We cannot defeat what we do not perceive as an attack because we simply do not notice it. Indirect influence is stronger than direct influence because standard defenses do not work against it.


Mass consciousness is both simple and complex. On the one hand, it is oriented towards simple emotional reactions, on the other hand, it has a very long memory, which from time to time they try to drown out when propagandists have such a need. Propaganda is looking for "keys" to human souls. These can be simple, therefore supposedly sincere words, or they can be quotes from authoritative people.

The USSR has always been a country of quotations. Everyone quoted the classics of Marxism-Leninism, which was quite massive. Universities and the Academy of Sciences lived from quotation to quotation, from one party congress to another. Dissertations were filled with quotations from speeches of general secretaries or decisions of congresses of the CPSU. It was a certain scientific ritual, without which dissertations could not exist.

The right quotes helped people in their careers, opened the way up. You could quote yourself or insert quotes into the speeches of others - everything worked. Let's remember the line "a song helps us build and live", the transformed phrase works in exactly the same way: "a quote helps us build and live". The USSR was a country of quotes, where everything was built according to a hierarchy.

A quote is an armor that allows other thoughts to move forward under cover. When there is cognitive and informational protection of mass consciousness , then there is also a cognitive and informational attack. There are thousands of informational shots, from which one can only protect oneself with the help of cognitive protection, which has its own systematicity, and these two systematicities sometimes coincide, and sometimes not. An informational blow will not be defeated by cognitive protection. For this reason, children are already prepared at school to repel such blows. In fact, even arithmetic tasks can carry an ideological load.

We are captive to quotes, even when we don't remember them. Often repeated clichés surround us, finding their place in our heads. That is, to describe a situation, quotations very often "pop up" in our minds, because they are known in advance, often rhyme, supported by virtual streams - a film, a book, a song...

There are countless examples of a widely circulated quote taking on a life of its own. This suggests that it has become entrenched in the mass consciousness, meaning that the “shot” has hit the target, as it is repeated even by those who have not seen or heard it in the source of the communication.

We basically live in a world of repetition, so the new and the old go hand in hand. But the “old” constantly accumulates a number of repetitions. It can be anything: from the classics of Marxism-Leninism to “everyday life”. Mass consciousness accepts everything, and if it is successful, it begins to live a completely different life — its own, since it has no external stimulation...

We can cite the following examples of "quotation generation" from the first version to many repetitions, both in high style and in low:

"Once there's such a drunkenness, cut the last cucumber" (Vysotskyi);

"Stand up, huge country, stand up for a mortal battle" (song by the Alexandrov ensemble);

"Hey, you, up there!";

"There's no saving you again!";

"I can't listen anymore";

"I am your corps de ballet!";

"Hey, you, up there!

Do not trample like elephants

Take a break from yourself

"Well, give me some silence! " - sang Alla Pugacheva.

Our brains are not really our brains, they are overflowing with other people's thoughts. Rhymed thoughts have great power for memorization. Combined with visuals, as in cinema or on stage, they pass many barriers, which simple quotes, which sometimes continue to live only in school textbooks, cannot do.

Many Soviet song quotes are direct "shots" into the mass consciousness, since with successful creation and performance they find a place in everyone's brain even beyond their content. Music and rhyme do their job. As a result, we are not so much facing an information war as an information-cognitive one. And this is essentially a war with our own people...

In the case of mass consciousness, lines from songs were more important than any monographs, because everyone hears and knows the song. In the same way, characters and words from novels or actions from games become reality. We begin to live, at least partially, in a world built on quotes.

There were quotes for note-taking, and there were quotes for relaxation. “Unscientific” quotes were much more widely distributed, bombarding brains accordingly. Such quotes began to live a life of their own. For example, Nikolai Baskov sang this, and people repeated after him: “I met a girl, a crescent eyebrow. A mole on her cheek, and love in her eyes. Ah, this mole drove me crazy. It broke my heart, it took my peace...”

First, in 1957, there was the film "I Met a Girl" with the same plot: "The beautiful voice of Lola, the main character of the film, attracts the attention of many in her city - from professionals from the city choir, who seek to attract the girl to their ranks, to Said, an ordinary worker who stands near her house for a long time. But Lola's father, wanting to protect his daughter from any encroachments, sends her to the village, not even suspecting that the infatuated Said will find Lola there too."

It is interesting that melodrama essentially speaks directly to the mass consciousness. It is a reflection of its essence, its picture of the world. When mass consciousness is tried to be ideologically oriented, it violates its foundations. In principle, we usually overestimate our interlocutor, but in fact he does not need high truths.

In essence, low truths can also be high. We underestimate the power of simple thoughts and simple words. In any case, they have a wider audience of listeners than leading newspaper articles. Pop music lives in just such a world, since its audience is the vast expanses of mass consciousness. Leonid Utesov, for example, sang the following:

"From Odesa Kichman

Two hurricanes ran,

Two hurricanes ran away and escaped.

In Vapniarovskaya Malina

They stopped.

They stopped to rest."

Being in the orbit of mass consciousness makes a star a real star. Now she will not be afraid of any criticism, since mass consciousness will fill any hall for her. It was Rashid Beibutov who sang directly for mass consciousness, that is, with a quote, then everything was repeated, he was the first:

"I met a girl with a crescent eyebrow,

Kindness on the cheek and love in the eyes.

Ah, this family drove me crazy,

I broke my heart, I took peace."

By the way, the mystery of his death remained unsolved. It's just that no one is interested in the secrets of the Soviet era anymore, there are enough of their own.

Mass consciousness is like a child, it is naive, it is open to simple, understandable emotions. Propaganda often uses them, for example, saying: "These are our children," thereby protecting those who need to be protected from any criticism.

A quote is one of the options for virtual influence, not just informational, because here there is an additional influence of authority and repetition. And what is repeated many times, the mass consciousness is ready to recognize as true. This is not bad or good, it is just easier to recognize as true what everyone hears, rather than argue with it.

Many current politicians adopt the virtuality of behavior from the past, becoming shadows of heroes of the past and present. That is, informationally they are with us, but cognitively, their ideal was found by them in the past.

Lenin, after the pressure of a mass of Soviet propaganda films, was very often repeated not only in behavior, but also in anecdotes that played on this model. Stalin was less often, either because it was scary in the past, or because it is easier to repeat, simply taking on the accent of a Georgian who spoke Russian.

And Stalin's clothing style has not yet been repeated: "None of the Soviet leaders was remembered by contemporaries for his manner of dressing like Stalin. One could even say that he created a special style that remains in demand today. True, not in Russia anymore. The communist leaders of China, North Korea, and Vietnam, just like seven decades ago, wear "Stalinki", which have long since turned from clothing into an ideological symbol. A sign of loyalty to the party, a symbol of the immutability of the political course. The course, therefore, may be different, may change very seriously. But the symbol will remain the same ," they write on the website "New Russian Brand", which sells things in the Russian style.

The world of quotations was very important in the USSR, since any text, any decision was framed as the implementation of wise decisions of the party and the government. That is, a quotation, not a law, was more likely a way of substantiating certain decisions. The press also relied on a similar citation causal chain, explaining the occurrence of certain events by the “wise” decisions of the party and the government. There was a sense of justice, since everyone lived the same way, which distinguishes that world from the rampant wealth of a small number of people today.

Russia has repeated this Soviet experience of dominating the state view of events without the right to criticize it. What is written or publicly said must always be more correct than reality itself. This is the main power of the printed word. It always has greater authority than the spoken word. Hence the increasing role of the state, whose words always dominate over any others.

Researchers record this state of affairs as follows: “The state’s influence on the media and public opinion in Russia is still practically absolute. The state literally decides who can exist and who cannot, who is allowed into the public consciousness and who is not. It does not yet want to interfere in the activities of external forces on the Russian information market. After all, we do not yet have censorship of external information: Radio Liberty, Voice of America, Western publications, and Western television are available on Russian territory, and no one is going to cut the cable or install jammers yet. On the other hand, the effectiveness of these media is limited: let’s say, their influence in Russian society extends to relatively closed and self-aggrandizing audiences,” writes Yaroslav Shimov in the article “Putin Has Gone Beyond Andropov” on the website of the Russian service Radio Liberty.

The abundance of information circulating makes it important to be able to separate the main from the secondary, the truth from the lie. There is always more information than we can grasp, let alone verify for accuracy. The modern world is generated by information generators that are controlled by states. And states want to see in information flows only what they like.

In peacetime, states are still at war, only informational. Researchers state that Russian information operations are always aimed not only at the armed forces of the country under attack, but necessarily at its population: "The Russian approach is holistic in nature. It is aimed not only at the target state and its armed forces [...], but also at achieving the desired effects in the minds of the target population, their perception and decision-making in favor of Russian interests and goals. This is a two-pronged approach that is aimed at the physical and cognitive measurement of the information environment," says the English-language study "Russia's Information War" by Denis Gomez.

Then everything that is in the field of attention of the mass consciousness should work. And perhaps this will be even more important for winning/losing than just attention to the armed forces. After all, even war is aimed at ultimately winning brains, here the ultimate goal is simply adjusted.

The world is diverse, there is a lot in it that can be turned into a weapon, there is also a lot of indirect influence, which in the end still works, albeit later. States are more comfortable with the direct method of a veiled order. His idea has been replicated many times in various forms.

In principle, even games work: and it is understandable, no one expects such a blow, seeing it all as innocent fun. For this reason, everything from primers can be a bridge to behavior change.

There is also the following example with games: "The Polish company Galaktus presented the game Hollow Home from the Twigames studio from Kyiv. Its main character is 14-year-old Maksym, who must leave the Ukrainian city besieged by Russian troops on his own. The creators said that they started development after the siege of Mariupol in the spring of 2022. The head of Galaktus Mateusz Szukait told DW that the Ukrainian colleagues worked on a game about the war, while constantly being under bombardment themselves. "The connection to real events gives the whole game an inner depth. Of course, it is quite tragic. And it was developed right during the war," Szukait said," says the article by Nikita Oshuyev "Games about Russia, repression and the war in Ukraine" on the website of the Russian service of the "German Wave."

In such approaches, there is a rule everywhere: the consumer follows the main line, leaving attention to indirect messages for later. And then this information spreads beyond his attention, since it has already entered the permitted field.

Or this example: “The Critical Reflex publishing house, which is currently based in Cyprus but founded by Russians, has introduced the game Militsioner from developer TallBoys. It also employs Russian citizens. In the game, you have to wander through a fictional city with architecture in the style of a Russian province. A huge policeman watches the main character from the sky. The goal is to escape from this city, which is prevented by an all-seeing guard. Back in 2020, when the game was just announced, the Rossiya 24 TV channel called it Russophobic and accused the creators of desecrating the image of Uncle Stepa from Sergei Mikhalkov’s poem. The developers claimed that when creating the game about repression, they were inspired by the novels Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and The Trial by Kafka,” writes Dzerkalo Tyzhnya .

Alla Pugacheva has these words in one of her songs: "This world was not invented by us, this world was not invented by me"... It turns out that we always live in someone else's world... So, someone creates it intentionally.

We cannot defeat what we do not consider an attack, because we simply do not notice it. Indirect influence is stronger than direct, because standard types of defense do not work against it. The child does not see the danger, but only sees entertainment, which cannot be refused.

In today's world, there has been a shift to video content consumption, and old print publications are dying out due to their commitment to verbality over visuality. They are clearly aliens, only not from the future, but from the past.

Today, in a large array of visual content, you can hide everything you need. All the original traces are confused: “Analysts note that among the 50 leading children's channels on YouTube there may be other Russian projects with Ukrainian labeling, but it is impossible to establish the ultimate owners without official documents. The expert also gave the example of the Booba channel, which is formally registered in the USA, but is actually created by a production company in Moscow and earns money from Western and Ukrainian audiences,” writes Natalka Dankova, the author of “Media Detector” in the text about children's YouTube channels .

Literature is a complex mechanism of influence that requires understanding and even rethinking your knowledge of the world, while playing is much easier. This is probably due to the fact that when playing, you are more deeply immersed in an imaginary situation. In your perception, you are not playing, but living there. It is also a generator of quotes that are actively present in your brain, since they are created by the best writing experts in the world. Journalism is designed for a one-time impact, while literature is designed for a conditionally eternal one. This confirms the phenomenon of a newspaper that is interesting on the day of publication, while a book can be interesting forever.

Soviet mythmakers rightly wrote and even sang: “A song helps us build and live.” However, the song that is sung, and almost everyone does, is a real quote that really helps us build and live. This happens for two reasons. On the one hand, it is popular, that is, everyone knows it. On the other hand, it is correct for the customer, that is, it forms the desired behavior.

We live in a world built by mythmakers. They launch their myths, and we have to adapt our lives to them, which resist with all our might, because myth is always stronger than truth.