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In contemporary risk societies, trust increasingly relies on institutional assurances, and once broken, is difficult to restore—giving rise to the "Tacitus Trap," where government actions are met with suspicion regardless of intent. While public opinion can trigger this, flawed media institutions often create a fertile ground for its emergence. This paper explores the Soviet Union’s collapse through the lens of media policy failures. Stalin’s rigid ideological control created an opaque, stagnant information environment, laying the groundwork for distrust. Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms, by contrast, loosened media oversight too rapidly, resulting in uncontrolled and distorted public discourse. Frequent ideological shifts further destabilized governance. As public anxiety grew amid conflicting narratives and policy inconsistency, trust in the government eroded, ultimately leading to the Soviet Union’s dissolution under the conditions of a full-fledged Tacitus Trap.
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