An agit-train was a locomotive engine with special auxiliary cars outfitted for propaganda purposes by the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia during the time of the Russian Civil War, War Communism, and the New Economic Policy. Brightly painted and carrying on board a printing press, government complaint office, printed political leaflets and pamphlets, library books, and a mobile movie theater, agit-trains traveled the rails of Russia, Siberia, and Ukraine in an attempt to introduce the values and program of the new revolutionary government to a scattered and isolated peasantry.
Section of a painted car of a Soviet "agit-train" from a 1921 newsreel.
Crowds would be gathered around agit-trains and modern technology such as phonographs and moving pictures demonstrated to a poor rural audience to emphasize the modernizing agenda of the Soviet regime. (1921 newsreel footage).
A key part of agit-trains were their special cars for presentation of motion pictures to tightly packed audiences — frequently the first exposure of rural Russians to the medium. (1921 newsreel footage).
Agitprop refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literature, plays, pamphlets, films, and other art forms, with an explicitly political message in favor of communism.
Agitprop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky titled: "Want it? Join" "1. You want to overcome cold? 2. You want to overcome hunger? 3. You want to eat? 4. You want to drink? Hasten to join shock brigades of exemplary labor!"
Bolshevik Propaganda Train
Top: Woman, learn to read and write! Bottom: Oh, Mommy! If you were literate, you could help me! A poster by Elizaveta Kruglikova advocating female literacy dating from 1923
