Translated material
Kremlin dreams
Sergey Parkhomenko
The authorities have stopped hiding their intentions: the independent press must be pacified or destroyed
The authorities have stopped hiding their intentions: the independent press must be pacified or destroyed
Chief editors of the "political publications" of the Media-Most corporation: Alexey Venediktov, Evgeny Kiselev, Sergey Parkhomenko, Mikhail Berger, all in handcuffs. Probably, the authorities would like us better this way. What does she expect from us? Repentance? Vows of eternal devotion? There's no harm in dreaming. Even in the Kremlin. (Photo: Alexey Dityakin )
The taking of the head of Media-Most, Vladimir Gusinsky, hostage, organized last Tuesday by a near-presidential group of professional political intriguers led by Alexander Voloshin, has put Russia's largest non-state information corporation in an extremely difficult situation.
Perhaps such a confession will even seem unexpected and illogical to some of those who, in the last few days, have managed to read and listen to countless comments, the authors of which, with more or less wit, more or less ingenuity, proved that the “action of intimidation” carried out by the federal prosecutor’s office "represents a folly of stunning beauty and power. Perhaps such an assessment of the situation will even seem overly pessimistic against the backdrop of the speeches of countless analysts who have more or less convincingly explained all these days that the “punitive action”, amazing in its irresponsibility of plan and the brutality of its execution, has once again discredited - moreover, humiliated - the supreme Russian power both before world public opinion and before the liberal-minded part of the domestic public. But on the other hand, they say, it strengthened the reputation of Media-Most as a company ready to defend its professional rights and its corporate dignity, no matter how noisy a frenzy or, conversely, no matter how gloomy rage this may lead high-ranking officials. And besides, it supposedly aroused sympathy for this company even among many of those who had hitherto treated it with jealousy, suspicion or prejudice.
May be. But personally, I admit, I don’t want to rejoice or gloat under these circumstances. And not only because the humiliations that have recently befallen the President of all Russians, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, seemed to me personally, in general, to be quite sufficient. That is, even before his confidants started this latest (unfortunately, the latest only in time), especially vile story, it seemed that enough was enough. The current portion of the shame the president has experienced seems to me perhaps even excessive. For example, I am quite upset that the magazine, which I have the honor to edit, has now lost the opportunity to devote at least a few paragraphs to the results of the first European tour made by the newly elected head of the Russian state. But what can you do if no such results exist? Just as it can now be considered that the voyage itself did not exist: it was ingloriously and mediocrely launched by Putin himself and his strategists in the wind, exchanged for the president’s helpless attempts to justify himself, to fight back, to escape.
Well, God bless him. That’s not the point, I repeat.
The situation in which for three and a half endlessly long days remained the Media-Most information holding as a whole, each of its leaders, and in total more than a thousand journalists who write, film, speak and show on the waves and pages of NTV, " Echo of Moscow", the newspaper "Segodnya", the magazine "Itogi" and other electronic and printed "Most" publications - seems to us to be truly difficult insofar as the problems posed to the company by the fact of the arrest of Vladimir Gusinsky, in essence, developed into a typical a standard set of problems that arise whenever an “ordinary” hostage-taking takes place. When an act is committed that is traditionally qualified throughout the world as one of the most cruel, cynical and vile forms of terror.
To be convinced that under the guise of the arrest of the head of Media-Most on absurd suspicion of an “economic” crime, he was taken hostage was forced by many very impressive features of the very first stage of the operation launched by the prosecutor’s office. And what exact forms the deprivation of Vladimir Gusinsky's freedom took - his imprisonment in the Butyrsky detention center, which enjoys the reputation of the most disgusting of Moscow prisons. And the frankness with which the investigators demonstrated to both the arrested person and his lawyers their disregard for the obligation to clearly and fully formulate the essence of their charges. And, in the end, the ease with which representatives of the highest state power, not excluding the president, dissembled about their ignorance of the arbitrariness being committed and their innocence in it, unable and unwilling to hide at the very least satisfied, but more often than not a triumphant smile.
However, the closeness of these two situations - the concrete, “Most” situation, and the classic, “hostage situation” - was most clearly revealed to us when we clearly realized what, in fact, was the strategic plan of the Kremlin masters of intrigue. A classic terrorist always very much hopes (and strives to achieve this by all methods available to him) that the opposing side will sooner or later be ready to sacrifice any of its principles, renounce any of its beliefs, suspend any of its actions in the name of one single goal: to save its hostage alive. In fact, the authorities want exactly the same thing from us. Putin, Voloshin, Ivanov, Ustinov, Patrushev - all those who are actually responsible for this act of political terror, despite the false claims that they “didn’t know”, “didn’t expect”, “were away” or “don’t think” themselves have the right to interfere" (and with them those who give them either free or generously paid tactical advice) would be happy to one day be convinced that the economic, technical and personnel potential of "Media-Most", its professional resource accumulated by it over the years of successful work in the media market, domestic and international authority - all this has been mobilized to solve only one task: to get Vladimir Gusinsky out of prison. They would now like to see how all of us, having thrown out “everything unnecessary” from our heads, day after day, with our last strength, are fighting for only one thing: to replace Gusinsky’s arrest with a written undertaking not to leave. And ideally, even worse: so that at least his transfer from a “bad” prison to a “good” prison would seem like the height of our dreams.
We understood and understand this vile plan. And when he rises again in some new form, we will resist. But it was precisely in this understanding and in the conviction that it was impossible not to resist while the hostage remained in the cell of the Butyrka prison - the nature of the weight that each of us, friends, partners and employees of Vladimir Gusinsky, felt on our shoulders. However, it is important for me to note that with the release of the head of Media-Most, this “hostage syndrome” could not go away on its own. After all, it didn’t originate yesterday. The problem itself, in fact, is not new to us.
Ever since the power family that has become entrenched in the Kremlin, having recently secured re-election for a second term, has paradoxically managed - through its own primitive aggressiveness and short-sightedness - to turn the relationship between the federal executive branch and the Media-Most information holding into one of the central plots Russian political chronicles, the journalists of the “Most” corporation are faced, it’s time to finally admit, with very serious problems of a purely professional, if not creative, nature. Over and over again, in an increasingly explicit form, accusing Media-Most of essentially anti-state, almost subversive activities, the Kremlin sages, led by Alexander Voloshin, were able to push us into an almost unnatural position. To put it scientifically, every day it became more and more difficult for us to be both an “object” and a “subject” of the information process. To put it in the language of lovers of ancient jokes, we increasingly found ourselves in the position of that veteran of Tula samovar construction, who, with every attempt to build a peaceful heating device for household use, still ended up with a machine gun.
Suppose you begin to analyze the reasons and circumstances of how the regime of the newly elected President Putin is gradually but steadily turning the guarantees of democratic freedoms and individual rights established by the Russian Constitution into something ephemeral and easily vulnerable to the demagogic speculations of a group of political adventurers close to them... And it turns out that you are talking about the immutable value of freedom of speech (in general) and the inalienable right of an independent press (in particular) to an objective and complete analysis of the political situation, without regard to how a particular official imagines the “political expediency” of such an analysis or “the degree of it useful to society." It turns out that you are standing up for your own rights and pointing out the value of your own efforts.
You will, for example, insist that the habit of officials at the highest federal level of using law enforcement agencies - from the prosecutor's office to the tax police, from customs to fire inspection - to fight political opponents or business competitors not only discredits these same bodies, but also plunges society into an atmosphere of fear, lies and hypocrisy, and also undermines the respect of law-abiding citizens for the law as such... And comes an angry rebuke to several high-ranking schemers who organized - under the guise of absurd and deliberately implausible accusations - a rude and brazen attack on the central office Media-Most Corporation. It turns out that you are protecting your own corporation.
You start, say, analyzing the progress of the amazing “All-Russian census of bastards”, which over the past few months, on their own initiative, has been carried out in their circle by the most notable tenors and feathers of that part of the Russian press that is controlled and slavishly devoted to the authorities... And you find yourself explaining to a couple of arrogant empty nesters that they have long and forever lost the right to even judge the integrity of their colleagues, even to touch the topic of corporate solidarity. You find yourself boasting about the good faith and solidarity of your own comrades.
This is just some kind of self-criticism. And we, undoubtedly, have to put in a lot of effort to cope with this “Samoyed effect”. In order to learn, even in these conditions, not to lose concentration on what, as is customary to say at diplomatic receptions, “causes our concern,” and frankly speaking, it seems to us disgusting and deadly (deadly! - if you believe that states, even great ones in past, also mortal) dangerous for Russia. And this is what we're talking about.
The new Russian government is not just young and inexperienced. She is subject to the typical teenage “negativism complex.” With the stubbornness and obstinacy of a pimply pet, she brushes aside “father’s truth.” But what she treats with such contempt is, in fact, the invaluable, hard-won, and sometimes blood-earned experience of many mature democracies and one immature one - our own. This experience irrefutably proves that modern human civilization, built on the principles of respect for personal freedom, is structured too delicately and complexly. That the laws of social, economic and political life are permeated with too many connections for these connections to be broken, with one’s eyes closed, as soon as they begin to even slightly constrain the movements of the state leader. The new Russian government wants to appear bold to itself, but in reality its self-will too easily turns into tyranny. And if some patterns of the democratic course of things do not seem obvious to her at the very first second, she is at that very second ready to recognize them as insignificant or completely non-existent.
The children of Lubyanka, who now flood the Kremlin corridors, like the cook’s children once did, are not clear about the nature of the connection between the sustainability of democratic freedoms in the state and its very right to count on harmonious development and, perhaps someday, prosperity. The taste of Dresden beer, it is not difficult to believe, remained forever on the tongue of the new Russian leader, but he did not feel the taste of freedom behind him: although the beer was German, it was GDR beer.
When they try to remind these people that freedom - and one of its most important and developed forms, freedom of speech - is the only medium known to mankind for the development of personality, creativity, entrepreneurial initiative, and scientific knowledge, they are sluggishly interested: “Who told you? What about Chile? What about China?" When in a conversation with them they move on to things that seem to be more understandable to them and warn that in a clogged, frightened country we will gradually rot, and from the outside they will look at us with pity and disdain, but they simply won’t extend their hands or give us money, they they lift their chins: “We’ll see about that! They swallowed Afghanistan. Now Chechnya too. They’ll trample on them.” We bother them with our questions and teachings. They would like us all to shut up and not interfere with our claims and doubts.
If we fail to interrupt these youthful dreams, full of sweet autocratic visions that turn into nervous totalitarian emissions, the acquaintance of the authorities with reality may take too long. Someday they will see enough of it there, in the Kremlin, taste their fill, calm down and become wiser. But it's a shame to wait. It's a pity to live on them.
That's why we shake them. And we will shake. Even if from time to time we have to take our hostages from them.
A quarter of an hour has passed since the release. During the three days spent in a cell in Butyrka prison, Vladimir Gusinsky lost one and a half kilograms. His political views have not changed one bit. (Photo: Vladimir Novikov )