140 | Mass Media and Historical Change
aired during the 1970s, whereas they were banned as ‘imperialistic’ in the
Soviet Union (Eugster 1983: 172, 186). Intervision even regularly broadcast
Western news reports, especially after 1976. Most prominently, Czechoslova-
kia and Poland acquired a great deal of Western material (Mihelj, in Imre et
al. 2013: 17), and since 1981 nearly all Socialist countries have aired Western
films in equally large measure. In post-invasion Czechoslovakia, light enter-
tainment programmes increased in an attempt to win the support of the
people and prevent more of them watching Western programmes (Bren 2010:
121, 202). Television built visual bridges between East and West, and it would
be well to examine more closely the social consequences of this phenomenon.
However, written media also crossed the borders between East and West.
Uncensored underground ‘tamizat’ texts, as mentioned earlier, were transferred
and translated from East to West. These were not only political transmissions,
but also cultural exchanges (including art, photos and videos), which contrib-
uted to the rise in relevant intellectual debate (Kind-Kovács and Labov 2013:
11–15). Sometimes such illegal publications were printed in Western media or
broadcasted in the East by Radio Free Europe.
The most extensive research on Communist media has been done on the
GDR (focusing on the dominance of the SED: Holzweißig 2002; on content
and appropriation: Zahlmann 2010). Here the radical changes in media pol-
itics that aimed to secure the dominance of the KPD (German Communist
Party) and the communist successor party SED (German Unity Party). These
were already being rigorously enforced in the immediate aftermath of 1945.
In the field of journalism, publishers were forcibly dispossessed, long-estab-
lished newspapers rich in tradition were silenced, and the local papers that had
been so characteristic of Germany were shut down, yet SOZ (Soviet Occupied
Zone) and ‘administrative’ area newspapers were subsidised. Be that as it may,
the SOZ brought back some earlier German traditions. The party-affiliated
press structure so typical for Germany was revived: each party was allotted
one leading newspaper and several regional ones. The papers affiliated with
the KPD and SED respectively were increasingly favoured with larger paper
supplies and higher print runs, while others soon felt the effects of censorship
and repression. Another German tradition revived after 1947 was the nation-
alisation of radio, with the SED carrying out a radical personnel purge on the
basis of political criteria. In similar fashion the Soviet administration and the
SED took over the Ufa, changed its name to DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktieng-
esellschaft) and created a nationalised system of film production.
As problematic as a comparison between National Socialism and the
GDR may be in many respects, it would be rewarding to do more research
in the field of media production in view of the fact that both dictatorships
developed similar media policies on an institutional level, although they
often applied them differently (Classen 2007). With the ‘Department of