We usually say that governments betray their principles.
That is true, but it may not be the whole story. A government can also wear down the meaning of a principle by repeatedly making it serve repression, conquest and political dishonesty.
That is where propaganda enters the picture.
Soviet propaganda did more than conceal events or improve the image of the state. It gave Soviet power a moral vocabulary. Military and political domination could be explained through the language of progress, solidarity, equality and antifascism.
The language was important because the Soviet Union could not openly describe itself as an empire. Its legitimacy depended on being understood as the historical enemy of empire.
This meant that Soviet actions had to be placed inside another story.
A country absorbed by Moscow had supposedly chosen socialism. A government installed under Soviet pressure represented the will of the people. Those who resisted were not simply defending their independence. They were reactionaries, nationalists, collaborators or enemies of progress.
The propaganda did not merely change the description of what had happened. It changed the moral positions assigned to everyone involved.
The state exercising power became "the liberator".
The population losing its political freedom became "the beneficiary".
Those objecting to the process became "the threat".
The poster accompanying this article is a good example of how that moral framework was presented.
It greets “the fighters against fascism” and declares that the Soviet Constitution offers moral and practical support to those resisting fascist barbarism.
There is nothing false about the moral necessity of opposing fascism and that is precisely what made the language so valuable.
By placing itself at the center of antifascism, the Soviet state could present its own power as morally protected. Resistance to Moscow could then be associated with fascism even when it came from people defending national independence, political freedom or simply the right not to be ruled by Moscow.
A legitimate principle became attached to the authority of the state invoking it.
That did not destroy antifascism as an idea. It did, however, allow antifascist language to be used in ways that often had little to do with fighting actual fascism.
This is one reason propaganda should not be understood only as posters, slogans and broadcasting.
In the Soviet system, propaganda entered education, administration, scholarship, journalism, public ceremonies and the language of ordinary employment. The official account of reality was reproduced by institutions and by the people working inside them.
Teachers taught it. Officials recorded it. Historians gave it authority. Journalists repeated it. Citizens learned which parts of it had to be performed in public.
Genuine belief was useful, but it was not always necessary. A person could privately know that an election was staged while publicly celebrating the result. An official could understand that a country had been occupied while writing documents that described a voluntary political transformation.
The system required participation in the language, even when it could not produce sincere conviction.
This created a particular kind of political life. People learned to separate what they knew from what they were permitted to say. Official words became less useful for describing reality and more useful for demonstrating loyalty.
That has consequences for the words themselves.
For someone reading communist theory in a democratic country, terms such as solidarity, equality, liberation and collective ownership may still carry their philosophical meanings.
For someone whose family experienced Soviet rule, those same terms may also recall censorship, confiscation, imposed governments, secret police, the rewriting of national history and death.
That difference cannot be resolved simply by saying that the Soviet system was not genuine communism.
Perhaps it was not. But ideas do not exist only in books. They also accumulate the history of what institutions have done in their name.
The real question is not whether Marx intended Soviet imperialism. The more useful question is why the Soviet state found communist language so effective when legitimizing its own power.
Why could one party describe itself as "the people"?
Why could political opposition be dismissed as "false consciousness" or "reaction"?
Why could national independence be treated as less important than a supposedly "universal" historical mission?
Why could domination by Moscow be described as "international solidarity"?
These questions do not automatically invalidate every communist belief. They do make it difficult to separate the philosophy completely from the political uses to which its vocabulary was put.
The Soviet Union eventually disappeared but the method did not.
Modern Russia is not communist. It has no serious commitment to economic equality or international working-class solidarity.
Its state ideology draws from nationalism, imperial history, Orthodox Christianity, Soviet nostalgia and an increasingly vague idea of civilizational struggle.
Yet its propaganda still performs a familiar task. It takes the exercise of power and places it inside a story that makes Russia appear threatened, defensive or morally obligated to act.
The invasion of Ukraine was presented as "prevention".
The occupation of territory was presented as "historical correction".
The destruction of Russian-speaking communities was presented as their "protection".
Ukraine’s political choices were presented as evidence of Western "control" rather than decisions made by Ukrainians.
The exact words have changed, but the purpose is recognizable. Russian power must rarely appear as power pursuing its own interests. It must appear as a response to somebody else’s aggression, betrayal or conspiracy.
Modern Russian propaganda is also more flexible than the old Soviet system.
It does not need one coherent worldview for every audience.
To some people on the Western left, Russia presents itself as resistance to NATO, American hegemony and capitalism.
To parts of the far right, it presents itself as a defender of Christianity, masculinity, hierarchy and traditional family life.
To audiences shaped by colonial history, it presents itself as an opponent of Western domination.
At home, it offers a story of siege, sacrifice and restored greatness.
These messages do not fit together particularly well because they do not need to.
The purpose is not to build a single philosophy shared by communists, nationalists, religious conservatives and anti-colonial movements. The purpose is to give each audience a reason to interpret Russian power sympathetically and to regard Russia’s opponents with suspicion.
The Soviet Union made empire speak in communist language.
Modern Russia allows empire to speak in several languages at once.
And there is another difference. The Soviet system relied heavily on an official account of reality. People were expected to repeat it, even when they privately doubted it.
The modern Russian system still produces official stories, but it also spreads several incompatible explanations for the same event.
An atrocity did not happen.
It happened, but Ukraine was responsible.
It happened, but Western intelligence organised it.
Russia may have been involved, but only because it had been provoked.
In any case, everyone behaves the same way.
The point is not always to make one version universally believable. It can be enough to make the audience tired of deciding.
Once every piece of evidence is treated as propaganda, people no longer ask which account is best supported. They ask which side produced it. Facts become tribal possessions. Investigations become performances. Moral judgment is dismissed as hypocrisy.
This is useful to an aggressor because paralysis does not require admiration.
A person does not need to support Russia in order to become politically useful to Russian strategy. It may be enough for that person to conclude that nobody can know the truth, all institutions lie and resistance is pointless.
This is where the Soviet and modern Russian systems meet most clearly.
Both weaken the connection between words and the realities they are supposed to describe.
"Peace" can be used to demand submission.
"Protection" can accompany bombardment.
"Self-determination" can describe an annexation conducted under military occupation.
"Antifascism" can be used to dehumanize the population of a democratic neighbouring state.
"Multipolarity" can become a polite term for dividing smaller nations into spheres controlled by larger powers.
The words are not discarded. They are kept because they still carry moral force but that force is borrowed, used and gradually depleted.
This should concern the contemporary left in particular.
The left depends on ideas such as solidarity, liberation, equality, peace and anti-imperialism. These words remain necessary. That is why their political use should be examined carefully rather than accepted because the speaker opposes the United States or NATO.
Criticism of Western power is not the problem. The problem begins when the standards used to recognize Western imperialism suddenly become unavailable when Russia behaves in similar ways.
Western countries are then judged by their actions. Russia is judged by the grievances it claims.
The choices of Eastern European societies are treated as products of American influence. Their fear of Moscow is described as paranoia or nationalism. Their historical memory is reduced to anti-communist prejudice.
This removes agency from the very societies that experienced the system being discussed.
Anti-imperialism cannot function as a geographical loyalty. It must remain a way of examining power.
The Soviet Union did not make every communist aspiration meaningless. But it demonstrated just how much damage a state can do when it turns political ideals into instruments of justification.
Modern Russia continues that process without requiring any one ideology.
It can borrow the language of antifascism today, peace tomorrow and anti-colonialism the day after.
The vocabulary changes according to need.
The habit remains the same.
Propaganda does not succeed only by persuading people to accept false statements. It also succeeds when it weakens the words people need in order to describe what power is doing.
A lie can sometimes be corrected.
Restoring the meaning of a word after it has spent decades serving the opposite of what it claims is so much harder. And yet, we have no other choice but to keep doing it.
And now, you know.
