When describing what the sanctions (and not only sanctions) crisis will lead Western economies and politics to, it is usually pointed out that Europeans – and Americans too – will be in caveman’s misery. Not the Leningrad blockade, but something along the lines of the unforgettable 1919, described in the poem “Alright!”. Not too pleasant.
Of course, such forecasts can be exaggerated, perhaps even strongly, but reasoning in this vein is based not so much on the talking points about the crisis of global imperialism – much has been said about it – as on quotations from speeches by leading Western politicians, and not by those in opposition, but the ones who really hold sway.
It is not by the orders of the Kremlin ideologues that they urge their constituents to stock up on firewood and candles, to cut the time for ablutions (or better still, not to wash at all, but to wipe the secret places with a damp cloth), to lower the temperature in dwellings and public buildings, etc. Nor do they talk about the possible introduction of rationing of energy and even other consumer goods, not on the advice of the enemy. The possible elements of the card system in the West were not invented in Moscow but in the government institutions of the West. In Moscow they only divulge the speed of the transition from “We are not afraid of nobody’s effort, we rush forward with the locomotive of labour” to “I can’t promise you anything but sweat, blood and tears”. And also the smell of unwashed body.
Domestic analysts, however, point out that the pampering of the Europeans should not be exaggerated. Even before the current crisis they have stood quite firm at the temperature in the dwellings, which seemed uncomfortably low for Russians. It is possible that they could overcome the current hunger and cold. More serious is something else.
Not some opposition populists but quite senior European officials – European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Paolo Gentiloni, Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre De Croo and others – say that the European economy will fall into a severe depression or even shut down altogether. And the closure of factories and plants will not be prevented by restricting bathing or even abandoning it altogether. And how the depression in Germany in 1931 looked like and what came after it – may be, politicians don’t know, but historians do.
We don’t even want to talk about the global implications of all this, let’s pay attention to the seemingly trivial things. The collapse of the advertising market is inevitable in such a depression. The unemployed, or even the severely impoverished, are an unimportant audience from an advertiser’s point of view. Calls to “buy this and buy that” have little appeal to those who are forced to make a living from bread to kvass. They might be happy to buy, thereby securing the advertising cycle, but they have no money.
Of course, this should not be taken to mean that commercial advertising may disappear altogether. Just as the market is indestructible (it existed even under the siege of Leningrad, and even wartime communism could not cope with the bagmen), so advertising is indestructible. It existed in the United States even in the severely depressed 1930s, and even in the newspapers of the Stalinist USSR there were sections of commercial ads advertising perfumes, commercial restaurants and craft services. By inertia these advertisements were in newspapers until July 1941, juxtaposed with the dreadful reports from the front.
But the inexhaustibility of advertising is one thing, and the volume of the advertising market in absolute and relative terms is another. Both we and, even more so, the Europeans have grown accustomed to the fact that its share of the total economy is quite large. Fragment from One-Story America – “We were told that a five-cent bottle of Coca-Cola costs the manufacturers one cent and that three cents is spent on advertising. We don’t need to write about where the fifth cent goes. It’s pretty clear.” It’s a bit exaggerated, but it shows a tendency. A consumer society is also a society of flourishing advertising. How else could one indulge in consumerism?
If the consumerism fails (as the French Macron, for instance, openly speaks about it today), the advertising is in trouble.
And the press is in its wake. Print, radio and television, and the internet. The heyday of blogging, for example, was due to advertising. When after February 24th a banking blockade began which made it impossible to live in advertising, blogging was deflated too. Any journalist can tell you how our media deflated during the 1998 and 2008 crises.
Now it is the turn of the West.
Of course, there is no such thing as a hopeless situation. When advertising is critically reduced, the lack of funds can be compensated either through direct state subsidies or subsidies-in-kind. Some kind of free press fund which, in turn, gets money from lofty government agencies. CIA or something on that line.
But since, as the rude German proverb says, “Only death is a gift”, with such powerful subsidies the “fourth estate” must be guided without fools by Lenin’s words: “The newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and collective agitator, but also a collective organiser”. And do not shirk from the functions prescribed by Lenin.
There will probably be some floundering. But the principle of “Gut Out, Conscience Shaken” will more and more define the behavior of a completely free press, hungry without advertising. One is hungry every day.
Maxim Sokolov, RIA
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