Russia and its Image

The Georgian Daily reports that Russia is reorganizing its image campaign and bringing more of its activities in-house.  This move reflects the continued reverberations from the widely held view that Russia lost the PR war around the “real” war in Georgia.  If that doesn’t prove the central role of communications in the world today, I don’t know what would.  Imagine Hitler firing Joseph Goebbels over the fact that his invasion of Poland was misunderstood by the world community.

In any event, even though the news story asserts that Russia has decided not to rely so heavily on Western consulting firms, sources in Russia are also at pains to compliment the work of Ketchum, the PR firm that has been handling all of Russia’s international communications for the last 3 years.  So, while Ketchum may have failed to make the world think better of Russia, they have been very successful in making their client, Russia, think well of them.

But maybe there are deeper issues at play.  In a very intriguing epilogue, the news story describes what really might be going on.

[W]henever a government Russian or otherwise begins talking about the need to promote its image and counter criticism, such comments typically indicate that there is a debate behind the scenes between those who insist that current policies are right but only misunderstood and those who suggest that the policies themselves are to blame.

Consequently, what may appear to many as little more than bureaucratic housecleaning could have a dramatic set of outcomes not only for Moscow’s public relations effort but also for its future elaboration of policy and hence for behind-the-scenes politics at the highest levels in the Russian capital.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if a major shift in Russia’s foreign policy was first revealed in a scrap over its PR strategy?