Lord of Echoes

Sergey Parkhomenko

---

History teacher Alexey Venediktov has been making history himself for ten years now.

(Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )

- Are you an observer of the political game or a player yourself? After all, you are often reproached for the fact that you, along with the whole “Echo”, play too much, that you too openly want to “run the state.” And as a result, you stop being a journalist.
- And I’m not a journalist. Firstly, because the editor-in-chief, and I think that when he agreed to become one, he deliberately changed his profession. What I personally do has almost nothing to do with what the radio broadcasts. As editor-in-chief, I communicate with people who make politics, and at the same time I not only ask them questions, but also express my point of view, and sometimes try to convince someone of something. And I have a little more opportunities for this not only than an ordinary citizen, but also than an ordinary journalist. Simply due to the fact that radio is a very influential force, and the reflection of this force falls on me. For example, I have the image of a person who knows a lot more than he says. And this is true, but we must still admit that in most cases I do not know as much more as people suspect, who judge my awareness by the awareness of the radio station.

Well, as for the fact that I play around... I am generally a “playing person”. Maybe not as intelligent as he is a player... But, I repeat, these games have absolutely nothing to do with what the radio does. In this case, Venediktov - separately, and Echo of Moscow - separately.

- "Echo" has a reputation as "the radio station that people come to." They come willingly - you just have to call - people are very different and very influential. How right are those who say that “people go to Venik”?
- This was true about five years ago. When I walked on the sidelines as a correspondent. Namely, not even as director of the information service, and especially not as editor-in-chief, but simply as a correspondent. He established connections and dragged, sometimes directly dragged, a variety of characters to the radio.

But for several years now, people have been coming not to me, but to Echo. I haven’t been broadcasting for a long time now. However, the Echo has built and maintained a very strong reputation as a place where you will be allowed to say what you have to say. And no one on this radio will have the task of soaking a guest in the toilet or anywhere else. Here I am ready to reveal a little editorial secret: Andrei Cherkizov, for example, is forbidden to give his “replica” to the back of today’s guest, even if he strongly disagrees with him. Tomorrow he will receive the full program from this radio and from this same observer. And today he has the right to say what he thinks. That's why people feel comfortable with us.

- But do you have the feeling that there is increasingly a gap between the level of conversation that takes place in the studio and the level of the audience for which the conversation is intended? After all, among the listeners of “Echo of Moscow” there are a lot of, for example, elderly people...
- Yes it's true. And in fact, I have never ceased to be surprised by the fact that people are always present in our audience - this is very felt, in any case, in the composition of those listeners who speak with us live, when we offer to speak out or ask a question, - so, two poles are present all the time. These are older people and, conversely, young people - around twenty. They are active. And the middle age group is failing. That is, they listen too, surveys show this, but they listen passively. Although at the same time there is no need to simplify anything or treat anything with disdain. Older people are active “consumers” of politics. Among them there are a lot of those who at one time began reading the Pravda newspaper from the third - international - page. They are sincerely interested in this. But at the same time, we take special care to ensure that any, even the simplest grandmother, also receives “her” guest. Some head of the Moscow pharmacy department. And so that she, too, could ask him her most pressing question.

- But maybe it would be more interesting for you to work not for your grandmother, but for the very circle in which you move? I sometimes suspect that in your heart you dream that “Echo” will become a kind of factory radio room, from which they broadcast throughout the enterprise. Only this enterprise is the Kremlin and the government. A kind of radio circulation for the Russian authorities...
- You are very mistaken. Do you know what I dream about most? Make entertainment radio. That's right - entertaining. If I were given a frequency next to “Echo” now, then I would only do the kind of entertainment radio there: where are the games, where are the jokes, where are the songs, where are the prizes... I would like this radio station to be truly conversational at night. In Russia there is still no such thing: so that people would just sit in the studio and talk to the city. We have a huge city: 800 thousand people don’t sleep in Moscow every night. And there must be someone who could answer on air to the grandfather who does not sleep because he has insomnia, and to the rocket scientist who is on duty, and to the simple-minded watchman, and to the young party-goer... They talk - and the music plays... All major cities in America and Europe have something similar. This is my dream, but not at all what you thought.

In political radio there is no one next to “Echo” now. This is a fact, and it is stupid not to admit it. All! From what Korzun inherited to me at one time, I think, to be honest, I have already squeezed out the maximum. Well, perhaps Putin should come... And maybe Placido Domingo... And then what? Everything is set up, the machine is working. And if you don’t break it or destroy it on purpose, it will always be a good radio station. Here we have reached the degrees known...

- It turns out that you think that by the end of the tenth year of the existence of “Echo”, what it was created for has not only been achieved, but, as it were, exhausted?
- No. Not exhausted. Achieved - yes, indeed. Because the main thing is obvious: the absence of censorship on Ekho; everyone except the fascists receive invitations (there is such a restriction, it’s true); We give news before anyone else, for which special technology has been created. And all this makes “Echo of Moscow”, in the form in which the radio station operates today, an absolutely necessary piece of the information landscape of Russia: take this radio out now, and a huge section of the “soil” will fall through.

- Well, there is no need to exaggerate anything. "Echo" has listeners - some percentage of the Moscow radio audience. Not that much, objectively speaking. If not to say - a little.
- Let’s not talk about “a little bit”. After all, in Moscow our weekly audience is a million listeners. According to other polls - one million and two hundred thousand, but I always prefer to focus on the lower numbers. That means a million people tune in to Echo at least two or three times during the week. Moreover, they are tuned in consciously, and not accidentally skipping by when the receiver knob is turned. Plus other cities - another three million a week in Russia.

But the main thing is something else. "Without me, the people are incomplete." We are not just an episode from the biography of these specific listeners. The very fact of the existence of "Echo" is a certain phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that the radio has not changed its editorial policy for ten years... Whether it is good or bad, but what it proclaimed itself to be ten years ago is what it is today. That's why I'm talking about landscape.

And here I don’t even know what it would be correct to compare it with. Then I’ll compare, maybe incorrectly. The Moscow Art Theater will close. How many people actually go to the Moscow Art Theater? Well, not so much, you can count it in a year... But the closure of the Moscow Art Theater is a national catastrophe. Because this is a kind of symbol of something else, besides the fact that it simply works as a theater - and simply shows performances.

In some ways, it’s the same story with “Echo”: it’s not only a radio station, it’s already a sign. It is clear that there cannot be a state “Echo”. Because those who founded Echo - Buntman, Korzun, Ignatov - left the state radio precisely because they did not want to reflect the interests of the state apparatus. Even the best, the whitest and fluffiest. Because today he is white and fluffy, and tomorrow he declares nuclear war...

No one on Russian radio now produces information like we do. But in this direction - information - I can no longer offer anything fundamentally new. Here is another unique guest, here is another advance... But everything should actually only be saved in this format. And I must remain at the head of the non-state “Echo” only in order to maintain it and, at most, improve it a little.

But the editor-in-chief is needed not to maintain the format, but to produce ideas. New ones.

And at the same time - you asked whether the idea with which it all began had been exhausted... Sergei Korzun at one time proposed our main slogan - “Free radio for free people.” And at some point we changed it to “Listen to the radio. The rest is appearances.” Because we decided that five years of freedom made everyone free. Therefore, it is as if we have now become radio for everyone. They changed it, as it now turns out, too early.

It turned out - especially in the last year - that a reverse process has begun. People don’t want not only freedom, but—excuse me—pluralism. People want to hear and listen only to those with whom they agree. And they demand that we invite either only Zyuganov or only Chubais to the studio; either only Putin, or only Clinton... Or only, I don’t know, Liza Minnelli... That is, only those who are pleasant to them for one reason or another. Suddenly there was some kind of turn: “There is no need to make propaganda for communists!”, “There is no need to provide a platform for democrats!”, “There is no need to be grist for the Americans’ mill!”... We began to feel some kind of pressure: “Why did you give the floor to Chubais?!", "Why did you give the floor to Zhirinovsky?!", "Why did you give the floor to Anpilov?!", "Why did you give the floor to Clinton?!"...

Why, why... What do you mean, why?!

Such questions have always been heard live, but gradually their proportion, their relationship with all others began to show: the same listeners become more aggressive, intolerant of other people’s opinions: “Why do you have the Palestinian ambassador on air?!”, “Why the ambassador Israel?!", "Why do you have General Sharon?!"

We don't have the answers to all these questions. It seemed to us that at one time we had explained everything to everyone once and for all: everyone has the right to speak, anyone who wants to listen can listen. Because radio is for the free, and the unfree can walk away from the field or gradually free themselves...

Forty years - in the desert! You have to walk through the desert for forty years to get rid of this in yourself. Everyone. Including ourselves. Here is the problem. Nothing here is exhausted. It’s too early to forget the old motto.

- Okay, so what do you plan to do? What about the slogan “All power to the Soviets”? First to proclaim, then to refuse, and now, at a new stage, to proclaim again? Demonstratively?
- I think yes. I think that the slogan “Free radio for free people” will again come in handy now. He is very timely. And I will not hesitate to return to him...

When the Kremlin first offered me to become the head of Mayak in 1997, I told them: guys, it’s a great idea, only tomorrow you will declare a new Chechen war - and what am I going to say? I’ll have to bend my heart, but somehow I don’t want to. Simply because I did it enough as a history teacher. Enough.

From 1978 to 1987 - nine years out of the twenty that I worked as a history teacher - I could not tell children what I knew. And he knew almost everything about repressions, he knew a lot about Stalin, about the processes of the 30s, about the Kronstadt uprising, about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I'm still ashamed. Because I remember that every year sixty people came out from me who could have received this information from me, but did not receive it or received it in a very truncated, incomplete form. I wasn’t a fighter then: the KGB came, checked my plans, I was very scared... I don’t want to be scared anymore.

And for me everything became simple: if the state, in my opinion, takes the right position on some issue, takes some right steps, I personally will support it with all my might. But no, no, I won’t. Moreover, I inform you in advance: the right steps, in my understanding, are the development of the market, the protection of civil liberties and so-called liberal values, and integration into the civilized West. No matter how pompous it may sound, over these ten years, as far as I think, I have understood what a citizen is and understood how to behave in order to be one.

- It is precisely the lack of civic position that is most often hinted at by those who still cannot understand and forgive “Echo” for one episode from its history, when the radio station became part of the Mostovsky media holding. Maybe it's time to repent of that decision? Why did Echo need it then?
- Everything is very simple here. By the way, I was not yet the editor-in-chief at that time, but they asked me for my opinion, and I answered then. It was 1994. We were already earning very decent money, but our technology was dying. We needed serious money to invest in modern technology, go to other cities, climb onto satellites, and so on. Large investments were needed. And we announced an internal “tender”, although such a word did not exist then, in fact we were here, maybe even the first. And at the finish line there were two competitors left. Some were Chicago bankers, brothers, I don’t remember exactly their last names, who had been involved in the radio business in Chicago all their lives. The other was Gusinsky, who at that time had not yet managed to build any kind of media holding. In the fall of 1994, everything was just beginning for him: there was the newspaper Segodnya and the not yet fully formed NTV, which broadcast only a few hours a day on someone else’s channel... So, both of them demanded a controlling stake, but the difference was who will control the editorial position. These brothers, Chicago bankers, were ready to invest a lot of money, guaranteed access to America, to Germany, but at the same time demanded that they be given the right to appoint an editor-in-chief, who, according to Russian laws, is responsible for the editorial position (not the publisher, not the founder, not someone else, but the editor-in-chief). And Gusinsky offered three times less money for the same block of shares, but at the same time was ready to agree that the candidacy of the editor-in-chief should be nominated by a meeting of journalists, and only he could approve it as the owner... We chose less money, but more freedom. And we didn’t know at all who Gusinsky was at that time.

And for the first few years, Gusinsky was interested in only one thing: when radio would start making a profit. Well, we started, as luck would have it, 13 months ago, bringing money into the holding, and just then the well-known political events with Media-Most began. But Gusinsky still didn’t listen to “Echo” and still doesn’t listen to it.

I had such a story with him. One day I was driving somewhere around the city, and, of course, the radio in my car was working. Gusinsky calls me - he is also going somewhere - and asks: “What’s going on? What’s new in the world?” At this moment the information program "Echo" begins. And I, with a delay of one piece of news, begin to tell him on the phone what is being heard from my receiver - the program that is broadcast on my radio. He listens to all this to the end, and then says: “Oh my God! How much do you know!..”

This is the story about the most important thing. Because he is a businessman. I began to communicate closely with him only when the policy of Boris Yeltsin changed to the policy of Vladimir Putin. Or “Vladimirov Putins”... We began to meet and exchange phrases about the threats that began to emerge more and more clearly. And they tried to compare watches, tried to understand whether we interpreted what was happening around us in the same way or differently... And the remote control from which he supposedly controls the broadcasts of the Ekho Moskvy radio station was never found in his office, although I I suspect that when investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office conducted a search there, it was this remote control they were looking for.

- Just as they didn’t find another remote control with which he personally, as many in the Kremlin are sure, selects photographs and edits covers for the Itogi magazine...
“Yes, I once had Voloshin, a man whom I rate very highly as an administrator, pointing his finger at the unfolded Itogi magazine with the famous photograph of Yeltsin stumbling as he exited the plane. And in all seriousness he asserted that Gusinsky personally gives orders which pictures should be placed where and in what size. It is impossible to object to this. This is paranoia. Paranoia among senior government officials. We definitely won’t be able to cope with it, and this is one of the most serious problems: people are not ready to hear the truth about themselves, they see it only as a mockery and consider it “getting personal,” even if we are talking about the essence of the matter.

And now, when this paranoia has led the struggle to such a stage at which it is a question of whether the authorities will be able to wipe us out completely or not, I am very often asked: why did you, in fact, stand up for Gusinsky? What is this Gusinsky to you? He is yours, what’s his name - an employer, a capitalist, therefore a bloodsucker, a murderer...

But the fact is that I understand: they put pressure on him and put pressure on him, and they put him in Butyrka for what we say. Not for what he himself says, but for what Cherkizov says on the air of “Echo”; what Kovalskaya writes in the magazine about Chechnya, and Golts about the army; for what Berger writes in Segodnya, what Kiselev says in the television Itogi about the Kremlin itself. That is, he was imprisoned for us and is being forced out of the country for us. So how should we react? “If you want to take it away, well, take it, it’s better for us! If you want to take it away, well, take it away, that’s what we want!” So, what?

No really. It doesn’t work out: we are, after all, “free radio for free people.”