Mobilization and Reform: Political Communication Policy Under Gorbachev

Abstract

Mikhail Gorbachev's 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 Gorbachev's 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.