Pravda (“Truth”), founded in 1912, was Soviet Russia’s oldest and most famous Communist paper and the official publication, or organ, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Initially suppressed by the tsar’s police, it rose to prominence following the October Revolution in 1917, afterwhich Vladimir Lenin exercised broad editorial control of the paper (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.). Pravda sought to avoid sensational news, focusing on Communist theory and domestic programs instead (Garfield, 2018). International relations were left to the official Soviet government newspaper Izvestiya instead (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.).
In the 1930s, Pravda’s articles represented the repressions under Stalin, with graphic headlines in support for executions (Specter, 1996). It’s support for Stalin went so far as to dropping the word “fascism” from its pages immediately after Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1938 (Simes, 1987). By the time Nikita Khrushchev took over, anti-Stalin sentiments were enunciated in the paper instead (Specter, 1996). In the 1980s, Pravda aligned itself with Gorbachev and the spirit of glasnost, broadening the scope of its coverage considerably (Simes, 1987). Yet, it remained as the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the CPSU and a staunch supporter of Gorbachev. Notably, it extensively covered Boris Yelsin’s removal as Moscow Communist Party Chief in 1987, strongly criticising the most outspoken supporter of democracy among the Russian leadership at the time (Specter, 1996).
Komsomolskaya Pravda (“Young Communist League Truth”) and Pionerskaya Pravda (“Truth for Young Pioneers”), offshoots of Pravda, were organs of the youth divisions of the CPSU, which focused on lifestyle news (Logan and Maloney, 1944). In the 1950s, its editor, Alexei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law, introduced more travel articles, sports pieces and short fiction in place of propaganda in these papers. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.).