TURUN YLIOPISTON JULKAISUJA ANNALES UNIVERSITATIS TURKUENSIS SARJA - SER. B OSA - TOM. 248 HUMANIORA TRANSFORMATION OF PUBLIC TEXT IN TOTALITARIAN SYSTEM A SOCIO-SEMIOTIC STUDY OF SOVIET CENSORSHIP PRACTICES IN ESTONIAN RADIO IN THE 1980s by Maarja Lohmus TURUN YLIOPISTO Turku 2002 ISBN 951-29-2071-9 ISSN 0082-6987 Tartu University Press - Tartu, Estonia 2002 Contents LIST OF TABLES, PICTURES, FIGURES AND MAPS 5 AKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC TEXT 9 1.1. Public text as the main focal point of communication in the public arena 9 1.2. Mechanisms and strategies of ideological content control 10 1.3. Description of central concepts 12 1.4. Context and theoretical framework of the study 14 1.5. Temporal organisation of materials 21 CHAPTER II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF PUBLIC TEXT TRANSFORMATION 27 2.1. Concept of the public text 27 2.2. Formation of the journalistic text 41 2.3. Textual intervention and textual transformation 46 2.4. Meaning of functions, the function of the meaning 48 CHAPTER III. HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOVIET TOTALITARIAN COMMUNICATION 55 3.1. Philosophical-political basis of journalism: A new type of communication 55 3.2. New limitations for communicative space: Journalism at a forefront, as the tool for creating a new type of human 58 3.2.1. Mythological hierarchy in the Soviet media 61 3.2.2. Control and censorship 68 3.3. Model of Soviet Communication in Estonia, (1940-1990) 70 3.4. Estonian Radio in the early 1980s 73 3.4.1. Formal and informal text in the 1970s and 1980s 74 3.4.2. Conflict between different expectations: Party versus audience 75 3.4.3. Mainstream and non-mainstream programmes 79 3.5. The role of editor 81 3.5.1. The dualistic role of the editing process in totalitarian system: texts for the official controller and for the audience 86 3.6. Viseurs vs. editors: conflicting cognitive mapping and world models 87 3.6.1. Models of editing - viseuring: Confrontations in the Soviet public text 90 CHAPTER IV. METHOD AND MATERIAL 103 4.1. The textual-contextual duality and a model for the limits of text 103 4.2. Coding of textual transformation 108 4.3. Hypotheses about the 'intervened' texts 112 4.4. Characteristics of the material analysed 113 4.4.1. Themes and evaluations represented in the texts 114 4.4.2. Examples of typical narratives and discourses 118 4.4.3. Context of performance: genres, identities, roles and styles in the texts 122 CHAPTER V. TYPOLOGY OF TEXTUAL INTERVENTION STRATEGIES 129 5.1. Reflection vs. distortion: typology of textual intervention 129 5.1.1. Statistical overview of content transformation strategies 129 5.1.2. Changes of the texts by the themes and topics 131 5.1.3. Deletion and addition of objects 133 5.1.4. Transformation of narrative 134 5.1.5. Transformation of modality 136 5.1.6. Changing of performance and form 137 5.1.7. Form and style as strategic elements of textual acts 138 5.1.8. Formal changes of the public text 142 5.2. Typology of strategies of textual intervention 142 CHAPTER VI. REPRESENTATIONS OF MYTHS AND SOCIAL CRITICISM: THE COVERT CRITERIA OF CENSORSHIP 145 6.1. Myths in the public texts 145 6.2. Characterisation of texts according to social myths 146 6.2.1. The myth of the creator Lenin and the Party and Marx and Engels as their predecessors 150 6.2.2. The myth of victory of the Great Soviet Socialist Revolution (Russian Revolution) and of a new era 153 6.2.3. The myth of the Great Patriotic War and the invincibility of the Soviet Union with many enemies 'out there' 154 6.2.4. The myth of historical progression of socialism, communist world revolution and communist future 155 6.2.5. The myth of the Soviet republics as a united family 158 6.2.6. The myth of labour and constant improvement of the Soviet economy 159 6.2.7. The myth of the working class as 'the leading power' 161 6.2.8. The myth of free and happy Soviet people and the new type of human 162 6.3. Concealment of strategic mechanisms operative in the society 165 6.4. Limitation of identities through obscuring of spatio-temporal environment 167 6.5. Limitation and reshaping of narrative of everyday experience and social processes 172 6.6. Construction and obscuring of conflicts 177 6.7. Curbing of subjectivity and shaping of new identity 188 6.8. Limitation of communication, criticism 191 6.9. The myth of audience 202 CHAPTER VII. INTERLUDE: PRESENTATION OF WORK AND WORKER IN TEXTS 205 CHAPTER VIII. TRANSFORMATION OF FUNCTIONS OF ELEMENTS OF TEXT. EFFECTS OF TEXTUAL TRANSFORMATION 225 8.1. Transformation of textual functions 226 8.2. Functions of the textual transformations 233 8.2.1. Ideologisation through enforcement of normative model 233 8.2.2. Positivisation 234 8.2.3. Changes of functional interrelationships between the levels of person, society, text and communication 235 8.2.4. Post-textual effects 238 CHAPTER IX. FINAL DISCUSSIONS 243 9.1. Textual transformation in the journalistic process 243 9.2. Reflections on the previous chapters 244 9.3. Discussion regarding the conclusion 252 APPENDIX 1. Catalogue of used transcripts of broadcasts of Estonian Radio 256 APPENDIX 2. Catalogue of codes 262 APPENDIX 3. Photograph of the original page of viseured text 272 INTERVIEWS, ARCHIVES 273 REFERENCES 274 SUMMARY 285 LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS TABLES CHAPTER 2 Table 1. Occurrence of different types of authorised texts as public texts in the Soviet journalism in the 1950s-1980s 45 CHAPTER 3 Table 2. Levels of Soviet mythology and their representations in the 1980s 66 Table 3. Formal and semi-formal or informal text in a closed society; the Soviet example in the early 1980s. 75 Table 4. The consumption and trustworthiness of different information channels in Estonia in the beginning of the 1980s 77 Table 5. The opinion of the audience about the programme of ER: what themes could be covered more and what less? 78 Table 6. The interest of the audience (%) in different topics. 79 Table 7. Distribution of programme of ER as mainstream and off-stream in the beginning of the 1980s 80 Table 8. Thematic comparison of ER day and ER night programmes in the in the beginning of the 1980s 81 Table 9. Stages of control and editing of the Soviet radio text in the journalistic process in the 1970s-1980s 82 CHAPTER 4 Table 10. Comparison of textual distribution with regard to the themes of 1980 in ER and the general thematic view of the texts selected for the present analysis 115 Table 11. The general distribution of broadcast offices and genres in prime time (formal text) and secondary time (semi-formal text) in the text selection, analysed on the basis of Estonian radio broadcasts in 1980-1981 116 Table 12. Overview of communicational types in the texts chosen for analysis (Estonian Radio; early 1980s) 117 Table 13. Field of social representations in public text in Estonian radio in the early 1980s 123 CHAPTER 5 Table 14. The most frequent strategies for transformation of public text 130 Table 15. Textual interventions across different topics; average number of cases per text related to different topics 133 Table 16. Transformation of objects in the texts 134 Table 17. Overview of transformation of the narrative 135 Table 18. Strategic elements of public text structure eliminated, added, or reversed by ideological control (mew) 141 Table 19. Typology of strategies of textual intervention 143 CHAPTER 6 Table 20. The occurrence of broadcast text genres in the textual selection, according to Soviet mythologies 147 Table 21. The occurrence of Soviet mythologies and everyday and aesthetic entertaining elements as an important component in the selection of the analysed texts 147 CHAPTER 8 Table 22. Summary of the main functional changes. Systematic modifications of original journalistic functions of public text 232 Table 23. Strategies of textual intervention across levels of changes of social-personal-textual- communication functions used by ideological control (viseur) 237 Table 24. Introduction of post-textual effects harmonised with the political structure of the society 239 FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPH CHAPTER 2 Figure 1. Processes and confrontations in the Soviet texts of the 1940s -1980s 40 Figure 2. The relations in the media field and the influences on the journalistic text 42 CHAPTER 3 Figure 3. Open and closed communication in the Soviet system 57 Figure 4. Soviet mythological hierarchy in journalistic texts in the 1940s-early 1980s 64 Figure 5. 'Double' editing as an activity in the process of the public text in the Soviet journalism 87 Figure 6. Official journalistic process in the Soviet system of journalism in the 1970s and early 1980s 91 Figure 7. Four models of editing-censorship confrontation in the Soviet public text in the 1970s-1980s 93 CHAPTER 4 Figure 8. Ideological editing of texts by changing their content and form in Soviet journalism in the 1980s 106 CHAPTER 5 Figure 9. Proportion of content corrections across different topics 130 Figure 10. Changes made to texts by sub-editorial offices 131 Figure 11. Main themes of programmes and average number of corrections per text across different topics 132 Figure 12. Transformation of narrative, actor's way of thinking and modality across different topics 135 Figure 13. Transformation of modality across different themes 136 Figure 14. 'Elimination of the existed system' and 'Construction of news connections and logic' across different topics 139 Figure 15.