From controlling military information to controlling society: the political interests involved in the transformation of the military media under Putin

Abstract

This article demonstrates how the Russian state's reconstruction of the communication network for the armed forces and information services served two purposes: firstly, to silence the free media and exert control of information on a nationwide level, and secondly, to draw upon the armed forces to reinforce its patriotic discourse. The relative liberalization of the media in the early 1990s led to a media defeat of the Russian army during the First Chechen war. Consequently, in the second war, renewed control of the media was progressively established, the goal of which was to deny access to independent journalists, on one hand, and to set up a more efficient communication network, on the other. This restructured network encompassed the internal network of the armed forces but was also destined to serve the outer civilian world – the Rosinformtsentr was created to this end. The implementation of these measures intensified over the summer of 2000, finally culminating in the adoption of the Information Security Doctrine, the revamping of military media and the placement of siloviki members in certain media posts. By putting the army back on center stage and giving it a prominence that it had lacked ever since the end of the USSR, the government attempted to mobilize society around a nationally sanctioned idea. The army, which easily fell into its historically familiar role, which it had actually never fully relinquished, has been able to easily reactivate this military-patriotic tendency in the public and to thus propagate a form of traditional military thinking that tends to be resistant to reform.

Keywords:

• media network
• security doctrine
• embedding
• censorship
• militaristic
• communications
• information
• restructure

Notes

 1. V. Soloviov, ‘Stanovlenie nezavissimoι voennoι pechati v Rossii: opyt “Nezavissimogo Voennogo Obozreniia”’.

 2. V. Soloviov, ‘Stanovlenie nezavissimoι voennoι petchati v Rossii: opyt “Nezavissimogo Voennogo Obozreniia”’

 3. Iu. Jeglova, ‘Fenomen ‘prikomandirovannoι’ zhurnalistiki’.

 4. The list appears in Iou. Jeglova, ‘Fenomen ‘prikomandirovannoι’ journalistiki’

 5. See Soloviov, ‘Stanovlenie nezavissimoι voennoι pechati v Rossii: opyt “Nezavissimogo Voennogo Obozreniia”’ and Zheglova ‘Fenomen “prikomandirovannoι” zhurnalistiki’.

 6. A. Grigoriev, ‘Voennaιa reforma na kanali Rossiia’; I. Konovalov, ‘Voennaιa telezhurnalistika: osobennosti zhanra’.

 7. Founded in December 1997 with a print run of 4000 copies, NVO would be read by the military and political elites alike, increasing its circulation to 30,000 by 2002.

 8. On this issue, see Elkner, ‘Dedovshchina and the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers under Gorbachev'.

 9. V. Soloviov, ‘O chom oumolchala “belaιa kniga” voennogo vedomstva’, 4.

10. A. Mikhaιlov, Chetchenskoe koleso.

11. O. Koltseva, ‘Whose war?’.

12. E. Sieca-Kozlowski, ‘Eclairage’.

13. Rossiiskaιa Gazeta, 21 June 2002.

14. http://www.watchdog.cz/?show = 000000–000003–000002–000028&lang = 2, 23 January 2003.

15. The Russia Journal, no.71.

16. V. Moukhine, ‘Novaιa sistema informirovaniia voιsk’, 8.

17. IEWS Russian Regional Report 3, no.10 (12 March 1998).

18. Nezavisimaιa Gazeta, 4 May 1998.

19. Governmental Decree of 1 October 1999, no.1538.

20. E. Pain, ‘The Second Chechen War: The Information Component’.

21. A. Soldatov, ‘Confessions of a “disinformer” from Lubyanka’.

22. Mikhaιlov, Chetchenskoe koleso.

23. Ch. Caryl, ‘Objectivity to Order’.

24. ‘Russia's media war over Chechnya’, World Mediawatch, in partnership with the BBC monitoring service, 19 November 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/528620.stm.

25. V. Sedov, ‘Myhdu molotom i nakoval'neι’.

26. Twelve channels emit broadcasts from the Ostankino Tower.

27. H. Feller, ‘Russian military reform: mass media control and information security’.

28. Quotation from E. Albats, ‘Power Play: Information Security Doctrine Redux’.

29. Available for online consultation at the Security Council of the Russian Federation website: http://www.scrf.gov.ru/.

30. V. Sytcheva, ‘The Security Council to establish order in the information field’.

31. S. Lambroschini, ‘New Russian media document gives cause for concern’.

32. Feller, ‘Russian military reform’.

33. Feller, ‘Russian military reform’

34. L. Walker, ‘Analysis: New Russian media outlets promote nation-building ethos’.

35. N. Gevorkian, N. Timakova and A. Kolesnikov, Ot Pervogo Litsa. Razgavory s Vladimirom Putinym, p. 24.

36. Ministry of Defense Directive no.166.

37. A. Bondarenko, ‘Proιgrannaιa informatsionnaιa voιna’.

38. A. Kamakin, ‘The media have the right to good breeding’.

39. I. Plugatariov, ‘Voennaιa sistema informatsii dvizhctria po zamknutomeu kreugeu. Kliuchevye dolzhnosti zaniali byvchie sotrudniki FSB’.

40. E. Sieca-Kozlowski, ‘Système d'information militaire: des postes-clés occupés par des anciens officiers du KGB’.

41. The English version of the magazine is entitled Russian Military Review.

42. http://www.strana.ru, 20 November 2002.

43. ‘Russian military broadcaster expands at home and abroad’, Krasnaιa Zvezda, 21 December 2005, via the BBC monitoring service.

44. FAPSI evolved from the merger of two KGB directorates (one for protection of state secrets and the other for handling electronic intelligence and counter-intelligence). Rife with corruption, it was dismantled by Vladimir Putin in March of 2003.

45. For this reason, the elimination of federal financing for the local and regional press in August 2000 signaled a change in relations between the government and the media.

46. On 25 April 2000, President Vladimir Putin divided Russia into seven ‘federal districts,’ a sort of ‘super-region’ that would regroup several smaller subjects of the Federation. Each of these federal districts is headed by a presidential envoy, known as the Plenipotentiary Representative (Polpred in Russian), aided by his own staff.

47. Rossiiskaιa Gazeta, 30 September 2000.

48. Cf. note 44.

49. ‘Putin continues to tighten screws on media’, Russian Regional Report 5, no.36 (4 October 2000).

50. Cf. Feller, ‘Russian military reform’.

51. Law ‘On Organs of the Federal Security Service in the Russian Federation’, no.40-FZ, adopted by the Duma on 22 February 1995 and signed by President Yeltsin on 3 April 1995; Article 15.

52. Operations such as the one in the northeastern theater in 2002. See the website http://fsb.ru/smi/smi.html (the official FSB website) for interviews with veterans of the operation, filed under the heading ‘FSB v zerkale pressy’.

53. Back when he still belonged to the FSB, Zdanovith's name was associated with a controversy involving sacks full of explosives that were discovered in the town of Riazan. Local authorities took credit for having worked with the FSB to foil a terrorist attack, yet Zdanovith, head of the FSB at the time, had stated that these sacks were part of an ‘anti-terrorism training exercise’. No evidence was ever provided by the FSB to substantiate this statement, and public opinion remains skeptical as to its veracity.

54. ‘Generals behind the Chechen war’, BBC news, 15 November 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/517621.stm

55. ‘Russian Military Training Journalists for Conflict Zones’, RFE/RL Security and Terrorism Watch 3, no.14 (23 April 2002).

56. Cf. V. Moukhine, ‘zhensonety zamutsia komplektatsieι armii’.

57. There is nothing new about the strategy of recruiting women to serve as agitators and propagandists for military service, so as to stem the tide of fleeing recruits. It originated at the 1919 Second World Conference of Communist Women, when Lenin and Zinoviev urged women to persuade their husbands, brothers and sons to go to the battlefield instead of shirking their responsibilities. It was suggested to them that emotional arguments would be effective, particularly the use of threats to repudiate or disown family members who declined to fight. Zinoviev would go so far as to advise women to persuade their husbands and sons ‘without their even noticing it’, and he charged women with the moral responsibility for stamping out cowardice. The wives of the Red Army soldiers were especially well-targeted, in keeping with a recommendation from the Central Committee itself (E.Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, 60).

58. V. Sperling, ‘The last refuge of a scoundrel’.

59. Even though the Russian Constitution of 1993 guarantees the right to alternative civilian service, the law would remain unclear in this domain until the summer of 2002, when an alternative civilian service was imposed, one that consisted of 3 1/2 years of incarceration (M. Gessen, ‘Lockstep to Putin's New Military Order’).

60. M. Lipman, ‘Svoboda pressy v usloviiakh upravliaemoι demokratii’.