The culture of subversion and Russian media Landscape

Abstract

This paper provides a conceptual framework for analyzing parallel (or subversive) media activities in Russia that enable Russian media consumers to act independently from official institutionalized sets of rules and constantly violate both traditional rules (based on great state pressure on content) and the globalized capitalist media economy based on commercial interests. These alternative sets of activities can be interpreted either like an entire parallel public sphere where alternative debate is articulated, or like separate parallel activities recompensing supply and demand failures. Two hypotheses are posed by author. The first states that accessibility of media production in general in Russia is a key element of a contemporary social contract. The second hypothesis relates parallel media practices with certain acts of political activism among narrow groups of the population that could not find places for self-expression in the institutionalized media field and use alternative media outlets (especially blogs and another new media) that ultimately constitute the parallel public sphere.

Full text

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012), 446–466 1932–8036/20120446
Copyright © 2012 (Ilya Kiriya). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No
Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org.
The Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape
ILYA KIRIYA
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia
This paper provides a conceptual framework for analyzing parallel (or subversive) media
activities in Russia that enable Russian media consumers to act independently from official
institutionalized sets of rules and constantly violate both traditional rules (based on great
state pressure on content) and the globalized capitalist media economy based on
commercial interests. These alternative sets of activities can be interpreted either like an
entire parallel public sphere where alternative debate is articulated, or like separate parallel
activities recompensing supply and demand failures. Two hypotheses are posed by author.
The first states that accessibility of media production in general in Russia is a key element
of a contemporary social contract. The second hypothesis relates parallel media practices
with certain acts of political activism among narrow groups of the population that could not
find places for self-expression in the institutionalized media field and use alternative media
outlets (especially blogs and another new media) that ultimately constitute the parallel
public sphere.
Parallel Public Sphere and Parallel Activity:
Theoretical Framework for Analysis
To explore the concept of the parallel public sphere, this discussion proposes at least two
theoretical bases—namely, the Habermasian and post-Habermasian theory of the public sphere and
institutional theory, particularly the concept of formal and non-formal institutions. Habermas’ concept of
the public sphere stemmed from the political debate that organized mediation between the bourgeois civil
society and elective authorities through different public channels, such as the periodical press (and
especially mass press), debate clubs, and saloons (Habermas, 1991). According to Habermas, one of the
foundations for public sphere was the literary public sphere, which consisted in debating literature and
different art productions in particular periodicals, libraries, and literary clubs. As such, not only could mass
communication channels diffusing political opinion be interpreted as parts of a public sphere, but also any
Ilya Kiriya: ilia.kiria@gmail.com
Date submitted: 2011–03–30

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 447
cultural production based on a transfer of symbolic forms (Thompson, 2007, p. 10). In the last 40 years, a
great part of such production has been recorded on different media.1
In the original Habermasian concept, the public sphere figures also like non-perfect debate.
Habermas refers to the public sphere as “bourgeois” to designate that the debate that benefits such social
organization is much more publicized. He characterizes French and German public spheres (the country-
model of the bourgeois public sphere was in the UK) as having limited participation. Based on such
categories, Bernard Miège—in his recent book on public sphere—indicated that certain elements of public
spheres are present even in non-democratic or semi-democratic countries; thus, this notion cannot be
regarded as a peculiarity for only democratic political systems (Miège, 2010, p. 36). In other words,
Habermas is considering the concept of public sphere as an ideal type. Such ideas were developed by
Habermas’ assistant, and a scholar of the late Frankfort school, O. Negt, who proposed studying forms of
resistance and the auto-organization of alternative debates facing the dominant bourgeois public sphere
(for example, the proletarian public sphere). Negt called such forms “counter-public spheres” (Negt,
2007).
Meanwhile, the original concept of the parallel public sphere was proposed by Tristan Mattelart,
who analyzed the role of non-authorized media practices, such as listening to Western radio broadcasts
and engaging in the illegal traffic of non-authorized literature and Western cultural products during the
anti-Soviet emancipation of Central and Eastern Europe (including the USSR; Mattelart, 1995). Such
parallel media consumption during Soviet times generated a political debate parallel to the official public
sphere, which—according to this scholar—contributed to anti-Soviet political activities (i.e., dissident
activities) in such countries, as well as to destruction of the official public sphere. The same struggle
between alternative and main public spheres has been argued by Negt and Kluge (1972). As it comes
from the French scholar’s argument, the parallel public sphere deals with imperfections of political debate
within the official public sphere. But the political debate in the Habermasian concept is in continuity with
economic role of the public sphere, which also serves to help the bourgeois class to negotiate rules on the
market. According to Christian Fuchs, among all the dimensions of alternative media which really create
an alternative public sphere (or counter-public sphere), the organizational one is also important. It means
that, really, the alternative public sphere is independent from the commercial mode of production, and its
products that generate alternative debate are self-produced and distributed according to non-commercial
rules. He relates such production to any and all media content, including recorded media content. For
example, according to his definition, independent cinema, underground cinema, and avant-garde film
represent a kind of alternative media generating alternative debate (Fuchs, 2010, p. 187).
The second theoretical contribution to the concept of the parallel public sphere stems from
institutional theory and the institutional approach to the non-formal economy, which considers the non-
formal economy to be an important element of any formal economy, as the non-formal economy
1 It is necessary to exclude certain computer software that, in general, represents different pragmatic
tools (systems, word processors, etc.) and cannot be interpreted as symbolic production. However, some
categories of software (e.g., computer and console games) can also be regarded as cultural production,
because they are based on fiction and sometimes literary topics.

448 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
reproduces a set of rules (institutions) that cannot be reproduced by formal economic regulations
(Tamasz, 2002). The same situation is possible when the formal set of regulations is not perfect or not
corresponding to the social contract (beliefs, habits, etc.; Gerchuni, 1999). According to Douglas North
(1990), efficient institutions (here, humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction) should be
grounded in social life. In this case, formal institutions (regulation frameworks, contractual rules, etc.)
correspond to non-formal institutions (practices of everyday life, rites, conventions, etc.). However, in the
case of the adoption of new formal institutions (e.g., in importing institutions), it could generate a conflict
between formal and non-formal institutions that could, itself, lead to the rise of opposing practices going
beyond new formal institutions. Institutional theory also shapes the connectivity between economic rules
and political rules. Development of widespread non-estate based political rules opens the doors for
concurrence within political life, which leads to perfection of exchange rules, and consequently, to
economic growth (North, Wallis, & Weingast, 2009).
From this point of view, the author proposes explaining the rise of informal activities in the USSR
through extremely tough regulations of social life, and of the same phenomena in post-Soviet Russia
through incompatibility between formal and non-formal traditional rules. In other words, Russian
authorities could not eradicate non-formal activities (in particular, piracy) because it takes time to change
non-formal institutions both in the political (tradition of parallel media flows consumption) and economic
(orientation toward accessibility of cultural products) fields.
Ultimately, the parallel public sphere represents a set of interconnected media consumption and
media production practices that constitute an alternative debate to the dominant one existing in the
official public sphere and also opposing the traditional organization forms of such production. Parallel
activity, according to such a theoretical framework, represents a set of settled practices that smooth over
institutional imperfections related to the main activity.
Social Tradition of Non-Formal Institutions in Russia
A long tradition of non-formal institutions and parallel economic activity exists in Russia. Such a
tradition was likely grounded in society long before the Soviet period, and it has been structured by
factors such as the position of resources in the network (Barsukova, 2000), the climate, and the character
of labor—all elements that have significantly influenced the Russian economic mentality (Balabanova,
2001). However, the Soviet period and state-predator that pretended to be completely dominant within
social life created a total network of parallel activity that has often been illegal. Thus, the hidden social
activity (not only in terms of consuming, but also in the field of self-expression) during the Soviet period
has been a response to the state’s overregulated and often disproportional official economy, politics, etc.
Several hidden (or parallel) activities were specific to the Soviet period:
 Distribution of goods, especially provisions during the last Soviet period of economic
shortage (deficit).

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 449
 Non-formal relations between middle management and workers in the system of
distribution of bonus payments (Clarke, 1995).
 Parallel mechanism of enterprise control in the late Soviet-period (i.e., the Gorbachev
period), when directors of enterprises created parallel networks of non-formal relations
with ministries and other enterprises and became non-formal owners of enterprises
(Kabalina & Clarke, 1996).
 Hidden exchange of prohibited goods. This has been probably the biggest segment of
parallel activity. Official authorities prohibited the circulation of a large range of goods, a
policy which provoked such a response in the society.
The period of transition (i.e., perestroika) was based on the reforming initiatives of the current
power and its leader, Gorbachev (Castells, 1999). Such reforms, to a certain degree, imported elements of
Western political and economic orders (for the first time), such as the freedom of speech, free initiatives in
the field of business, a free electoral process and real political alternatives, and self-repayment of state
enterprises, as well as (for the second time) private property, prices determined by the market, real
exchange rates, and proportional electoral systems. Such elements required the complete importation of
Western (or “globally dominant”) formal institutions which did not correspond to the cultural basis (i.e.,
non-formal institutions). Grounded non-formal institutions conflicted with global official institutions that
provoked some kind of mix between imported formal and grounded non-formal rules. Such rules work as
compensatory practices for the defects of formal orders (Ledeneva, 2006). For example, to a great extent,
the privatization of state property involved the quasi-free distribution of property among those politically
loyal to the power oligarchs (Nureev, 2003), thereby completely transforming the political system into a
pseudo-democratic system. Meanwhile, “free prices” determined by the market were artificially “fixed”
prices for particular privileged industries (evident, for example, in the market price and “taxed price” for
real estate). Instead of laying off workers from ineffective enterprises, the state engaged in the non-
repayment of salary (which provoked the “gray” employment of those “officially employed” in other firms;
Sinyavskaya, 2005). In other words, market and political reforms did not lead to a market economy and
democratic political system, but to the strange mix of what Castells (1999) referred to as statism and
capitalism.
Such institutional conflict provoked the installation of parallel activities in seemingly all spheres of
social life, including the importation of goods, money laundering, barter exchange (Yakovlev, 2006),
double accounting, shadow bartering, manipulative campaigning within political life (Ledeneva, 2006),
informal medical services (Shishkin, 2003), non-formal labor (Sinyavskaya, 2005), and the non-formal
preparation of doctoral works (Kalimullin, 2005). Thus, the parallel sphere was omnipresent in social life,
and in everyday life, people could migrate between the official and hidden spheres.
According to this historical and institutional basis, this article analyzes media consumption in
Russia. To do so, the author proposes distinguishing two key characteristics or dimensions that structure
hidden practices in post-Soviet media consumption. The first dimension, accessibility of media, considers
piracy and hidden practices from only an economic point of view, such as the mechanism of maintaining

450 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
low prices or even making some cultural products free of payment. The second dimension is the protest
activity within the public sphere generated by opposition media, which identifies hidden practices as a
political response to official rules.
Archaeology of Accessibility
Accessibility of Culture and Soviet Normativity
The historical orientation of Soviet (Russian) people to the accessibility of any cultural and mass
communication product is based on the Soviet propagandist function. To ensure this function, the Soviet
mass communication apparatus had to first build an audience (i.e., to ensure that the masses were
literate), and second, to make products of mass communication accessible to people.
The propagandist function has been crucial to the Soviet identity, which was constructed under
the principle of double identity—the national identity and the Soviet identity—as the basis of a new culture
and ideology (Castells, 1999). The communication of the new ideology was the biggest challenge for the
Bolshevik authorities, who had to develop effective mass communications forms consistently, and who
tended to limit personal communications (telephone communications, transportation means, etc., that did
not serve point-to-point personal communication functions). This centralized form of communication
administration is called communicational control (Kiriya, 2004, 2007). The USSR constructed a centralized
system of cable radio and a unique system of television broadcasting in real time across 11 time zones, in
addition to building a gargantuan newspaper industry, with a total circulation of 230 million copies in 1989
(Ovsepian, 1999).
In this context, propaganda should make products of mass communication and culture accessible
to people; without such access, the Soviet identity could not be maintained, and communication control
could not be ensured. Television and radio were offered free of charge and without advertising.
Newspapers were paid communication forms, but the majority of the population received a free
subscription from Communist Party cells in their workplaces. Sometimes, the Communist Party cells in big
enterprises also distributed free tickets to movie theaters. Every large Soviet structure had its own
cultural club, where theatrical or cinema productions were offered to employees.
From another point of view, such accessibility of official content conflicted with the Soviet policy
(here, we could find some intersections between the economic and political dimensions) of controlling the
incoming flows of communication. Only the authorized (and mainly, locally produced) content framing and
feeding into the state propaganda could be accessible. The selective isolation of the Soviet cultural sphere
provoked the existence of a parallel flow of disallowed content that, in the Soviet system, was categorized
as illegal practice (shadow activity). Thus, accessible content was installed in the non-formal hidden
system of circulation of non-allowed content (“samizdat,” illegally listening to Western radio, illegally
trafficking in Western music, etc.) under other rules of exchange, albeit for a very narrow group of the
population.
Ultimately, the Soviet system was based on controlling access to cultural and informational
products, and for a majority of the population, such a system became a normal and uniquely possible

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 451
institution for the diffusion of information and culture. In a centralized and planned economy, the state
apparatus economically supported culture, which was not made for profit. Yet the parallel hidden
communication system was recompensing bottlenecks (primarily in the field of content) in the official
communication system. Thus, the dissemination of Western and global content was a kind of non-formal
institution based on general interest in foreign (limited in access) culture, generating a demand for
Western content in the “hidden market.” This means that parallel media circulation during the Soviet
period could also be interpreted within a framework of a market failure problem within an authorized
media market.
Accessibility’s Likeness to Subversion of the Market Exchange during the Post-Soviet Period
During the transition period, the state imported global market economic institutions (such as
market-driven prices, private property, etc.), yet it also maintained the old social contracts under pressure
from the population. It structured the industry to be more accessible for people by subverting some
commercial mechanisms.
First, the state adopted strategies to ensure accessibility to traditional mass media—namely,
television, radio, and print media. The state television chose the only possible model of financing:
commercial advertising. This was the only possible alternative, given the shortage of state funding, as well
as the non-readiness of the population to pay for it. Thus, classic paid public TV (financed by both the
state and people) could not exist, thereby provoking the structural dualism of Russian state television—the
biggest players in the advertising market (state television channel Rossia and the 51% state-owned
Channel One, which had a collective daily share of about 40%) accounted for about 50% of television
advertising revenues in the market (Kiriya & Degtereva, 2010), while also ensuring the public content of
broadcasting.
In 2015, Russia will completely shift to digital terrestrial broadcasting (DTB), which was
announced as a big governmental project. However, without forcing the population to buy new equipment
(i.e., set-top boxes), the Russian government cannot accomplish this task. Experiences in some Russian
regions (where DTB was launched as a pilot test) demonstrate that the government is ready to make such
equipment more accessible for people and distribute set-top boxes (seemingly) for free (Kachkaeva,
2008).
With the development of television (free for customers) and the crucial drop-off of people’s
revenues to spend on print media, pay media (very developed during Soviet times) became less popular,
which led first to a drop-off in paid circulations, and ultimately to the practical disappearance of
subscriptions. This situation provoked a very tough reaction from the state to ensure the public’s access to
the newspaper. First, Gaidar’s liberal government, in parallel to shock therapy and significant inflation,
distributed unprecedented support for the biggest newspapers (fixed prices for paper, some subventions
from state, exempt VAT payments, etc.; Zassursky, 2001). The entire system of financial state support for
the press was implemented, which made the press financially and politically subordinate to local and
federal authorities. Among the supporting mechanisms, the state uses the subvention of subscription,
which means that the state pays the subscription fees for some kinds of newspapers (primarily state-run

452 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
ones). The difficult economic situation has led the majority of print outlets to be sold and financed either
by the state (local authorities, city authorities, federal authorities, regional governors, etc.), or by large
industrial groups that also represent one of the means for making such outlets accessible to people (even
if their objectives are purely propagandist).
One of the structural mechanisms that made the press more independent from readers’ payment
was the tolerance of a parallel form of financing media. A more developed mechanism is information
coverage contracts (from big companies or authorities), which are also known as purchasing loyalty
contracts. Research conducted by the author in 15 regions in 2009–2010 shows that this parallel market is
bigger in some regions than the official advertising one (Kiriya, 2011b).2 Such a need to ensure
accessibility sometimes pushes the state to distribute some kind of cultural and informational goods under
non-market conditions (as gifts or donations). For example, in sports (mainly in soccer), broadcasting
rights do not represent a real market; state companies (e.g., Gazprom,) are the main owners and
sponsors of soccer teams, and they are sometimes forced to sell broadcasting rights to state-owned
television channels at low prices. In 2007, President Putin publicly announced that sports—soccer in
particular—should be accessible for free, which forced the Russian Soccer Federation to cancel the deal
with pay television platform NTV+, and to give the rights to state-owned broadcasters for a non-disclosed
price.
For a long time, the desire to ensure accessibility meant opposing the changing of tariffs for
private, fixed telephonic communications (before the mid 2000s, local telephone calls were semi-free,
because the monthly payment did not correspond to the total duration of telephone line use—namely,
unlimited access for quite a low price, as financed by the state). For example, in Moscow, the passage of
an hourly tariff has been postponed three times due to social pressure from the population and different
associations. In 2009, according to the Ministry of Communications, the total income from fixed telephone
services collected by state-owned companies was about 102 billion rubles (US$3.3 billion), equating to an
income averaging 1,000 rubles (US$33) per person, per year (Ministry of Telecommunication and Mass
Communication, 2009). Thus, this sector is also supported by the state to ensure accessibility.
In the field of cultural products, only one segment has drastically dropped off: the book
publishing sector. According to the Russian Center for Public Opinion Study (VCIOM), in 2009, 36% of
Russians were not reading books (in 1996, this number was only 20%; VCIOM, 2010). In other spheres of
cultural industry (the cinema industry, the software industry, the music industry, etc.), the shift to
commercial financing (and, consequently, the price growth for such products) has been accompanied by
piracy practices that continued the accessibility of such products for people.
During the first years of Gorbachev’s reforms and the “new Russia,” piracy was a quasi-legal
practice tolerated by the state. State enterprises and Komsomol (the political organization of young
Communists) organized a widespread network of video saloons (a movie theater, of sorts) that primarily
2 The two years of financed research were made possible by the Laboratory for Media Research at the
Higher School of Economics using the deep interview method with 60 media owners and media managers
in 16 regions of Russia. The survey was entitled “Media capital in Russian regions.”

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 453
showed pirated films and cartoons (Interactive Research Group [IRG], 2001). Videocassettes with two
recorded films (usually Western productions), a unique distribution method, became the most popular
form of home video. The state tolerates the existence of the “Gorbushka” market, a known location where
pirated videos, computer software, music, etc., are sold. In 1991, in response to blatant piracy in Russia,
Jack Valenti (the then-president of the MPAA) initiated the boycott of the Russian legal market by major
players in American cinema, which led the market to absolutely uncontrollable piracy (Beumers, 1999).
Prior to 1995 (when Russia joined the Bern convention), piracy was a non-regulated business; thus, this
non-formal sector represented a practice which was not covered by any norms and, consequently, was
omnipresent.
After joining the Bern convention in 1995 and installing a Business Software Alliance (BSA) office
in 1997, Russian authorities engaged in what could be characterized like a spectacular struggle against
piracy. Authorities tolerated home piracy, non-formal exchanges (Internet and home Ethernet networks
became the major instrument of such exchanges), and even the existence of some privileged sales points
(such as Gorbushka, which obtained a new building near the park where pirates had previously traded),
although police sometimes engaged in enforcement actions and pursued pirates in the center of cities.
Such a policy moved piracy from being an activity not covered by the rules to being a shadow activity that
was even more tolerated by the state.
The state changed the structure of legal home videos for Russian films considerably. Before 2000,
the Russian cinema sector was quite small; however, after the growth of state oil revenues, Russian
authorities became increasingly important players in the cinema industry. In 2008, the total movie-making
budget in Russia was estimated to be 6.07 billion rubles (about US$209.11 million), but the market
income (income from box office) was about 5.77 billion rubles (Ivanov, 2009a). The total volume of state
support for filmmaking the same year, according to an official report from the Ministry of Culture (2011),
was about 1.6 billion rubles. By supporting filmmaking in Russia, authorities considerably changed the
balance of forces in the entire DVD market. Russian producers who had already obtained money from the
state could significantly decrease the prices for their legal discs, bringing their price closer to the price for
pirated DVDs. This changed the balance in the legitimate market to favor Russian cinema, ultimately
bringing foreign movies into the pirate segment. Indeed, today only 18% of pirated films are Russian films
(Ivanov, 2009b). In general, this intersection between parallel and legal markets makes the prices for
media goods higher and the variety of accessible goods lower, due to the high degree of monopolization
by multi-national companies (Sezneva & Karaganis, 2011, p. 151), but also by some local majors
sponsored by state companies.
Based on this discussion, the entire tradition of accessibility is socially grounded and represents a
kind of social contract in which the state ensures the accessibility of cultural products exchanged against
the state’s emphasis on content. During Soviet times, accessibility represented a kind of non-formal
institution that still perfectly corresponded to the official institutional field based on culture, such as
propagandist productions ensured and paid for by the state. After the Soviet period, the global model of a
market economy of culture was implemented as the official set of rules, thereby provoking a conflict
between formal institutions and non-formal institutions that led to an increase in parallel activities among
social actors maintaining a social contract (accessibility) within a new globalized set of rules. Ultimately,

454 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
the state’s identified strategies to maintain such a contract resulted in the Russian media and
communication sector becoming non-commercially oriented.
Hidden Practices as a Parallel Public Sphere
Media consumption cannot be perceived only as a passive activity of absorbing symbolic forms,
but also as some kind of possible resistance to dominant symbolic forms or as the protection of specific
cultural forms. Thus, by consuming some kinds of symbolic forms (independently from their medium and
distribution), people affirm their cultural identities, which is partly connected with their political
orientation, ethnicity, etc. (Hoggart, 1998; Morley & Brunsdon, 1999), and which contributes to organizing
them according to different social groups with particular forms of debate. This provides the possibility to
examine some parallel forms of media consumption, such as the parallel public sphere. However, it seems
necessary to examine free-of-charge and quasi-free-of-charge mass media practices of the public sphere
(television, radio, Internet-based media, newspapers, etc.) and customer-paid mass media (the book
sector, the recorded media sector, the music sector, the film sector, etc.) separately, due to different
models of their valuation. In the first case, the demand is entirely based on content choice and depends
less on prices (Picard, 1989). In the second, which is the customer-paid model, the value is unpredictable
(Huet, Miège, & Peron, 1984), and demand could depend on the price level, which means that the
consumer choice could be determined either by content choice or pure supply and demand (which has
been pointed out precisely in the previous section).
Mass Media in the Parallel Public Sphere
The parallel public sphere should be examined with a connection to the official one. In the 19th
century (when the English public sphere flourished; Habermas, 1991), 90% of the Russian population
(dominated by serfs) had neither political rights nor special needs in information, due to their literacy level
(very low, as previously discussed). Consequently, the Russian public sphere in the 19th century was
extremely narrow. Russian intellectuals discussed actual political problems and possible paths of social
development in the printed media (primarily in literary journals), but these discussions were understood
and read by a limited range of audiences, which, in Habermasian theory, is a stage of the literary public
sphere.
During Soviet times, due to ideological filters limiting access to Western mass media content,
parallel or protest media activity flourished. In the field of mass media, this activity was primarily the
widespread practice of listening to Western radio. According to Mattelart (1995), by broadcasting
alternatives to the official Soviet public sphere of news and Western music, such radio stations (Liberty,
Voice of America, BBC World Service) contributed to increasing the parallel alternative political debate that
became part of the parallel public sphere, in which certain anti-Soviet groups constructed their own press,
mechanisms of self-expression, and parallel power, and in so doing, contributed to the transformation of
the official public sphere into a ritual public sphere in which ideology was not really shared, but became a
simple habit. At the same time, the audience for such stations in the USSR (unlike the politically active
Western Europe) remained quite narrow (reproducing the pre-Soviet situation with the public sphere).
Using the KGB’s post Soviet-period revelations and figures about the Soviet middle-class, the author has
determined that the audience did not exceed 20% of the population (Kiriya, 2007). Thus, it is possible to

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 455
identify some main peculiarities of the parallel public sphere in Russia—namely, the very narrow character
of protest activity and the parallel flow of information due to social passivity and social structure.
Interactions between Communist authorities’ decisions concerning media industries and
consumption of this parallel flow are particularly interesting. Under the pressure of such parallel practices
(listening to Western radio and the illegal trafficking of music and videos), the Communist Party
progressively authorized entertainment in the official media sphere. The Soviet government launched the
first radio station that broadcasted music, Mayak. After a few years of non-successful struggles against
videos, the Kremlin authorized a state-run video industry (Mattelart, 1995). This reaction by the state to
social pressures is quite similar to providing accessibility in the actual dominant economical system (see
above, “Archaeology of Accessibility”).
In contemporary Russia, the parallel public sphere is still present. Its existence is due to the quite
restrictive character of the official public sphere, where the large, widespread media (mostly government
itself or state-owned companies) are subordinate to censorship and filtering of their content (Koltsova,
2006). Such dualist public activity correlates well with two major attitudes of the population toward
media. The majority of the Russian population relies more on media and expects some kind of support
from it (Klimov, 2007). Research on television audiences’ attitudes (Kachkaeva & Kiriya, 2007) shows
that, for the majority of Russians, media is a state institute that explains all external realities for them.
The remaining Russian population is more pragmatic regarding media functions. These people use media
both to be more informed, and to make their own decisions and their own interpretations of reality. Such
people rely on themselves (Klimov, 2007).
The large, widespread media and official public sphere serve the needs of the greater part of the
population, providing them with enlightening content that maintains social stability and ensures the
reproduction of the power elite. Such media have the largest share of the audience (Channel One, Rossia,
and NTV account for approximately 50% of daily audience shares on television, which is the main
consumed media in Russia) and the advertising market (state-owned Channel One and Rossia account for
50% of the entire television advertising market; Kiriya & Degtereva, 2010). These media are primarily
owned by the state or close to the state power elite groups.3
Meanwhile, some niche media outlets may be more critical, as they have a news agenda that
differs from that of the official media. Such media serve the informational needs of a very narrow group of
socially active people, whose needs are also catered to by Internet use. These media are the Ren-TV
television channel, Echo Moskvy radio broadcast, and Novaya Gazeta print media. Online media also play
a role in this field4 (Etling, Alexanyan, Kelly, Faris, et al., 2010). Yet all these media outlets are
3 Channel One is 51% owned by the state, and 25% of its stock is owned by Yuri Kovaltchuk and his bank
Rossia, which are known to be very close to Prime Minister Putin. The media Rossia, Kultura (Rossia K),
Rossia 2, and Rossia 24 are directly owned and operated by the state. NTV and TNT (entertainment
channels) are owned by Gazprom, which is a state-owned company.
4 In his interview to three of the biggest TV channels in December 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev
stated that “the television agenda is crucially different from Internet news agenda.”

456 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
institutionalized within the system of state-related ownership: Ren-TV is owned by the bank Rossia, which
is close to Prime Minister Putin (owned by his old colleague Kovalchuk), Echo Moskvy belongs to Gazprom,
and Novaya Gazeta belongs to the deputy of the State Duma (the lower chamber of Parliament) and the
businessman Lebedev. Such media do not play the role of mediators (the basic function of the public
sphere, according to Habermas), but rather, they ensure the isolation and marginalization of the
opposition and other critically thinking people. Consequently, such media can be called “information
ghettos” (Kiriya, 2007; Kiriya & Degtereva, 2010). Such ghettos reproduce the old Russian culture of a
narrow public sphere from the 19th century and the late Soviet period. The use of a parallel public sphere
represents the subversion of the traditional public sphere, but it does not play an important role in the
subversion of the entire social order.
In parallel to such an institutionalized parallel public sphere, another public sphere has appeared
within social networks on the Internet. According to Etling et al. (2010), public discourse within social
networks in Russia has its own peculiarities—namely, quasi-exclusive fields for public discourse for
isolated clusters of the population, such as democratic opposition and nationalists. As such, the parallel
public sphere is represented in its institutionalized form, as well as in a non-institutionalized form (see
Table 1). Sometimes, public discourse from blogs (i.e., the non-institutionalized sphere) can migrate into
the institutionalized parallel public sphere (Internet media or some another “ghetto”), but it does, though
rarely, sometimes appear in the official public sphere, as evident in some police corruption affairs (e.g.,
the Dymovsky case or revelations of illegal actions of traffic police), the scandal over improper quality of
social security in nursing homes in the Pskov region, the scandal involving the Tver region’s governor
Zelenin,5 etc.
Table 1. Main and Parallel Public Spheres in Russia.
Main public sphere
Parallel public sphere
Institutionalized
Non-Institutionalized
Widespread television channels,
radio, and some political print
media
Opposition television channels
(Ren-TV) and media outlets
(Echo Moskvy) controlled by elite
groups close to the state and
online-media
Blogs and social networks
The question now is how the state will react to the non-institutionalized public sphere. Recent
initiatives of regulation indicate that the state will either legalize this field and force bloggers to be more
responsible for the content they create (the most recent initiative proposed registering every blogger
account as separate media) or create a non-institutionalized main public sphere in which the state will—
through loyal bloggers—organize public discourse. As such, in the field of public protest activity, such a
parallel public sphere is still quite narrow, which reproduces the old cultural tradition of the narrow
political debate. Another peculiarity of this parallel debate is the inclusion of actors in both the production
and consumption of symbolic forms. The same situation was observed in the 19th century in the literary
5 Zelenin published a photo of a worm on his plate at an official Kremlin dinner via his Twitter account.

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 457
public sphere (literary men were themselves reading) and during the Soviet period, when the consumption
of Western content was actively debated (Firsov, 2008).
Cultural Goods in the Parallel Public Sphere
During the Soviet era, the cultural industry in general was not a business, and consequently, it
played a dirigiste role (see above, “Archaeology of Accessibility”). In such a tradition, literary content was
politically and ideologically charged, which considerably reduced the offer in this field, particularly by
limiting and filtering global content. It further provoked (as in the mass media field) an increase in parallel
practices that contributed to establishing a parallel public sphere. Such practices included exchanges of
Western music in the early post-war period (e.g., the Beatles’ first albums were prohibited in the official
phonographic industry), auto-publication and circulation of prohibited literature (from both Western and
dissident authors), and the illegal exchange of videos (Western films often recorded from foreign
television broadcasts in nearby border zones, such as the Baltic countries). The traffic of such prohibited
recorded cultural goods was based not only on consuming, but also on producing activities.
Samizdat was an illegal activity of auto-edition, where some groups of dissidents not only
circulated prohibited literary works, but also contributed to their diffusion, copying and producing them for
others. The field of music was the same: Music lovers purchased (generally from visiting foreign citizens)
Western vinyl discs and then reproduced them on old X-ray photographs (Rafikova, 2010). In other words,
some parallel media activities during Soviet times represented not so much consumer practices as protest
activities (traffic of Western music was more popular among the “Soviet fops” social movement).
Consequently, some such activities (e.g., auto-publication of samizdat and non-formal exchange of
prohibited books, music, and video programs) were based on non-monetary exchanges (Lisjutkina, 1993).
Such separate organizational structures of production (quite similar to artisanal models) and differentiated
from industrial mass-produced books, music, and movies corresponds in this case to “alternative debate”
defined by Fuchs (2010).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its ideological barriers were destroyed, which is why it is
still not possible to simply apply the same reasons in structuring the Soviet parallel circulation of cultural
products to post-Soviet piracy. However, at the same time, the lack of financial accessibility to cultural
goods and the population’s limited income could not be the only reasons. Between 2000 and 2008, the
average salary per habitant increased 8 times (from 2,223.4 to 17,290.1 rubles; Federal Statistic Bureau,
2011), but the level of piracy in the music field did not drop significantly (from 75% to 67% of the total
music market volume between 2000 and 2006), while the total pirate market volume doubled (from
US$200 to 450 million; IFPI, 2006). Thus, other strategies exist beyond piracy.
During Soviet times, the hidden flow of information had no lucrative motivation (i.e., for users,
the primary motivation was an added value that such products represented compared to their official
prototypes). The significant amount of piracy in modern period could be explained by several non-lucrative
motivations identified through the deep analysis of 100 Internet blogs on piracy (Kiriya, 2011a). The first
such motivation is a trial function, where users download free pirated films to make decisions about
consuming them officially (through movie theaters or by purchasing legal DVDs). Such a motivation is also

458 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
identified in a survey by Sezneva and Karaganis (2011). The second motivation is access to the non-
commercial culture; such movies (art house or other non-mass-produced products) could not be
purchased through official channels because localized versions were not available, and in general, they are
not distributed commercially. The final motivation is access to locally produced films for those who live
abroad or in some very distant regions where the official market is very poor. As such, piracy partly
represents a reaction to the imperfect content of a market-driven cultural economy. In other words, piracy
is, to a certain degree, more oriented to narrow markets’ demands than to that of the official mass
cultural market, and in that sense, it is a parallel reaction to institutional conflict between a formal set of
rules (driven by the global market economy of big distributers) and a non-formal set of rules based on the
tradition of an alternative cultural consumption.
Yet even if some consumers’ motivations for accessing pirated cultural goods have no relation to
financial motivation (and, consequently, to accessibility), they could be interpreted not as a parallel public
sphere, but just as an result of the market’s failure (non-correspondence of monopolized, majors-
dominated supply to local market demand and the particular interests of users). Unlike the Soviet
situation, in which the consumption of Western music, movies, etc. both has been connected with
alternative mass media practices (such as listening to Western media) and contributed to the creation of
an alternative debate, the actual parallel activities of sharing media content for free have no connection
with alternative debate and represent, instead, some kind of non-organized anti-market protest.
The state policy in the field of filtering cultural content has no connection with Soviet practices.
Indeed, practically all cultural content is accessible and not prohibited because, universally, Russia’s most
important media channel is free television. Other media (due to their character of paid consumption) are
consumed by quite a limited range of the population, a segment whose opinion does not represent the
most important target for Kremlin propagandists. Consequently, cultural content is not filtered, and
pirating cannot have serious political motivations. Moreover, the organizational structure of piracy
corresponds perfectly to the industrial production proper to the legal cultural market production, a
situation which does not respond to criterions of Fuchs’ alternative debate.
Thus, in the field of mass communication, from a political point of view, a path dependence exists
among imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet traditions of mass communication control. The dirigiste model
and significant intrusion of the state into social life (and in the field of content), as well as broad social
passivity, have all led to a low degree of pluralism and limitedness of range for the official debate within
the public sphere. It subsequently provoked the existence of very narrow politically active groups that
organized their own means of self-expression beyond the institutionalized set of rules; such
interconnected practices constitute the parallel public sphere. Nevertheless, the institutional difference
between Soviet times and post-Soviet times is obvious. The Soviet Union never pretended to be a
democratic country connected to global political and economic systems. Thus, the grounded non-formal
tradition of dirigisme corresponded perfectly to political order. Post-Soviet Russia implemented Western
democratic institutions with pluralism and freedom of press and speech; thus, again, formal Western-
imported institutions were in conflict with grounded non-formal ones.

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 459
Both systems of rules (formal during Soviet times and non-formal during the current period)
provoked the existence of parallel public spheres characterized by narrowness and social atomization,
thereby not leading to considerable reforms in the official public sphere. In other words, this parallel flow
simply reproduced the dominant social order.
The political dimension in the field of cultural industries and recorded content is quite similar.
After the Soviet era, the formal system of institutions opened doors for the quasi-non-controllable import
of any global entertainment content (with very rare exceptions), but in this case, the state bureaucratic
filter was replaced by market policies filter of global players in the field of content, which also provoked a
lack of some kind of value being added for cultural products and contributed to the creation of parallel
pirated practices. However, such practices could be interpreted not as a parallel public sphere, but (much
more likely) as market failure.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article highlights that a kind of subversive media culture has long been
grounded in the entire social tradition in Russia, and that it is strongly connected with the official set of
rules and represents a kind of social response to their imperfection. The significant pressure that the
Russian state historically applied to manage social reforms led to escapism among the population,
ultimately yielding attempts to delve into parallel and alternative practices. Such practices had two
historical dimensions: the economical dimension, based on the grounded social tradition of media
accessibility, and the political dimension, based on different kinds of alternative debate practices that
could be interpreted as a parallel public sphere.
Indeed, the accessibility of media products likely represents a main driver configuring the Russian
media system, which—under pressure from such historical traditions exhibited by users, as well as from
the political power (continuing to ensure accessibility to propagandist content)—became only partly
market-oriented. Accessibility became a form of grounded cultural tradition structuring non-formal
practices opposing the global market media economy implemented under the commercial model. The
state apparatus should maintain such functions as upholding the elements of social contracts, considering
them when applying media policy. Piracy, according to such a dimension, is a reaction to the institutional
conflict between imported global institutions and the grounded tradition of accessibility (see Table 2).

460 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
Table 2. Transformation of Formal and Non-Formal Institutions Structuring Media Piracy
Practices Within Economic and Political Dimensions.
Soviet Times
Post-Soviet Times
Economical
dimension
Political dimension
Economical
dimension
Political dimension
Formal institutions
State-financed
media and culture
State monopoly of
mass-media and
communication
control
Market economy
of media and
culture,
commercial media
and cultural
industries
Formal
independence of
media outlets,
pluralism, non-
regulation of
recorded content
importation
Non-formal
institutions
Accessibility (low
prices, open
access, free
consumption)
State-dirigiste
tradition
Accessibility
State-dirigiste
tradition
Parallel
compensatory
activities in the
mass media field
Foreign radio
listening
Advertising-paid
model of financing
media with state
financing
Parallel debate
within Internet,
particularly in
social media
(parallel public
sphere).
Parallel
compensatory
activities in
recorded cultural
industries field
Illegal traffic of
Western and
prohibited music,
literature
(samizdat), video
Audiovisual piracy
tolerated by the
state
Free circulation of
cultural products
The second dimension of subversive practices in the media field concerns the parallel public
sphere and the alternative flow of information, as the parallel practice of informal exchange of cultural
goods for some narrow groups of the population was represented by politically motivated protest activity.
During the Soviet era, such protest parallel activity was driven by an exchange of prohibited literature, as
well as by the practice of listening to prohibited music and foreign radio, etc. Traffic of such goods was
sometimes organized through non-commercial (gift-based) exchanges and represented a real alternative
debate driver. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the importing of Western democratic institutions,
combined with the strong tradition of the state intruding into social life, provoked the new conflict of
institutions, which, in turn, led to hidden state control practices and a dirigiste tradition in the field of
mass media, ultimately resulting in the creation of a parallel public sphere (see Table 2). Historically, the
Russian parallel public sphere of this kind was narrow and involved an insignificant number of people.
Actually, two parallel public spheres in the mass media field can be distinguished: the institutionalized

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 461
public sphere, represented by very limited opposition media, but controlled by the state to manage the
alternative discourse, and the not-yet-institutionalized public sphere, which acts via Internet blogs. To
manage the isolation of opposition communities within parallel “information ghettos,” the Russian state
should operate as a “switcher” (Castells, 2009, p. 45) and ensure non-connectivity between the large-
scale official public sphere (the exclusive field of the state propaganda, where the state prefers to act like
a programmer) and the narrow opposition communities on the Internet. However, in the field of cultural
industries, the strategy of the state is not to filter the content. This means that piracy does not represent
alternative political debate, but merely consumers’ reaction to the imperfection of the market-based
cultural economy.
Finally, a conflict exists between formal and non-formal institutions of economy and politics. The
state uses an advertising-based model (which is an imported global element) for mass media to ensure
accessibility, yet it maintains a strong affiliation with mass media outlets and uses the dotation state-paid
model to continue playing the dirigiste role in the official public sphere. As a result, the imported formal
institutions of commercial media are in conflict with non-formal institutions of the state bureaucracy’s
communication control. Ultimately, the subversive parallel media practices—even if some represent a
reaction to the imperfect rules of the institutionalized media environment—are based on a historical and
cultural framework that also determines state policy in this field. Such practices are complementing and
inciting official state policy in media to maintain and reproduce social order.

462 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
References
Balabanova, E. S. (2001). Osobennosti Rossijskoj ekonomicheskoj mentalnosti [Peculiarities of Russian
economic mentality]. Mir Rossii [World of Russia], 3, 67–77.
Barsukova, S. Y. (2000). Neformalnaya ekonomika i setevaja organizatsia prostranstva v Rossii [Non-
formal economy and networked organization of space in Russia]. Mir Rossii [World of Russia], 1,
52–68.
Beumers, B. (1999). Cinemarket, or the Russian film industry in “Mission Possible.” Europe-Asia Studies,
51(5), 889.
Castells, M. (1999). The information age, volumes 1–3: Economy, society and culture. London: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Clarke, S. (Ed.). (1995). Management and industry in Russia: Formal and informal relations in the period
of transition. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgard.
Etling, B., Alexanyan, K., Kelly, J., Faris, R., Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2010). Public discourse in the
Russian blogosphere: Mapping RuNet politics and mobilization. Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center
for Internet and Society, Harvard University. Retrieved from
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/
Public_Discourse_in_the_Russian_Blogosphere_2010.pdf
Firsov, B. (2008). Raznomyslie v SSSR. 1940–1960-e gody [Differences of opinion in USSR in 1940–
1960s]. St. Petersburg: European University in SPB.
Fuchs, C. (2010). Alternative media as critical media. European Journal of Social Theory, 13(2), 173–192.
Gerchuni, J. (1999). Budgety vremeni i neformalnaya ekonomitsheskaya deyatelnost’ [Time budgets and
non-formal economic activity]. In T. Shanin (Ed.), Neformalnaya ekonomika. Rossija i mir [Non-
formal economy. Russia and Worldwide] (pp. 343–356). Moscow: Logos.
Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of
bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hoggart, R. (1998). The uses of literacy. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Huet, A., Miège, B., & Peron, R. (1984). Capitalisme et industries culturelles [Capitalism and cultural
industries]. Grenoble, France: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble.

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 463
IFPI. (2006). The recording industry 2006 piracy report. London: IFPI. Retrieved from
www.ifpi.org/content/library/piracy-report2006.pdf
IRG. (2001). Russia: Video market in transition. Interactive Research Group report for European
Audiovisual Observatory. Strasbourg, France: EAO. Retrieved from
http://www.obs.coe.int/online_publication/reports/IRG_video.pdf.en
Ivanov, O. (Ed.). (2009a). Analiticheskij doklad "O sostoyanii kinootrasli Rossii" [Analytical report “About
Russian cinema industry”]. Moscow: Movie Research. Retrieved from
http://www.rb.ru/inform/126607.html
Ivanov, O. (Ed.). (2009b). Kinostatistika 2008 [Movie statistics 2008] [Analytical report about Russian
movie industry]. Moscow: Movie Research. Retrieved from
http://www.movieresearch.ru/catalog/uploads/file/116KinoStatistika_2008.pdf
Kabalina, V., & Clarke, S. (1996). Politika privatizatsii I borba za control nad predpriatiem v Rossii [The
policy of privatization and struggle for control of enterprise in Russia]. Roubezh [Border], 8–9,
60–97.
Kachkaeva, A. (Ed.). (2008). Tsifrovizatsii teleradioveshtshanija: opyt perekhoda v Rossii i v mire
[Digitalizing television and radio broadcasting: Russian and worldwide experience]. Moscow:
Elitkomstar, State University–Higher School of Economics.
Kachkaeva, A., & Kiriya, I. (Eds.). (2007). Rossijskoe televidenie: Mezhdu sprosom i predlozheniem
[Russian TV: Between demand and supply]. Moscow: Elitkomstar.
Kalimullin, T. (2005). Rossijskij rynok dissertacionnykh uslug [Russian market of PhD-writing services].
Ekonomitcheskaya Sotsiologia [Economic sociology], 6(4), 14–39.
Kiriya, I. (2004). La production des biens culturels en URSS, une “autre” industrie culturelle. Les enjeux
de la transformation actuelle [Production of cultural goods in USSR : « another » cultural
industry. Reasons of actual transformation]. Les enjeux de l’information et de la communication
[Issues on information and communication]. Retrieved from http://w3.u-
grenoble3.fr/les_enjeux/2004/Kiriya/home.html#une
Kiriya, I. (2007). La persistance du non-marchand dans l’appropriation des medias et des TICs en Russie
post-sovietique [Persistence of non-market in appropriation of media and ICTs in post-soviet
Russia]. Thèse de doctorat en sciences de l’information et de la communication [PhD paper in
sciences of information and communication]. Grenoble, France: Grenoble University.
Kiriya, I. (2011a). Le piratage audiovisuel en Russie post-soviétique [Audiovisual piracy in post-soviet
Russia]. In T. Mattelart (Ed.), Piratages audiovisuels—Les voies souterrainnes de la

464 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
mondialisation culturelle [Audivisual piracies—Underground paths of cultural globalization].
Brussels: De Boeck.
Kiriya, I. (2011b). Nerynochnye printcipy I ogranichenya konkurentsii na regionalnykh mediarynkakh v
Rossii [Non-market principles and limitations of concurrence in regional media markets in
Russia]. In E. Vartanova (Ed.), Economika I menedzhment SMI [Economics and management of
media]. Moscow: Mediamir.
Kiriya, I., & Degtereva, E. (2010). Russian TV market: Between state supervision, commercial logic and
simulacrum of public service. Central European Journal of Communication, 1, 37–51.
Klimov, I. (2007). Social'nye vyzovy ‘privatizirovannogo’ televidenija [Social challenges of privatized TV].
In A. Kachkaeva & I. Kiriya (Eds.), Rossijskoe televidenie: Mezhdu sprosom i predlozheniem
[Russian TV: Between demand and supply]. Moscow: Elitkomstar.
Koltsova, O. (2006). News media and power in Russia. London: Routledge.
Ledeneva, A. (2006). How Russia really works. New York: Cornell University Press.
Lisjutkina, L. (1993). Samizdat i agitprop. Glasnost’ pered vyzovom svobodnogo rynka [Samizdat and
agitprop. Glasnost facing challenge of free market]. Obchtchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’
[Social sciences and modernity], 4, 101–113.
Mattelart, T. (1995). Le cheval de Troie audiovisuel. Le rideau de fer à l’épreuve des radios et télévisions
transfrontières [Audiovisual Trojan Horse. The “Iron Curtain” under the attack of cross-border
television and radio broadcasting]. Grenoble, France: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble.
Miège, B. (2010). L’espace public contemporain [Contemporary public sphere]. Grenoble, France: Presses
Universitaires de Grenoble.
Ministry of Culture. (2011). Ob itogah raboty Ministerstva kul'tury Rossijskoj Federacii v 2010 godu i
zadachah na 2011 god [About the results of activity of Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation
in 2010 and tasks for 2011]. Moscow: Russian Federation Ministry of Culture. Retrieved from
http://mkrf.ru/activity/reports/detail.php?ID=166518
Ministry of Telecommunication and Mass Communication. (2009). Ekonomicheskye pokazateli otrasli
[Economic indicators of telecommunication industry]. Moscow: Russian Federation Ministry of
Telecommunication and Mass Communication. Retrieved from
http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/directions/stat/stat/
Morley, D., & Brunsdon, C. (1999). The nationwide television studies. London: Routledge.
Negt, O. (2007). L’espace public oppositionnel [Oppositional public space]. Paris: Payot.

International Journal of Communication 6 (2012) Culture of Subversion and Russian Media Landscape 465
Negt, O., & Kluge A (1972). Offentlichkeit und erfahrung. Zur organisationsanalyse von burgerlicher und
proletarischer offentlichkeit [Public and experience. Organizational analysis of bourgeois and
proletarian public sphere]. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance (Political economy of
institutions and decisions). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
North, D. C., Wallis, J. J., & Weingast, B. R. (2009). Violence and social orders: A conceptual framework
for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Nureev, R. (2003). Gosudarstvo: Istoricheskie sud'by vlasti-sobstvennosti [The state: Historical destinies
of power-property]. Paper presented at the Internet-conference “Poisk jeffektivnyh institutov dlja
Rossii XXI veka” [The search for effective institutes for Russia in the 21st century]. Retrieved
from http://ecsocman.edu.ru/db/msg/129880.html
Ovsepian, R. (1999). V labirintakh istorii otechestvennoj zhurnalistiki [In the labyrinth of the history of
Russian journalism]. Moscow: RIP-holding.
Picard, R. (1989). Media economics: Concepts and issues. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
Rafikova, S. (2010). Subkultura ili podrazhatelstvo: styliagi sibirskoj provintsii [Subculture or imitation:
Fops of the Siberian province]. Kulturologichesky jurnal [Journal of cultural research], 2.
Rosstat [Federal Statistic Bureau]. (2011). Rossijskij statistichesky ezhegodnik [Russian statistics
yearbook], section “Dokhody naselenija” [Population’ revenues]. Moscow: Rosstat. Retrieved
from http://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b11_13/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d1/06-09.htm
Sezneva, O., & Karaganis, J. (2011). Russia. In J. Karaganis (Ed.), Media piracy in emerging economies
(pp. 149–218). New York: Social Sciences Research Council. Retrieved from
http://piracy.ssrc.org
Shishkin, S. (Ed.). (2003). Informal out-of-pocket payments for health care in Russia. Moscow:
Independent Institute for Social Policy.
Sinyavskaya, O. (2005). Neformalnaya zaniatost’ v sovremennoy Rossii : Izmerenie, mashtaby, dinamika
[Non-formal employment in contemporary Russia: Measurement, scale and dynamics]. Moscow:
Pomatour.
Tamasz, P. (2002). Neformalnost’ v postsocialistitcheskoi ekonomike. Postanovotchnye voprosy dlia
sotsiologitcheskikh issledovanij [Non-formal in post-socialist economy. Basic questions for
sociological research]. In I. Olimpieva & O. Patchenkov (Eds.), Neformalnaya ekonomika v
postsovietskom prostranstve [Non-formal economy in post-Soviet space]. (pp. 15–24). St.
Petersburg: TSEFIR.

466 Ilya Kiriya International Journal of Communication
6(2012)
Thompson, J. (2007). The media and modernity: A social theory of the media. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
VCIOM (Russian Center for Public Opinion Study). (2010). Kniga v menyayushchemsya mire: Starye i
novye tehnologii chteniya v Rossii [Book in the changing world: Old and new technologies of
reading in Russia]. Moscow: VCIOM.
Yakovlev, A. (2006). Agenty modernisatsii [Agents of the modernization]. Moscow: State University-
Higher School of Economics.
Zassursky, I. (2001). Mass-media i politika v 90-e gody [Mass media and politics in the 1990s]. Moscow:
Moscow State University Press.