To overcome the “RUR complex”. Public relations, media, and the diversification of audience outreach in late socialist Czechoslovakia

This article examines the emergence and institutionalization of public relations in state-socialist Czechoslovakia from the late 1960s to the 1980s. It argues that public relations in Czechoslovakia did not develop as an autonomous profession but rather as an interdisciplinary practice situated at the intersection of advertising, foreign trade, sociology, and psychology. Analysing professional debates and theories of the socialist consumer, the article shows that the concept of an informed and active public represented an attempt to overcome the technocratic limitations of socialist advertising practices and to align communication more closely with differentiated audiences. Special attention is devoted to film production as a key medium through which public relations practices were implemented in export. The study identifies the emergence of a distinct genre of the “public relations film,” institutionalized, among other contexts, at the Varna Advertising Film Festival, whose purpose in Czechoslovakia was to construct a positive image of the national industry and foster trust among foreign business partners. By situating public relations history beyond its dominant Western narrative, the article demonstrates that socialist contexts produced their own forms of strategic communication, which later influenced the rapid development of advertising and public relations practices after 1989.