Abstract

Despite the extensive scholarship devoted to the Soviet mass media, their economic development remains comparatively understudied. Questions of media finance and economics were scarcely explored in Soviet scholarship and have attracted little sustained attention since. Yet an examination of this subject, especially on the basis of archival materials newly brought into scholarly use, makes it possible to illuminate previously overlooked aspects of the functioning of the Soviet political and ideological system. This article examines the economic development of Pravda, the largest party publishing house, in the 1920s. Over the course of that decade, the Soviet press system evolved from the extraordinary conditions of War Communism toward the establishment of planned principles of economic management. For a substantial part of this period, however, its economic activity continued to operate according to principles shaped by the specific circumstances of the New Economic Policy. Despite its special political status, the Pravda publishing house likewise functioned within a partially market environment. In the 1920s, the publishing house's principal economic objectives were the rationalization of production processes, the achievement of financial self-sufficiency, and the publication of a broad range of printed materials with minimal reliance on state resources. On the whole, its staff proved capable of meeting these challenges. By the end of the 1920s Pravda had become a large multifunctional enterprise producing four newspapers, nine journals, and a substantial volume of nonperiodical publications. In 1929, the total single-run circulation of its periodicals exceeded one million copies. At the same time, Pravda's economic development in the 1920s was constrained by a range of objective and subjective difficulties — acute shortages of resources, personnel, infrastructure, and production capacity. The organization of labor within the enterprise was far from optimal, while the political tasks assigned to it by the party contributed to rising costs. Nevertheless, throughout the 1920s Pravda stood out as one of the most efficient Soviet publishing enterprises. This efficiency, however, stemmed also from its privileged economic position.