Mass Communications as a Vehicle to Lure Russian Émigrés Homeward

Abstract

After the millions of wartime displaced citizens had been forcibly returned to the Soviet Union after the Second World War, the Soviet Union inaugurated a new type of campaign in the mid-1950s to get all the remaining Soviet citizens and former émigrés from Sovietoccupied areas to migrate back. In this campaign, the Soviets used all the means of mass communication they were able to produce, especially radio combined with the press and direct contact with people. The campaign was not very successful, at least not among the people it was supposed to lure back: people residing in Europe. However, many people, especially from Latin America, migrated back to the Soviet Union, only to be disappointed, just as the people who had migrated to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.