Russian Education and Society, vol. 53, no. 7, July 2011, pp. 324. 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

. All rights reserved. ISSN 10609393/2011 $9.50 + 0.00. DOI 10.2753/RES1060-9393530701

A.S. ZApeSotSkii

The Influence of the Mass Media on Young People as a Problem of Russian Pedagogy
An analysis of the influence of the mass media on the moral state of Russian society discerns negative consequences of that influence, and sees the mass media (particularly television) as involved in the cultural degradation of the population. It argues in favor of state, social, and pedagogical controls to facilitate a more positive role of the mass media.

A major problem of pedagogy in the post-Soviet period has been the growing lack of coordination of social institutions that influence the development of the personality of the young person. Similar difficulties existed during the Soviet regime. Issues such as lack of coordination of the influences exerted by parents and schoolteachers, the influence of the streets, and problems of adaptation to a changing social environment were of professional concern to scientists and practitioners, and were reflected in state policies. But the urgency of the problems of that era is not to be compared
English translation 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 2010 Pedagogika. Vliianie SMI na molodezh kak problema otechestvennoi pedagogiki, Pedagogika, 2010, no. 2, pp. 316. A publication of the Russian Academy of Education. A.S. Zapesotskii, Dr. Sci. (Culturology), is rector of St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions. Translated by Kim Braithwaite.
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to what is going on now. Anomie and social disorganization characterize the socialization of young people in todays Russia. The set of socializing institutions in different countries are approximately the same: the family, educational institutions, the company of peers, institutions of a civil society, the church, and the mass media. But the resulting vector of their influence on the individual takes shape in different ways. The Russian Academy of Education carries out regular studies of the pedagogical aspects of the activity of these socializing institutions. A lot of empirical material has been gathered and has undergone theoretical processing. The analysis has revealed that the most urgent problems include the opposition between the activity of the countrys pedagogical community and the leading mass media. N.D. Nikandrov, president of the Russian Academy of Education, was one of the first to draw attention to this situation [1]. A report on this problem was given at a meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Education by Academician L.A. Verbitskaia on 29 October 2008 [2]. On 22 December 2008 the General Assembly of the Russian Academy of Education drafted an Appeal of the Russian Academy of Education to the countrys leaders; at the request of colleagues, it was revised, edited, completed, and signed by academicians N.D. Nikandrov, G.A. Bordovskii, L.A. Verbitskaia, V.G. Kostomarov, A.A. Likhanov, and V.L. Matrosov, and this author. The appeals full text offers the pedagogical community serious material for reflection:
At the present time, when the countrys whole focus is riveted on the economic crisis, it seems to us especially important to emphasize that by now several generations of Russias young people have been growing to maturity under conditions of a different crisis that is considerably more dangerous, a spiritual and moral crisis. Unfortunately, we cannot unequivocally link the problems that have accumulated to the economic difficulties and mistakes of the past, to characteristics of the period of transition, and so on. It has to be recognized that no rebirth of Russia is possible unless there is a decisive change in the attitudes of ruling authority and society toward the role of morality as a condition that

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is essential for development. Large-scale major changes have taken place in the entire spiritual and moral space, and the key element, the system-forming element of that space, consists of the mass media and, first and foremost, the federal TV channels. The spiritual degeneration of the country poses a threat to its future. Let us mention just a few symptoms of the disaster. In the past fifteen years, childrens interest in reading has declined catastrophically; the percentage of those who read on a regular basis has fallen from 50 percent to 18 percent. Tens of thousands of minors are registered as suffering from alcoholism; over 80 percent of young people and almost 40 percent of school students drink alcoholic beverages. The number of adolescents who smoke has tripled. Among narcotics addicts (about 3 million), over 80 percent are children and young people. The average age of those who try narcotics for the first time has fallen from seventeen to fourteen. It is well known that the socialization of young people today is determined by the family, the system of education, the company of peers, and the mass media. The task of upbringing has been turned over, in effect, to the system of education alone. And this is going on at a time when problems of social orphanhood have become more acute in Russia. About 30 percent of children are being born outside a registered marriage. In the past fifteen years the number of orphans has risen by more than 75 percent. In 1995, there were 450,000 orphans out of 21 million school students; in 2008, there are more than 900,000 orphans out of 13.3 million school students. The level of abuse against minors is critically high, and that includes domestic violence. In 2007, 70,380 crimes associated with acts of violence against minors were committed. It is also well known that in the emergence and development of the young person a particular role is played by social ideals, examples to be emulated, symbols, models of behavior, concepts of good and evil, actions that are good or bad. Society is obligated to form standards of socialization and basic social features (language, values, perception of the world, and norms of behavior) and to orient young people toward qualities and models of activity that are socially approved. The measure of what is typical, as well as what is to be encouraged or rejected, varies in different strata of society and different social groups. But the federal mass media should be obligated to raise the level of cultural development of Russians and maintain standards. What is happening more and more often, however, is that they are destabilizing and disintegrating society. Young people are being set against older people,

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school students are being stolen away from their teachers. The influence of television is of particular concern; before our eyes many stations are turning into the garbage can of the global media space. In the past fifteen to twenty years we have hardly seen a single new television program created in Russia that serves to elevate people. At the same time, programs from the boondocks and back alleys of Western television are being cloned in lethal numbers. Our analysis of seven channels over a single typical day recorded a total of 160 fights, 202 murders, 7 robberies, 10 sexual acts, 66 scenes showing the consumption of alcohol, 39 cases of obscene and abusive language, and 302 cases of negative news items. The attitude of many journalists working in news broadcasting can be formulated in the most cynical manner: Good news is bad news. The result of this TV policy can only be the neuroticization of the population. The programs of the main TV channels are dominated by low-class variety shows, low-grade comedies, and hastily created series showing the beautiful life and mediocre talk shows. Guideline practices that are destroying the heart of culture in this country, along with false values, are taken up first by the peripheral private TV channels and are then drawn into the orbit of state TV broadcasting. Abusive and obscene language is becoming established as the linguistic norm. The norms of the subculture of home-grown glamour are being elevated to the rank of national virtues, the norms of economic criminals, the new rich. More and more often, those in the role of key figures in TV, television anchors, are well known for the immorality and disreputable behavior of their personal lives. They are foisted off on the viewer as stars, as newly discovered ideals. The virtues that have been traditional for Russians are objects of ridicule and derision. The countrys scientific and pedagogical community must not reconcile itself to this. As a function of his professional duty, the schoolteacher is obligated to inculcate what is human in the individual, and should be able to expect that TV will give the maximum help in this effort. Many administrators of the mass media, however, explicitly disdain moral guidelines, literally delighting in the climate of everything goes and flaunting immorality, by appealing to the value of freedom of speech, the importance of market relations, and the idea of democracy as supposedly reflected in the system of audience ratings. It is our position that freedom of speech and freedom of creative endeavor, as these concepts are often interpreted by the mass media, actually constitute the negation and destruction of social norms of

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morality. In any cases evidencing a lack of conscience and no sense of responsibility to society, a limit must be imposed. The mass media should be obligated not only to inform and entertain but also to be responsible for its moral influence on society, first and foremost on young people. It is our position that advertising revenue and profit should not be the chief criterion of success in the mass media, because the cult of wealth should not be the predominant aspiration of the state and society. Nor should ratings serve as the chief indicator of success for television. What we are seeing is that a major portion of television is absorbed with problems of in-house competition, and in the pursuit of cheap success as reflected in the notorious audience ratings, it is doing everything it can to heat up the viewing audiences interest in the basest manifestations of human nature, the showing of abnormal and immoral manifestations of mind and physiology. But television should be obliged to distinguish between good and evil; it does not have the right to foster the spiritual decay of millions of viewers. It is our conviction that the law cannot serve as the sole regulator of the activity of the mass media, since in a normal society the law is only the formal portion of regulators of societal development. The informal portion also has to play a role of its own, namely morality and public opinion, backed up by the state and by institutions of a civil society. Under the conditions of the weakness of society, the role played by the state in the regulation of the mass media has to be seen as inadequate. The authorities do not have the right to relegate issues of morality to the market. On the contrary: the market ought to be regulated by the state in cases where it is in conflict with morality. A great deal has been done in the past few years by the Russian state to develop the system of education and to support culture. Given the magnitude of the tasks facing the country, and considering the realities of the development of the information society, even under the most optimistic forecast the system of education will not be able to cope with the effective opposition mounted by the leading mass media. Contributing factors in education include fewer hours devoted to Russian language and literature in the secondary schools, and the abolition of the written graduation paper. We do not have the right to indicate how the state will solve the problem. But we are prepared to do everything we can, and we would like to take the path of restoring the Fatherland to moral health, in collaboration with the leaders and creative collectives of the mass media. Russia is a country with a magnificent history, culture, and spiritual

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legacy. That is the way things were in the past, and that is the way things should be in the future. Together, let us refuse to permit the connection between the eras to be broken.

The problem of pedagogy in this country, as presented in the Appeal of the Russian Academy of Education, was elaborated in the thesis that Television is the Enemy of the Teacher, in a conversation that this author had with V.V. Putin, chairman of the government of the Russian Federation, in October 2008. In response, the opinion was voiced that the authorities are prepared to deal with this problem together with society.1 There can be no doubt about the effort and willingness of our highest officials to defend national interests. Time is passing, however, and there has been practically no change for the better. It follows that the problem is not random or situational, but deep-seated. And the issue deserves attention, since it determines the context of the everyday activity of the pedagogical community.2 To a substantial extent, the interpretation of the role of the mass media is embodied in the formulation the fourth branch of authority, authority over minds. Ideally, that role ought to be centered in the hands of specialized social institutions that are independent of the three formal branches of ruling authority, the legislative, executive, and judicial. The belief is that by offering to young people information that is diversified and reliable, the mass media enable young citizens to form an objective picture of reality and to be involved in the countrys social and economic development. In todays Russia, it is generally newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet that are called the mass media. On the basis of a number of essential features, this class of phenomena can also be said to include the film industry, book publishing, the manufacture and distribution of audio and video products, and a broad array of advertising carriers (from the roofs of buildings and the sides of buses to school notebooks). The laws in Russia make it possible to view the mass media as commercial enterprises that engage in the purveying of information as it sees fit. None of their social functions are spelled out in the law. The requirements imposed on the objects and procedures of the trade have been spelled out minimally and vaguely. Prosecution

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of the mass media for purveying unreliable information by citizens or public institutions is practically impossible by law, and occurs only in exceptional cases. As a rule, it is not successful, owing to the ineffectiveness of enforcement mechanisms. It is not surprising that the mass media in Russia do not bear any responsibility for its psychological influence and upbringing effect on citizens, for the formation of the spiritual and moral atmosphere in society and the development of our culture as a whole. Meanwhile, present-day scientific knowledge sees the mass media as multifunctional social institutions that perform the functions of entertainment, education, upbringing, socialization, and so on [37]. The medias socially significant obligations are formally ignored; the state keeps its distance and society remains removed from any evaluation of the execution and regulation of the entire spectrum of the mass medias activity. This is leading not to the disappearance of particular functions but rather to their deformation and, in the long run, to social disorganization. For example, instead of educating the public, popularizing scientific knowledge, and assigning to knowledge the status of a value, the mass media are fostering antiscientific ideas about the world, popularizing all kinds of charlatans, and discrediting scientists. Instead of encouraging young people to go into scientific activity, they are shaping a disdainful attitude toward it. Everything that used to be done by parents, teachers, professors, leading figures of culture and the arts, and eminent writers, has been increasingly taken over by television. In effect, television controls all our culture and passes it through its own filters. . . . It singles out particular elements of the overall mass of cultural phenomena and gives them special weight; it extols the value of one idea and depreciates the value of another, polarizing the entire field of culture. These days, anything that does not find its way into the channels of mass communication has hardly any influence on the development of society [8, p. 29]. These are the words of a foreign researcher discussing Western television about forty years ago, but today they are even more relevant in regard to the mass media of Russia. Educational institutions and the dominant mass media in Russia

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have turned out to be antagonists, because they belong to different cultures. Educators work in a social state based on the constitution and preserve in their activity the idea of the continuity and development of a thousand years of Russian culture. But the leading federal mass media represents the product of the social and economic formation formed during the time of Yeltsin, and works to break up the cultural continuity of the generations and to create a different kind of culture. It has been thought that the activity of the mass media is going on under conditions of the deideologization of the Russian state. However, many researchers are concluding that this is a myth to conceal the state apparatuss realization of an ideological paradigm that is extremely unattractive for society. It is well known that any policy involves specific goals and methods by which to achieve them, resting on particular theoretical postulates. The ideological foundations of the present course of the reforms in Russia, despite their apparently eclectic nature, on the whole fit into the framework of the ideology of the 1990s, defined by leading Russian scientists as liberal fundamentalism [9]. On the level of ordinary interpretation, this ideology is embodied in the formula: There is no ideology; the market will put everything in its right place and lead Russia to prosperity. This in effect represents the rejection of any nonmarket ideology, including a Christian ideology that includes its concepts of conscience, morality, and ethics. Jesus Christ drove the money changes from the Temple; todays bureaucrats are often inclined to turn the Temple into a market. The formal denial of ideology, in effect, constitutes an affirmation of the primacy of private material interests. The concepts of good and evil have been cast aside as incompatible with the market, which supposedly recognizes only two categories: profitable and unprofitable. This ideology has been taken up by a substantial portion of the ruling stratum in Russia; it is propagandized and instilled by the mass media, ever since B. Yeltsin endorsed the celebrated slogan: Everyone get rich! Sad to say, this practice has not even been changed by regular public statements by D.A. Medvedev and V.V. Putin in defense of the public interests. In implementing the ideological paradigm of liberal fundamen-

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talism and concocting the myth of the complete deideologization of the country, the mass media (and television first and foremost) have also found it necessary to create a number of myths about themselves. The set of myths comes in a single package, in which every component that is not in conformity with reality goes perfectly well with other components, and it fits in with the overall conception that since our society has done away with the socialist way of life and has chosen the market path of development, the present organizational model of the mass medias operation is supposedly the only possible one, and is in accord with the most advanced market standards (of the West). One typical myth is the notion that the mass media holds up a mirror to life, which objectively and reliably reflects the problems that are of the most concern to the audience. In fact, television does not inform the viewer about reality; instead, it gives reality its own interpretation and creates a different reality in the minds of the audience: Television is an industry that manufactures meanings. It is an entity that censors reality, in which there is a mass of diverse simulators, of hollow, illusory, and other structures. The format is the thing through which we perceive reality. Always, it is not a raw event. On television there are no raw events, even if you are broadcasting directly from the place of the event [10]. The absolutization of market mechanisms of the mass medias operation means that their activity is not under the control of society in todays Russia. But any assertion that the mass media immanently and inherently has a market nature is also a myth. It is well known that different social institutions can be involved in the activity of market mechanisms to differing degrees. And market mechanisms can be used in their activity in various ways. The consequences that can result from converting the work of law enforcement agencies (for example) to market mechanisms are well known; to a substantial extent this has taken place in Russia. . . . As a matter of fact, though, by their very nature the mass media are social institutions intended to ensure spiritual reproduction first and foremost, and in this regard they are analogous to the schools, the church, and the family, rather than to enterprises or corporations. It is true that in a number of respects the mass media is considerably closer to the

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market and more similar to commercial enterprises than the family or the schools. Its place among social institutions could be placed somewhere between libraries and theaters, on the one hand, and market entities, on the other hand. But its essential nature does not change because of this. Turning the commercial side of the mass medias activity into its chief functions has extremely negative consequences for the development of the state and society. Yet another myth is the assertion that the situation in Russia is a kind of calque or copy of the way things are done in the West. In fact, in the process of shaping post-Soviet legislation in Russia, ideas similar to Western ideas in regard to the mass medias independence from ruling authority and business were intended and spelled out in normative acts. But measures to implement them in a society of a different type did more than just fail; they led to consequences that were the diametric opposite. These days, the corporate ethics of Russias journalists are immoral; judicial authority is under the de facto control of executive authority; big business (also under the control of executive authority) serves as the main management tool of the mass media. The public is kept out almost totally from having any influence on the mass media, whose activity is oriented only toward fulfilling vulgar consumer demand and following the directives of ruling authority, handed down indirectly by the business that owns the mass media. But the interests of state servants are by no means always identical to the interests of the state, and consumer demand is a mechanism that is completely unmatched by the influence of a civil society. In connection with this, when making a comparison it is of fundamental importance to consider that in the West, civil societies have for many centuries placed limitations on the activity of the mass media. This practice has served to form mechanisms to ensure the appropriate control and regulation of the spiritual and moral aspects of mass information. This is why, for example, television in Western Europe and the United States is so astonishingly different from television in Russia, and for the better. The functions of moral control over the mass media that are performed by a civil society in the West were performed by the state for over seventy years in the Soviet Union, via the mechanism of party

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leadership. And its instantaneous withdrawal from those duties created a vacuum, made all the more dangerous because the country was in a state of transition not only in the sphere of economics but also in the sphere of ideology, morality, and ethics. The practice of resorting to sex and violence have become a trademark of the mass media in the post-Soviet period. Debates and discussion as to the magnitude and forms in which the mass media are permitted to deal with this array of problems are being conducted in all countries where the public can make its voice heard. Nowhere else, however, has the mass media been as successful in achieving a victory over the interests of society. As justification for their practice, they exploit the myths of the democratization of the mass media and the facts of life. We should note that the state acknowledges one more function performed by the mass media besides that of informing, even though it is not stipulated in the lawnamely, entertainment. Now the public has to pay for it. That payment comes in the form of advertising placement. As is well known, the TV viewer does not really want to watch advertising. But he is forced to watch it, since it is a part of the entertainment programs. The most profitable way to make money under these conditions is to exploit peoples baser instincts, their subconscious, appealing to the darker sides of the soul. There is as much appeal to that kind of stories in the arts as there is of art itself. However, as mass communications became more developed in the Soviet Union and the West, it became increasingly apparent that the mass medias speculations on exploitive scenes of sex and violence posed a danger to peoples inner world; rules were worked out to govern the way journalists deal with such subject matter. In todays Russia these rules are being performed in exactly the opposite way. It is no accident that many of our self-taught, homegrown Russian writers create under the influence of an abridged version of a book that is circulated widely in television circles, by Professor Richard Walter from the University of California: It has to be remembered that thoughtful, wise, and rational behavior, in combination with decent harmony, induces boredom. Writers basically attract the publics attention specifically by the skillful

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exploitation of sex and violence. This is first and foremost the practical business approach to the commercial enterprise that movies and television represent. They are deeply rooted in the theater. A careful reading of oedipus Rex, for example, can benefit any dramatist who wants to improve his skills. That drama is a tragedy specifically about a king who murders his father and goes to bed with his mother. In similar fashion, Hamlet, for all its poetic artistry, refinement, and effectively developed plot line, is a story about sex, greed, and death. . . . Ultimately, when an airplane lands safely that is not news. And no one is going to go to the movie theater or turn on the TV set to watch a film with a title like the Village Full of Happy Wonderful People [11, p. 63]. Professor Walter, and his followers in Russia even more so, end their discussion of this topic at the place where the true artist usually starts it, thereby elevating his work above a mere craft or business and makes it genuinely artistic. Any powerful means of expression, in particular those that appeal to the instincts of the audience, should evoke moral feelings that exalt a person and inculcate humanistic values. This is the approach that should serve as the basis of upbringing in the arts and the mass media. Do conflict and violence occur in films such as Battleship Potemkin, carnival night, the cranes Are Flying, and nine days in one year? Of course, but in a context that is totally different from, for example, that in the Okna [Windows] program on the TNT Channel. In the first place, the conflict is between good and evil, in which the heroes are fighting to affirm high civic ideals; the viewer subconsciously identifies morally with the main heroes; the viewer is edified as a result of his esthetic experience, his feeling of shock. The meaning of goodness, the nature of civic ideals and moral principles, and the goal of the viewers edification, are established for the artist from outside, by the state and by society. In the case of the Okna program, the audience is consistently offered an array of immoral situations similar to those that take place in real life (actually peeping at them has been tabooed in society). When the television is turned on, the viewer becomes automatically involved in the destruction of his own culture. He does not always realize this, but he necessarily enters into a state of

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mental excitement and stress. The cause is dissonance that results from the contradiction of the norms he has been taught. Because of his previous experience and upbringing, watching the action in this program seems indecent. But the TNT Channel is not a pornography studio prohibited by law; it is an official TV channel that makes use of the states system of telecommunications. At any given moment the same thing is being watched by millions of others (an idea that we hear constantly). In other words, watching it has been sanctioned by society. After a few minutes the viewer may actually want to stop watching, but at that moment the plot takes an abrupt turn, captures his attention, and it becomes impossible to switch it off. In a few more minutes, there is another plot twist. And so on until the end of the program. Essentially, the TV viewer is treated like an animal; the program appeals to his subconscious and compels him to experience a perverted pleasure from peeping at it. Such techniques of attracting and holding viewers are meticulously developed by writers and directors. In the 1990s, propaganda was used to suggest that the mass media are the result of societys progress and development along the path of a democratic market. The argument was that the market, on the basis of publication and circulation statistics (in the case of print media) and ratings (in the case of television), makes it essential that publishers and producers be responsive to audience demands. High publishing statistics and ratings attract advertisers, increasing revenues of the mass media, and the entire system, as a whole, supposedly serves as a stimulus to produce good-quality work for the consumers benefit. In practice, the advertiser does not always go by publication statistics and ratings. Very often, bureaucrats give entrepreneurs recommendations on how to spend the advertising budget. On the other hand, the situation offers unique opportunities for organized crime. Some mass media financing is almost entirely in the shadow economy. Naturally, such budgets are totally concealed from any control by society. The situation is not much better in the case of legal revenues from advertising, including budget-funded mass media that are officially under state control. The total earnings from advertising just by the

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leading federal TV channels in 2008 have been estimated by experts at $5 billion. These funds are spent on themselves, as a matter of self-financing. Television managers vigorously discussed a report that in a competition between the channels of federal television to lure popular actors, Maksim Galkin was offered a fee of $7 million and Anastasiia Zavorotniuk was offered $3 million. In what way does the viewer gain anything when these personalities change channels? Just how much of an interest does the countrys population have in regard to that cost of TV operations? The assertion that advertising is paid for by the corporation that contracts for it is fair in only a relative sense. A manufacturer does not pay the cost of the advertising out of his profits, but adds it to the final cost of the product. In other words, it is the consumer that pays the cost of advertising a car, laundry detergent, or drug, irrespective of whether he sees the advertising. According to data published in Forbes magazine in July 2009, the annual salary of TV anchorwoman Anfisa Chekhova was $700,000, Kseniia Sobchak was paid $1.2 million, Tina Kandelaki was paid $1.5 million, and comedy club earned $8.3 million [12]. How justified are such costs from the standpoint of the interests of society? To what extent do such salaries improve the quality of television? In carrying out their television production, supposedly going halfway to meet the publics demands, the mass media is actually satisfying a demand that it shapes. What is at work here is Karl Marxs formula, according to which needs are generated in exactly the same way as products are produced [13, p. 28]. What the mass media advertises and foists on the viewing audience is, in fact, itself. Peoples expectations and behavior are formatted, determined, and created, says D.B. Dondurei. What do television ratings actually represent? In apartments in the major cities of Russia, at least 3,000 televisions have to be turned on via a special device, which makes it possible to determine when they have been turned on and to what channel. The viewership determined in this way is proclaimed as the criterion of the quality of the transmitted program. And yet independent studies show that in about 70 percent of cases, people turn on their TV as if it were a light switch as soon as they enter their home. It is often

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left on until people go to bed, no matter what they are doing, even if no one is watching the programs. Many specialists have serious doubts about this system for rating quality [10]. The publics money, at a cost that is not commensurate with the products actual cost, is used to create a kind of surrogate being that is foisted on society under the guise of creative masterpieces. The participants in this process are paid huge salaries. Let us look at the influence of advertising on the television viewer, for products whose sales volume serves as the mass medias only measure of importance. From the formal point of view, advertising is a means of informing the public about the products and services offered by a seller. Any other aspects of advertisings influence on the public remain in the shadow. And yet, owing to a number of historical characteristics in our country starting in the early 1990s, advertising has occupied ideologys niche in the mass consciousness. Largely as a result of advertising, young peoples preferences have undergone a radical reorientation from nonmaterial values to material values. Wages and salaries are now firmly established in first place among young peoples motives for engaging in some professional activity, having driven out values such as work content, self-determination in the work, and the opportunity to make the best use of ones knowledge and abilities through work. For young people under the influence of advertising, the term know how to live is coming to mean nothing more than possess: to wear fashionable clothes, to go to expensive clubs and discotheques, and not to try very hard in school or on the job. The concepts of happiness and the meaning of life are changing. It has to be kept in mind that for a child, advertising represents first and foremost the simplest model of acquaintanceship with society. It is something that he encounters every day; it entertains him, fascinates him, and plays with him. At the same time, advertising often distorts peoples understanding of acceptable social behavior. A graphic example can be seen in the campaign conducted by the Alenka trademark. In the commercial a little girl (the protagonist) asks: Why should someone be given chocolate? She tries to come up with an answer: For getting a grade of 5 [A] in school? But ap-

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parently he has not done that! For cleaning up his room? Certainly not that! Maybe for helping his mama wash the dishes? But he did not! Its just so he can eat it up! Alenka Chocolate. Propagandizing particular models of behavior, of course, leads to their being taken as the standard. Children who observe the behavior of popularized personalities adopt their gestures, way of speaking, and expressions as models. In its representation of a particular type of behavior, advertising orients people toward social complicity and referentiality. A childs mind is quite specific. The child cannot critically evaluate cultural elements and values that are promoted by the mass media; usually he merely assimilates them and copies the patterns of behavior. It was not by chance that Daniil Granin, a writer considered the conscience of the nation, noted in the newspaper Argumenty i fakty: These days, unfortunately, the kinds of personalities who become cult figures sometimes make you wonder. . . . The cult of the young people who spend their time having fun in the bars of the capital cities. . . . That Kseniia Sobchak is really something! If we believe that she truly is a cult figure, then we are living in an unfortunate time and our society is pathetic [14]. When a consumer purchases a particular item, he is also automatically reproducing in his mind the sociocultural conditions and norms of behavior that have served as the context of the advertising directed at him. As a result, the symbol of the product item also cultivates in the consciousness of the audience a system of corresponding social values. It needs to be kept in mind that todays mass media (in particular, TV advertising) is attempting to appeal not to the publics consciousness but to its subconscious, to its emotions and not to its reason. Peoples emotional states and inner feelings constitute the necessary psychological background when shaping their convictions and value orientations. Most important, the society in which the active involvement of the masses is artificially channeled into the sphere of consumption becomes a consumer society. In all of this, advertising plays a key role, urging people to consume through the deliberate creation of a system of values in the consciousness of both the individual and of society as a whole. The advertising content takes over the

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functions of ideology; the mechanisms by which the advertising reaches the mass audience turn into an institution of socialization, which designs and shapes the kind of individual that it needs, the individual as consumer. Let us note that the Soviet system was intended to develop the creative type of personality. The conversion to the reproduction of consumer man does not leave Russia with the ability even to achieve the model of catch-up development in the economy and the sphere of production, let alone innovative development. On the whole, moreover, what is being formed is a degrading culture whose basic content squanders the countrys resources. Just about all the scientific studies of the populations qualitative characteristics in the past few years have found a precipitous regression in the main parameters. When researchers have included an assessment of the factors of this process, the influence of the leading channels of federal television rank in first place. Television sets the direction of societys development and determines models of behavior, which citizens then engage in, with horrifying success. The situation is especially tragic in the case of young people, who are the victims of a cultural break with preceding generations. It is a situation that already existed in theory, but never occurred in practice to such a degree. In the past twenty years, Russias mass media has had the role of chief architect of the construction of a new national culture. Strictly speaking, the new culture has not grown out of the old culture. It is not being created via the modernization of what used to be, but through rejection of the past. The growth points are not societys basic values that trace their roots through many centuries of culture but subcultural formations of the glamour type. The mass media is not building the new culture on the foundation of the old but on the rubble of cultural elements that were proved unsound and discarded. What is being formed is a unique type of culture without direct present-day analogs in other countries. One might call it the culture of the rich vulgarian. The closest analog is Ancient Rome during its era of degradation and decline, in effect adopted as the model by the Moscow elite in the early 1990s. In spite of the authorities official deference toward the Russian

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Orthodox Church, for the first time in a thousand years Russia has ceased to be a Christian country, and it is rapidly sliding into paganism. In the 1990s, the authorities removed all concern for morality from among state functions. Even the solid personal support for moral principles as expressed by head of the state V.V. Putin and D.A. Medvedev, did not change the situation. The Russian state is based solely on the letter of the law and ignores morality. Immorality has become the leitmotif Russian society and culture. And in shaping this situation, the mass media have played the role of the chief instrument. Another side of this process has been the replacement of the national culture by mass culture, which goes by the name of pop culture. The best achievements of culture have either disappeared from the television screen or relegated to marginal channels that are not accessible to most of the territory of Russia. The country has been deprived of its great national culture as the main highway of its own development. That culture has become fragmented and banished to local television channels, which might be called cultural ghettoes for those nostalgic for it. There are serious grounds for asserting that this overall decline in culture goes hand in hand with a lowering of intellectual level. It is well known that intelligence, while originally an innate quality, also is a product of overall cultural development as the individual matures. For example, working successfully in high technology is largely linked to what kind of literature one read during childhood, what films one went to, and whether one engaged in regular and sustained intellectual activities. In connection with this, V.T. Tretiakov, dean of the Higher School of Television at Moscow State University, says that we are returning to the murkiest times of medieval ignorance: High culture has been one of the first victims. I venture to say that it is television, in general, that is killing that culture. No one is able to say where the point of no return lieswhere 80 out of 100 people are not able to recite a single line from Pushkin by heart, or only 75 people cannot do so. We have already entered that zone and are continuing to sink deeper in it. Russia as a country, a nation, and a state will either perish or will turn into something that is totally

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unlike itself if its cultural models are vulgarized and thrown away and its cultural codes are done away with [15, p. 6]. The movie critic Valerii Kichin draws attention to an ominous new sign of the times, the disappearance of the thinking audience: In general the viewer no longer wants to go see something intelligent. The new public does not want to listen to a lot of boring stuff. . . . Take Sergei Solovevs film Anna Karenina, for example. The novel is one of the most widely read works in the world. The director Solovev is one of the most popular in Russia. But neither Tolstoy nor Solovev is in wide demand by the distribution networks, which are oriented toward the tastes of people who lack both education and curiosity. To illustrate the curve representing the degradation of the movie-going public, recall that Tatiana Lukashevichs 1953 screen adaptation of Anna Karenina was one of the most widely distributed films (and seen by 34.7 million people), and Aleksandr Zarkhas 1967 film was seen by 40.5 million viewers [16, p. 13]. The same thing has been stated by other researchers: The quality of the audience in Russia in 2009 is worse than it was in the early 1930s, not to mention the 1960s. In Moscow, although we rank in first place in terms of the number of students enrolled in institutions of higher learning, and in second or third place in terms of the number of those with a higher education for every 10,000 population, there is no audience for culture of high quality [10]. The cultural degradation of the population is turning into a disaster for the economy. Just about all rectors and professors of higher educational institutions are sounding the alarm: the overall level of cultural training of college applicants is not high enough to train specialists of the previous quality. Employers everywhere also complain about the shortage of qualified cadres. In the past few years, the data from sociological surveys have shown that young people increasingly have a dependency mentality; they are less motivated to learn, work, or develop themselves. It is reasonable to assert that the deformation of the system of mass influence on the population in Russia has brought about that the consumer society is now a full-scale characterization of the situation. A society has come into being that has learned how to

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consume but is less and less able to produce. The mass medias upbringing function has been discarded, leading to the emergence of a phenomenon called downward selection, upbringing with a minus sign, in which everything that is base and antihumane in people is cultivated. The systematic appeal to primitive animal instincts, and the activation of mechanisms of the subconscious that are ordinarily suppressed by culture, are having a destructive impact on the personality. A new type of personality is being shaped, which is several rungs below the typical individual of the Soviet era on the evolutionary ladder. It is apparent that the only way the situation can be changed is if there is a change in the established paradigm of state administration, whose main features include lack of a system, antiscientific elements, reliance on individual greedy interests, and neglect of spiritual and moral development. It must be recognized that the social and economic system that has been formed is not compatible with traditional concepts of conscience, morality, and ethics, with values and ideals of Christianity and all other traditional religions. In principle it is not compatible with the entire course of world cultural development [17]. And that is why it is not effective. In regard to the mass media, it would be advisable to revise its place in the structure of social institutions as defined in the law, as a commercial enterprise first and foremost. The law does not have sufficient power to regulate even economic relations, given the existence of an immoral society, especially considering that it is not able to regulate the operation of the mass media. The postulates of law known as tough regulators ought to be supplemented by soft regulators, sanctions by a civil society in support of morality. It is vital to reinstate and develop the interpretation of the mass media that used to be in placea means for the upbringing and formation of the kind of individual who is a citizen and active participant of culture, including a participant in economic relations, especially in the case of children and young people. The influence of the mass media must be placed in the context of the systemic activity of educational and leisure-time institutions as well as the family. And this activity must be strictly regulated by the state. At the same time, we have to agree with Vladimir Putin: the

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pedagogical community has no right not to be a participant in what is going on. We are obligated to lead young people along the path of restoring the country to moral health, by personal example, the example of everyday activity and the living speech of interaction. The pedagogical community has to act as a leading participant in the rise and development of a civil society and to exert constructive influence on the mass media, as well as, where necessary, to direct social pressure. Russia is a country with a magnificent history, culture, and spirituality. That is the way things were in the past and how they must be in the future. Notes
1. V.V. Putin, chairman of the government of the Russian Federation, visited the St. Petersburg Humanities University of Trade Unions, where he had a conversation with instructors and students, on 7 October 2008, http://premier .gov.ru/vizits/ru/70/775/html. 2. What follows are the results that the author obtained while working as a member of Russian Academy of Sciences Academician O.T. Bogomolovs research group.

References
1. Nikandrov, N.D. Sredstva massovoi informatsii i sotsializatsiia molodezhi. St. Petersburg: SPbGUP 2008. Izbrannye lektsii universiteta, issue 76. 2. Verbitskaia, L.A. Moralno-nravstvennye osnovy obrazovaniia: spravka k dokladu na zasedanii Prezidiuma RAO 29 oktiabria 2008 g. Unpublished manuscript. 3. Lasswell, H.D. The Structure and Function of Communication in Society. In Mass communications, ed. W. Schramm. Urbana, 1960. 4. McQuail, D. Mass communication theory: An Introduction, 2d ed. Beverly Hills, CA, 1987. 5. Deiian, A. Reklama. Trans. from the French. Moscow, 1993. 6. Leontev, A.A. Psikholingvisticheskaia problematika massovoi kommunikatsii. In Psikholingvisticheskie problemy massovoi kommunikatsii. Moscow, 1974. 7. Grushin, B.A. Effektivnost massovoi informatsii i propagandy: poniatie i problemy izmereniia. Moscow, 1979. 8. Mol, A. Sotsiodinamika kultury. Trans. from the French. Moscow, 1973. 9. Bogomolov, O.T. Natsiia ne vyzhivet, prenebregaia nravstvennostiu i kulturoi. Ekho planety, 2008, no. 2728 (July). 10. Dondurei, D.B. Rossiiskoe televidenie: ne nravitsia, no smotriu. televizionnye reitingi kak instrument konstruirovaniia realnosti: stenogramma

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lektsii, prochitannoi 30 ianvaria 2009 goda v Fonde im. d.S. likhacheva. St. Petersburg, 2009. 11. Stsenarnoe masterstvo: kino- i teledramaturgiia iskusstvo, remeslo i biznes: (ref. kn. Richarda uoltera). In-t povysheniia kvalifikatsii rabotnikov televideniia i radioveshchaniia. Moscow: IPK rabotnikov televideniia i radioveshchaniia, 1993. 12. Kto iz rossiiskikh znamenitostei zarabatyvaet bolshe vsekh? http://svpressa.ru/issue/news.php?id=11882. 13. Marks [Marx], K. Ekonomicheskie rukopisi 18571859 godov (pervonachalnyi variant Kapitala., Ch. 1. In K. Marks [Marx] and F. Engels [Engels], Sobr. soch., 2d ed. Moscow, 1968, vol. 46, pt. 1. 14. Granin, D. Daniil Granin: Seichas kult deneg. A ot sovestitolko neudobstva?! Interviu vziala O. Shablinskaia. Argumenty i fakty, 17 November 2004 (no. 46). 15. Tretiakov, V.T. TV: ot uzhasnogo k velikomu. Izvestia, 14 May 2009 (no. 82). 16. Kichin, V. Kino ne v fokuse. V Rossii sniato sto filmova smotret poprezhnemu nechego. Rossiiskaia gazeta, 23 January 2009 (no. 10). 17. Li, Tzin Tsze. Zaimstvovanie zapadnoi kultury: Nelzia dopuskat otklonenii kak vlevo, tak i vpravo. In dialog kultur i tsivilizatsii v globalnom mire: VII Mezhdunar. likhachevskie nauchnye chteniia. 2425 maia 2007 goda. RAN, RAO, SPbGUP [i dr.]; A.S. Zapesotskii (science ed.). St. Petersburg 2007.

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