Sometimes, when I hear another piece of news about the relationship between Russia’s authorities and media, I have a feeling of deja vu. I have already seen all this, but in Kyiv, not in Moscow. Now that I have prepared a regular article for the Moscow newspaper Vedomosti, I buy this newspaper at a newsstand the next day and am surprised: look, they’ve printed it! Then I think: on the same day, The Day also carries a regular article of mine, so it is also certain to be printed. However, as we know, a newspaper is not a television set, and Natalia Lihachova in Kyiv is not interested in my work, as is not Irina Petrovskaya in Moscow. Freedom of the press is not a reservation for a few newspapers and one or two radio stations but the dictatorship of truth at each television channel and in each printed publication even if they are owned by Rupert Murdoch himself, let alone Boris Berezovsky or Hryhory Surkis!
Our Russian colleagues are just passing through what we once had to pass. We, too, used to build, by joint effort, this antisocial system of compromise between the press and the regime, between journalists and oligarchs, between the media moguls and the country (sometimes these things coincide, ...so much the worse). We also tried hard to contain our ire, looking at those who did not wish to take part in this construction. Then we suddenly wondered why the system ceased to work and all, for both society and the regime stopped heeding us. The answer is that the authorities saw how easy and cheap it was to buy us, and society stopped trusting the well-fed compromisers.
The same case in Russia: we defend the NTV channel as the last hope of free Russian television, but we should not forget that Media-Most founders were also ardent participants in their construction and also tried to snatch a thick slice of the pie of power. Vladimir Gusinsky lost, and NTV maestro Oleg Dobrodeyev went on to run RTR, the state-owned Russian television. I wonder if we would be now defending RTR with equal persistence had Gusinsky won and Berezovsky lost! And if Yuri Luzhkov were the Kremlin’s blue-eyed boy, what kind of hues would the TVC channel show?
The most terrible thing is we know the answers to all these questions. Yes, everything would be the other way round. Thus, we are not defending the free Russian press, It in fact disappeared at the moment when the media fell hostage to the oligarchs and their burning desire to “help” the authorities. Rather, we are defending our dream of the free press, for if it does not come true in Russia or Ukraine, our dreams of a decent life, civilized economy, and European welfare state will always remain eternal illusions.
