I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.

  • why was there a newspaper to each workplace in which workers could write their complaints and their ideas

    In which more than just airing complaints, something would be done

    at least as far as Pat Sloan writes in ~1937

    The editorial committee of a Soviet newspaper, whether of a factory wall-newspaper or of the Government’s newspaper Izvestia, does not deal with its correspondence in this light-handed way. For on every Soviet newspaper, from the very smallest to the very largest, there are members of the editorial staff whose entire work is to deal with the complaints of readers, to investigate these complaints, and to see what can be done to remedy their grievances, if any real grievances exist.

    The editorial staff of the wall-newspaper, receiving these topical comments on the life of the factory, is under an obligation, not merely to publish them, but to investigate the complaints; and to publish the letters with a statement of what has been done to redress the grievances expressed. […]

    The chapter “A People’s Press” https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/soviet-democracy/