The Development of Public Relations in Russia: part II

by Nina Kinnunen

In the beginning of 90’s they did not have educated PR professionals in Russia. There were other communication professionals of course, but no specific PR practitioners, since PR as a professional field and a university discipline had not yet been established. The first ones who started working in the field of Russian PR were former journalists. This is why Alexander Goregin and Alexandre Nikolaev (1996) call the years 1989-1992 “the journalism stage” in the development of Russian PR. Former journalists had to serve their employer’s interests of course, but they also brought along some principles and ideals from their previous occupation. They had respect towards the public and its need to be informed. These professionals wanted to create a tradition of open communication. During the early years of Russian PR these new professionals also seemed to have high hopes of changing the communication culture rapidly. But as we already know, the change has not been that quick or easy.

According to Goregin and Nikolaev, soon many organizations wanted to return to the past methods with their media relations. They should have cooperated with mass media representatives in an open manner, but they were still heavily burdened with the communication culture from the past. The managers wanted to gain back some control over the messages the media representatives would send about their organizations. (Goregin & Nikolaev 1996.)

Government agencies reacted by bringing in people with administrative or Communist party backgrounds into their PR departments. These groups were chosen because they were more likely than former journalists to put their employers' interests over society's or public’s interests. They were more willing to withhold or distort information that caused trouble for their institutions. Consequently, a PR practitioner with a journalism background was often viewed as a professional troublemaker. (ibid.)

So, it seems that the first years full of hope and promises of quick change was followed by some kind of a backlash reaction. Two steps forward and one step backwards - that’s the way transition processes often evolve, not linearly.

During the first few years the PR practitioners concentrated on political public relations because the media’s and society's interest was concentrated on the radically changing political institutions. At first media had no real interest in business. State-run industries had not traditionally communicated about themselves, and new businesses were more preoccupied with simply surviving. This changed in 1991 after economic reforms brought media's interest into the economic sphere. As business demand for public communication grew, business people got interested in PR. At first their interest was limited mostly to the search for cheap publicity, though. Russian businesses wanted to use PR as a substitute for advertising, which was becoming more and more expensive. (ibid.)

This development described above has left a significant impact on how PR is understood and taught today in Russia. It was journalism and business scholars who began to define and discuss the conceptual frameworks, principles and methods of teaching PR in Russia. As a result two schools emerged: “journalism-type public relations” and “business-type public relations”. Business scholars have concentrated on the management and marketing functions of PR whereas journalism scholars have focused on the management-communication function. Nowadays the PR education in Russia has a strong orientation either to journalism or to business depending on the specific university. (Tsetsura 2009, 602.)

I noticed this in practice while trying to find some contact information from Russian universities’ web-pages. I could not find any separate “Department of communication” or “Organizational communication and PR” or similar subject there, but later noticed that PR was usually placed (at least in those cases) under journalism or economics/marketing.

USED SOURCES:

Goregin, G. Alexander & Nikolaev, Alexandre G. (1996) Evolution of Modern Russian Communication. Communication World. June-July 1996.

Tsetsura, Katerina (2009) Development of public relations in Russia: a geopolitical approach. In Sriramesh, Krishnamurthy &Verčič, Dejan. (ed.) The global public relations handbook: theory, research, and practice. New York: Routledge 2009, p. 600–617.