2io HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
German programme from Moscow, if only from a feeling of
curiosity. The wireless enables Moscow to enlighten the
bourgeois world on the Soviet achievements and revolutionary
innovations, e.g. in the matter of marriage, sexual ethics,
classlessness, etc. In the wireless propaganda service the Soviet
regime undoubtedly has one of its most effective methods of
creating the impression in the widest circles abroad that the
Soviet Union., despite all difficulties, is approaching the ideal of
the classless state.
The more friendly are its relations with the Western states,
the more effectively the Government is in a position to exploit
another instrument of its propaganda—namely, the cinema.
There is hardly another instrument so suitable for giving the
inhabitants of the bourgeois states an idealized picture of
developments and conditions in Russia. Here the leading
artists of the Soviet Union are able to use their talents to
convince the outer world of the idealism and the achievements
of the State. Thanks to their masterly technique, and the great
ability of the producers and actors, some of these films have
made their way all over the world.
Here, too3 the two fundamental tendencies of Russian
propaganda can be clearly traced: on the one hand the great
achievements of Russia are described; on the other, the sub-
human conditions in the bourgeois states are depicted. This
latter tendency does not find full expression to-day owing to
the desirability of cultivating good relations with the bourgeois
world. The sound film called Sailors of the King* announced
some time ago, which was supposed to show the wretched
conditions under which the men of the Royal Navy had to
live and work (the film was planned to show a mutiny in a
vessel of the Navy), has apparently not been completed, or at
any rate has not been shown abroad. The Russian standard
film, the Chelyuskin^ confines itself to comparing, quite en
passant^ a failure of the American aircraft industry with the
remarkable achievements of Russian aircraft construction. It