Concept
agitprop
A contraction of “agitation and propaganda”: the ideological publicity and education body set up by the Soviet Communist Party in 1920, and later any cultural product with a political purpose.
Agitprop is a contraction of “agitation and propaganda”. The term comes from the name of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda that the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party set up in 1920; the department was to coordinate the propaganda work of all Soviet institutions. In the civil-war years agitation trains carried acting troupes, pamphlets and musicians to a largely illiterate peasantry; poster campaigns and agitation centres were other forms in use.
The distinction between agitation and propaganda is older. According to Plekhanov, a propagandist presents many ideas to a few people, an agitator presents one or a few ideas to the masses. Lenin took the distinction over in 1902 and illustrated it: the propagandist explains the causes of unemployment in full, whereas the agitator draws a single idea from an event everyone knows, such as the death of a worker’s family from starvation.
In time the word “agitprop” came to be used for any art and publicity with an open political message.
Example
Lenin’s own example: on unemployment an agitator tells of a worker’s family dying of hunger and presents a single idea to the crowd.