ABSTRACT
In 1925, at its Tenth Party Congress, the party tried drama for the first time as a propaganda technique. Communist demonstrations changed from the rather dull Social Democratic pattern to a cross between new-style Russian propaganda and American advertising. During the depression years, 1929-1933, the Miinzenberg Trust burgeoned with every variety of anti-fascist propaganda, with ballyhoo for Russian culture, films, literature, science, scenery. The transformation of the German Communist Party into one division of the Russian Politburo was strikingly illustrated by the new propaganda forms that were imported and fostered during the middle twenties. With the change in Russia, there was a change in the League’s mentality. Founded as a party division assigned to defend the Communist organization, it was soon transformed into a propaganda medium for “the defense of the socialist Fatherland.” Kunio Ito, a highly gifted painter-actor from Tokyo, worked for several years in the Agit-Prop department of the German party, as well as for the Arbeiter Theater-Bund.
