VI. Discussion of key findings NNS provides an 'atypical vocabulary' and a mirror on society A. The Northern News Service develops an 'atypical vocabulary' In four years of experience, the Northern News Service developed its own agenda about what kinds of stories mattered in the North--foreshadowed perhaps by Gorbachev's 1987 admonitions, but also influenced by the wider currents of change sweeping through Soviet society. For example, there is congruency between the NNS agenda and the sorts of issues that fueled the emergence of nationalist movements within Russia and the non-Russian republics of the USSR. As Hosking, et. al. have recently noted, "Glasnost' enabled [non-conformist intelligentsia] to articulate concern about degradation of the environment, belittlement of the indigenous language, culture and history, the poor performance of the local economy, sometimes too about territorial issues or the excessive immigration of outsiders" (Hosking, et. al., 1992: 206). Here again are the same potent themes: environmental disaster, indigenous rights, failures of established systems. These, too, found voice in the articles produced by the Northern News Service. Simply listing the subjects covered by NNS in the 1988-1992 study period is instructive. While many of the subjects are the predictable components of nearly any news organization in nearly any society--government, economics, culture--others speak with considerable specificity to the time, place and context that was unique to NNS. These constitute what I call the "atypical vocabulary" of the Northern News Service, the peculiar combination of subjects and perspectives that offer us insight into how the organization progressed, the roles it played and even the regions it served. Even predictable topics of coverage like the environment can be seen in NNS reporting to have been undertaken with particular emphasis attributable to the context. One way to establish the individual character of the NNS vocabulary is to compare it with the content choices made by others from the period. No entirely parallel content analysis could be located, but comparison with three Russian news agendas from the same period are instructive in general terms nonetheless. These lists of the 10 most frequently covered subjects at three different Russian media do not use the same system of classification or measurement and do not cover precisely the same time frames; they should be viewed as illustrative of broad trends only, not specifics. Particularly noteworthy among the Northern News Service topics are those involving indigenous people, exchanges, renewable resources and wildlife. While some of the distinctions undoubtedly reflect only differences in coding and subjective decisions between researchers who classified the stories, the essential point still holds: these are not subjects that typically would make the "top 10" list of news subjects--and these are not the same items likely to have been discovered on a list of Russian newspaper topics 10 years ago. Coverage of environmental concerns, for example, came of age in the USSR at the dawn of the glasnost' era; indeed, concern for the environment, as evidenced by widespread opposition to a proposed diversion of northern rivers, may have come before official government moves toward glasnost', serving as a catalyst in the growing demand for change. (See especially Darst, 1988: 223-249). Discussion and disclosure concerning environmental problems became one of the "dominant themes" of glasnost' (Pryde, 1991: 2) and, indeed, the first non-Party cabinet minister ever named in the Soviet Union was Nikolai Voronstov, who took over the environment ministry (Goskompriroda) in 1989. Public concern in the late 1980s was high. As Fyodor Morgun, a former head of Goskompriroda told Time magazine in January, 1989, "Please believe me, the people have awakened" (quoted in Pryde, ibid.: 250). Concern over the environment also became linked to nationalist movements in the USSR (Pryde, ibid.: 256 and 264; Darst, op. cit.: 241-246), and ordinary citizens often had their first exposure to political activism and pluralism in ecological movements (Hosking, 1992: 10). Early environmental and cultural activism became a "nursery for future political movements" (Hosking, ibid.: 17). In the Russian North, environmental concerns were closely allied with demands for increased sovereignty not only among indigenous peoples, but also among Russian nationalists who proclaimed a "back to the village" movement to find Russia's soul (Darst, op. cit.: 241-242). A quarter of all stories written by Russian journalists for NNS dealt with environmental issues, and of all those environmental reports, half also involved discussion of politics or government. A large number also dealt with concerns of indigenous peoples--fully 40% of all Russian stories, compared with half the stories from Canada, and more than half of those from Alaska. Add to these figures the stories focused on coverage of wildlife and questions of language, and the nature of this unique, Northern aspect of NNS reporting becomes apparent. Indigenous peoples represent a greater proportion of life in the North than in more populous southern centers, and despite having its administration centered in more cosmopolitan centers like Moscow and Anchorage, NNS editors demonstrably did attempt to represent this unique aspect of Northern life in the news reports. Coverage of wildlife is also a case in point. Not only is the subject itself unusual for a mainstream news agenda, so too is the emphasis and perspective it took in the NNS report, where much of the wildlife reporting centered on its strong cultural component (27% in Russia, 47% in Alaska) and on its role as an economic mainstay (47% in Russia, 20% in Alaska). Stories about exchanges, visits and cooperation between countries formed a large percentage of the total NNS news report, being the seventh most frequently charted subject, 21% of the total data-set. More than 60% of these stories were written by Russians; only one subset--exchanges between indigenous people--was reported at a significantly higher level in Alaska than in Russia, 40% to 22%. Arkady Kudrya, editor of the NNS bulletins in Moscow, remembered exchanges as an integral part of the news service. "As I looked through the set of the stories we published from 1988 till the present time, I saw that one of our main themes was the international cooperation between Northern countries and regions--in business, ecology, transport, communications, science, culture and so on. Especially great attention was paid to the cooperation between Alaska and Siberia and the Far East of our country. We helped our people better understand each other, and we can be proud of it" (Kudrya, 1993c: 1). Because it would be expected of nearly any news service, coverage of economics does not in itself support claims of an "atypical vocabulary" at NNS, but coverage of economics in the North had peculiar dimensions: 34% of Russian economics stories involved indigenous people, 13% involved wildlife, 21% involved exchanges with other nations. B. Experiences of the news service mirror broader Russian events The history of the Northern News Service and its performance provides a study in the course of glasnost', but it also offers more than that. Within this account of the NNS is the story of how proponents of perestroika struggled to remake a communist Soviet society, and of conditions they have reached today. In the ebb and flow of Russian participation in the news service, large patterns of history can be seen in miniature--perhaps mainly as shadows or reflections, but sometimes with sharply focused detail nonetheless. NNS began as a mirror of Soviet policy changes about glasnost' and international cooperation, as outlined in Section III. But although Gorbachev's Murmansk speech and his commitment to the policy of glasnost' created the climate in which the NNS could be introduced, they could not guarantee the news service a smooth path. In its infancy the news service was caught in a continuing struggle within the USSR over glasnost', which was at that time far from an established or secure part of Soviet life. In fact, glasnost' proponents were under direct attack on several fronts even as plans for launching the NNS experiment in multi-national openness went forward. Between the Murmansk speech and initial NNS meeting in Leningrad, Aleksandr Gel'man warned in the 9 April 1988 Sovetskaia Kultura that "Glasnost' must be protected like the apple of one's eye ... We must inhale some air for a second wind, and now is the very time to do it. The struggle is not about to end; its decisive, most difficult stage is only beginning" (In Melville, op. cit.: 67.) Indeed, one of the most public challenges had just appeared, when Nina Andreeva wrote "I cannot forsake my principles" in Sovetskaia Rossiia on 13 March 1988. Her anti-glasnost' polemic appeared "like an exploding bomb" (Melville, ibid.: 63) and was quickly seized upon by other opponents of reform. Until contradicted by a full-page article in Pravda three weeks later, many took the Andreeva article as a signal that glasnost' was to be reined in. A writer in the pro-glasnost' Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote, "It is shameful for me to admit that I took this anti-perestroika position for the official viewpoint ... I recall my first reaction exactly: 'Here, in an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU, material written in a didactic tone, with no editorial commentary ... Such a strongly principled position has surely been agreed, and has possibly been put out as a decree..." (Ruslan Koslov, quoted in McNair, op. cit.: 101). A second assault on glasnost' followed shortly afterward, when the Ministry of Communication announced a limit on the number of subscriptions available to many newspapers and magazines, "an action that was widely interpreted as the bureaucracy's effort to 'yoke' glasnost'" (Melville, ibid.: 67). The yoke did not hold (subscriptions to the newly reinvigorated Soviet press instead strained against the limits of available newsprint, selling at record levels) but the struggle continued. The struggle against glasnost' continued because many in power had no desire to see big changes in the status quo. As McNair observed: There can be little doubt that the majority of Soviet citizens approve of the ... reforms in media policy. There are those, however, for whom the introduction of glasnost' brings little pleasure ...[Many], particularly among the older generation .... fear that their achievements in building socialism in the USSR, despite the ravages of Stalinism, are in danger of being undermined by the glasnost' campaign ... Opposition to the new information policy also comes from that stratum of Party and state workers which, for financial and political reasons, has a personal stake in maintenance of the status quo ... This group is less outspoken in its criticism of glasnost' than the old age pensioners who write letters to the press condemning 'negative appraisals' of the past, but they are better positioned to impede it. (McNair, op. cit.: 93-94) That uncertainty about glasnost' and its uneven application throughout the country were apparent during the fall of 1988, when foreign editors first gathered with Soviet colleagues to charter NNS. During initial negotiations in Leningrad and later on a tour of a formerly closed area of Saami reindeer herders on the Kola Peninsula, there was evidence of the struggle over how much to acknowledge, how much to reveal, and a clear illustration of the protective "status quo" mentality McNair characterized (Weaver, 1988: M-10) There was a further reflection of the continuing battle in the effort to hold the Northern News Service's 1989 meeting in the closed city of Noril'sk. As outlined in Section III, unnamed "high officials" reportedly opposed allowing NNS to meet there, but the meeting went forward. The occasion not only allowed foreign journalists into a closed, former Gulag city bristling with strategic industry, it also provided a forum for dissident Russian environmentalists to address them. Ernest Gellner has written of perestroika as "an attempt at moral regeneration, at expiation, at the purging of guilt" (Gellner, 1990: 3), and the NNS visit to Noril'sk fits that interpretation precisely. In much the same way that he saw commemoration of Stalinist repression as memorializing "both the victims and the culprits" (ibid.: 4), so the NNS journalists' examination of the dual horrors of Noril'sk--its Gulag past, with an estimated 80,000 dead, and the ecological disaster of its present, with uncounted victims--was an opportunity for the Soviet hosts not only to demonstrate glasnost' under extreme conditions, but also to disassociate themselves from guilt by exposing its source. Exposing Western reporters to the steaming smokestacks of Nadezhda Metallurgical Combine, arranging lectures on Gulag history and inviting discussion with Taimyr Green Front dissidents surely provided a combination of potent purgatives as well as demonstrating openness. On several levels, this was the essence of glasnost' in action, a clear victory for proponents of openness and international cooperation. But even so, NNS did not escape the subsequent contraction of glasnost' that accompanied Gorbachev's increasing conservatism in the months before the August 1991 pustch. Indeed, the organization was once again squarely in the mainstream of events in the wider nation, even if playing them out in an arena of modest proportions. As outlined by former NNS co-chairman Baranikas in Section III, Novosti officials inclined toward censorship in late 1990, beginning "to ruthlessly censor [Soviet articles] in the most conservative Communist manner" (Baranikas, 1993b: 3). That behavior echoed a general retrenchment then under way in the central government. "Meanwhile, Gorbachev was shifting to the right," wrote Peter Duncan. "His position was, in the long run, untenable; he was in alliance with people who hated him. Yet this situation was to last from October 1990 to March-April 1991 ... [In January 1991] Gorbachev proposed a moratorium on glasnost' and his new head of broadcasting ... banned the news programs 'Vzgliad' and 'TSN,' which sought to report the Baltic events objectively" (Duncan, 1992: 99). That shift and the censorship Baranikas recalls are evidenced to some degree in the articles produced by NNS. Although overall coverage trends do not demonstrate a striking difference between the kinds of stories covered in 1991 compared with other years, more subtle examination of the data shows a substantially different 1991 report. For example, coverage of environment news in general accounted for 15% of the Russian total in 1989, 34% in 1990, 33% in 1991 and 17% in 1992, revealing no apparent pattern, and certainly none pointing at censorship in 1991. But an examination of environment stories of a negative nature yeilds more telling results. Stories combining environment and pollution, for instance, accounted for 60% of all environmental coverage in 1989 and 1992 and 50% in 1990--but only 38% in 1991. Pollution and science (a category generally associated with nuclear waste) shows the same pattern, with the 1991 level (17%) the lowest of any year. Stories including renewable resources and pollution accounted for between 13-33% of the pollution stories every year except 1991, when no stories with that combination appeared at all. After the failure of the August 1991 coup, "democratization" came to Novosti as to many Russian institutions. "After the attempt of the coup the leadership of the agency was accused of the fulfilling ... the decrees of the coup plotters and was replaced by other people" (Kudrya, 1993a: 4). Censorship in the nation was ended in 1991. Two stories published in the NNS bulletin in 1992 illustrate the more open, less doctrinaire approach Russian writers then took. In the April 1992 bulletin, Gennady Vedernikov, Novosti correspondent in Khabarovsk, wrote under the headline "The small nations of Russia's Far East struggle for survival": In the past local people exchanged pelts, fish and meat for tea, salt, arms and other prime necessities. The seven decades of the socialist experiment completely destroyed their traditional lifestyle. Their lands were used to mine minerals and procure timber. Heavy blows have been dealt to their natural environment. The areas under pasture have shrunk and fish reserves have been radically reduced. At the same time, indigenous ethnic minorities were guaranteed a certain minimum of social protection. Lately, however, they have lost even this: quotas for the admission of their children to schools, as well as some government benefits, have been abolished. When the state turned its back on these peoples, their economic situation sharply deteriorated. Many of them can no longer fish and hunt. The number of jobless is growing." (Vedernikov, 1992: 1) Similarly, in August that year Kudrya wrote about conditions in the North, described living conditions and cited a poll of "experts of the Northern areas" that was taken "in search of a path from the brink of the precipice": The current economic hardships make things difficult for all--and unbearable for subarctic ethnic minorities. Life for them is hellish, with astronomical food prices and plane fares, and growing unemployment. Matters are still worse regarding social issues ... Ethnic minorities of the North are in a disastrous condition, said 97 percent of the pollees. The Soviet state did them only harm... (Kudrya, 1992: 1) Absent the constraints of the former Communist bosses, the biggest challenge Novosti now faced was one that once again mirrored conditions in the nation as a whole: economic peril. Reconstituted as the Russian Information Agency after the break-up of the USSR, there was no longer a mandate to provide escorted, expense-paid trips to foreign journalists, or to publish glossy magazines like Soviet Life in the USA or Soviet Land in India (Kudrya, op. cit.: 4). The Northern News Service bulletin was likewise suspended for two months in 1991, then reinstituted on the basis of paid subscriptions within Russia. "At the end of 1991 it became clear that the financial condition of the agency, as that of the whole country, was very shaky, so the decision was taken to distribute all of the agency's publications (in Russia) among subscribers. 1991 was the last year when we distributed Northern News in this country free of charge among partners and contributors. Beginning in 1992 an attempt was made to have some profit from it ... Some of our former partners, small newspapers like Krasnoye Znamya in Troitskoe, Mayak Arktiki in Tiksi, and so forth, had no money for the subscription and stopped" (Kudrya, ibid.: 5). Once again, NNS was reflective of larger patterns in the country: like the rest of Russia, the Northern News Service was trying to move to the "market economy."