Evolution of operating strategies in the field of soviet radio broadcasting: a case study of lithuanian ssr radio in 1980-1990

Evolution of Operating Strategies in the Field of Soviet Radio Broadcasting: a Case Study of Lithuanian SSR Radio in 1980-1990 Recently, the subject of the soviet period in Lithuania is analysed more often in scientific research. In difference to the earlier made researches, present theses are more focused on the underexplored micro or individual’s level of the soviet period, in which attempts are being made to find out the relationship between the soviet system and a person, who lived in it, his/her behaviour strategies. The soviet regime sought to construct a soviet person, as one of the most important tools using its propaganda mechanism, which likely was the most effectively applied through the mass media restricted by several levels of censorship. An important role in generating the propaganda content was played by persons, who worked in the radio of the Lithuanian SSR and were its ideological employees. After analysing the strategies of persons, who worked in the radio of the Lithuanian SSR in the late soviet period (1980-1990), it could be stated that the radio field was under total control of the field of politics (power) in 1980-1985, which manifested through the censorship mechanism. Due to such strong impact of censorship, before 1985 many actors in this field kept to the strategy of conformance and some part of them led double life. The period from 1985 to 1988 in the radio field should be considered transitional, when the majority of actors chose the strategies of anticipation or testing of the boundaries. 1988, the year when the Reform Movement for Lithuania (Persitvarkymo sąjūdis) started, should be considered an essential breaking point in the transformation of strategies. This was the time, when the major part of the field actors had to choose the strategy of shift, or retreat from the radio field. After analysing the field of radio according to the structure of competing agents’ relations, it can be stated that the field actors competed in two directions: vertically – in seeking for career and horizontally – while seeking for recognition, thus in both cases acquiring symbolic capital. Before 1985, the value of the symbolic capital depended on a field actor’s personal position. Considering the structure of the soviet field, the symbolic capital was obtained mostly by those field actors, who sought for a career by showing their loyalty to the communist party. Besides, in the period under analysis, a dominant position was taken by radio broadcasters, who because of being famous were able to acquire high symbolic capital and convert it into material values. Following 1987, after the Reform Movement started, content-generating journalists were able to obtain symbolic capital not only through their search for career, but also by preparing critical commentaries in respect to the government. It is also necessary to emphasize that, whereas before 1987 actors in the radio field often worked for economic capital – high salaries or social connections, which later were converted into possibilities to acquire deficit products, etc., after the Reform Movement started, the dominant forms of capital in the radio field changed and gradually transformed into the forms of capital that are typical to the field of journalism functioning under the present conditions, such as expression of the economic capital through the audience or expression of the social capital through dominance