Russia: Going Off the Air or Out of Air?

When the BBC goes off the air, civilisation is at an end. At least, so seems to have been the British view during the Cold War, as submarine captains had orders to open the envelopes for the nuclear arms' codes when the BBC fell silent. Now, this bastion of free speech and independent media is silenced by authorities in Russia, BBC reports.

On Friday, the BBC announced that its Russian partner, Bolshoe Radio, has been ordered by the authorities either to take Russia's last FM-relay of the BBC's Russian Service off the air or be shut down. That would make Bolshoe Radio the third and final Russian radio station, in the last months, that has been forced to quit BBC broadcasts in Russian.

Bolshoe Radio, which was recently purchased by the Finam investment group, was "allowed for 18% of --- content to be foreign-produced." Now, the radio station has been ordered to produce all its programming itself. The new owner of Bolshoe Radio denies that the decision to take the BBC off the air was made with outside prompting, and instead states that the radio station cannot send foreign propaganda. According to the BBC, a spokesman for Bolshoe Radio said it is "well known that the BBC was set up to broadcast foreign propaganda" and that "any media which is government-financed is propaganda."

However, it is beyond doubt that the BBC Russian Service was taken off the air by the Russian Federal Media Monitoring Service, Rossvyazokhrankultura (cf. "Russia silences its free voices?"). The head of the Russian authority, Boris Boyarskov, thus plainly states that his agency was behind shutting down the BBC in Russia, according to Interfax news agency:

The licensee who was organizing broadcasting on this frequency should have indicated the name of the mass media outlet, the BBC, in its plan, which it failed to do. We carried out checks on this and issued the broadcaster with a warning that it should only be giving air time to those mass media outlets which have been stipulated in the programming plan and that it should bring its broadcasting into line with this programming plan.

The statement that the BBC would broadcast "state propaganda" is surely a novelty in fabricating pretexts for smothering media freedom. The BBC is renowned throughout the world for its independent news coverage, and any attempt by a British government to limit the BBC's freedom would likely result in its eventual resignation. Such is considered the power of the free word in Britain, that when the BBC goes off the air - freedom is presumed at an end.

Thus, another free voice is silenced for Russians, eventually smothering the souls of the people. Is it a coincidence that the lyrics of Vysotsky's song "Спасите наши души" (Save Our Souls) come to mind?

Спасите наши души! - Мы бредим от удушья.
Спасите наши души! - Спешите к нам!
Услышьте нас на суше! Наш SOS все глуше, глуше...
И ужас режет души. - Напополам...

Save our souls! We are slowly smothered. Save our souls! Make haste to us! Hear our sorrows! Our SOS grows unheard... And horror cuts our souls in halves.

Politkovskaya Podcast

On Tuesday evening, Open Source radio broadcasted a show on "The death of Anna Politkovskaya", with myself, Masha Gessen - Deupty Editor of Bolshoy Gorod, Raffi Aftandelian - maaskva: nashimi glazami, and Edward Lucas, The Economist Central and East European Correspondent. The programme in full will, in due course, be available for download at OpenSource, but in the meanwhile, it will have to suffice with their presentation of the show:

What did she know about Putin’s Russia that we don’t? Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow this week, shot on the street. A journalist, she spent the last seven years as a columnist for Novaya Gazeta, covering Chechnya and the oligarchs and the list of official sins that continues to grow in Putin’s Russia. She titled collections of her columns Putin’s Russia, A Dirty War and A Small Corner of Hell; it’s not hard to figure out why she made a lot of people uncomfortable.

She had a lot of enemies, they all had motives, and the threat isn’t limited to her. Russian journalist Masha Gessen revealed on the phone this afternoon that, given the choice between a lighthearted piece for a Russian paper on the economy or a more sober look at Putin for an American paper, she’d take the economy. Safer that way.

Several guests we spoke to this afternoon described Politkovskaya as “passionate”; she opened her 2004 book Putin’s Russia with the words “These are my emotional reactions, jotted down in the margins of life as it is lived in Russia today.” She established her own credibility; she was asked to help negotiate the hostage crisis in Beslan and then — she believed — poisoned on the plane on the way down. After the crisis, when it became illegal to sell a newspaper within a hundred meters of a subway entrance or bus stop, she was one of the few fearless journalists left; The Economist described her in an obit on Sunday as brave beyond belief.

And now she’s gone. What does this say about Putin’s Russia? Was an oligarch — or a Chechen, or police sergeant exposed for corruption — angry at what she’d done to his image, or did the Kremlin send a signal? And as we focus our attention on the Middle East, Russia threatens European natural gas supplies and rounds up Georgians as “criminals” for export back to Georgia. Are we completely missing a serious and not-so-new problem?

What is interesting with a discussion like this, is how various perspectives meet: a Russian and a western journalist, an Armenian American in Moscow and a Swedish expert on Russia. The greatest fear participating in a broadcast is not to get one's message through. This time the message is urgent: The significance of Anna Politkovskaya and how her murder reflects current Russia.

In these days, the negative attitudes towards Russia dominate. At the same time, Politkovskaya's murder may prove a turning-point for Russia. Although, there were only familiar faces - old soviet dissidents in their seventies - at her funeral yesterday, her death may actually rejuvenate the civil rights movement in Russia.

In 1966, the trial against Danilov and Sinyavsky set off a spark that ignited the soviet dissident movement of the 1970s - Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner and others. Nobody could then fully grasp the significance of a few "lost souls" in the quagmire of Brezhnevite soviet society. Still, the perseverance of the dissidents inspired others and eventually led to the era of glasnost and perestroika of the 1980s.

Today, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya may inspire a young generation of "new Russians" to gradually look beyond self-interest when confronted by mounting oppression. Regrettably, oppression is the situation for Russian media today, and journalists fear for their lifes and far too many try to avoid sensitive subjects, while they otherwise risk the necks of themselves and their families. Still, perhaps it has to become worse before it becomes better.

Perhaps, Anna Politkovskaya's death will become the start of something new in Russia. That would be a testimony worthy of her bravery and moral standing as an independent journalist and a whistleblower on all the injustices prevailing in Russia of today. Anna Politkovskaya was an inspiration when she lived. Now her legacy may become an even greater inspiration for future Russia. Her mission was to fight injustices. Her vision was a better Russia - a Russia which the people deserves but must fight hard to attain. Her final sacrifice must not be in vain!


Comment: The show in full may be listened to at Open Source Radio.