The rise of the public relations man and the decline of the Soviet “intelligentsia” after 1989

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to expose the radical split between a Public Intellectual and a Public Relations Man, who in this chapter will be abbreviated as pr-Man. The pr-Man is not a result of manipulation and he or she is not an audience person, but a master of manipulation. The pr-Man belongs to the creative class, which (among other things) produces political advertising. Is it possible that the pr-Man is also a Public Intellectual? The ambiguities of the split between a Public Intellectual and a Public Relations Man will be analyzed from the period of the end of the Soviet Union (1985–1991) until today. The main theses of this chapter are:the ambiguous manifestations of Public Intellectuals and pr-Men create various conflicts between the state’s ideologists, critical intellectuals and commercial pr entrepreneurs.the market of political opinions functions differently than that of the marketplace of ideas of Public Intellectuals;when the ideas of a Public Intellectual and of a pr-Man are analyzed in the light of public communicative actions, then we discover that both of them are competitive participants in the same sphere of social reason;pr companies create images, which have to compete with the true intellectuals, thus they experiencing the effect of intellectuals as specters who haunt them (i.e. their pr-companies)[...]