The main goal of the official Soviet media has traditionally been not to reveal but to conceal the facts. When, in 1962, an uprising by workers in Novocherkassk, an industrial town in the south of Russia, was brutally put down by government forces, the media’s role was not to report it. The bloodstained streets were repaved, and amateur radio reports were jammed. Discerning readers deduced facts from what newspapers did not say rather than from what they did: omissions were more informative than inclusions. If the media said something did not happen, people understood it to mean the opposite.
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