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Direct Subsidies to the Press: Some Background The issue of subsidies presents the most complex and delicate aspect of the relationship between the state and mass media in Russia. From about 1991 distribution of the allocated monies became the main if not the only preoccupation of the Russian Press and Information Ministry, and its first head Mikhail Poltoranin. An early ideal was that the subsidies would reflect priorities and be given, disproportionately, to papers for children and youth, disabled persons, national minorities, literary and cultural magazines. Despite this early policy, by special decision, huge subsidies were given to the mass circulation newspapers, that were working for the so-called “common information space” in the former Soviet Union. Trud and Komsomolskaya pravda each received about 190 million rubles (then about $19 million) in March and April of 1992 alone. Among the criteria for singling out these particular publications was a personal preference of President Boris Yeltsin. Only a few publications, Moscow News, Kommersant and Kuranty among them, have from the very beginning categorically rejected any state help on the grounds that “the free press must save itself by its own means.” Most accepted state assistance justifying their privileged position as “an indispensable informational and psychological support weapon of the reforms.” Faced with the wave of open and covert cries for help in a time of economic hardship, the authorities perceived a wide field for maneuver. The government was fast to learn that economic pressure provides as effective tool for control over editorial policies, as the ideological and political dictate exercised by the communists. (A source says that Komsomolskaya pravda, for example, was “mildly” forced in early 1993 to abandon its yearlong tradition of monthly front page interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev by a call from the Ministry of Press and Information.) From the very beginning Mikhail Poltoranin did not hesitate to limit publicly the sphere of the state protectionism and material support only to publications “that work for a rebirth of Russia” as the Yeltsin government perceived it. During the brief tenure of Mikhail Fedotov, Poltoranin’s subsidy approach was beginning to be transformed by him. Fedotov, who incidentally is one of the authors of the USSR and Russia’s media laws declared that the budget money would not be given to the publications subsidized by private businesses and foreign capital, to press digests, to religious and commercial newspapers, bulletins of advertisements, and to erotic press. Regarding local press, the ministry was planning to support just one publication in every area, namely its “most important and popular newspaper.” Preference was to be given in accordance with the petition of the provincial governor and after an accord of the municipal or regional Soviet. The money was to be given once for the whole year with an advice to secure it by purchasing shares of a printing shop, or by putting it into a local bank. “Thus, the necessity of subsidies will disappear in one or two years. . . . All other local publications must exist by the rules of the market and to be either unprofitable or profitable depending on their concept, professionalism, and financial efficiency of their leaders,” as outlined a Fedotov report. The same Fedotov text foresaw as “inevitable” the creation of “common administrative bodies” of the publications of the same territories, and their merger into concerns and holding companies as a next step on the way out of the crisis. Other conditions were suggested for those who might be the recipients of budgetary injections. The recipient publication was to undergo a fiscal review that might end in compulsory recommendations to cut the staff, rent out a portion of the editorial offices or otherwise reduce expenses. Only after execution of the advice, would the petition for subsidy be granted. Experts estimated that only some 200 publications (or at least a third of the present recipients) would really be given the subsidies requested under these severe terms. The available figures for direct subsidies are incomplete and contradictory, and the current inflation of just under one percent a day must be taken into account. Different governmental functionaries provide different figures. The recipient publications prefer to diminish the figures, or to say that they cannot get the allocated sums, while their competitors tend to inflate them. For example, the original sum allocated in 1992 for Izvestia was 55 million rubles, but according to its rival Rossiyskaya gazeta, Izvestia received that year as much as 858 million rubles. A report based on the data of the Ministry of Press and Information and presented for the parliamentary hearings on the state policy in the sphere of mass information, in the summer of 1992, said that eighty per cent of the subsidies were coming from the national budget, while the remaining twenty was to be taken from local state sources. Among the listed recipients were 302 newspapers and magazines, including 42 local ones (in April of 1992). The 1992 figure of total subsidies from the national budget was to comprise 5.110 billion rubles, but the projected inflation was to increase it up to 9.553 billion rubles or some $50 million (subsidies started from several dozen million rubles in 1991). The informative Moscow News, at the same time, reported that in fact 12.318 billions were allocated for “more than three hundred” publications in 1992, 85 per cent of the sum coming from the national budget, and 15 per cent from the local ones. New and again different figures—eight billion rubles for 500 publications—are quoted in a ministerial memorandum prepared a posteriori, in early 1993, while the same ministry’s Department for Mass Media in yet another memorandum speaks of nine billion rubles allocated to 400 newspapers from the federal budget. The actual sum is thus hard to determine. As to the figures for 1993, the federal draft budget prepared in March by the government but never approved by the soon-to-be dissolved Parliament envisaged federal subsidies for the press to the amount of 11-12 billion rubles, although as much as 54 billion rubles were requested by the Press Ministry to keep the printed media afloat. Roughly this budget was finally enacted by President’s decree right after the disbanding of the parliament. During 1993, though with a heavy emphasis on its last two quarters, the Ministry of Finance did provide 24.58 billion rubles (which almost equals the original sum in view of inflation rate) distributed among some 600 publications. In comparison, subsidies to state television during 1993 year totaled more than 100 billion rubles (or about $90 million). Andrei Richter Figure I: The Way Out?
The Russian government’s policy does not
decrease the doubts regarding desirability of direct
state subsidies to the press. More
appropriate—some of which may be contemplated by the
January 10 Chernmyrdin order printed in the
supplement—would be the following types of
government action: Any of these privileges must be uniform within categories and provided automatically to all eligible publications. And if the government really starts a demonopolization and denationalization of the industries and services related to the production and distribution of the press, it must envisage similar privileges for those publications that choose alternative ways and means of production. |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
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© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
