News from Moscow is a social and cultural history of Soviet journalism after World War II. Focusing on the youth newspaper Komsomol'skaia Pravda, the study draws on transcripts of behind-the-scenes editorial meetings to chart the changing professional ethos of the Soviet journalist. Simon Huxtable shows how journalists viewed themselves both as propagandists bringing the Party's ideas to the wider public, but also as reformers who tried to implement new ideas that would help usher the country towards Communism. The volume focuses on both aspects of the journalists' role, from propaganda editorials in praise of Comrade Stalin and articles lauding young heroes' exploits in the Virgin Lands, to revolutionary new initiatives, such as the country's first ever polling institute and clubs promoting the virtues of unfettered public debate. Soviet journalism, argues Huxtable, was riven with an unresolvable tension between innovation and conservativism: the more journalists tried to promote new innovations to perfect Soviet society, the more officials grew anxious about the disruptive consequences of reform. By demonstrating the day-to-day conflicts that characterised the press's activity, and by showing that the production of Soviet propaganda involved much more than redrafting orders from above, News from Moscow offers a new perspective on Soviet propaganda that expands our understanding of the possibilities and limits of reform in a period of rapid change.

This volume contributes to a growing reevaluation of the Brezhnev era, helping to shape a new historiography that gives us a much richer and more nuanced picture of the time period than the stagnation paradigm usually assigned to the era. The essays provide a multifaceted prism that reveals a dynamic society with a political and intellectual class that remained committed to the ideological foundations of the state, recognized the challenges that the system faced, and embarked on a creative search for solutions. The chapters focus on developments in politics, society, and culture, as well as the state's attempts to lead and initiate change, which are mostly glossed over in the stagnation narrative. The volume challenges the assumption that the period as a whole was characterized by rampant cynicism and a decline of faith in the socialist creed and instead points to the persistence of popular engagement with the socialist ideology and the power it continued to wield within the Soviet Union.

In From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television, Sabina Mihelj and Simon Huxtable delve into the fascinating world of television under communism, using it to test a new framework for comparative media analysis. To understand the societal consequences of mass communication, the authors argue that we need to move beyond the analysis of media systems, and instead focus on the role of the media in shaping cultural ideals and narratives, everyday practices and routines. Drawing on a wealth of original data derived from archival sources, programme and schedule analysis, and oral history interviews, the authors show how communist authorities managed to harness the power of television to shape new habits and rituals, yet failed to inspire a deeper belief in communist ideals. This book and their analysis contains important implications for the understanding of mass communication in non-democratic settings, and provides tools for the analysis of media cultures globally.