The Russian media in post‐Soviet conditions

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE (partly based on interviews with Russian editors and journalists) is concerned with developments in the Russian media from the end of 1991 up until the middle of 1995: it does not deal with the parliamentary election campaign in that year. For Russian journalists, the period following the collapse of the USSR was, of course, one of turbulent transition. There were times, especially after the storming of the old parliament in October 1993, when media freedom seemed to be in imminent danger. At other times-notably during the Chechen crisis-the robust independence of Russian journalists greatly impressed the outside world. Media pluralism in Russia became-for the time being at least-a reality which no one could deny. Nevertheless, journalists faced a whole range of entirely new difficulties-including, not least, economic crisis. It need hardly be pointed out that the survival of media freedom in Russia ultimately depends on the fate of Russian democracy. The present article, however, has a narrower focus. Its main purpose is to discuss some of the factors which militated both for and against media pluralism during the first three and a half years of post-Soviet rule. First of all, however, a brief mention should be made of the Soviet past. The changes of 1991 were abrupt and fundamental; but Russian journalists did not face them wholly unprepared. Over many decades, at least some journalists had tried to exercise a measure of independence. At the beginning of 1992, for example, Literaturnaya gazeta claimed credit for preparing the way for perestroika even during the Brezhnev era.1 It should also be remembered that the foundations for media freedom, both in law and in practice, were laid in the Gorbachev period. It was towards the end of that period that openly anti-communist views first appeared in print: Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was published in the literary journal Novyi mir in 1989.2 The legal framework for freedom of expression was created by a media law-the first of its kind-which came into force on 1 August 1990 and which prohibited censorship and laid down that newspapers (or broadcasting stations, to which the law also applied) could be closed only by a court order and on specified grounds.3 Finally, in 1991 even television became pluralised: on 13 May of that year the Russian television channel (then effectively under El'tsin's influence) began to broadcast its own programmes with a slant markedly different from that of the All-Union Soviet television.4