We need more films of the type produced in the last decade by the National Film Board of Canada, such as The Head Men (which compares village chiefs in Brazil, Nigeria, and Canada), You Don't Back Down (a report of a two-year study by a young Canadian doctor in a village of Eastern Nigeria), and The Stage to Three (which contrasts leading theatrical personages of Greece, Thailand, and Canada).o

The developing nations are so caught up in rhetoric about communications technology that key Western leaders translate all wordly needs in terms of their own ambitions, and those ambitions by-pass objectives so necessary to progress in less developed countries. Propaganda becomes a mirror image of the developed West. Robert W. Sarnoff, chairman and president of the Radio Corporation of America, worries about the “social grasp" of communications and about communications satellites in particular. He warns that

If this new device is to realize its full potential, the nations of the world must come together to agree on matters of frequency, rates, copyrights, avoidance of interference, and freedom of access to the system's facilities. 10

Such contemplation reveals all too dramatically the basic propaganda chasm of our times! The man in love with the idea of the machine is distinct from the man who desperately needs the ideas that are themselves the machines of progress.

NOTES

1. Letter to Bernard Rubin from D. Willcocks, Deputy Director, Policy and Reference Division, British Information Services, New York, N. Y., dated November 24, 1970. 2. Letter, Willcocks, op. cit.

3. The following sources were utilized in the discussion of West German activities: Letters to the author from Dr. Johannsen, Press-Und Informationsamt Der Bundesregierung, Bonn, Federal Republic, dated October 16, 1970, and December 8, 1970; letter from Wilhelm Hondrich, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, Mainz, Federal Republic, dated January 26, 1971; letter from Dr. Krause-Brewer, Trans-Tel, Cologne, Federal Republic; letter from Christian v. Chmielewski, Direktor des Kulturellen Programms, Deutsche Welle, Cologne, Federal Republic, dated November 16, 1970.

4 Letter to author from Alain Chaillous, Director, Press and Information Service, Embassy of France, New York City, dated January 26, 1971. Also, from same source, specially prepared document, 2 pp., "La Production des Films et des Programmes de Télévision Réalises par le Gouvernement Francais à l'Intention des Pays Etrangers." Also, see "UNESCO: Global Overview of Film Situation," in Heinz-Dietrich Fischer and John C. Merrill, eds., International Communication (New York: Hastings House, 1970), p. 402. 5. See Paul J. Deutschmann, Huber Ellingsworth, and John T. McNelly, Communication and Social Change in Latin America (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), p. 79. 6. Max F. Millikan and Stephen White, “TV and Emerging Nations," Television Quarterly 7, 2 (Spring, 1968), p. 31.

7. Robin Day, “Troubled Reflections of a TV Journalist," Encounter 34, 5 (May, 1970). 8. Eric Sevareid, "Address to the Massachusetts House of Representatives" (January 24, 1967), House No. 4408, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Also see, "How Influential Is TV News?" Columbia Journalism Review 9, 2 (Summer, 1970), pp. 19-28; Sir William Haley, "Where TV News Fails," Columbia Journalism Review 9, 1 (Spring, 1970), pp. 7-11.

9. Jean Marie Ackermann, "Small Actions and Big Words," International Development Review 8, 4 (December, 1966), pp. 33-39.

10. Robert W. Sarnoff, "Proposal for a Global Common Market of Communications," Communications News 7, 4 (April, 1970), p. 8.

Eastern Europe

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOVIET PROPAGANDA LINE*

BY FREDERICK C. BARGHOORN

Soviet propaganda is not prevented by Communist ideology from adapting to changing international needs.

** * * *

Since the [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] CPSU's "general line," formulated and reiterated with appropriate modifications in certain key statements, sets the ideological and semantic framework to which Soviet propaganda must conform, a survey of a series of these propaganda directives may furnish a background useful for understanding the major propaganda themes.

The communications examined have policy as well as propaganda aspects. It whould be noted here that in Soviet political communication it is unusually difficult, and sometimes nearly impossible, to distinguish clearly between the elements of policy and propaganda. One can, of course, seek to infer policy from action. In reading Soviet mass media, however, it is difficult to separate analysis and directive, on the one hand, from demagogy and even deception, on the other. A heavy component of propaganda is built into most published Soviet statements, especially those intended for distribution outside of a relatively narrow circle of heavily indoctrinated, experienced communist party insiders. The party leaders tend to view even most communists as objects of propaganda manipulation. Moreover, difficulties arise because they are impelled to resort to guarded, esoteric communication patterns that reflect both the influence of the elitist, conspiratorial political structure in which they operate and probably also the inadequacy of Marxist-Leninist terminology as a political language.1

Of course, the student of Soviet political prose learns to distinguish between statements intended primarily as policy directives for party executives and propaganda specialists, for example, and agitational statement designed to play upon the emotions of rank and file communists and of non-communists. Thus, an analysis in a CPSU theoretical journal such as Kommunist, most of the readers of which belong to the Soviet political elite, of the "political essence" of the "national bourgeoisie" can be classified as primarily a policy document. Still, such an article may be permeated with propaganda connotations of a more or less covert nature. It may be intended, in part, to convey to Soviet and foreign communist functionaries instructions regarding tactics to be applied in dealing with, for example, Indian, Indonesian, or Brazilian "bourgeois" statesmen. By contrast, when Khrushchev openly and insist

*Selections from "Development of the Propaganda Line" in Frederick C. Barghoorn, Soviet Foreign Propaganda (copyright © 1964 by Princeton University Press). Renumbering of footnotes. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.