What is "agitprop"

agitprop \agitprop\ n.

1. [agitation + propaganda.]

   1. agitation and propaganda; -- used especially for such activities carried out on behalf of communist activists.

2. a person who disseminates messages calculated to assist some cause or some government; one disseminating agitprop[1]. Also called agitpropist.

   Syn: propagandist

also agit-prop, 1938, from Russian agitatsiya "agitation" (from French agitation; see agitation) + propaganda, from German (see propaganda).

n. 1 (context uncountable English) political propaganda disseminated through art, literature, drama, etc., especially Communist propaganda 2 (context countable English) An organization or person engaged in disseminating such propaganda.

n. political propaganda (especially Communist propaganda) communicated via art and literature and cinema

Agitprop (; from , derived from agitation and propaganda) is stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message.

The term agitprop originated in the Russian SFSR (which later joined the Soviet Union), as a shortened form of (), i.e., Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department.

In the case of agitprop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture.

The term agitprop gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly politicized left-wing theatre originated in 1920s Europe and spread to America; the plays of Bertolt Brecht are a notable example. Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. Gradually the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art. After the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda. It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages.

In the Western world, agitprop often has a negative connotation.

Agitprop was originally an abbreviation for the departments of Agitation and Propaganda in the early Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Agitprop may also refer to:

• Agit-Prop Records, a British record label
• Agitprop! Records, an American record label
• Agit-prop (band), a Finnish music group
• Agitprop (Kalahari Surfers), a 2012 album by the South African musician Warrick Sony

Agitprop is a 2012 album by the Kalahari Surfers, the recording identity of South African musician Warrick Sony. Agitprop was released on Sjambok Music; it was first played at the Unyazi Festival in Durban in September. Agitprop explores Sony's fears about South Africa in the 2010s becoming a one party state under the African National Congress, and includes a song about chemical warfare scientist Wouter Basson. South African Rolling Stone compared it to the KLF, Sly and Robbie and Pink Floyd, and described its "slow evolution of nuance" towards the "desolately upbeat" "Hostile Takeover". Sony says the album was mostly written on the train while commuting to work; he calls the genre "Voktronic, ... a blend of folktronic, and volkspiele with a dose of electronic experimental dubstoep and experimental rolled up into one fat two blade stereo hit."