Informative work of the anti-Bolshevik governments in the territory of Siberia during the years of the Civil war (June 1918 - January 1920)

During the Civil war both the whites and the reds had an equally difficult task: they had not only to convince the overwhelming part of the Russian population of the appeal of their program, of the benefits of the proposed model of country's development, but to also have considerable sacrifices for the sake of its implementation. There was a need in new political technologies, allowing not simply to reproduce the dominant ideological beliefs on a mass scale, but also to have an influence on people stronger than before, changing their political attitudes. Both Bolsheviks and their opponents made a wide use of "informative work". In Siberia this political practice included three main components: transfer of the various channels of information, which the state authorities were interested in, tracking of the political moods of the population, curbing the spread of undesirable information for the regime. In the limits of the political system of white Siberia there was formed their own informative machine, which was understood as the sum total of information, propaganda, cultural-educational and censorship institutions and agencies, both civil and military, the activity of which was directed toward information and communications, conducted by the Omsk government's political course, the ideological mobilization of the population in the East of Russia with the aim of achieving victory over the Bolsheviks. The beginning of the formation of political propaganda in the territory of Siberia dates back to June 1918 (information office of the Administrative department and the information office at the Administration of the Affairs of the West-Siberian Commissariat). In the development of the government apparatus for informative and political propaganda one can trace several periods: the origin (June - October 1918), the formation (November 1918 - February 1919), the greatest activity (March - October 1919), termination of the activity (November 1919 - July 1920). The main task that was to be solved by the propaganda agencies of the White East, was the formation and consolidation of the "imagined community", understood as "the Russian national community", its objectives being the struggle with Bolshevism. As a special subsystem in the state mechanism the apparatus of government informative work and political propaganda carried out the following functions: generation of new interpretations of the political and historical realities, construction of new collective identities of the ideological mobilization of the population to fight against opponents of the regime. However, due to some reasons the degree of effectiveness of government bodies for informative work and propaganda was low. They failed to win any dominant position in the information space. Various rumors, Zemstvo co-operative printing, the Bolshevik and SR propaganda were the channels of spreading of alternative information, which enjoyed great trust with the population of the region. In addition, on a day to day basis there were revealed vulnerabilities of the Kolchak regime, the flaws in the work of the managerial staff: imperfection and a low efficiency of the civil administration and judicial institutions on the ground, lack of coordination in actions, lawlessness and arbitrariness of the agents of power. Government's inability to cope with the growing speculation and corruption served as a good indicator of its helplessness and inefficiency. As a result the propaganda being not backed up by the real actions was losing trust with the population, and the Omsk political regime was losing its attractiveness and support.

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