Leaflet - a weapon of the proletariat or a modern form of advertising?!

Leaflet is a printed product with informational, advertising, religious or propaganda content. In essence, as well as in appearance, it is a sheet of paper with a text message and/or illustrations printed on one or both sides of the leaflet. The simplest and most affordable of the printing products.

It is not possible to accurately determine the historical period of the appearance of leaflets. The so-called “letters of letters”, manually copied by scribes to disseminate socially significant (political, military, religious) information, were in circulation in Rus' long before the actual replacement of runic writing with the adapted Latin alphabet, carried out by the Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius. Unlike sealed correspondence, which, by the way, became the prototype of booklets, letters of authorization were transported in open form and read out by messengers in crowded places.

 Leaflets were first noted as a weapon of information warfare and a means of ideological propaganda in the German Peasant Wars at the beginning of the 16th century. Just a decade later, in 1534, the French king Francis I was surprised to find a Protestant leaflet of heretical content at the door of his chambers in the castle of Amboise, which served as the beginning of the famous “leaflet case” and the persecution of the Huguenots. Since then, the leaflet has become one of the symbols and main tools of underground agitation and struggle.

However, both the unlucky French ruler and subsequent dictators would have been somewhat confused if they learned that during the numerous wars of the 20th century The seemingly harmless leaflet was thrown into enemy territory in huge quantities to demoralize and undermine the morale of the civilian population and army personnel by both warring sides. Even then, awareness of the importance of information as the most formidable weapon in the history of mankind, with difficulty penetrating under helmets, was tossing and turning in the narrow-minded heads of the military leadership.

With the development of modern media, ideological propaganda switched to more technological methods zombification of the controlled population. And the leaflet, without losing a bit of its functionality, has become a powerful tool for conducting budget advertising campaigns. Due to the possibility of producing gigantic circulations at a very modest production cost, the leaflet enjoys well-deserved popularity among advertisers.