On The Media

BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC, this is NPR's On the Media. Bob Garfield is away. I'm Brooke Gladstone, reporting this week from Russia, an enemy turned friend turned—well, our President has assured us that despite some recent nasty exchanges, Russia is not our enemy. And that's easy to see from the familiar shops, the bars, the aspirations humming and buzzing in the streets of Moscow.

Our Russia story concerns free speech, where independent media are muffled and where the murder of muckrakers, such as Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, are mostly ignored.

We flew into a city awash in sunshine, music, money and anxiety, at least for some.

[YELTSIN SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

A lot's happened here since Yeltsin stood down a coup from atop a tank. Since Russia's roaring '90s, when the ruble was dying and the independent press was being born, on this perfect day in June, a rally in Pushkin Square.

[RUSSIAN]

I asked a middle-aged woman, why are you here?

[RUSSIAN]

She says, “I'm here because I've run out of patience. Changing policies are taking us backwards. Our lives are going backwards.”

[RUSSIAN]

Former chess champion, current anti-Putin activist and his allies have staged a series of protests, like this one, in several cities this year. Despite an explicit policy of non-violence, most have ended in bloody clashes with police. Not this one.

[RUSSIAN]

Here, platoons of uniformed enforcers far outnumber the protesters, whose speeches are interrupted by prerecorded heckling -

[TAPED LAUGHTER]

- maniacal laughter blasted from a wall of speakers on a flatbed truck circling the square. The authorities seemed to have overreacted to this demonstration because, by all accounts, Kasparov's calls for free elections and a freer press pose no real threat to public order or the popularity of President Putin.

YEVGENY KISELYOV: Freedom of speech is not one of the basic commodities required by the people. They can skip it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In the Yeltsin years, Yevgeny Kiselyov was Russian television's Walter Cronkite crossed with Ted Koppel—that is, until Kiselyov's boss, the oligarch who launched the hugely popular NTV channel, was prodded by President Putin into voluntary exile. The big pro-Kremlin oil company Gazprom bought NTV and chased all the independent journalists away, among them, Kiselyov.

Has the public ever really cared about freedom of the press?

YEVGENY KISELYOV: [SIGHS] Yes, in late 80s, because it was a new commodity that they have never tasted, something that they were longing for, and it was very sweet.

I remember those famous queues to the newspaper kiosks that formed in the early hours of the morning in late '80s started to subside by early 1991, because the freedom of speech did not bring new prosperity, did not bring goods, did not stop inflation, and that's why they became very angry with the journalists. So you promised us everything and we've got nothing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In fact, Kiselyov says he was surprised back in '91 to see Muscovites fill the streets to support Yeltsin's stand against the attempted Communist coup. Then again, he says, it doesn't take that many to fill a street.

YEVGENY KISELYOV: Majority of the Muscovites stayed home. Those who were conscientious supporters of democracy and freedom came out. Minority always matters, you know?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you see anyone on the horizon to help organize that now-slumbering minority? Would it be Kasparov?

YEVGENY KISELYOV: With all my due respect to Garry Kasparov, I don't think that he is capable of mobilizing the opposition and becoming its respected leader.

[CROWD HUBBUB/AMBIENT SOUNDS IN BACKGROUND]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: During the G8 Summit earlier this month, Garry Kasparov gave a press conference in Moscow's House of Journalists. He had this to say about the powerful Western powers jawboning in Germany.

GARRY KASPAROV: We want these leaders to state the obvious—Russia under Putin doesn't belong to G8 because it's not a democracy and it's not an industrial power. Any time they bring Putin to these big meetings, they treat him as an equal, they are extending these democratic credentials, and that works against us.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do you contend with Mr. Putin's enormous popularity here?

GARRY KASPAROV: I don't know anything about Mr. Putin's popularity.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, according to poll numbers.

GARRY KASPAROV: Oh, yeah. And probably if U.S. administration could exercise the same control over the present America, Bush would enjoy the same popularity.

In the countries where democracy is in jeopardy, to talk about the popularity of the leader who was never contested in free and fair elections and never faced a true debate with the opposition, I think it's totally irrelevant.

You know, I believe that in Russia today, any poll that is related to a personal issue, whether it's Putin or a local mayor or a governor, always giving you a distorted picture. When you ask the same people about economy, about crime, about unemployment, health care, social conditions, they give you very different answers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Kasparov may be Russia's most visible dissident in the West, but here he's neither seen nor heard outside Moscow and a few other major cities. He, and many other opposition figures, are banned from Russia's state-controlled TV networks, due largely to the 2002 law against extremism. It effectively stifles anyone or anything that could potentially destabilize the government, by, say, criticizing it.

Other rarely seen members of the opposition movement, known as "other Russia," include former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and, current member of Russia's lower legislative body, the Duma.

Ryzhkov, once a prominent member, will soon be out of work because of another more recent law that sets almost impossibly high requirements for independent candidates seeking public office. Over coffee in a Komergarsky Pereulok cafe, Ryzhkov says the law is crafted to keep Kremlin opponents out of power.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: It's unbelievable. You know, three years ago we had 60 political parties. Today, because of this law and because of regulation, we have only 15. So that means that Russia laws specially created to stop citizens to participate in politics.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you find it disheartening that Putin is one of the most popular leaders in the world to his nation? Even more than the thicket of rules that Putin has set up, don't you have to deal with the fact that people still resent the time of Yeltsin for the chaos that ensued?

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: Yes. Putin is still very much popular. The question is why. First, as you said, is contrast between him and Yeltsin. Of course, Yeltsin time, '90s, were an awful time for Russians, and Yeltsin himself sometimes was ill, drunk and strange. And, of course, if compared with him, Putin is sportive, he is smart, he is energetic, so his image is much better.

Second reason is that for last seven years there was no, any, any program with criticism towards Putin. Can you imagine that in States?

And third reason is that in petrol states, leaders always unpopular if oil prices and gas prices are very high.

Look around Moscow. It's a luxury town. It's one of the richest towns in the world now. But objectively speaking, Russia is weak and Russian economy is weak.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But, as you say, perhaps as important as the Russian petrodollars that are helping keep the country afloat, there's also the question of his image. He is not an embarrassing leader. You know, there's something about national pride.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: Oh, you know, of course, after humiliation of '90s, when we lost Cold War, when we lost at least half of economy, of course people need some proud on Russia, on our country. But question is what quality of pride. Could we be proud because of model of Politkovskaya and six month not any progress in investigation? Is it proudly for us?

Could we be proud that the top ten of Russians have incomes 25 times more than lowest ten percent of population? Or could we be proud about Russian corruption, which is number one in the world, and last year it was about 300 billion dollars?

These topics are not discussed in Russian media and Russian television. You can see only good news about Russia and only bad news about the West.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk about the state of the pro-democracy forces currently.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: Putin's saying and his administration's saying, who are these guys? Who are these guys in a position? They're marginals. Who are the marginals, I'm asking Mr. Putin. Former chess champion is marginal. Former Prime Minister. Former Central Bank Chairman, Mr. Gerashchenko, or me, former First Deputy Chairman of Duma. We are marginals.

You know, in Russia, to exist means to be on television. Me, Kasyanov, Kasparov, we never could appear on national TV. And because of that, opposition leaders are unpopular.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Putin maintains, and the people around Putin maintain, that Russia is a democracy.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: No, Brezhnev said that Soviet Union was democracy, too. Remember that. I think Putin cynically thinks that democracy does not exist anywhere. But everybody, Bush and Blair, say that they're democrats. Why don't Putin say that?

Russians never lived in democracy, never in their history. Older generations remember Soviet time when state regulated everything, including private life. So now they feel themselves free, because state does not touch their private lives.

You can make your small business. You can travel to Turkey resorts. You can buy any video. You can buy a Rolling Stones CD, which was restricted in Soviet time. And you can find jeans in any corner. And for many Russians, it's a democracy.

So question is, are we still on transit from authoritarianism to democracy or transit is finished, and current authoritarian state—very traditional for Russia—is forever?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ryzhkov finishes his coffee and heads back to the job, the one he'll lose because he won't be allowed to run in the upcoming March election. So much for his constituency in Siberia.

[BACKGROUND TALKING/MUSIC]

Here in Moscow, Putin's media critics are permitted to carp—within city limits.

[RUSSIAN]

And cheerful urbanites complain about their president between vodka shots.

[BACKGROUND TALKING/MUSIC]

Coming up, one newspaper copes with the murder of its own, and the editor of Izvestia defends the Kremlin's view of freedom.

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