Journalists Union of the Ussr

a voluntary organization of Soviet professional employees of the periodical press, television, radio, news agencies, and publishing houses. The union’s main aims are to promote active participation by journalists in the building of communism and to aid the growth of their professional skill and the ideological and theoretical value of their work.

The union was formed in 1959. Membership is available to journalists, photographers, artists, and editors who have worked in the press, radio, or television or in news agencies or publishing houses for at least three years and have displayed high professional skill. By late 1975 the union had approximately 60,000 members. The supreme directing body is the All-Union Congress, which is convened once every five years. Between congresses the directing board conducts the union’s activities, while the secretariat directs professional and organizational matters.

The union has regional branches. Primary organizations of journalists have been created at editorial offices. The union has krai and oblast organizations, as well as republic unions in Union and autonomous republics.

Professional and ideological work is done with the aid of professional commissions and sections under the Central Directing Board and the directing boards of local organizations. These commissions and sections are effective in organizing conferences on practical and scholarly aspects of journalism, seminars on journalism, symposia, competitions, and photography exhibitions, some of which are held at schools and institutes of journalism. The union maintains houses of journalists in many cities, including the Central House of Journalists in Moscow. Prizes of the Journalists’ Union of the USSR have been established.

The union is a member of the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ). Its members attend international meetings and symposia of the IOJ and organize such events in the USSR, thus promoting cooperation between the journalists’ unions of socialist countries and strengthening progressive journalism in developing and capitalist countries. The union publishes a weekly survey of the foreign press, Za rubezhom (Abroad), and the magazines Zhurnalist (Journalist), Sovetskoe foto (Soviet Photo), Demokraticheskii zhurnalist (The Democratic Journalist, a Russian-language publication of the IOJ), and lnformatsionnyivestnik (Informational Bulletin).