The Media in Post Soviet Russia

One important yardstick of democracy and civil liberties is the freedom of the press. When a country is being run by an authoritarian regime, such as the Communist Party in the USSR, the media tends to be strictly controlled by the government in order to preserve the party line. One of the ideals necessary to democracy is freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Without these two basic liberties the state can control and manipulate what the citizens know and also silence opposition. One interesting question to consider is when a country transitions from a totalitarian form of government to a democratic one how does this effect the freedom of the press, and how long it takes for the media to cut the ties that it has with the government. Hopefully by studying this question it will make it easier to understand the process that Russia is currently going through by looking at the media as a microcosm of the evolution of Russia.

Most of the scholars agree that so far Russia has been having a slow and difficult time transiting the media from the public sector to the private. One of the reasons is the lack of basic infrastructure, such as publicly owned printing presses.(Androunes 12) Another reason that scholars have pointed out that the transition has been especially slow is that the people working in the media do not have the expertise to know how to run a privately owned business. Now that the state is no longer funding their enterprises the media workers are having to learn new skills such as marketing and how to use commercials and advertisements to make a profit. One interesting holdover effect of soviet era media is that the press became so accustomed to supporting whoever was in office at the time that they have continued this trend even when it wasn't mandated by the government. In order to better understand this issue it will be necessary to study the evolution of the media from the beginning of the Soviet Union to the era of Glasnost and Perestroika, and finally what the media was like under Yeltsin and Putin. It will also be necessary to study the many obstacles to freedom of the press that are in Russia, and why they are there. Some of these obstacles are structural and others are cultural ones, but together they make for an intimidating stumbling block for the progress of free and independent media.

During the Soviet period all of the Media in Russia was centrally controlled by the communist party. During the duration of Soviet rule freedom of the press was nonexistent and journalists were commonly, and correctly, perceived as mouth pieces of the Communist Party.
One interesting paradox that was central in the Soviet Media was that it was called the "Peoples Press". According to the official propaganda all of the media was supposed to be a reflection of the common Soviet citizens interests and values. One paper that especially espoused this notion was the official paper of the Communist Party, Pravda, "Almost every issue of Pravda... carries a front-page photograph glorifying the common man." (Hopkins 1) This notion is particularly absurd, the media during the Soviet era was used mainly as propaganda to shape public opinion in favor of the Communist Party.

The only way that this ludicrous view of the press makes any sense at all is if it is viewed through the Communist idea that the government and the people are one and the same. If viewed through this lens then press' ideological bent, as well as their highly opinionated and biased reporting, makes perfect sense. One way that the Soviet government helped keep journalists compliant was by maintaining control over all of the journalism schools in the country. In all there was about a dozen schools of journalism in Soviet era Russia and they were all run by the Party. In order for an applicant to get accepted into the School they had to be approved by a Communist Party Committee. The Schools curriculum mostly focused on indoctrinating the students into the ideologies of Marxism and Communism. The Students learned that it was their job to take the facts and to reinterpret them so that they better fit into the Communist viewpoint so that the common Man could better understand it. Also another important lesson that these students learned was that any dissent from the Party line was not to be tolerated, any student that did attempt to criticize the government or party was immediately expelled and served as a powerful example to the others. (Androunas 30-31)

The Soviet Press and the Communist Party were highly integrated. It was understood that to be a journalist in the Soviet Union you had to either be a member of the Communist Party or in the process of becoming a member. The Party was also in charge of appointing all of the editors and managers to the various manifestations of the Soviet Media. Also in order to make sure that everything that got printed conformed to the interests of the Communist Party everything that got sent out had to go through a censorship agency for approval. (Hopkins 28-29 ;Androunas 38-39)

The Communist Party had their hand in every single aspect of the Media during the Soviet era. Aside from just controlling the content of the paper the Party also controlled how much the papers would cost and how many would be printed up and distributed. Since all of the industry in the Soviet Union was owned by the Communist Party this meant that the Party owned every aspect of the production and distribution of the media. The media was treated like every other industry in the Soviet Union in that the Communist Party established economic goals and plans for it. In a very real sense the Media was run and manufactured like a machine. Everything was produced by the party, from the paper to the ink to the Journalists themselves, and once the product was finished it was Shipped out by Soviet distribution to be sold in Soviet owned stores. (Hopkins 31)

The main goal of the Media was to work as propaganda. Unlike most media, little if any thought was given to profits. On way in which this manifested itself was the actual cost of the papers. Since there was no concern as to whether or not a profit at the end of the year the papers were sold for very cheap, sometimes at our below production costs. The reason for this was that the Party felt that papers, especially the Pravda, where important to help shape the publics opinion. These papers were the only source of information in the Soviet Union, so if someone wanted to have any idea of what was going on in the country than that's where they had to turn to for their information. It was almost expected that every good Communist Party member would subscribe to at least one magazine or paper.

One of the major duties of the Soviet media was to inform the public of what the proper behavior was for a Soviet citizen. The papers try and frame these ideas in underhanded ways, "A typical statement in Soviet newspaper editorials begins, "All the Soviet people unanimously approve of...," followed by a decision or action of the Communist Party. What is being said, quite obviously, is that all Soviet citizens should approve of the action." (Hopkins 40) The media was also used extensively to talk about government policies and how they fit in with the context of the official Marxist-Leninist dogma. These papers stress in various ways that an ideal citizen should be honest and have a love of state and of labor. These ideas are important but the thing that these papers stressed the most was a total belief and immersion in Marxism and Communism. These were the religion that the Party picked for the Soviet Union and the newspapers made it clear that anything else was heresy and not to be tolerated.

The Soviet Media system remained fairly unchanged until Gorbachev rose to the top of the Communist Party and started to initiate his policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in 1985. While the press reform initiated by Gorbachev fell far short of freedom of press, it was an important step in that direction. The policy of Perestroika was an attempt to reform the Soviet economy and Glasnost was an attempt to allow more freedom and openness in the Soviet system. Under the new policy of Glasnost people with dissenting opinions were allowed to voice them and some access to the press, but opposition to the actual socialist system was not tolerated.

Despite the short comings of Glasnost there were several important things that came to light in the press due to it's policies. One of the things that was finally publicized was more information about the human rights abuses and whole sale slaughter carried out by former Soviet leaders such as Joseph Stalin. Also Russian citizens were allowed to see more of the inner workings of the Communist Party, and the arguments and power struggles within the party. Despite the notable advances in the openness during the era of Glasnost, the press wasn't able to print anything that they wanted to. One of the most famous examples of this is the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It took the press twelve days to report on the devastating nuclear accident. (McNair 2)

Once the Soviet people found out about the Chernobyl disaster they were understandably upset about the long time it took for the information to come out, and the Soviet media lost some of it's legitimacy as well. Another thing that was causing the Soviet Media to lose legitimacy was the increasing availability of outside information. Some of the ways that the Soviet citizens were acquiring outside news included "imported video cassettes, foreign radio broadcasts... samizdat publications and expanding opportunities for Soviet citizens to make contact with foreigners." (McNair 52) Probably the biggest success associated with Glasnost is that the workings of the party became more open and things that weren't open to criticism started to open up as well. One good example of this phenomenon is the institution of the Military, "of 216 articles about the Militsiya (Soviet police) published by Pravda, Izvestia, and Moscow News in 1987, only 67 were positive, while 40 were critical, and 109 were neutral." (Mcnair 54-55) Of course when you start to criticize things that have been untouchable for so long some people are not going to like it.

The conservatives in the party felt that Glasnost had gone to far and that it was hurting the party when stories that were critical about it were published. In fact many people had problems with these new openness. One of the groups who had a problem with the openness was some of the elderly citizens who survived the Stalin era who felt that by printing articles that were critical of that time period took the advancements that they made for granted. Also, while national media outlets such as Pravda complied with Glasnost, local papers often stayed moored in old style Soviet reporting.

Ultimately the twin policies of Glasnost and Perestroika helped to accelerate the demise of the Soviet Union. It only makes sense that if you give a people a taste of freedom then it will cause them to want even more. Also by opening the Media the flaws of the Soviet system became more and more apparent to the Soviet people. On June 12, 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected as the first Russian President, which marked the beginning of a new era in Russia. Obviously anytime a system makes a dramatic change, such as one from communism to capitalism and democracy, it's not going to be easy and there are going to be growing pains. Also it is going to take a while for institutions within the system to fully transition into the new system. (Androunas 2-3)

One of these institutions that is still in the process of slowly transiting to the new system is the media. When Boris Yeltsin came to power one of the first things that he did was ban the Pradva. When Boris Yeltsin reinstated Pradva it had officially switched affiliations to Yeltsin, which only goes to prove the old adage about how the new boss was the exact same as the old one. Even after Russia had been an official democracy for awhile there still were may obstacles to the freedom of the press. These obstacles were found in governmental institutions, the incompetence of the media and the prevailing attitudes of the Russian people themselves.

One of the biggest obstacles to the freedom of the Russian media is state ownership of industries that are key to the publication and distribution of the media. One of the biggest examples of this is the state monopoly of printing press, distribution and newsprint production. (Androunas 12) Even if the media is technically free, it will never be free in any meaningful way until it can become financially independent from the government. If the media depends upon the government for things that are essential to it's existence than it would be an obvious conflict of interest for the media to print anything negative about the government. In many ways the State took the place of the Party in it's control of the media. In Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the media was controlled by The Ministry of Press and Mass Information.

These were not the only problems facing the media in Russia at this time. Another problem that the print media had to face was the post offices. Certain post offices refused to deliver certain newspapers if they disagreed with the ideological stance of the paper. Also, if the post office decided to deliver the paper at all, it was usually late so by the time the customer received the paper the news was already old. Another problem that the papers faced was the basic lack of resources, "One day Soviet Byelorussia, the major republican newspaper because of lack of paper." (Androunas 14) All in all none of this makes for a successful media, or for one that is likely to have much legitimacy.

One of the results of these adverse conditions was a decline in the rates of subscription to papers. Almost all of the Russian newspapers had lost large percentages of subscribers by 1993,
"Izvestiya has kept 25% of the 1992 subscribers (800,000 compared to 3,200,000), Komsomolskaya pravda- 15% (1,831,000 of 12,941,000), Nezavisimaya gazeta- 39% (27,000 of 70,000), a weekly Argumenti i facti- 35% (8,873,000 of 25,693,000). (Androunas 15) Of all of the papers the conservative ones fared the best, for example Pradva managed to keep 49% of it's readers. Obviously it is going to hurt the media, both financially and in a loss of legitimacy, if they are losing more than half of their readership.

Another problem that plagued the media was the general incompetence of the people who worked in the media. The media's incompetence ran from incompetence in terms of financing to incompetence in reporting. During the Soviet Era, when the press was centrally controlled, everything was financed and organized by the Communist Party. Because of this the people who actually worked in the media did not have to worry about basic market principals such as profit, supply and demand, production costs or advertising. To make matters even more complicated the Communist Government was more interested in the media as ideological tools than as was to make a profit. One way that this idea manifested itself was in the cost of the papers. Since the Communist Party was more interested in spreading their propaganda than in profit they kept the cost of the paper low, sometimes lower than production costs, so that as any people as possible would read them. The party also kept the cost of production and distribution artificially low for the media. Another thing that the Party did was base the number of each paper that produced based upon it's ideologic value, meaning that magazines like the Pradva got printed more than ones based on general interests.

The way in which the Communist Party ran the media had nothing to do with capitalism so when the Russian economy switched over to capitalism the media had a lot of difficulty transiting itself. The people in the media did not have the practical experience and knowledge necessary to be able to run a functioning business in a capitalist economy. One area that the media men's ignorance and incompetence was obvious was their approach to advertising. During the Soviet era none of the media, except for small local papers, had any traditional advertising. This made perfect sense to the Communist party since they weren't really all that interested in profits and whoring out their media to commercialism would pervert their noble mission anyway. It also didn't help that the companies in Russia also didn't have any experience in marketing either.

In a capitalist economy, as opposed to a communist one, it is necessary for the press to turn a profit and one of the best ways for it to accomplish this is through advertising. The first problem, with regards to advertising, that had to be dealt with was the lack of consumer items to actually advertise in the press. The Russian economy was suffering due to it's transition to a capitalist one and there was a scarcity of consumer goods in the state. Another factor that hampered the papers at first in regard to advertisements was that the readers were used to papers that had no advertisements in them. It is easy to see why someone who had always received their paper with no space taken out for advertisements would feel cheated upon receiving one chock full of advertising. Another problem was the type of adds that companies placed in the paper were inappropriate for their audiences, "the general interest newspapers of four to eight pages are filled with the kinds of adds that are published in the business section of The New York Times or trade publications." (Andournas 17) Once the companies start to get more adapted to capitalism and modern marketing then the advertising will get better and better. Another problem that has come with advertising and the commercialization of the press is corruption. One of the biggest problems with corruption is found in the T.V. industry in Russia. Often companies can bribe a reporter into doing a commercial on air in the context of an actual report.

Another thing that journalists in Russia have to worry about is assignations. In Russia assignations are often carried out against Journalists who speak out against corruption in the government or criticize organized crime, "one grim statistic of Vladimir Putin's Russia is that in the six years since he became president, more than 13 journalists have been killed." (Clancy) One of the journalists was Anna Politkovska. Politkovska was a well known investigative journalist who took a dangerous position on the war in Chechnya, and was likely killed as a result. In Russia it is not only dangerous for Russian journalists, but for any journalist who reports about the wrong thing. In 2004 the American journalist Paul Klebnikov was killed for reporting about the rampant corruption of Russia. Obviously incidents like this will decrease the motivation for any journalist to report about corruption in Russia. Until Russian journalists are able to criticize corrupt politicians the media in Russia will remain a weak institution with no political clout.

Another factor that has slowed the transition from the communist media to a western style capitalist one is the mindset of the people in the media. It is important to remember that the majority of reporters in Russia where also reporters during the Soviet Era. Also a lot of these journalists went to the Soviet journalist schools where they were indoctrinated to support the party. It only makes sense that despite the Soviet Unions collapse the reporters would continue to report in the same manner. One of the major aspects of Soviet style journalism was that reporters were expected to report whatever they were told to, and to always cast the Party in a favorable light. Now that there is no more Party to support one might assume that the journalists would be against the new order that brought down the system that they were so loyal too. This of course was the exact opposite of what actually happened. During the Soviet era journalists were perceived, and treated, like they were merely puppets and mouthpieces for the party. It was this tradition that the media choose to follow after the collapse of Communism. The journalists were trained to support whoever was in power, so it made no difference to them if that person was Joseph Stalin or Boris Yeltsin.

Another thing to take into consideration is the mindset of the entire Russian population. For most of Russians history, at least from the time of the czars to the time of the Soviet Union, personal freedom and liberty was nonexistent. An idea such as freedom and freedom of speech can be declared and legalized but, due to the culture and history, it will take a bit longer for it to truly come to fruition. In the Communist culture people were made to believe that personal freedoms were not nearly as important as the good of society. These people are so used to the media supporting the government that it seems natural to them, and when the media does dissent a decent amount of people feel that it overstepped it's boundaries.

Another problem with the Russian media is the clear and overbearing favoritism showed to certain candidates in political races. The 1996 presidential campaign is a good case study for this issue. In the early parts of the election Boris Yeltsin had a low approval rate and it looked unlikely that he would be able to win the presidency again. At the time the most likely candidate was a communist, Gennady Zyuganov. Obviously if a communist came to power in Russia than it would be disastrous for the new economic elite that had risen in the society, including the elite in the media. In order to protect their industry the media started to give more and more favorable coverage to Yeltsin while they basically either ignored Zyuganoz or published articles about him that cast him in a negative light. After the intensive media campaign Yeltsin was able to completely turn his image around and win the election with 54% of the total vote. (Burton)

Some media institutions are more free than others. The press has relatively more freedom than television and radio which are both state controlled. The Russian president has a great degree of latitude to shape the shows on the government owned channels, Channel One, NTV and RTR. The television is a particularly dangerous institution for the government. The televisions combination of images and sounds makes it particularly convincing and increases it's appeal to the masses of Russia. One of the reasons that the government plays such an aggressive role in it's control of television is because of what happened in Chechnya. Vladimir Putin was under the impression that the television coverage of the war in Chechnya had been responsible for Russia having to withdraw from that conflict. After this experience Putin was determined not to allow the media have such a decisive impact on policy again, and one of the ways that he accomplished that goal was by exerting even more control of the State run television. (Morley)

In a country such as Russia it is important to keep a close eye on how the media is doing, because it helps to serve as a test for how democratic and free Russia truly is. It is commonly accepted that the media plays an indispensable role in an democracy. For this reason the media's freedom is a helpful measuring mark for how democratic and free a system really is. According to Ralph Nader any democracy "required rich and diverse sources of information." This makes perfect sense, because since it is the citizens who vote to put the government officials in office they are the ones who require fair and accurate information before Russia can claim to have finished their transition into a democracy. In order for the Russian elections to be truly legitimate and fair the public has to be aware of the policies of the government and the actual consequences of governmental actions rather than the propaganda that currently passes for the press. Also in order to truly establish a fair election process the media will have to stop showing such blatant favoritism towards candidates, and they will also have to give opposition candidates more access to the media as opposed to ignoring them or ust making them look foolish. It truly is like James Madison said when the United States was in transition from being a colony to a democracy, "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."

There are several steps that Russia needs to take before the media can truly claim to be free, and actual be a force in politics. One of the first things that must happen is the press must strive to be as independent as possible from the government, although that can't truly happen until the government gives up its control of industries that are integral to the production and distribution of the media. Another thing that has to be done is there must be more effort taken to protect journalists who take unpopular opinions, until a journalist can report without fearing for their life than daring reporting in Russia will obviously be stifled. Another thing that goes along with this is that there must be more effort to find the killers, and the people who hired them, and bring them to justice so that it creates an atmosphere where there is less motivation to target journalists. It will be interesting to see how much the media changes and becomes freer as time goes on and the Soviet system starts to fade more and more from the public conciseness, and the people who were a part of that system start to die off.

Works Cited

Androunas, Elena. Soviet Media in Transition; Structural and Economic Alternatives. Westport: Praeger, 1993.
Burton, Matthew. A Survey of Corruption in Russia. Impublished.org, 2001. 30 Apr. 2007
Clancy, Jim. "A Look At Russia's Media Landscape." Cnn 15 Dec. 2006. 30 Apr. 2007
Hopkins, Mark W. Mass Media in the Soviet Union. New York: Pegasus, 1970.
McNair, Brian. Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Morley, Jefferson. "Putin's Russia -- Case Study in Media Control." Washington Post 13 June-July 2006. 30 Apr. 2007