Ellen Mickiewicz

Redefining the Political System of the USSR: Mass Support for Political Change

Using data from a national public opinion survey carried out in the Soviet Union during November and December 1989, we explore two attitudes relevant to the revolutionary changes there: (1) attitudes toward change and political democracy and (2) attitudes toward a core component of socialist ideology, the locus of responsibility for social well-being (the state or individuals?). These variables are unrelated, with the sample relatively evenly divided among the intersecting cells of a cross tabulation. While social conflict may be mitigated by the small sizes of absolutely opposing groups, consensus may also be hard to reach. Ethnicity, education, income, age, party membership, and life satisfaction have important effects on these attitudes. We discuss how attitude patterns in our data may be related to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and to problems faced by the independent successor states as they develop new institutions and foster new values.

Piracy, Policy, and Russia's Emerging Media Market:

The birth of a media market in Russia affords a unique opportunity to study the collision of international and national norms and practices. The refraction of globalization—involving, in this case, copyright protection and the program market—through local values and the rather different outcomes of sanctions and market inducements emerge as critical issues. The players in this drama are major and independent U.S. movie studios and trade organizations; U.S. governmental agencies involved in trade and assistance; and Russian movie studios, television stations, legislators, police, and, curiously, dissidents whose early advocacy of piracy helped build a more pluralized media system. Without an adequate framework of domestic laws and enforcement institutions, Russian broadcast television stations nonetheless dramatically curtailed their practice of pirating U.S. films—a result of complex alliances and incentives.

Regional Variation in Female Recruitment and Advancement in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

It is commonly reported in the West that the representation of women in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is far below their representation in the population at large, and that although there are slightly increasing rates of admissionl, continuation of the large disparity seems to constitute a relatively permanent feature of central recruitment policy and procedures.1 In 1970, for example, women formed 53.9 percent of the general population and 22.2 percent of the CPSU. However, that aggregate figure masks a considerable degree of regional variation. Publication of data from several regional party archives provides the opportunity to examine more closely the process of female mobility within the party and to advance more precise notions about determinants of that process than had previously been possible. First, there are distinct differences between the Central Asian republics of Muslim culture and all others. Between 1954 and 1962, during the Khrushchev regime, these Muslim republics recruited women into their parties in the same proportion as the national average. After 1962, however, the rise in female recruitment was less steep in the two Muslim republics for which there are data: Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. By 1972, only 19 percent of the Kazakh party was female. On the other hand, two Baltic republics, Latvia and Estonia, registered percentages of female memberslhip far larger than both the national party and the Muslim republic parties; the Baltic proportion of women in the party was almost 32 percent by 1968. The republic of Georgia shows a pattern of female recruitment that was far below the national proportionally, up to 1941, and then exceeded the national average in every subsequent year, although that percentage has remained stable (around 23.5 percent) from 1957 until the last data point in 1972. Between the very hiigh female proportion of the Baltic republics and the relatively low proportion for the Central Asian republics are two oblasts, or provinces, in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. Both Perm and Moscow provinces show hiigher female participation than does the national average, although both are lower than the Baltic statistics. By 1974 the Perm organization was almost 28 percent female, and by 1972 the Moscow party organization was about 31 percent female. Rates of growth of female membership were also considerably lower than in Latvia and Estonia.

Evaluation Studies of Soviet Party Members

Recent studies by academic sociologists in the Soviet Union indicate a com- mitment to the expansion of information and development of evaluative studies of the be- havior of Communist Party members. In particular, the present article analyzes patterns of newspaper consumption among party members and their behavior within organizations. The latter relates further to the efficacy of transmission of information upward through party organizations to central decision-makers.

The Functions of Communications Officials in the USSR: A Biographical Study

This study analyzes the biographies of a number of Soviet communications officials in order to address some fundamental and increasingly important questions about the communications process and about prospects for responding to the dilemmas that recent information about the Soviet audience has revealed. Major efforts to examine audience opinion have been undertaken in the Soviet Union. To a considerable extent these efforts are a response to the perception, on the part of media officials, that foreign communications sources have made inroads into the communications system and have created, especially in this time of increased bipolar world tension, alternative channels of information. As the officials recognize, the internal media system has changed substantially, and new patterns of communications consumption have emerged. But as a result of the findings of audience surveys, basic elements of the political doctrine concerning communications have been undermined. In order to enhance the efficacy of communications, that doctrine and the practices that flow from it are under discussion among Soviet communications experts. The discussions challenge the orthodoxy of Soviet communications doctrine, calling into question such fundamental assumptions as the direct relationship between higher education and the persuasive power of the media, the actual comprehension of media messages among the population at large, and the preferences of various segments of the population.1 The pressure for change, for making more feedback possible and for increasing the efficacy of communications, has led to the creation of the Letters Department of the Central Committee, but the increased feedback that will presumably flow through that channel is still self-selected. Simply expanding the channels for this (nonrepresentative) feedback does not address the central problem-how to make the communications system more persuasive-since large segments of the population do not volunteer their opinions unless their views are solicited by scientifically designed and reliable surveys. Activists are the ones who make their opinions known through the channels on which the policy-makers in the field of communications normally rely, and their views cannot be said to represent those of the public at large. These dilemmas must be seen against the backdrop of the vigorous growth of the communications media in general and the rapid, though belated, development of television in particular. For example, in 1976 the Soviet television industry produced over seven million sets compared to an average annual production rate of about 480,000 sets between 1950 and 1960.2 A dense satellite system has made possible the reception of signals over eleven time zones and in hitherto inaccessible areas, and over 86 percent of the Soviet population now have access to television broadcasts. This growth and the new technologies have

Changes in the media under Gorbachev: The case of television

Under Gorbachev the Soviet media have led the way in the process of mobilization. Television, in particular, has become the first truly national medium in Soviet history, reaching virtually all parts of the country and attracting an audience the size of which has never been approached before. Under Gorbachev, the presentation of Soviet television has changed considerably, and audience impact is likely to have changed in parallel although adequate measures of viewer reaction are not currently available. Spacebridges between the USSR and other countries have been a particularly notable innovation, although a controversial one to many Soviet commentators. Although it may have a long‐term homogenizing effect, the wider penetration of television into Soviet life may raise expectations in a manner that will present difficulties to the central leadership.

When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina . By W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 278p.

It takes a vacuum for the American mainstream press to seize an opening to perform its vital role. And it takes a crack in what the authors portray as an edifice of official secrecy, lying, intimidation, and retribution for the mainstream press to do its job—holding public officials to standards of accountability.

22.50 cloth,

Mikhail Gorbachevs program for the renovation of the Soviet political system is a reform of considerable magnitude. The sequencing of policies provides important information about the nature of the Soviet system and the dynamics of change, and in that sequence, communications policies shifted earliest and most radically. Virtually from the beginning of Gorbachevs tenure in power, an observer of Soviet politics could detect in the use of the media the operation of a key mechanism in effecting major change. Glasnost, the new openness and public discussion, is a media phenomenon. The new role accorded the media is in many ways a revolutionary one. The expanded functions of the media in the Gorbachev administration require them to precipitate institutional change in the Soviet political system. Mobilization will be temporary if there is insufficient structural change to support it, and the media system itself has become a principal factor in breaking down dysfunctional institutions inherited from previous regimes, strengthening weak institutions (such as the soviets) and developing new types of institutions. As a consequence of this dynamic, systemic change in the media system precedes other large-scale change, and, in fact, before any major economic and political reforms of the Gorbachev administration were launched, extensive changes in the system of political communication had been made.

15.00 paper.

In 1950, Frederick Barghoorn’s book, The Soviet Image of the United States, brought to the American public an understanding of how the Soviet Union portrays the United States.2 Since the publication of that seminal work, the issue of mutual perceptions has increased in importance. In the very critical problems of international security and arms control — the strategic theories and the mission capabilities that are associated with them — the question of ‘mirror-imaging’ has been raised with some urgency. Does each superpower project its own security strategies and gaming formulae on the other, resulting in surprised denunciations of deception when the other side is shown to have been following its own independent strategic course? The greater attention to the pitfalls of mirror-imaging have led the strategic communities on both sides to attempt to understand with less parochialism the particularities of how the Soviet Union and the United States perceive each other. In a sense, then, the original questions posed by Barghoorn years ago have returned with even greater urgency.