ABSTRACT
The media was a powerful force in Russia by the time Yeltsin came to power. Journalists had fought for their right to free speech by rejecting the limits that Gorbachev had imposed on glasnost, and they had helped repulse antidemocracy forces in the 1991 coup. Their freedom had not been bequeathed ‘from above’, as was usual in the case of reform. They were indebted to Yeltsin for their victory only in the same measure as he was indebted to them. To that extent free speech was not intended as a ‘means’ to anything other than the normal everyday workings required of a democracy. This was the moment of truth for media professionals. Editors and jour-
nalists had an opportunity to practise their profession in a normal and civilised way and build on the role of the media as the fourth estate. Yet this is not what happened. Instead, much of the blame for the demise of free speech must be laid at the feet of media professionals. If it was not only possible but relatively easy for Putin to clamp down on free speech almost immediately Yeltsin resigned, then journalists had done little to consolidate their status. It meant that the unprecedented chance to create institutions to safeguard journalists’ rights had been squandered. It showed the journalist community to be atomised and competitive, when it had been feasible to band together in solidarity against state and corporate interests. Although journalists the world over are a fractious tribe, Russia had been lamenting its absence of free speech for centuries. As there was no Kremlin diktat to tell the media what to do, it was possible
to set up normal relations with two other institutions connected to the media industry: private investors and the public. Under glasnost the media had worked to champion the interests of the public, but under the stringent conditions of the market the scales tipped towards owners and finance. As soon
as the bulk of journalists began to identify their self-interest with oligarchic or state interests, rather than serving the public, the media reverted to their traditional role in Russia, as an organ for somebody or something other than truth-telling. Novaya gazeta’s Sergei Sokolov was in no doubt that journalists were to blame:
It all started in the 1990s when they sold out to the oligarchs for gigantic amounts of money and they themselves began to lie and in fact made lies their business and their way of earning money. Strictly speaking, journalists themselves sold out their profession and their free speech. Now the government has changed and there are no more oligarchs; instead, the security services use them, and it’s too late to jump back. They started it themselves; this must be remembered.1
