2.3 (July 2002): 297-302
© 2002 National Communication Association

The Past, Present, and Future of Russian Censorship

James A. Janack

Frank Ellis. From Glasnost to the Internet: Russia’s New Infosphere. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999. xxiii + 259 pages. Notes, bibliography, and index. $69.95.

This book is a bold attempt to understand the role censorship played in the Soviet Union and offers a comprehensive overview of the factors that will influence the future of censorship in the Russian Federation. Frank Ellis surveys the relevant legislation that seeks to regulate the contemporary Russian “infosphere” (a term the author suggests to replace the word media, which is too closely related to print and broadcast outlets and does not adequately take into account the role that computers and information technology play in the exchange and dissemination of information). He also provides a list of computer networks in Russia and sheds light on the attitudes of journalists and writers that affect the infosphere. In so doing, he carefully analyzes censorship’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union, surveys the current tension between journalists’ undisciplined access to free expression and legislation to regulate that expression, and finally examines the prospects for present and future attempts at censorship with an emphasis on the growing role of the Internet in Russia. Throughout the book he offers an unabashed defense of entrepreneurship and free markets of both capital and information, which, he claims, are inextricably linked.

Ellis divides the book into three sections. The first offers a thorough examination of the philosophical justification for Soviet censorship and its role in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Empire. In the second section of the book, he offers an overview of mass media legislation of the Russian Federation and the issues facing contemporary Russian journalists and writers. In the final section, Ellis analyzes the development of the Internet and an information society in Russia. Embedded in Ellis’s analysis are arguments against various criticisms of the media leveled by Russian conservatives and Western liberals.

Ellis traces the roots of Soviet censorship to the state’s founder, Vladimir Lenin, and his attitudes toward the dissemination of multiple viewpoints. Not only did Lenin fear that anti-socialist ideas might hold greater appeal for many and thus hinder the revolution, but Lenin also had complete faith in the scientific grounding of socialism. To tolerate any views that were inconsistent with socialism, as it was interpreted by the experts (leaders of the Communist Party), would be the equivalent of tolerating the views that the earth is flat or cubic. Thus the justification for censorship was established on “scientific” grounds in keeping with Soviet socialism’s materialist underpinnings.

Without ignoring the economic, environmental, and international factors in the Soviet Union’s demise, Ellis argues that the system of censorship played a decisive role in the Soviet state’s collapse. Censorship, Ellis maintains, undermined economic, scientific, and artistic initiative. The most devastating restriction on economic information was the practice of arbitrarily setting prices. As Ellis explains, “prices in conditions of a free market function as information. Planners in the Soviet economy did not, indeed could not have that information” (32). Exacerbating the economic situation was the global economy’s increased reliance on information technology and decreased emphasis on heavy industry. Such developments posed formidable problems for a state like the Soviet Union that relied disproportionately on heavy industry and sought to limit the exchange of information. Furthermore, censorship based on an “infallible” ideology restricts scientific endeavor as well. Similar to scientific heretics during the Renaissance, scientists in the Soviet Union could be persecuted for questioning dogma. That is, if Marxist-Leninist ideology has all the correct answers, it must have all the correct questions. Science’s role is to ask new questions and seek new answers, a mission at odds with ideological dogma. Similarly, art that did not contribute to the construction of communism was not supported. Ellis maintains, for example, that literature can act as a society’s moral conscience. Any society that denies itself that conscience, or creates an artificial conscience (socialist realism), cannot learn about itself and will deteriorate into moral and social decline.

In the second section of the book, Ellis offers a thorough overview of the mass media legislation of the Russian Federation as well as other pressures on Russian journalists. This section seems most useful as a resource for those interested in the development of freedom of speech in Russia and any implications that development (or lack thereof) has on Russia’s democratic progress. Starting with the 1990 Soviet era press law, Ellis traces legislative efforts to address the issue of censorship through 1996. The most comprehensive of such legislation, the 1992 Mass Media law, is included in an appendix in the book.

Despite the undeniable (if limited) progress of efforts to curb censorship in the Russian Federation, Ellis is right to note that legal reform can produce only limited results. The most significant obstacle is the ethical climate in which journalists operate and to which they contribute. Coming so soon after the release of the suffocating grasp of the Soviet system, any calls for self-regulation are likely to be rejected by journalists as efforts to reinstate self-censorship. In the meantime, the Russian infosphere may bounce between extremes of attempted censorship and utterly unregulated freedom of expression, and it will be the responsibility of the courts and other regulatory bodies to navigate between those extremes. As Ellis points out, journalists’ freedom “to print what they wish is in itself an insufficient precondition for the growth of a civil society. Freedom imposes responsibility” (94). Because of Russia’s history of censorship, legislation is unlikely to create such responsibility. As a result, the onus for responsible reporting will likely fall on the journalists themselves.

In addition to the past’s influence, the author also notes contemporary pressures such as corporate and criminal organizations eager to control the media, legislation that inhibits the activity of the media, and the Chechen conflict, which has exacerbated the contention between the state and the media. Ellis suggests that the most effective means for creating and encouraging a responsible fourth estate is a stable and enduring constitution, written or unwritten. Unfortunately, study of the Russian constitution, adopted in 1993, casts doubt on its ability to act as a protector of journalists’ and citizens’ rights. The judicial branch, which would presumably mark the first line of defense for freedom of speech, is vulnerable to the whims of the executive and legislative branches. As an alternative to both Marxist-Leninist ideology and governmental guidelines, a minority of journalists have turned instead to proposing their own journalistic codes of ethics as guides for their behavior and as a way to improve the respect for their profession. Understandably, other journalists have rejected such codes as veiled attempts at controlling journalists.

Furthermore, the grave need for investment has left the media vulnerable to the influence of both corporate interests and the state (90% of Russian media are recipients of state subsidies, according to Ellis) (105). At this point, any truly independent media outlet does not have the capital to survive. A clear example of this predicament is the recent government takeover of Media-Most, the sponsor of NTV, the only nationwide independent television network, as well as other independent news outlets. Control of Media-Most was seized by Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas monopoly and Media-Most’s largest creditor, in April 2001. Given the choice, Ellis prefers the pressure of corporate interests. Though some may claim that toeing the corporate line in a media outlet is not so different from toeing the Party line, Ellis counters that, when a journalist runs afoul of his backer’s economic interests, there are at least other outlets with other corporate interests. However, when one runs afoul of the Party’s (or the state’s) interest and the Party controls all the media outlets, there is no place left to go. Unfortunately, both the government and corporate interests have been implicated in physical attacks on journalists since 1994. The Chechen War made being a journalist in Russia a particularly dangerous profession. The combination of financial difficulties, complicated and contradictory legislation, and a campaign of intimidation conducted by organized crime, with the tacit approval of the government, leads Ellis to conclude that, “Russian journalism can only ever be at best an anemic version of what has long been taken for granted in the West” (120).

The third section of Ellis’s book, probably the most provocative for Western academics, examines further issues that will affect the development of Russia’s infosphere. Before offering a thorough survey of Russia’s computer networks and Internet service providers, Ellis notes the indignation of writers in response to the flood and popularity of Western programs on television and the Western influence of the Internet. Though literature has long held a privileged position in Russian culture as the vehicle of political and intellectual protest, Russian writers are not welcoming the elimination of censorship as whole-heartedly as one might expect. As the author puts it, traditional print-based literature is now forced to compete on the open market for the population’s attention against electronic media, including Mexican soap operas, Hollywood films, and Internet pornography. At this point, traditional literature appears to be losing.

Ellis’s discussion of the competition between electronic media and books affords him the opportunity to offer an argument against political correctness. Though Ellis contends that with the intrusion of Western media has come the “American-style obsession with race, sex (read gender) and culture and the canon of great literature” (128). This discussion seems directed more toward Western tendencies than Russian ones. Ellis condemns the efforts of political correctness to establish the terms for discussion of race and gender because political correctness was a “Marxist-Leninist construct designed, as the name suggests, to lay down standards of orthodoxy—the correct approach—to questions of class and ideology” (128). Furthermore, according to Ellis, the attack on the great canon of literature, led by the proponents of political correctness, seeks to undermine literature’s role in transmitting moral and cultural values from one generation to the next. In Russia’s case, its great canon of literature “was, possibly still is, Russia’s moral and intellectual centre [and] the screen leads away from that centre, not to it” (128). Ellis suggests that we in the West take a lesson from Russia’s struggle and recognize the “insidious influence of feminism and other excrescences of political correctness” and realize what “we in the West stand to lose” (130).

The growing role of Western sources of entertainment in Russia also allows Ellis to address accusations of cultural imperialism. Ellis contends that such accusations “are not really substantial intellectual arguments at all” (161). Ellis contends that “there is no coercion to watch the latest offering from Hollywood” (161) and that “those who believe that there is such a thing as cultural imperialism resent the choices that people make because these choices are inconsistent with their Utopian visions of how a society should be” (162). However, after arguing at length how the manipulation of the media had such a tremendous influence on Soviet society, Ellis’s contention that one can simply choose to ignore the media’s offerings seems inconsistent. Ellis’s faith in the free market becomes most obvious in the third section of the book as he notes that Russians’ seeming preference for the West’s entertainment offerings suggests that, “domestic markets are failing to fulfill a need” (163). He contends that, “the history of other communication products and services suggests that the market is a far better regulator than the bureaucratic committee” (145). He goes on to argue that attempts regulate the Internet, such as the USA’s Communications Decency Act, attack free trade under the guise of protecting minors (159). Ellis predicts that if bureaucratic interference can be minimized, the intellectual and entrepreneurial power that information technology will release in Russia has the potential to make it an information superpower over the next century.

Ellis’s qualified conclusions are guardedly optimistic. Despite the Russian government’s fear of losing control, as well as other economic and historical issues that will arise within Russia’s infosphere, the author predicts that global pressures and economic survival will ensure the development of information technology—perhaps. The book is strongest in its description of conditions and factors in Russia that influence the development of its infosphere, as well as the potential implications of those conditions. When Ellis strays from the conditions in Russia, the work is less compelling. Though his conclusions may be dubious, his book does offer a thorough treatment of the issues and organizations that are shaping Russia’s infosphere and will be of interest to those who study the development of media, freedom of speech, and their ties to social transformation.

James A. Janack is assistant professor of Speech Communication at Syracuse University.