Letter department workers process mail from citizens writing about the upcoming 26th Party Congress

In the Soviet Union, public letter-writing was a celebrated form of civic and political engagement. Even during the Soviet Civil War (1918-1922), when the Bolshevik regime had hardly secured its power in many parts of the former Russian Empire, leaders established not only newspapers, but letter departments within them. These departments were charged with reading, responding to, and often finding solutions to citizen-readers’ concerns. The authorities envisioned letter-reading departments not as sources of surveillance information, but as potential partners: since the government possessed the resources necessary to address readers’ concerns, the idea was that coordination with the press could allow it to help citizens. 

 

Throughout the Soviet period, the number of reader letters steadily increased, with only minor dips that caused alarm among newspaper editors and political leaders alike and were promptly addressed, or at least criticized. Conversely, the increase in literacy rates and greater stability in the quality of life during the Khrushchev era produced a noticeable increase in mail received by periodicals. 

 

Yet no period in Soviet history witnessed the volume of mail seen during perestroika (1985-1991). The photograph in this artifact, published in Moscow’s television and radio guide Govorit i pokazyvaet Moskva (lit: “Moscow Speaks and Shows”) in December 1985, illustrates the essential work of letter departments in the early years of Gorbachev’s reforms. It captures letter department workers processing and responding to mail concerning the published drafts of the Party documents that would be approved several months later, at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986. 

 

The image itself, of course, does not prove that more mail was received at this time than earlier. What it shows, however, is that periodicals and state figures both wishes to show Soviet citizens that appropriate channels for participating in politics existed. It also coincides with a general effort to further invigorate public letter-writing. By suggesting that letter department employees took their work with readers’ letters very seriously, the photograph conveys one way in which the media sought to promote this practice.