Abstract
Central to Gorbachev’s ambitious programme of social revitalisation has been a policy of greater press freedom. Because it has opened the communications system to new and more daring criticism, glasnost’ has raised anew the problem of the balance between information and control in the Soviet political system. Decision-makers require a sufficient flow of fact and opinion to enable them to adopt policies, predict outcomes, enforce implementation, and monitor results. They must therefore permit sufficient autonomy for media organs to generate needed information without relinquishing political controls over certain important themes and topics. The centre can also be frustrated by the ability of administrative agencies to block media coverage which reflects poorly on their performance.
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Notes
V. A. Markov, ‘Metodicheskie problemy kompleksnogo issledovaniia raionnoi gazety’, in A. N. Alekseev (comp.) Metodologicheskie i metodicheskie problemy kontent-analiza (Tezisy dokladov rabochego soveshchaniia sotsiologov), vyp. I (Moscow-Leningrad: Institut sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1973) p. 89.
See Aaron Trehub, ‘Gorbachev Meets Soviet Writers: A Samizdat Account’, Radio Liberty Research RL 399/86 (23 October 1986) p. 2.
This list is derived from several recent Soviet articles dealing with the subject of criticism and immunity, as well as from the useful study by Nicholas Lampert, Whistleblowing in the Soviet Union: Complaints and Abuses under State Socialism (New York: Schocken Books, 1985) p. 54, who notes that in the majority of cases where aggrieved citizens prompted media exposés of wrong-doing, the organisations involved were of small to medium size, and located in peripheral regions rather than in major industrial centres. Among the Soviet articles, see especially Iurii Borin and Mikhail Fedotov, ‘Pravo na informatsiiu’, Zhurnalist, no. 11 (November 1986) pp. 24–5; and Evgenii Lisin, ‘Na putiakh perestroiki’, Zhurnalist, no. 11 (November 1986) pp. 4–6.
Thomas F. Remington, ‘Politics and Professionalism in Soviet Journalism’, Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 3 (Fall 1985) pp. 495–6.
M. S. Gorbachev, Zhivoe tvorchestvo naroda (Moscow: Politizdat, 1984) pp. 30–1; Pravda, 11 December 1984.
See Lilita Dzirkals, Thane Gustafson, and A. Ross Johnson, ‘The Media and Intra-Elite Communication in the USSR’, Rand report R-2869 (September 1982) esp. pp. 43–62.
Interview with Butenko, Moskovskaia Pravda, 7 May 1987. Butenko’s comment was that the Plenum had accepted the concept that ‘elements of crisis had accumulated’ in society (‘krizisnye momenty stali nakaplivat’sia’).
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© 1989 Thomas F. Remington
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Remington, T.F. (1989). Gorbachev and the Strategy of Glasnost’. In: Remington, T.F. (eds) Politics and the Soviet System. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09820-0_4
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