This report tests basic assumptions used by Western analysts in interpreting the Soviet media by bringing to bear new information, derived from emigre interviews, about the structure and inner workings of Soviet media and the political mechanisms by which the media are controlled. Section II reviews the mechanism of Party and state control over Soviet media, in which formal censorship in fact plays a secondary role. Section III looks at the crucial role of the chief editor and the editorial processes he presides over. Section IV analyzes types of discussions, debates, and controversies in Soviet media and considers their relationship to institutional, personal, and policy conflict. Appendix A contains a fuller description of the study approach. Appendix B provides a selective review of media-related assumptions in a variety of Western Sovietological writings. Appendix C examines a presumptive "doctored photograph" incident. Appendix D provides a profile of one of the seemingly unorthodox Soviet journals, Literaturnaia Gazeta.

The Rand Corporation is conducting a multiyear comparative study of the role of the media in intra-elite communication in Communist countries. Western analysts of the political process in "closed" Communist systems necessarily rely heavily on the published and broadcast output of the mass and specialized media. These media are in part propaganda organs, but they also have other functions. A generation of Sovietologists has had to base much of its analysis of policies and politics on interpretations of media nuances. Yet their assumptions about the relationship between the media and the political actors whose behavior or attitudes are inferred from them have received little attention. The Rand study was initiated to fill this need. Its emphasis is not on techniques of content analysis, but rather on the process by which politically significant material appears in Communist-country media. The principal data base of the study is information obtained from interviews with 44 emigres formerly involved in the media process as writers, journalists, editors, censors, and government and Party officials. The results of this study are published in a Summary Report, which provides an overview and conclusions, and in a series of Rand Notes, which contain more detailed analyses and documentation of the research. This Note documents six case studies of controversy in Polish media: (1) The wide-ranging media campaign during the March 1968 crisis, which was directly linked with internecine political struggle within the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP); (2) The "Falkowska debate" of 1964; (3) The differentiated treatment of the German question in the media in the late 1960s; (4) The 1971 media debate over the law on social parasitism; (5) The 1976 controversy over amendments to the Polish constitution; and (6) The media discussions of 1977 and 1978 concerning decentralization and unemployment.

Includes publications previously listed in the supplements to the Index of selected publications of the Rand Corporation (Oct. 1962-Feb. 1963)