Animated Soviet Propaganda

Many of us have seen the old posters used for propaganda, but there was a whole range of media being utilized in the spread of Soviet propaganda. One of these was cinema, and animated features were also a popular medium.

Animation had several advantages. Firstly, it is an audio and visual tool. Strong and vibrant colours and dramatic music could be used to portray an emotion, while leaving an image or melody in the memory of the audience that will make the message more likely to stay. This also provides a large range of styles, genres, and even references known to the audience to be made (e.g. a man with a tall hat with the American flag is clearly Uncle Sam, and not just a random fellow).

Secondly, it gives the artist freedom. When filming with real people, there are limits to what can be done - back in the black and white error there was a lot of things that could not be done in a movie. In animation, there is no limit. Plot, setting and character design indeed vary from more realistic styles (e.g. Ave Maria, an anti-Vietnam clip) to the pure caricatures (The Millionaire, the story of how a bulldog becomes rich and powerful). This enabled Soviet artists to portray they're idea of America, without ever having been there - it needn't be truthful since it's not meant to look real anyways. This made it a powerful propaganda tool.

A third advantage is that animations have the appearance of being innocent and child-like, being something for children. Thus, they could be watched by the young who are more easily influenced, and the ideas planted in them through the images could take root and grow into beliefs and "understanding" as they themselves grew.

From my understanding, the reason propaganda is so effective is that it plays to your emotions, rather than logic. I for one was touched by the images in Ave Maria, but I know that the Soviets were not mere bystanders in the war, and hardly saints.

I have thrown in a few links to some propaganda animations (plus two links above!), and while watching, you can ask yourself How does this make me feel? Try looking at the whole package first - the music, the colors, the mood, character - as this will probably shed light on how it is that propaganda works.

Similar tactics can be seen today, e.g. in music videos and advertisements - are they propaganda as well?

Animated Soviet Propaganda Part 1 - American Imperialists 27:20 

Part 1 of this documentary. Includes Mister Twister, A Strangers Voice, The Millionaire, Ave Maria, The Shooting Range and commentary.

Segments from the same documentary

Cinema Circus 3:37

The Bright Future, Communism 10:01

Capitalist Sharks 4:32

Others

A Lesson Not Learned 5:16

What Hitler Wants 8:13

Mashenkin Concert 9:11

Access to paradise

Do you desire to end up in paradise after your death? For a Finnish Christian this is a difficult task, because we have to try to live all our lives well without harming others.

If you happen to live in Turkmenistan this goal is much easier to achieve. Late president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov had a very practical solution: you just have to read the book he wrote, Ruhnama, three times a day.

This is not a joke. In March 2006 dictator Niyazov was recorded as saying that he had interceded with God that any student who reads the book three times a day automatically gets into paradise.

This powerful propaganda epos is a bizarre combination or controversial history, stories, poems and autobiography. It gives spiritual and moral guidance to the nation, and many people consider it as a stone base of art and literature of Turkmenistan. Some think it is an addition to the Koran.

Before Niyazov died in 2006, Ruhnama was implemented in school teaching and it was an obligatory part of driver’s license. This was possible, because after two decades in authority president Niazov had built a personality cult with odd regulations. He for example forbade ballet and opera as foreign vanity, and banned car radios in the name of traffic safety.

But why should Finnish or any other countries’ PR professionals know anything about Ruhnama? Answer is: because this book can bite you in your ass if you aren’t careful. Turkmenistan has been one of the most closed countries, and any foreign company that wanted to make business with Turkmens and get hands on the vast oil and gas reserves, had to translate Ruhnama into their own language.

Over four years ago a Finnish electrical engineering company Ensto almost did that. At the last moment Ensto changed its mind and refused to translate Ruhnama. It lost a very profitable deal.

If you don’t believe, look at the YouTube sample from home page of Finnish rewarded document Shadow of the Holy Book.

Here is an ethical question all PR professionals should ask themselves. We are taught to adjust into host country’s circumstances and teach tolerance to managers, but where is the line when circumstances become impossible to tolerate? Can our company prop up an arbitrary dictator because that is a national custom?

Nowadays Niyazov’s book’s translation is no longer demanded, because he died and Turkmenistan has a new president. New president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov started a reform which doesn’t progress very fast.

Turkmenistan is still one of the most closed countries in the whole world. There is no free press. There is a very limited and controlled internet access all over the country. Students who want to study abroad may never get further than the airport. Does this sound like a country in which you would like to operate? I don’t know about you, but for example our national jewel Nokia does.

Some of the sources I used for this article:

Turkmen President Fails to Fulfil internet Pledge. Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

Sajari, P. 2008. Nokia käy kauppaa Turkmenistanin diktatuurihallinnon kanssa. Helsingin Sanomat 27.2.2008.

Halonen, A. Personal opinion in Helsingin Sanomat 4.3.2008

Niemi, K. 2006. Diktaattorin oikuissa oli myös johdonmukaisuutta. Helsingin Sanomat 22.12.2006.

Ukrainian PR: is there one?

by Päivi Jauhiainen

Today is my turn to write our blog but unfortunatelly I'm having a terrible migraine. I'll try to write something but my eyes are not "fit" at the moment to look at the screen for a long time, so I will keep my comments short. Hopefully there will be at least some sort of reason and logic in my text...

I was searching the internet and also aour university's library web pages for information about Ukraine and PR. I found nothing from our university library and also the internet results were quite poor. In my opinion, this is because PR is a relatively new matter in Ukraine. One webpage ( http://www.ukraine-today.com/business/pr/index.shtml ) told that some critics say that Ukrainian PR is nonexistent and others say that " it does exist and has its own schools, principles, theories and 'national peculiarities'". In any case, there are only few Ukrainian PR companies and they are still relatively young. In addition, many Ukrainian companies and organisations rather use international PR companies than domestic ones. For example, the webpage shows how the "oldest" PR company in Kiev was founded in 1993 so the industry is new in Ukraine.

All this can perhaps explained by their history as a part of Soviet Union, where there was no need for PR in a form as we see it. Ukrainian PR industry is apparently trying to learn from its western counterparts and to build up a PR culture of their own. On the other hand, it would seem to me that they are now at the learning stage rather that making their own new theories about the matter. We can only hope that the western way of doing PR is the best to work in Ukraine too and that it fits their communication culture. On the web pagfe of The European Public Relations Confederation (http://www.cerp.org/news/news/pdfs/PRcongress_engl.pdf ) is information about a conference which was held in Ukraine in 2006. The page tells about the young state of Ukrainian PR and how it has been possible only from 2004 for Ukrainaian PR specialists to make qualification degrees in PR. The page also tells that Ukrainian PR is very young but very dynamically growing industry.

Sorry, this is all I am able to write today. I promise i'll be better next week. Now I'm off to bed to cure my headache. I hope this not an early stage of the "oink, oink" flue...

Public relations in the transition society – Estonia
by Tuomas Muhonen

The process of change in Soviet Estonia began during the Singing revolution in 1988 and 1989. Estonia became independent again on the 20th of august in 1991. The Soviet occupation had lasted for 48 years. The time of totalitarian Soviet communism affected very deeply to Estonia's society and culture. Therefore, also public relations in Estonia have changed fundamentally during 20 years after singing revolution.

According to Tampere (2003: 132; 2005: 21), there are five types of stages of change in a totalitarian society and organisations. At the first stage of change, a society or organisation is closed and secret. The public communication of an organisation is asymmetrical and usually propagandistic. These organisations view their environment as irrelevant and even disturbing. At the second stage, organisations face up the new ways and code of a society. At the middle stage, organisations come face to face with financial conflicts and new interest groups. At the fourth stage, organisations start a real change. They start to plan strategically and analyse interest groups. The final stage would be an open society and organisation, which is still coming. (Tampere 2003: 132; 2005: 20–21.)

A Communist propaganda made people passive and unresponsive. People had some kind of immunity to information. Organisations send messages to interest groups but they don't receive the messages and vice versa. (Tampere 2005: 25.) This kind of attitude can affect unconsciously even nowadays.


USED SOURCES:

Tampere, K (2003). Public Relations in a Transition Society 1989-2002: Using a Stakeholder Approach in Organisational Communication and Relations Analyses, Doctoral Theses, Jyväskylä University Press (Finland)

Tampere, K (2005). Väike teoreetiline sissejuhatus Eesti praktilisse suhtekorraldusse. In Praktiline suhtekorraldus: Eesti kogemus. Tartu Ûlikooli Kirjastus.

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.