Imagining journalism: Politics, government and the person in the press in the Soviet Union and Russia, 1953-1993.

The dissertation examines Soviet journalism in the post-Stalin era as a cultural product that should be analyzed in terms of both its social and textual constructions. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical figure of the person or chelovek, which appeared in journalism first under Khrushchev as a symbol around which communist society could be reconstituted after the trauma of Stalinism. The dissertation begins with a discussion of the political context of the Soviet Union in the years immediately following Stalin's death, and goes on to describe how the press became an essential part of Khrushchev's attempt to reform Soviet society. This redefinition of journalism as an essential and active part of Soviet government was led by Khrushchev's son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, editor of Izvestiia between 1959 and 1964. The journalism of the person is illuminated through close readings of certain journalistic texts from the Khrushchev era that sought both to represent and to define a society of socialist persons. I also examine several essays by Anatolii Agranovskii, whose fame rested on his investigations and representations of the everyday heroes of Soviet society. The discussion of Soviet journalism after Khrushchev stresses how those who removed Khrushchev from power in 1964 sought to redefine the party's control over journalism. This new approach resulted in the fracturing of the community of discourse that had formed under Adzhubei. Some journalists continued to be inspired by the journalism of the person, while others were more concerned with the problem of furnishing the public with reliable information than with establishing an independent political voice. I then show how the roots of Gorbachev's reforms can be located in these various currents of opinion about media that came into being during the 70s and 80s. The figure of the person was taken up again during perestroika, although it subsequently lost its political valence as the Communist Party began to disintegrate. The final chapter shows how one segment of the post-communist media, the new Russian tabloid press, represents both a decisive rejection of the moral frame Soviet media even while it evokes a similar ethos of didactic concern for the person.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsCultural anthropologyEuropean historyMass communicationSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130398/2/9722125.pd