A Brief History of Kompromat

While censorship filters out information, kompromat is about the selective manipulation of material to discredit political opponents. Short for “compromising material” in Russian, kompromat exploits the connection between news and blackmail, played out by using hints, images, videos, and threats of disclosure. It can run the gamut from one-sided reporting taken out of context to faked documentation to secret recordings of sexual acts. Honed by popular Russian television news programs, kompromat mingles entertainment, news, scandal, and political power in a way that makes compelling viewing. Elements of kompromat include smearing an opponent; threatening a revelation of “compromising materials” such as evidence of fraud or an encounter with prostitutes; as well as broadcasting behavior that ranges from unflattering to evidence of illegality, preferably in a way that humiliates an individual. In Russia, kompromat is particularly prevalent due to the absence of the idea of the media in service of public interest. Rather, media are seen as tools for the state. In addition, it is common for media law to be used as a weapon against citizens for the interests of the state and there are virtually no privacy protections.

For example, kompromat was used to discredit and then dismiss powerful prosecutor Yuri Skuratov in 1999 after he threatened to reveal how top Russian officials were siphoning money into foreign bank accounts. When Skuratov could not be silenced by the Kremlin, a video of the prosecutor (or at least someone who looked like him) having sex with prostitutes was shown on television. In 2010, videos of Russian opposition journalists and politicians who were filmed separately having sex with the same woman were leaked online. Last year, a married opposition party leader was discredited when a video emerged of him having sex with an aide.

That is not to say that Russians view kompromat without criticism and cynicism. When a campaign to smear popular Russian opposition politician Alexei Naval΄nyi circulated a picture of him with the unpopular exiled oligarch Boris Berezovskii, Naval΄nyi was able to use his own social-media networks to show that it was a doctored photo of him meeting with someone else. The Russian internet then mocked the propaganda attempt by circulating the photo of Naval΄nyi edited to show him with a range of ridiculous characters, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to an extraterrestrial. While this is a good example of the failure of kompromat, it does not mean that kompromat as a media tactic deployed in service of the Kremlin does not have a powerfully corrosive effect. It is not necessary to “prove” anything conclusively; rather, kompromat provides a titillating way to distract the audience and plant enough doubt to render political opponents ineffective and undermine trust in general. It distracts the public from the key realities of Russian politics, namely widespread corruption, the lack of a proper legal system, and the failure of elections to transfer power.

Kompromat is also beautifully flexible. It is often enough to just raise sufficient doubt to discredit an opponent. If it is too flimsy, outrageous, or unbelievable, it is simply dropped from the news cycle. This allows Russian propagandists to try out various forms of kompromat and stick with what is most resonant with the audience. Because Russian media is so slanted toward the state, it is difficult for this barrage of information to be countered or challenged. In addition, a slew of accusations—even if none of them are particularly damning—can be bewilderingly effective on the audience.

Kompromat has been especially important during elections so that despite some opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin-friendly United Russia party, they are in no real danger of losing their elected positions. Over time, the Kremlin has developed a variety of ways to rig elections for its own benefit, namely by using the state media as a megaphone for its candidates; manipulating legal means to deny opposition parties and candidates entry into elections; and using trumped-up charges to arrest, detain, and imprison significant political opponents such as Naval΄nyi. Although the Russian state appears to avoid outright voting fraud, this also has been a factor (and a catalyst in the 2011–12 protests). Kompromat remains a very useful tool for the regime in elections, in particular if producers can obtain some sort of incriminating evidence (whether it is true or collected in a legal way is not important) to threaten or denigrate opponents.

Kompromat as a Foreign Export

Kompromat has had devastating consequences for exiled opponents of Putin's regime, who found themselves facing charges of possession of child pornography (which they believe were planted by Russian operatives on their computers) in Lithuania and Britain.Footnote ¹ In a broader way, Germany was the target of misreporting about an alleged rape of a young Russian émigré (later found to be an unsubstantiated allegation) that led to public demonstration.Footnote ² A study in Sweden found that Russian operatives were attempting to influence Swedish internal affairs through media manipulation, including forgeries and disinformation.Footnote ³ The Russian media have used kompromat to try to show that Ukraine (with American backing) was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.Footnote ⁴ While this propaganda may have been effective within Russia, evidence presented by western media has shown much more conclusive evidence that it was Russian separatists who shot down the plane.

In January 2017, the US media reported that American intelligence officials had warned Trump about allegations that Russian operatives had gathered compromising material on him or had inappropriate contacts with his advisors.Footnote ⁵ These issues are still being played out through hearings and investigations in the United States. National security officials had reported that hackers linked to Russian intelligence were responsible for obtaining information from the Democratic National Committee's servers as well as the email account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.Footnote ⁶

This raises two questions. First, did the central element of kompromat—obtaining compromising material—play an important role in the outcome of the US 2016 presidential elections? Second, is there any evidence to suggest there are meaningful parallels between Russian kompromat and the current problem with “fake news” and Trump's communication strategy in the United States? Can we expect to see at least part of the US media system embrace the exciting and corrosive power of kompromat? The first is a question of the effect of international propaganda on the US system, which is a foreign relations issue. The second query relates to perceptions of media freedom and asks us to consider if a Russian propaganda technique is finding root in the US media system. In other words, is kompromat a successful Russian export?

Kompromat as a Weapon against the US

While there is compelling evidence that the Russian state is deploying kompromat against western states, it is far less clear how effective this may be. While this is a disappointing answer in the context of this article, it points to the importance of getting beyond news reports and analyzing the effect of Russian propaganda on a more granular level. It might be tempting for Democrats to perceive the negative coverage of Clinton, her email issues, and her campaign as linked to an external influence. However, while the timing of the email leak was clearly damaging to her campaign in the final weeks, this was not the fundamental problem with Clinton's electability. Rather, as analysts have acknowledged, there was a broad lack of understanding of Trump's populist appeal or the depth of dislike of Clinton as a candidate. There is no compelling evidence that Clinton lost the US presidential election due to Russian kompromat.

The US and Russia media systems have long been perceived as separate, with the US audience almost completely disengaged from any Russian sources or narratives. However, this separation of national media systems has been challenged by the advent of both international broadcasters (such as CNN, Al Jazeera, and RT) and online news, especially as it is distributed via social-media sites. Initially, one would gauge the influence of an international broadcaster such as RT, which claims to support media freedom by presenting alternative views, but in fact is focused on propagating Kremlin views. One might think that this fact would guarantee relatively low influence in a crowded US media market. RT, however, has been able to capitalize on both a growing interest in the United States on “news” that denigrates the Obama administration as well as a general lack of understanding on the part of the US audience about the source of messages that promote conspiracy theories.Footnote ⁷ The anti-American messages are amplified in the online sphere, including by the ability of RT to use YouTube to further distribute their reports via social media, the aggressive promotion of the material on social media via trolls, bots, and paid promotion, as well as by resonating with networks that were opposed to the Obama administration and open to conspiracy theories.Footnote ⁸ There are also websites that pose as news but in fact are linked to Russian propaganda efforts. This all serves as a warning of the possibility of kompromat being adopted into a fragmented media system in a way that could be damaging to US media discourse.

What goes beyond any discussion about concerns and serves as a definitive demonstration of an actual gain for the Russian government is the impression that Russia has an effective and powerful covert intelligence operation. This impression is, in many ways, more useful to the Kremlin than a specific electoral outcome (in particular in that the Trump administration could be a far more dangerous foe due to its unpredictability and lack of interest in traditional diplomatic processes). In terms of “hybrid war,” in which the key is the ability of countries to project their power onto the international stage without conventional attack, mere rumors of a Trump dossier were a significant international diplomacy coup for Russia. This returns to the first principle of kompromat, that the impression of incriminating information is what is centrally important.

Kompromat in the US

While evidence of the deployment of kompromat by the Russians into the US media system was discussed above, what about the adoption of the tactic itself by US politicians and journalists? Trump found himself a possible victim of kompromat when security analysts warned that the Russians might have gathered compromising material of a personal or financial nature during his visits to Russia (an idea that Trump was quick to dismiss). This is ironic when one considers how Trump's communication strategy parallels elements of kompromat.

Indeed, Trump has shown consistently that he uses kompromat, although he focuses somewhat more on denigration than falsehood at times. Trump does make statements or accusations (often via his personal Twitter account) that are untrue or, at best, unfounded. According to the New York Times, Trump has lied about Obama's birthplace, John F. Kennedy's assassination, 9/11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, and voter fraud.Footnote ⁹ The other element shared by the White House and the Kremlin that enables kompromat is an audience segment that is more interested in embracing a nationalistic, isolationist worldview that rejects much of post-modern understanding of civil rights and global economics. As with the Kremlin, the White House has media outlets ready to reflect this worldview and to perpetuate untruths—and quite a large audience wishing to embrace this worldview.

Other key elements of kompromat are missing from the Trump administration, however. Falsification of materials or use of material gathered by surreptitious means (such as sex tapes) has not played any role as it has in Russia. There is relatively little falsification; indeed there has been little effective deployment of faked or implausible evidence from the White House. While lies and denials do create a certain amount of useful distraction, they do not generate the more powerful and lasting impression as does video “evidence.”

Nevertheless, the real issue is that the barrier to effective use of kompromat is higher in the United States due to several key political differences between the two countries. The main reason that kompromat is less effective in the United States than in Russia lies not in the lack of appeal of compromising material, but much more in the split between a relatively loyal and oppositional audience to White House communication and its media. More voters in the 2016 US elections actually voted for Clinton, but Trump won the post due to the rules of the Electoral College that assign all state votes to the majority winner in almost all states. The election was marked by change in the traditional rules of campaigning, in that Trump ignored standard norms that he should be truthful or even vaguely civil, an approach that in no way impeded enormous support for him despite his lack of political experience. An analysis of the campaign coverage shows that Trump was able to dominate media presence early—and on his own terms—in a way that gave him a far higher volume of media attention.Footnote ¹⁰ The fact that much of the coverage was not positive fed into his supporters’ worldview that the media is unfair, while at the same time giving Trump powerful name and brand recognition among Republican contenders. The same strategy allowed him to dominate in the media over a much more experienced politician in the general election.

It might seem that looking at the passage of kompromat into the US media ecosystem might be useful via the lens of “fake news,” in particular given that concerns over false reports designed to look like news stories and concerns with gaps in media literacy have been widely discussed since Trump's election. While kompromat is certainly designed to distort a media system, it is really not the same issue that concerns most US media analysts. First, there is not a vertically-integrated relationship between the state and the media in the United States (as there is in Russia) that allows for the state to dictate coverage to the main television channels and other key media elements. Indeed, the US political and media system is characterized by a sharp division between Left and Right, with the Left dominant in the traditional media sphere and the Right allied with more peripheral media outlets (the exception being Fox News, although in the current environment it is more center-Right than far Right). Thus, the mainstream media, which is generally dedicated to the ideals of objectivity and balance in reporting, is not allied with the executive or legislative branch. Rather, outlets that embrace bias and are more likely to have poor news values are allied with the far Right and/or Trump.Footnote ¹¹ When kompromat is promulgated (by the White House or by far-Right publications), the more respected traditional media can refute it, although this becomes somewhat exhausting and distracting—or even distorting of the entire media system.Footnote ¹²

In terms of the audience, studies show that the US electorate were sharply divided in their media habits as Left-leaning voters continued to consume Left-leaning, but mainstream media.Footnote ¹³ On the other hand, many voters on the Right abandoned the mainstream media (deeming it hopelessly biased) to consume advocacy outlets that did not ascribe to liberal media norms. Thus, outlets such as the extreme-Right Breitbart (which saw an enormous surge in popularity during the elections) are excellent vehicles for kompromat, much in the way that many outlets in the Russian media are. The difference is that the other media “spheres”—the traditional US media that ascribes to balance, fairness, and objectivity—are not good vehicles for kompromat. The dominant media sector still remains vested in professional news gathering and reporting, unlike much of the Russian state-run media. Despite Trump's constant vilification of the media and petty attempts by the White House Press Secretary and other officials to denigrate it, this has not been effective in silencing the media as it is in authoritarian regimes. Rather, it signals to many Americans that there is something wrong in a White House that is unwilling to hold normal press briefings. This, in turn, leads to more support and concern about media freedom, something many Americans have taken for granted for a long time.

The Future of Kompromat in America

Kompromat, as an institution, does not have a specific place in US history. There have been many stories of the misuse and manipulation of the US media in the political sphere. These range from how the media were used as a tool to stifle political freedom in the McCarthy era to how the media often frame issues in ways that are unfair or disadvantageous to groups that hold little power (such as impoverished people, criminals, and others.) The sustained use of media outlets as a tool for a specific politician or administration, however, has not been a part of mainstream US political communication. Nor have Americans been reliant on media messages to create and popularize political parties, as happened in the wake of the Soviet collapse in 1991. The media were conceived of and deployed as a weapon for state building and state protection by the Communist Party throughout the Soviet regime. This same legacy does not exist in the United States, making it harder to frame the media as part of the state apparatus. Indeed, the United States is one of the very few countries in the world that has no significant state media sector.

Kompromat is also more difficult to use in the system that still has competitive elections. Despite the deep unhappiness many Americans felt with outcome of the 2016 elections, they have been accepted as a legitimate transfer of power. Since the 1996 Russian presidential elections, when the media worked in concert to hide the health problems of Boris Yeltsin in order to stave off a credible challenge from the Communist Party contender, there has been no significant challenge to the Kremlin's hegemony on power.

On the surface, Russia and the United States also share relatively weak parties, although a closer examination will show that “weak” has very different meanings in the two systems. Political parties as vehicles to aggregate the interests of the masses never took root in Russia. The dominant United Russia party is not a political party in the traditional sense; rather, it is the “party of power” that works as a party “machine” to manipulate alleged free elections in order to maintain current elites in public office. In the United States, political parties are considered weak because of a lack of party discipline. While there are national political party committees, they have relatively little power to enforce party policy on candidates because they do not determine who runs or holds office. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a focus on personality over politics in US elections, opening the door to leaders who are better at sound bites than policy. As politicians are elected by their local constituents, this also leads to a lack of coherence in national policy. Within each of the two national parties—and particularly the Republican Party—there are significant differences in policy preference and even basic ideology, often making it difficult for voters to find consistency within party tickets. Yet, despite the challenges in the party system in the United States, elections still function as peaceful transfers of power, voting still matters, and the process is transparent. None of these things are true in Russia.

For the United States, the larger problem is the market-driven nature of its media. Ironically, this is both a protection against state-driven propaganda and a challenge to media freedom. It is a protection in that the state has very little control over the media, which has virtually no public funding and exists largely on a commercial basis. As such, the media's orientation in the United States is to its customers, who are also citizens. A strong professional norm among US journalists that media should serve the people, rather than the elites, also drives expectations and standards. While this is not always achieved, it means that media should adhere to certain standards to maintain credibility. Yet, this very lack of centralization and control of the media—unique to any powerful nation—also means the media system is open to fragmentation and exploitation by special interests.

While there are signs that the US audience is vulnerable to falsification and faked news reports, analysis suggests that kompromat cannot become a widespread tactic due to structural differences in the two media and political systems. Ultimately Trump did not win or lose based on what the Russians may or may not have in terms of dossiers and kompromat. While the 2016 elections may have handed the Russians a propaganda coup, it also made Americans much more aware of the general tactics of Russian international propaganda. The fact that the US president is using tactics that would be more at home in the Kremlin than in the United States also should give citizens pause. Forewarned is forearmed, suggesting that the study of Russian media tactics is now more important than ever, not just for Russian democracy but for media freedom and democracy worldwide.