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Soviet Information Service: The Medium, the Message, and the CommissarAuthor(s): Frederick RyanSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 61-68Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542010 .
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Notes
SOVIET INFORMATION SERVICE: THE MEDIUM, THE
MESSAGE, AND THE COMMISSAR
Frederick Ryan
Accurate communication of fact and opinion is subject to influence by a
variety of agents. Using the analog of message transmission through a
medium, the library and information services of the USSR are discussed and
factors peculiar to that environment are examined. The question of how to
determine the essence of "natural" information flow is raised, and specific
political influences on bibliographic processes are analyzed. Elements of
Soviet and Western practice are compared in order to highlight key charac
teristics of both systems and to contrast the sharply divergent approaches to
the universal task of providing library and information service within a par
ticular cultural context.
The interrelations of medium and message in communications have been
discussed at length in both the professional and popular press. The in
terplay of a number of factors conditioning accuracy of communications is
a reasonably well understood subject.1 However, the impact of political and
social influence on the flow of bibliographic and other forms of information
is a phenomenon perhaps less widely appreciated. Information profes
sionals recognize that the fundamental communications model consists of
some information being sent as "input" through
a "channel" to a place of
"output." They know, too, that the medium and the message are inter
related, and that distortions or loss of information as it passes along the
channel are to be expected, and that "output" therefore often does not
equal "input." "Noise" is one common type of transmission variable;
McLuhan held that the nature of the medium itself is another. A further ex
ample, one that Western society tends to overlook, is the possibility of con
scious, deliberate interference with the "natural process" of communication
?interference by a third party such as a political authority, as the informa
tion travels along its channel. This is normally called censorship, whether
partial or total, but it is important to recognize that there are many more
ways, some of them extremely subtle, for such interference to manifest
itself, and many other reasons for its occurrence than just the crude desire
to suppress information.2
This paper considers such interference, and takes as a convenient symbol that favorite Western stereotype of Soviet life, the Commissar. As the
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62 hScC/Soviet Information Service
message moves through whatever medium carries it, how does the "Com
missar" act upon that message? Some of the answers, of course, are fairly
well known through long experience in both Eastern and Western bloc
countries, for such information media as film, literature, and painting.
What is much less obvious, and perhaps harder to accept, is that the process
of interference also occurs with the flow of supposedly "neutral" informa
tion such as bibliographic data, a bedrock element of library and informa
tion service.
Before moving to specific illustrations, two conceptual problems that color
the entire discussion need examination.
Problem No. 1: No one has yet defined with precision what the "natural"
flow of information is, so how can it be determined that interference has oc
curred? Discussions on transborder data flow can serve as one painfully in
structive example.3 These have been complicated by strikingly different
perceptions of what "free" or "natural" flow is. Even within a single coun
try, widely divergent views are held, since the definition is influenced by the interplay of economic, electronic, cultural, political, and legal factors.4
Problem No. 2: Consciously or not, we tend to assume that information
is a "constant"?and that one can analyze the variables that act upon that
constant. However, after years of effort, information science researchers
have still been unable to define satisfactorily such an element as the ''
infor
mation unit'' except when information is defined in a very elementary and
restrictive way as solely a logical quantity (e.g., as a sequence of 0 and 1
bits).5 Can we answer unambiguously the question of what the information
content of the last book we read is, or of this very paper? We cannot,
because no agreed-upon nomenclature to handle this question yet exists.
There is a kind of signal-to-noise problem but without a precise definition
even of what the signal is.6
Despite the ambiguities in definition noted above, discussions of infor
mation and its use (or misuse) rather easily assume the operation of some
natural laws of information transfer. If we are not so bold as to claim that
natural laws are at work, at least an apparent regularity in information flow
is almost universally perceived, and some of the influences upon that flow
are considered below. When dealing with the USSR, one sees, of course, a
country whose history the Renaissance and the Reformation largely
bypassed. To those of us with such culturally pivotal processes as part of
our intellectual heritage, this difference has enormous implications for what
may be considered "natural" in social forms and practices generally, and
in information work particularly. A point to remember in discussions of
medium and message is that close attention must be paid to distortions of
that flow emanating from any quarter?not just the most obvious. And
even though, on the levels that affect the library profession, there is a lack of
complete mathematical precision in defining information or its behavior,
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63
the vital responsibility of dealing with information and its dissemination to
users remains. Where, then, may one see the "Commissar" lurking and
interfering with the flow of information? His influence can be pervasive; five examples are considered.
Case No. 1?The Information Centers VINITI and INION. The All-Union
Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI) and the In
stitute for Scientific Information in the Social Sciences (INION) are the
two major abstracting and indexing centers in the USSR. They have na
tional responsibilities and oversee massive information-processing enter
prises. VINITI is the more senior institution and has tended to enjoy
greater status and resources. These organizations have encouraged the in
troduction of computerized data processing into the library/information field generally and have utilized systems and equipment from both the
Eastern bloc and the West. Each also directs educational and scholarly pro
grams in information science including some at the leading edge of profes
sional practice and scholarly inquiry internationally. Unfortunately, much
of this work remains largely unknown in the West due to the enduring
language barrier. INION recognizes that it has the more politically sen
sitive role, and its director has stated openly that although INION feels
compelled to include in its indexes ideologically antagonistic works, it then must strive in its abstracts to expose authors' prejudices or errors. INION
has attempted to integrate such concerns into the very fabric of its indexing activity. The proper abstract, according to this same official, should sani
tize the erroneous ideological overlay that can obscure the bedrock of fac
tual and reliable data. INION has also been concerned with how to reflect in its indexes the ideological position of authors and to clarify the "correct"
aspects of an author's handling of the material.7 This concern is by no
means uniformly operationalized, but the orientation is striking indeed,
emanating, as it does, from one of the largest information dissemination
operations in the world?one that publishes over a thousand bibliographic,
statistical, and scholarly titles annually and that is a component part of the
prestigious Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Case No. 2?Books vs. Journals: Information practitioners have long con
sidered it elementary to characterize the general differences between jour nal and monographic literature?one of those "natural laws" at work. We
assume that a specific set of elements are inherent in the journal literature
and, in fact, serve to define it as a communications type. In periodical pub
lishing, factors like currency and brevity certainly do appear constant.
Note, however, that vital data that in the West one would expect to find in the journal, or perhaps in the technical report literature, often appear in the USSR in monographs. A basic reason is that information that in the
West we call proprietary and that is therefore discussed only briefly in jour nals gets in-depth monographic treatment in the USSR?there are no com
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64 L8tC/Soviet Information Service
petitors from which to hide the technical process, formula, or marketing
strategy. Has the profit motive in the West distorted the "natural" flow of
information?to the extent that the definitions themselves, of journal vs.
monographic literature, have been distorted?8 At the least, one can assert
that the context of a capitalistic economy has strongly conditioned percep tions of these two forms of publication.
Case No. 3?Citation Study: It has long been apparent to Slavic specialists, in the course of their research using Soviet sources, that Soviet citation
practices have varied over time. I conducted several informal literature
citation studies of the proportion of foreign sources cited in Soviet works
published both before and after Stalin. One was done in the early 1970s us
ing the Slavic monographic collection of the University of Illinois library, and another in 1985 using Soviet periodical literature at the University of
Calgary library. The intent was simply to see if the loosening up in Soviet
society associated with the death of Stalin was reflected in Soviet authors'
willingness or
ability to cite non-Soviet sources. The year of Stalin's death,
1953, was used as the dividing line. The fact of a difference may have been
predictable, but its magnitude was not. A pattern of increased non-Soviet
sources cited after Stalin was indeed discernible, and sometimes by a factor
of thirty. Joseph Stalin's "Commissar" certainly seems to have been
vigilant.9
Case No. 4?Guidance vs. Control: What a parent may call guidance, a
child may consider control. What a government may consider guidance, a
researcher or artist may call control. The concepts of guidance and control
are points on a continuum with the crucial distinction perhaps primarily in
the mind of the beholder.
In both theory and practice, the Soviet information world places heavy stress on the guidance of readers and researchers.10 Recommended read
ings, highly selective bibliographies, compilations of "the best works" in
all fields play a much greater role than they do in the United States. The
USSR is well advanced conceptually in information analysis as a standard
component of information services?state-of-the-art reviews, critical analy
ses of trends, data compilations and prognostications?as opposed to
straightforward presentations of discrete informational materials. Is the
"Commissar" guiding or controlling? The West prides itself on its objec
tivity, and with some justification when practices in the rest of the world are
considered. The Soviets, however, reject the very concept of objectivity in in
formation work.11 This philosophical position may serve at times merely as
convenient camouflage for their own lack of candor. Nonetheless, when
they view much of the Western press, they invariably ask how one can
possibly justify in the name of objectivity the dissemination of information
one knows to be false or information that may hurt another person. Does
the "natural" flow of information include the false, defamatory, libelous,
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65
injurious? Does distortion in the information flow come from the inclusion, or the elimination, of "disinformation"?12 In dealing with the question of
objectivity in information work, it may be instructive to look at the view once expressed by a leading Soviet library journal on the role of libraries.
The journal, Sovetskoe bibliotekovedenie, offered the frank statement: "The
chief task of libraries consists of the active propagandizing of the policies of
the Communist Party and the Soviet government.13 Developments in
Soviet society of recent years related to the glasnost' campaign do not mean
ingfully alter the essence of that formulation. Strict controls are still in place
regarding both the scope and rate of change in what may be communicated
via public media. It is illuminating that while the standard English transla
tion of glasnost' has become "openness," the Russian term does not really
carry the nuance of "sincerity" or "candor" that most Westerners have
regularly assumed. A more apt English word may be "publicity" in its sense of "obvious or
exposed to general view" or "accessible to the
public."14 The best equivalent perhaps is "making public," which avoids
the inescapable public relations connotations of "publicity,"15 an instruc
tive case again of how cultural or linguistic assumptions precondition
understanding and, thus, communications.
The guidance-control interplay is also seen in a common Soviet library
practice of keeping records on users' reading habits. The records are
reviewed so that librarians can select and recommend materials relevant to
a reader's interests as reflected in past reading practice. Undoubtedly, most
such use is "innocent," but one can legitimately ask whether the
information-seeking behavior of individuals is different when the results of that behavior are open to detailed scrutiny. The answer, in any society,
must clearly be yes.
Case No. 5? What Gets Published?: Paper is in chronic short supply in the USSR. In any situation of scarcity, decisions on the allocation of resources
are required.16 In the USSR, it is not the market making those choices; it is not the market determining, therefore, the flow of the information published on that paper. Is this an example of rational guidance or simply of tight political control? The term "computer chip" can be substituted here for
"paper," and precisely the same point is valid once again. Note the stark
contrast between the Soviet approach and the aggressively market-driven
perspective of the Western conglomerates that in recent years have bought out publishing, indexing, and data-processing firms in the library/informa tion industry?two very different worlds, yet both dealing with the same
commodity.
A personal note may be in order at this point: I was once in the large in formation center of a government ministry in Moscow. The center was of
ficially directed by a Party appointee with no professional qualifications, but was
actually run by his assistant, who was a competent and knowledge
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66 h&C/Soviet Information Service
able librarian. I had been visiting a number of such sites working out prob
lems regarding the book exchange relationships between our institutions.
The resolution of questions related to business was overshadowed, how
ever, by suspicion and hostility on the part of the director that my very
presence and evident knowledge of his operation created. This was an
unusual occurrence, but immediately upon leaving that building, I was
followed and put under surveillance. This is a small but instructive example of a mind-set leading a real flesh and blood Commissar apparently to at
tempt to interfere with the flow of information?in this case between a U.S.
university and a Soviet source of supply. Some of the features of a system of information service quite different
from our own, both in degree and kind, have been discussed above. One
reaction to such a picture of the Soviet system may be summarized thus:
"Granted, conscious distortion may be characteristic of the Soviet ap
proach, but their activity is peripheral to our concerns. It represents a kind
of curiosity, something that may be ignored at little cost."
One problem with dismissing the Soviet scene is the simple fact that the
USSR is the planet's other major power, and one that exerts massive in
fluence throughout the world on both friend and foe. The USSR's informa
tion activity is enormous and represents too great a percentage of world
wide information service to dismiss. For example, it is estimated that ap
proximately one-quarter of the world's total number of scientists are
Soviet. About one-third of the total of engineers and technicians are in the
Soviet bloc. The information enterprise that supports these vast numbers is
an energetic one and is responsible for a large portion of the total daily in
formation transfer in the world. To take an example closer to everyday life,
the contact lenses through which some of this journal's subscribers will read
these words are derived from a polymer chemistry technology developed in
Czechoslovakia and then adopted by Bausch and Lomb for sale in the
West.
In conclusion, one may affirm that while electrons in a copper wire may
flow the same in Leningrad or Los Angeles, information does not. A basic
task for information professionals is to identify and keep clearly in mind
certain pertinent distinctions when discussing the process of information
use and transfer. Every social system has elements of its own
"Commissar," and when information systems and the operation of their
component parts are discussed, it is essential that this aspect be isolated.
Otherwise, effects that are assumed to be simply natural phenomena or
even "natural laws" at work may escape from view and thus from critical
analysis. Unless the social contexts of information use are considered, a
continuing professional ethnocentrism remains a real risk that can only
weaken our analytical efforts and retard a clearer understanding of our own
place in the larger information world.
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67
Notes
1. A voluminous literature exists upon the medium/message topic as a branch of
the broader subject of communications theory. Marshall McLuhan popularized the
theme in works such as The Medium and the Message: An Inventory of Effects (New York:
Random House, 1967) and From Cliche to Archetype (New York: Viking Press, 1970). A representative work from another perspective is George N. Gordon, The Theory and Practice of Manipulative Communication (New York: Hastings House, 1971).
2. The process by which translating, an ostensibly straightforward intellectual
and creative endeavor, can be thoroughly manipulated is given insightful analysis in
Marianna Tax Choldin, "The New Censorship: Censorship by Translation in the
Soviet Union," Journal of Library History 21/2 (Spring 1986). For historical antecedents to present-day practice, see Choldin's A Fence around the Empire: Russian
Censorship of Western Ideas under the Tsars (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985). 3. Rein Turn (ed.), Transborder Data Flows: Concerns in Privacy Protection and Free Flow
of Information, Report of the AFIPS Panel on Transborder Data Flow (Arlington, Va.: American Federation of Information Processing Societies, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 27-30.
4. Peter Robinson, "Transborder Data Flows: An Overview of Issues," in
Transborder Data Flows, Proceedings of an OECD Conference, held December 1983
(Amsterdam: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1985), pp. 17-18.
5. Richard W. Hamming, Coding and Information Theory, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986), p. 106.
6. A very large body of literature has been produced in the continuing attempt at
analysis and definition of information and the communication of it. The monograph
by Claude E. Shannon, one of the pioneers in this effort, entitled The Mathematical
Theory of Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949) stands as a
classic in the field.
7. Vasilii Vinogradov, Informatsiia i obshchestvennye nauki (Moscow: Nauka, 1971),
p. 114.
8. Ellis Mount and Wilda B. Newman, "Top Secret/Trade Secret: Restricting and Accessing Information," Collection Building 7 (Summer 1985): 3-7. This work
deals competently with issues of proprietary material but is illustrative of an ap
proach that assumes an exclusively Western perspective. 9. Bruce Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1983). Included in this work is discussion of the irregular flow of foreign publications themselves into the USSR related to shifting political determinations
by the Soviets to emphasize or minimize the acquisition of Western technology. 10. L. I. Kushtanina, "Biblioteki v novoi piatiletke," Sovetskoe bibliotekovedenie 2
(February 1986): 7-8. 11. Viktor Grigorevich Afanasev, Sotsial'naia informatsiia iupravlenie obshchestvom
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1978), pp. 375-380; K.J. McGarry, The Changing Context of In
formation (London: Clive Bingley, 1981). See especially pages 142-145 for a discus sion of social, economic, and other barriers that make an unimpeded and objective information flow problematic.
12. Robert L. Pfatzgraff (ed.), Intelligence Policy and National Security (London: Mac millan Press, 1981), pp. 223-226; Ladislav Bittman, The KGB and Soviet Disinforma
tion (Washington, D.C: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985), pp. 213-215. 13. A. I. Pashin, "Rukovodiashchaia roi' Kommunisticheskoi partii v razvitii
bibliotechnogo dela," Sovetskoe bibliotekovedenie 6 (June 1977): 17.
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68 h8cC/Soviet Information Service
14. Webster Js Third International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged ( Spring
field, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam, 1976), p. 1876.
15. John Lodeesen, untitled communication, Sovset (Electronic journal of George town University, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Soviet Studies Pro
gram), 29 May 1987. 16. The intertwining of economics and politics in the Soviet Union has fascinated
and frequently perplexed Western analysts, who at times forget that the Russian
revolution was an event whose economic composition was fully the equal of its
political composition. A source that is useful in illustrating the Soviets' approach to
resource allocation for a major commodity is John P. Hardt and Jean F. Boone, Oil
Price Behavior: Implications for the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C: Library of Con
gress, Congressional Research Service, 1986).
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