Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 9 – Most people
assume that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has become a genuine propaganda state, but
two Moscow military commentators say there is much more to be done and in the
authoritative “Voenno-Promyshlenny kuryer,” they describe just what a real
Russian “ministry of propaganda” should do.
The appearance of this article
suggests that at least some in Moscow are considering additional steps to make
Putin’s propaganda effort even more all-embracing than it is at present. At the
very least, it provides a useful checklist of steps some in Moscow are pushing
for in this important sector.
In the current issue of the journal
directed at Russia’s military industry, Anatoly Brychkov and Grigory Nikonorov
argue that under conditions of globalization, “the defense of a territory by
armed forces alone without an information component has already become
impossible” (vpk-news.ru/articles/25979).
The two argue that Russia has not
done all that it can in this area and that it must do far more to elaborate and
inculcate in key elites and the population at large a national ideology in
order to defend Russia from information warfare directed against it from
abroad. To that end, they call for the
establishment of a ministry of propaganda.
That ministry, they say, would
supervise a nine-part effort in that regard.
Those efforts include:
1.
“All
government and non-governmental information companies …would be united in a
single holding with the status of a ministry” as the first step to creating the
ministry of propaganda itself.”
2.
The
ministry would “take measures to put under the control of the state information
companies in which the participation of the state is not visible.”
3.
It
would “stop the opening of new companies and by law prohibit the activities on the
territory of the country of media, the basic capital of which is controlled by
foreign states.”
4.
It
would “change the information policy inside the country from entertainment to educational
and scientific educational.
5.
It
would “create an information monitoring service, give it the functions of a
censor, and subordinate it directly to the president.”
6.
The
new ministry would organize within this service departments “corresponding to
the directions of information combat.”
7.
It
would “open information companies abroad,” attracting support for this from “private
persons.”
8.
The
ministry would supervise “the preparation of cadres for information combat.”
9.
And
it would “use the cadre resource potential of the creative intelligentsia,
scholars, public activists, and representatives of traditional religious
confessions from among the patriotically inclined.”
The ministry’s efforts, the two military
authors say, “must embrace all age and professional categories of the
population,” but they must focus in particular on those of interest to the siloviki.
And the two authors call for developing plans for the new ministry in greater detail
and coming up with cadre training programs to staff it.
“Around the ideology” of the state, Brychkov
and Nikonorov say, “it is necessary to form an elite” that understands what is
at stake. In that environment, they argue, “a health state organism cannot
exist without censorship.” And they add: “to put the media and its resource
base under the control of the state is allowed by the Constitution and laws of
the country.”
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