Mariia Zimina

The   doctoral   project   draws   attention   to   the   personal   input   of   journalists   into   Soviet international news coverage in the post-war years. A deeper look into the work of those workers shows a striking contrast to the historiographical tradition of portraying the USSR asan isolated country. In fact, many decisions were made in the field of foreign propaganda based on the impulses “from below” by mezhdunarodniki [international news workers]. The dissertation explores what kind of background was expected for mezhdunarodniki, whether the target demographic in the regions affected the choice of personnel and methods of work,what the institutional prerequisites were, if those were different for high-rank officials andordinary  international  coverage   journalists, etc.  I  also   focus on   the  division   of functions between the main Soviet news outlets and other actors in the field at the time: from heads of news agencies and propaganda departments to embassy employees and officials at Agitprop.