Media-ecological engineering of the Soviets

Abstract

This article explores the hypothesis that the Soviets built a society on the principles of media ecology. The media ecology of the Soviets had three sources: the materialistic (economic) determinism of Marxism, the environmentalism of Russian literature and the Bolsheviks’ goals of socialist upbuilding. Moreover, the determination to build a new society made Soviet ‘media ecology’ not just descriptive or critical but proactive. The Soviet media ecology could be nothing else but applied media ecology. The notion of media-ecological engineering is advanced in this article to describe the applied character of Soviet ‘media environmentalism’. The article is a part of a larger project, ‘The media ecology of socialism’, which aims at a media-ecological analysis of socialism in general and the Soviet mentality particularly.