Soviet Information Service: The Medium, the Message, and the Commissar

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



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,



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



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,



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



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.



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.



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).



Documents

Soviet Information Service: The Medium, the Message, and the Commissar