VOL. IV (XXI) 2009 - Departamentul de Filosofie si Stiinte ale ...

ANALELE UNIVERSITĂŢII DE VEST DIN TIMIŞOARA
SERIA FILOSOFIE ŞI ŞTIINŢE ALE COMUNICĂRII
VOL. IV (XXI), 2009
ISSN 1844 – 1351 (online)
ISSN 1842 – 6638 (print)
PUBLIC RELATIONS DISASTER AS A PARTICULAR SYMBOL OF POWER
MODERN KREMLIN AND NUCLEAR CRISIS MANAGEMENT
KURSK TRAGEDY
THE CULT OF SACRIFICE AND THE OLD SPIRIT OF MOTHER RUSSIA
Adrian PĂCURAR
West University of Timişoara
The loss of a nuclear armed and powered submarine, the supreme
weapon in human history, in the summer of 2000 by the Russian Fleet was
not only one of the biggest tragedies in the modern military era but also a
very bad sign for a country who desperately tried to maintain its position as a
military and political superpower. And, unfortunately for Russia, that tragedy
was only one in a long list of accidents and disasters, a list which can be
tracked down in time at least to the moment of the loss of K 129 in April 1968
during some naval exercises in Northern Pacific. Almost every time when this
type of tragedy occur the Russian authorities were unprepared to have a
proper reaction in front of the media and the general public and because of
this almost every time, at least after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
the Russian officials did not succeed to deliver anything else but huge public
relations disasters. Following this idea we may say now that in this article we
will try to make a short analysis regarding some general issues about crisis
management in present days Russia. And in order to do this we will follow
two major coordinates. In the first place we will briefly focus upon one
particular crisis situation in order to see how Russian officials and authorities
were involved in crisis management of the disaster.