Mustafa Cebrail SADAKAOĞLU
Raymond Williams (1921 – 1988), one of the founders of Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, is known not only in Britain but in many other countries as an effective intellectual and social critic. His extensive studies focus on subtitles as social conflicts, ecology, and communication. This study is based upon the short text he wrote on advertisement, he defines as a striking means in his study titled “Advertising: The Magic System in Problems in Materialism and Culture”. This study aims to discuss the point of view of the author, who regards advertisement as the official art of capitalistic societies in his mentioned text, in the light of the experiences of USSR by taking into account the political, economic and cultural developments in the 20th century. In this regard, the concept of advertisement viewed as a complementary confined to capitalistic societies and economic relations cannot live in non-capitalistc societies and economic relations according to historical deterministic standpoint. Such an approach makes the possible existence of advertisement in non-capitalistic societies and economic relations, even if with different purposes and forms, open to discussion needed to be analysed. This study, focusing on this issue,can be seen as an academic attempt with the aim of making contribution to the field, as it makes use of relevant literature and concrete data. In the study, in addition to the theoretical discussion of the issue, case study analysis is also carried out through selected examples. Thus, the public information and propaganda issues will be discussed through the experiences of USSR, which constructed and defined its existence outside the capitalistc production and distribution web, lasting politically for a long period in the 20th century. In order to limit the approximately one century period of experience and thus deepen the study, the three production domains defined as early period public information between 1917-1925 of the USSR are included into the study; “representation in cinema, information posters, and ceramic objects used with the aim of propaganda”.
Key Words: The Soviet, Propaganda, Advertisement, Information, Public Information
