Studies of Russian society have traditionally highlighted the particularity of the country's historical path and the irregular, irrational nature of Russian culture (Kangaspuro, 1999). Scholars have described Russia as characterized by numerous contradictory features. Not surprisingly, the nature and structure of the modern Russian media system reflect political, economic, and sociocultural developments deeply rooted in the country's history.

During the two last centuries Russia has experienced a permanent transition:

• from an agrarian society and imperial monarchy in the early nineteenth century

• to a rapid, though uneven growth of capitalism and rise of a diverse party system under the rule of an authoritarian ruler (tsar) in the second half of the nineteenth century (interrupted by World War I early in the twentieth century)

• to a short-lived bourgeois multiparty democracy in February–October 1917

• to the socialist revolution (early twentieth century), resulting in the emergence of the Communist Party monopoly and state-controlled planned economy and eventually to years of “mature socialist democracy” characterized by economic recession and degradation of political communication to propaganda

• to a “perestroika” (reconstruction), as a policy of top-down Communist Party reforms that resulted in the collapse of the USSR

• to the establishment of Russia as an independent state accompanied by a liberalization process and the introduction of a market economy and political systems inspired by “Western” models of liberal democracies