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Degrees of Risk Degrees of Risk By Alexander Podrabinek Translated by Arch Tait May 2016 This article is published in English by The Henry Jackson Society by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. The article refects the views of the author and not necessarily those of The Henry Jackson Society or its staf. DEGREES OF RISK 1 Conflict with the government in power is never-ending. The less a regime is beholden to the community, the more grounds there will be for conflict. There have been variations. At one time, when there were tsars and nobles, popular discontent was voiced by jesters, later by the educated gentry, then by an emergent and disaffected middle class, by students and revolutionaries. At a turning point in Russian history, armed resistance to the Bolshevik regime came, not from those marching under red banners, or the White Army, or Cossacks but from striking workers and from pesants rising in revolt. In the brooding Stalin period, discontent smouldered deep in people’s hearts, only rarely, in moments of total desperation, bursting out in open protest. During the ‘herbivorous’ Brezhnev era, intellectuals, enthused by the recent thaw and hopes of change, came together in the democratic movement and again went public. Today, when civil liberties have not yet been completely crushed and society is trying to assert its rights, the burden of confrontation with the regime has been assumed by a political opposition. Thirty years separate the last days of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union from the current regime of one-man-rule under Putin. During that time, the communist system and the Soviet empire have collapsed, democracy in Russia has been born and swiftly stifled, there has been a succession of presidents, but the never-ending conflict with the government in power continues. In the Beginning Was Literature ... The way Russian history has developed, the primary, most widespread source of resistance to despotism has been the word. Literature. This may be due to a baffling respect Russians have for the written word. Their trust in anything printed on paper almost beggars belief, and is something successive regimes have not been slow to exploit. Contrary to the view widely held in the Soviet era that the common people in Tsarist Russia were all but illiterate, literacy levels were actually quite reasonable. The 1897 census found that 21 per cent of the population were literate. In 1916, the then Minister of Education, Pavel Ignatiev, put the literacy rate at 56 per cent. In the Soviet period, compulsory school education and universal literacy were successfully exploited by the communist regime for total zombification through propaganda, but this was a two-edged sword: the free word was remarkably corrosive when pitted against the constructs of the propagandists, not least because those writing uncensored literature were generally more talented by an order of magnitude than their officially approved, pen-pushing colleagues. From its birth, the democratic movement in the Soviet Union demanded free speech and was umbilically linked to the struggle for the right to freely access and disseminate information. The impulse for the first mass public campaign in defence of free speech was a court verdict on the writers Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuliy Daniel for publishing their works abroad. In 1966, they were sentenced to 7 and 5 years imprisonment respectively. This evoked numerous protest letters from writers, scholars, artists, and filmmakers. Over time, protesting become the core of dissident activity, and in 1968 led to publication of the uncensored samizdat bulletin Chronicle of Current Events which, in the course of the following 15 years, became the organizational focus of the democratic 1 This paper was written for the Russian Service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. It can be accessed at, Podrabinek, A. ‘Stepen’ riska’ [Degrees of Risk], svoboda.org, 11 April 2016, available at: http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27650774.html 2 DEGREES OF RISK movement. It was a movement of many and varied colours, but the whole spectrum was displayed in the Chronicle. In all likelihood, the greater part of the KGB’s operational efforts “The Soviet regime were targeted at stopping samizdat. During searches they seized not understood what a only manuscripts but also novels long ago published in the West or danger free speech reproduced in the USSR, poems, historical research, philosophy, and represents for a totalitarian regime. any other items that had not been given the seal of approval of the Today’s regime is no Glavlit [General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the less aware of that.” Press – ed.] censorship committee. The Soviet regime understood what a danger free speech represents for a totalitarian regime. Today’s regime is no less aware of that. The restriction of free speech in contemporary Russia has not yet reached the level that existed in the Soviet Union, although Vladimir Putin’s regime is moving slowly but surely in that direction. This manifests itself in the imposition of government monitoring of editorial policy of the media, especially television; in the hampering of the media’s economic independence; in intimidation of journalists, leading to self-censorship; and in direct, politically motivated oppression of independent journalists and internet writers. Roscomnadzor, the current censorship agency, compiles a list of banned publications and media output. This register lists tens of thousands of items, most of them internet web pages. Today's Internet is closely comparable to Soviet-era samizdat. Despite the similarity of the tools for suppressing free speech, and the state’s attitude to sedition, there is an astonishing difference between Soviet times and the present in the attitude of those with a vital interest in free speech. That means, first and foremost, journalists and writers. During the rigours of the Soviet period, the polarization of writers was “The journalistic more pronounced. Party propagandists had favours lavished on them community in Russia and were awarded what by Soviet standards seemed like enormous manifests an extremely benefits in everyday life. Those who refused to bow down to low level of professional aspiration ideological censorship found themselves, at best, out of work, and at and concern about free worst in prison. There was, of course, a middle-of-the-road option, speech.” pursued by a brittle, browbeaten band always at the ready to capitulate. The monthly magazine Novy Mir, Moscow’s Sovremennik and Taganka theatres were highly visible examples of half-strangled free speech. The more intellectual section of society, itself steamrollered by communist propaganda, enthusiastically embraced these islands of half-truth, overlooking the fact that the other half was lies. The forms of the old Soviet model are replicated today. There is a frenzied output of Kremlin propaganda on the federal television channels, and there is an Internet free of censorship. There is also a middle of the road: institutions manoeuvring between the regime and society, in the form of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the radio station Echo of Moscow, and the television channel Rain (Dozhd’). There is, however, a huge difference between the price that had to be paid for free speech then and the price that has to be paid now. Today courageous journalism is not punished by instant expulsion from the profession and inexorable politically-inspired repression. We see this on the example of such internet resources as Daily Magazine (Yezhednevny Zhurnal) and Facets (Grani) 3 DEGREES OF RISK which, although blocked by Roscomnadzor, continue to be produced and are accessible to anyone willing to make even a slight effort. Reporters trimming and tacking their way through the ocean of the media, the middle-of-the- roaders, are not putting their lives and freedom at risk, as they would have been in Soviet times: at worst their media may be closed down, starved of funding and lose government licences. This is no doubt upsetting, even an ordeal, but bears no comparison with the consequences that befell those defending free speech 30 or 40 years ago. To be fair, some journalists do go far beyond the commonly accepted limits, and for them the occupational hazard increases exponentially. It can amount to much more than being subjected to censorship by their editors or losing their jobs: for the most daring and talented it can mean assassination. On the whole, though, the journalistic community in Russia manifests an extremely low level of professional aspiration and concern about free speech as a precondition for normal work as a journalist. We have only to look at the annual meetings with Vladimir Putin, when press conferences are duly attended by even Russia’s most outspoken journalists. It is a sorry sight. Human Rights Activists The situation of the media and journalists is analogous to that of the opposition. In the Soviet period, the functions of a political opposition were performed by the democratic movement, of which the human rights activists were the most visible and effective component. These usually insisted that their activities were non-political, although the claim was somewhat disingenuous and necessitated playing with words and splitting hairs over definitions. In reality, any activity affecting the foundations of a political system can be considered political, and in a totalitarian state with a rigid system regulating every aspect of the life of the community, any departure from the
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