Jukka Pietiläinen: The Regional Newspaper in Post-Soviet RussiaEnglish summary
This study explores the changes which took place in the Russian press and journalism during the period of political reforms (1985-1991) and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The study is focused on the regional level and uses the Republic of Karelia as a case.
With the collapse of the Soviet system, the former press structure with dominant national newspapers collapsed and the regional newspapers, which preserved their circulation better, became the most important part of the press. At the regional level, a new kind of competition and pluralism emerged. For example, in Karelia the number of regional newspapers published in Russian grew from two to eleven and in the number of those in Finnish or Karelian from one to three. The development has been similar in other regions as well. According to an analysis of factors influencing the local newspaper publishing the circulation of local newspapers is higher in areas with the earlier traditions of newspaper publishing, the development of civil society and the economic welfare.
Theoretically the study is based on the notion that the Soviet Union was a fake modern society and its modern features, like the extensive use of mass media, were partly rituals with little modernising impact. One of the reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet system was that the peculiar, incomplete modernisation of the Soviet era could not handle the pressures caused by the modernising development. After the collapse of the Soviet system a new round of modernisation is beginning although the collapse of economy and the forced forms of modernisation have also strengthened the traditional elements.
The media had an important role in the collapse of the Soviet system and this study argues that it was not only the information itself which assisted in the collapse of the society but that the way in which the media presented that information was also important in discrediting the former system. After 1985, the Soviet media started to realise the traditional slogans of the media’s participation in the construction of the society and offering space for various views. In so doing the press actually participated in the destruction of the social system, which was not equipped to adjust to conflicting opinions. Paradoxically, if Soviet journalism had functioned according to the Western journalistic practice of presenting the information in a way which leaves readers in a detached and non-participant relationship to politics, the collapse of the Soviet system would not have been so sudden.
In the Soviet Union, no proper journalistic sphere could develop; journalism was an extension of both political and literary spheres. In the post-Soviet conditions the possibilities for its development are better but in many other Central and Eastern European countries the development of Western-type modern newspaper and modern news form has been more rapid. One of the reasons for this is that Russia has so far also remained outside major Western investments in the media sector which in other Central and Eastern European countries has been accompanied with imported formats and models of making journalism. Moreover, Russia has longer traditions in endogenous forms of journalism which could not be expected to change as rapidly.
The problems with the development of civil society and political system also play a role: journalism based on quotations and interpretation from the universal, commonsense point of view can develop only in conditions in which source organisations and comments are easily available and where a widely accepted common sense point of view exists. These conditions are so far poorly developed in Russia. It is also important that among the old school of journalists the adaptation of detached and standardised forms of journalism has been seen as a loss. There is some evidence that journalism has adopted practices from abroad, for example, the Finnish-language Karjalan Sanomat started to resemble Western journalism more rapidly than Russian newspapers.
According to a survey conducted in Petrozavodsk in February 2000 the audience is clearly divided on the basis of age and partly on the basis of gender. The scandalous, oppositional newspaper has proven to be the most popular and successful part of the press, while the old and new “quality”, elite-oriented newspapers appeal to only small part of the audience.
An empirical examination of journalism in two newspapers indicates that journalists have gained clear control of the production of newspaper text. In the Soviet era the newspapers were filled with articles by outside authors and official texts, while during a short period of glasnost the letters to the editor played an important role. On the other hand, journalistic control has not become complete inside the texts. Among the different textual strategies the professional news form has received more popularity although non-commentary monologue and a news form in which the citations from the sources are mixed with the comments by journalist are still common. Only the texts written solely by outside authors have clearly lost their share in the newspapers.
Text of the dissertation (pdf-format)