Abstract
The press reflects the political environment in which it is situated.2 In pluralist, competitive regimes, the press can serve as an active force, a fourth estate, which is accessible to the public, provides a wide array of information, and enjoys relative autonomy from the government. However, in highly centralized, non-competitive regimes, access and information are limited. In some cases, governments settle for a conservative approach, controlling and censoring the press in order to maintain order and stability. In other cases, they give the press a more transformative role, using it to promote policies, inculcate ideology, and even to help create a new definition of humanity. At the peak of Communism, the Soviet press was an extreme example of the latter.
Nowadays nomenklaturist propaganda does not even take the trouble to try to make people believe what it says. Its aim is a different one, namely to make Soviet citizens understand that they must use a definite phraseology.
Michael Voslensky1
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Notes
Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 1983, p. 296.
Siebert, Schramm and Peterson conclude that the press, in principle, ‘takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates’, and it ‘especially reflects the system of control whereby the relations of individuals and institutions are adjusted’. Siebert, Peterson and Schramm, Four Theories, 1964, p. 1.
According to Schramm, totalitarian media systems include state ownership, censorship, a utilitarian function in the construction of socialism and a devotion to Marxist-Leninism. Siebert, Schramm and Peterson, Four Theories, 1963, p. 121 ff. According to Friedrich, totalitarian systems contain six elements: ‘(1) a totalist ideology; (2) a single party committed to this ideology and usually led by one man, the dictator; (3) a fully developed secret police; and three kinds of monopoly or, more precisely, monopolistic control: namely that of (a) mass communications; (b) operational weapons; (c) all organizations, including economic ones, thus involving a centrally-planned economy.’ Carl J. Friedrich, ‘The Evolving Theory and Practice of Totalitarian Regimes’, in Carl J. Friedrich, Michael Curtis and Benjamin R. Barber, Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views (New York: Praeger Publishers) 1969, p. 126.
See Juan J. Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, in Fred Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (eds), Macropolitical Theory (Reading: Addison-Wesley) 1975.
According to Linz, authoritarian political systems are ‘political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without an elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some points in their development, and in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill defined limits but actually quite predictable ones’. Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, p. 264. See also, Negrine, Media in Britain, 1989, p. 26. See also Siebert, Schramm and Peterson, Four Theories, 1963, p. 10; McQuail, Communication, 1983, p. 84; Jean Seaton and Ben Pimlott, ‘The Role of the Media in the Portuguese Revolution’, in Smith (ed.), Newspapers and Democracy, 1980, p. 175. See also Warren K. Agee and Nelson Traquina, A Frustrated Fourth Estate: Portugal’s Post-Revolutionary Mass Media, Journalism Monographs, no. 87, February 1984, p. 10 and Francisco Pinto Balsemao, ‘Democracy and Authoritarianism and the Role of Media in Portugal, 1974–1975’, in Maxwell (ed.), The Press and the Rebirth of Iberian Democracy, 1983, p. 117; Habte, ‘Third World’, 1983, p. 106. See also Dennis L. Wilcox, ‘Black African States’, in Curry and Dassin (eds), Press Control, 1982, p. 212; William A. Rugh, The Arab Press: News Media and Political Process in the Arab World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press) 1987; Munir K. Nassar, ‘The Middle East Press: Tool of Politics’, in Curry and Dassin (eds), Press Control, 1982, pp. 187–208.
In applying the concepts of negative and positive control to the press, it can be said that negative control implies that: 1) the press has a powerful predisposition against publishing material which the government opposes; and 2) should the press seek to publish such material, the government can either (a) convince it not to publish the material, or (b) prevent it from publishing the material. Positive control implies that: 1) the press has a powerful predisposition towards publishing material desired by the government; and 2) should the press be inclined not to publish material which the government desires, the government can either (a) convince it to publish the material, or (b) force it to publish the material. Much of this is borrowed from Felix Oppenheim, ‘Power and Causation’, in Brian Barry (ed.), Power and Political Theory: Some European Perspectives (London: John Wiley) 1976, p. 114. See also Robert A. Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control (New Haven: Yale University Press) 1982, p. 17; Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan) 1990, p. 40.
Remington, Authority, 1988, p. 4 ff.
Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. 10; Friedrich, ‘Totalitarian Regimes’, 1969, p. 144.
I will accept Friedrich and Brzezinski’s definition of ideology as an ‘action related system of ideas’. Friedrich, ‘Totalitarian Regimes’, p. 138. I am sympathetic to Schull’s definition of ideology as ‘a form of discourse or a political language — a body of linguistic propositions expressed as speech acts and united by the conventions governing them’, because it is particularly appropriate to Soviet-style systems. The arguments put forward about the role of ideology in distinguishing totalitarian press systems would fit this definition. Indeed, many of the arguments below about the impact of language on a political system are similar to Schull’s. However, the concept of ideology as discourse has not been sufficiently developed. Schull does not devote enough attention to the ideational sources of the particular linguistic propositions and therefore what distinguishes different types of ideologies. See Joseph Schull, ‘What is Ideology? Theoretical Problems and Lessons from Soviet-Type Societies’, Political Studies, vol. xl, 1992, p. 729.
Goldfarb explains: ‘Life really is different in an old-fashioned tyranny than in a totalitarian order. Though traditional autocracies may sometimes be more unpleasant and brutal, human ontology is not undergoing a conscious, politically enforced, systematic redefinition.’ Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. 4; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books), 1958, p. 470 ff.
John Wesley Young, Totalitarian Language (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia) 1991, p. 31.
On the importance of the goals of the party, see T.H. Rigby, ‘Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-Organizational Systems’, in T.H. Rigby and Ferenc Fehér (eds), Political Legitimation in Communist States (London: Macmillan) 1982, pp. 1–26.
Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. 48.
George Schopflin, Censorship and Political Communication in Eastern Europe (New York: St Martin’s Press) 1983, p. 5; Young, Totalitarian Language, 1991, p. 31.
A good example of the difficulties with taking on the dominant ideology was the attempt of Lysenko’s opponents to undermine his influence. Criticism had to be made more on ideological than scientific grounds. Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. 44. Schull associates such difficulties with Gorbachev, asserting that he ‘did not jettison (Soviet) ideology quick enough, but tried to reform it from within a language that is impervious to reform’. Joseph Schull, ‘The Self-Destruction of Ideology’, The Harriman Institute Forum, vol. 4, no. 7, July 1991, p. 2.
Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, pp. 110, 55; Young, Totalitarian Language, 1991, p. 31.
In speaking of what he views as an absence of ideology in most authoritarian regimes, or at least of the comparative weakness of authoritarian versus totalitarian ideologies, Linz writes, The student of an authoritarian regime would be hard pressed to identify explicit references to ideas guiding the regime in legal theorizing and judicial decisions in nonpolitical cases, in art criticism and scientific arguments, and would only find limited evidence of their use in education.’ Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, pp. 267–8.
Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, p. 265.
Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, p. 191.
Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, p. 229. For different examples of writing about the post-Stalin Soviet political system, see Brown, ‘Political Power’, 1984, p. 56; Grzegorz Ekiert, ‘Democratic Processes in East Central Europe: A Theoretical Reconsideration’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 21, pt. 3, 1991, p. 293; Paul Cocks, The Rationalization of Party Control’, in Chalmers Johnson (ed.), Change in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press) 1970, pp. 153–90; Richard Lowenthal, ‘Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy’, in Johnson (ed.), Change in Communist Systems, 1970, pp. 33–116; Gabriel Almond and Laura Roselle, ‘Model Fitting in Communism Studies’, in Thomas Remington (ed.), Politics and the Soviet System (London: Macmillan) 1989, p. 172 ff; Allen Kassoff, ‘The Administered Society: Totalitarianism without Terror’, World Policy Journal, vol. 16, July 1964, pp. 558–75.
Lowenthal, ‘Development vs. Utopia’, 1970, p. 51; Jeremy A. Azrael, ‘Varieties of De-Stalinization’, in Johnson (ed.), Change in Communist Systems, 1970, p. 138.
Linz describes the life of the totalitarian regime in two phases. The first is a ‘highly ideological’ phase, followed by a second phase where there is a ‘more instrumental attitude towards ideology’. In describing this process moving towards post-totalitarianism, he says, ‘The more remote the ideological initial thrust and commitment becomes and the more scholastic the use of the ideology, the more the system will either turn to personal power or, once the staff in a Weberian process proceeds to the routinization of charisma and its institutionalization in the party, toward a process of de-ideologization.’ Linz, ‘Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes’, 1975, p. 229; Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. xv.
Diane R. Spechler, Permitted Dissent in the USSR (New York: Praeger) 1982; The Rand study indicated that while there was some leadership control of debate, ‘central directives on coverage notwithstanding, each journal or newspaper has a certain latitude to take a position that reflects the public it is addressed to or the official function it serves… Different media do diverge from one another in details of their coverage, but the Central Committee remains unconcerned so long as the diversity remains within accepted bounds…’. Dzirkalis, Gustafson and Johnson, Elite Communication, 1982, p. 66.
Spechler, Dissent, 1982; Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. 57 ff.
Goldfarb, Beyond Glasnost, 1991, p. 57 ff; Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) 1979, p. 294 ff.
Spechler, Dissent, 1982, p. 255.
Schull, ‘The Self-Destruction of Ideology’, 1991.
Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 1984, p. 296.
Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1991, p. 54; Remington, Authority, 1988, p. 84; Glazov, The Russian Mind, 1985, p. 11; Voslensky, Nomenklatura, 1984, p. 296.
This model is taken from Daniel Hallin’s analysis of the Western media regarding the Vietnam war. The significance of the three spheres has been altered in order to take into account totalitarian and authoritarian media systems. Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1989, p. 117 ff.
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© 1999 Jonathan A. Becker
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Becker, J.A. (1999). Press Systems. In: Soviet and Russian Press Coverage of the United States. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598423_2
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