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Is Russian Propaganda collapsing?
We are at an interesting moment. Russian propagandists are looking its effectiveness inside the country. This happened before the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet propaganda environment started with the nuclear meltdown at Chornobyl. After all, it’s impossible to hide it from western nuclear sensors. This is one of the reasons for the Policy of openness that Mikhail Gorbachev enacted.
There are consequences to this that reverberate to this day. Some in Russia, including Federation President Vladimir Putin, blame Glasnost and Perestroika for the fall of the USSR. These are not minor charges and are part of the cult of the USSR that pervades the present. This is one reason many older Russians miss the USSR. It was a time when the nation was respected and feared within the concert of nations.
This is the criticism of Perestroika:
By starting perestroika, which many in Russia today, including Putin, consider a disaster, Gorbachev exposed himself to criticism from every direction — for being too radical, too conservative or too feeble. But he did not flee from public scrutiny. Even weakened by age and illness, he continued to embrace it as director of the Gorbachev Foundation, whose work embodied his values.
Like Putin, Gorbachev thought that it would have been better if the USSR had…