TELECOMMUNICATIONS
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Abstract
MEDIA AND POWER IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA by Ivan Zassoursky (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004—$65.95/23.95, ISBN 0-7656-0863-4 hard, 07656-0864-2 paper, 272 pp., tables, notes, bibliography, index) describes the rise of independent media from the Gorbachev era to the turn of the century. A journalist and currently director of the Laboratory of Media, Culture, and Communications on the journalism faculty at Moscow State University, the author is probably uncomfortable with the most recent changes in Russia as the re-elected Putin regime continues to place media outlets under its own thumb. He talks primarily about newspapers in his six chapters, but devotes one of them to the role of the Internet in Russia, drawing on his two Russian-language works covering the same topics. His study is especially useful for its inside view, by a Russian, of the dramatic changes from about 1985 that have transformed the stodgy old Soviet media image to something quite different now. But he stresses that the changes continue and the system will soon look different again, for a variety of reasons that he explores. He also makes clear some of the mistakes and misjudgements that have been made along the way. (Chris Sterling)