Tens of thousands of people participated in opposition rallies against alleged unfair parliamentary elections in Russia. The biggest was in Moscow: up to 120 thousand people demanded Russia’s prime-minister Vladimir Putin resignation.

“Putin Thief”, “We need fair elections”, “Register opposition parties” — these were slogans of Russia’s biggest protest rally since the day of parliamentary elections and since the beginning of post-Soviet Russia.

Famous Russian writer Boris Akunin, known for his public support to former oligarch and Putin’s opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said he “hasn’t seen such Moscow for the last 20 years”. Opposition leaders, rights activists, well-known journalists and public figures appealed to the people to take further action to control authorities and use democratic tools to change government policy. The rally’s resolution included five points:

–        Political prisoners to be released immediately;

–        Elections results to be cancelled;

–        The head of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov to resign,and  his activities and election fraud to be investigated;

–        Opposition parties to be registered, democratic election law to be passed;

–        New fair elections to be held.

Rally participants agreed the authorities now have two weeks to react and fulfil their requirements. If not, a new rally, a bigger one, will be held on 24 December in Moscow and other cities. Opposition parties Yabloko and Communist Party, who took part in protest on 10 December, also resolved to remind the authorities about people’s demands on two rallies of their own — on 17 and 18 December respectively.

This day is not just remarkable because Moscow hasn’t faceda rally like this in 20 years, but also because other cities protested. Similar rallies were held in Saint Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Perm, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Samara amd other cities. Protests of solidarity were held outside Russia, too, in London, New-York, Oslo, Helsinki, Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Jerusalem, Tokio, Dublin, Berlin, Prague, Rome.

In most Russian cities policemen arrested tens of acivists, but in Moscow they earned applause from the rally participants for their unexpected accommodation. Previous Moscow protests against elections results have been marked with hundreds of detentions and cruel police actions.

Russian TV, just like the Moscow police, surprised people by broadcasting news about the rally. Previous protests were not covered. The current rally waseven  covered live, although neither Putin nor Medvedev were criticised on air and the rally’s topic — mass election fraud — was not explained or discussed during the broadcasts. Most items looked like reports on how well the police performed and how bad the traffic jams were because of the rally.

Inspite of rights activists’ words about “civil society rebirth” and “dramatic changes in Russia”, the Central Election Commission deputy Stanislav Vavilov said the Commission will not review election results. Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalist the government “has not yet formed an opinion on the rally”.

But post-Soviet Russia has changed already: Never before has it faced tens of thousands of people chanting that they, not Putin and his “United Russia”, are the real power.

Police and anti-Putin protesters have clashed every day since the parliamentary elections on 4 December.

Hundreds of people protested against election fraud directly on elections day; most were detained by police. There were 8-10 thousand people (two thousand according to the police) in the centre of Moscow the day after elections.

Opposition leaders Ilya Yashin and Alexey Navalny were detained, as well as journalists from Reuters, Bloomberg, The New Times magazine, “Izvestia” newspaper and Lenta.ru news agency. The journalists were released, but Yashin and Navalny were sentenced to 15 days of arrest for “failure to follow a lawful order of policeman”. Both claim they didn’t break the law.

On 6 December, there was a rally at Triumphalnaya Square in Moscow with more than 1,000 protesters. People chanted “Putin thief”, “Russia without Putin”, “It’s a shame to be in NASHI”.

NASHI, a pro-government youth movementallied with two other pro-Kremlin organisations – “Stal” and “United Russia’s Young Guard” – celebrated the victory of United Russia in the parliamentary elections. Seventeen thousand members of these movements gathered at Moscow centre on 6 December. About two thousand of them went to Moscow’s Triumphalnaya Square to prevent anti-Putin protesters from holding a rally by standing there and shouting out “Putin, Medvedev, victory”.

Between 250 and 300 protesters were detained, including Yabloko party leader Sergey Mitrokhin; People’s Freedom Party leader Boris Nemtsov; Other Russia activist Eduard Limonov; Oleg Orlov , head of the Memorial human rights organisation; and journalists Bozhena Rynska of Gazeta.ru and Alexandr Chernykh of Kommersant.

Over 50,000 Ministry of Interior troops are located in Moscow together with policemen. Protesters and journalists have complained of their brutality and aggression from soldiers.

Similar protests were held in Saint-Petersburg  by about 800 protesters, 200 of whom were detained whilst Rostov-na-Donu, saw 300 protesters on the streets, 15 of whom were detained.

Russian TV reported on the actions of pro-government movements’ as if they were the only ones held. Pro-Putin demonstrators were described as “citizens tired of marginal groups they don’t support”, in coverage reminiscent of Breznev-era propaganda.

Activists were disappointed by a controversial statement made by Pavel Gusev, the leader of Journalists’ Union,  and public council of Moscow police, Olga Kostina. They accused journalists covering the anti-Putin demonstrations of “being biased and lacking objectivity” and “bringing difficulties to law enforcement authorities”.

In the meantime US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressed “serious concerns about the conduct of the election”. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High representative for foreign affairs and security policy expressed the same concerns commenting on a “lack of media impartiality, lack of separation between party and state, and the harassment of independent monitoring attempts” during parliamentary elections.

A big opposition rally against election fraud is expected on 10 December at Moscow Revolution Square just near the Kremlin. Moscow officials have authorised the rally, but troops remain in the city.

This article was originally published on Agentura.ru

On 7 February, 2011 the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding was expelled from Russia. According to the Guardian, the journalist flew back to Moscow from London, but was refused entry when his passport was checked on his arrival. After spending 45 minutes in an airport cell, he was sent back to the UK on the first available plane with his visa annulled. Harding was given no reason for the decision, although an airport official working for the Border Service of the FSB, told him: “For you Russia is closed.” The Guardian believes that Harding’s forced departure comes after the newspaper’s reporting of the WikiLeaks cables, where he reported on allegations that Russia under the rule of Vladimir Putin had become a “virtual mafia state”.

Harding’s expulsion is the latest example of the tactics adopted in the 2000s by the FSB in dealing with foreign journalists.

The 1990s under Yeltsin was a period of remarkable openness in Russia when journalists were free to explore areas that had long been off-limits. Under Putin, the FSB returned to KGB methods to deal with foreign journalists, using the threat of withholding visas and access to the country as leverage in an effort to influence their coverage.

In May 2002 Nikolai Volobuev, then the chief of the FSB’s counterintelligence department, said 31 foreign journalists had had their press passes revoked because they were “conducting illegal journalist activity”.  Eighteen of those were refused entry into Russia and had their visas blocked for five years. Since then this method has become common practice. According to the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, based in Moscow, more than 40 journalists were refused entry to Russia between 2000 and 2007.

In July 2006 Russian authorities refused an entry visa to the British journalist Thomas de Waal. The Russian Federal Migration Service explained that de Waal’s application had been denied under a 1996 security law. The explanation might be that de Waal wrote extensively on the war in Chechnya: In 1993-1997 he had worked in Russia covering the North Caucasus, and he co-authored the book Chechnya: A Small Victorious War. In 2003, he testified as an expert witness for the defense at the extradition trial in Britain of Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev.

In June 2008, British journalist Simon Pirani was refused entry to Russia, although he had a valid visa in his passport. Pirani, who writes about trade union issues, was told by Russian authorities he was deemed a security threat.

Natalia Morar, a Moldovan citizen who works for the independent Russian weekly New Times, and who had lived in Moscow for six years, was refused re-entry to Russia in December 2007 after a business trip to Israel. Morar had reported on corruption and written articles critical of high-level FSB officials.

She was forced to fly to Moldova, where she was told by Russian embassy officials that she posed a threat to Russian national security. In February 2008 she arrived at Domodedovo airport in Moscow with her Russian husband, Ilya Barabanov (who also works with New Times), whom she had married since she had last been refused entry. But she was stopped at passport control and told that her status had not changed, despite her marriage. Although she has continued to work for New Times covering corruption issues, her job has become increasingly difficult without access to Russian sources of information.

Meanwhile, the security services closed the doors of their press offices. By the mid-2000s the Federal Protection Service responded only to requests for filming or photographing inside the Kremlin. Military intelligence has no press office at all, the foreign intelligence service refuses to comment on anything that happened after 1961, and the FSB’s Center for Public Communications has tended not to answer media requests even under the threat of legal prosecution.

On April 24, 2008, then FSB director Nikolai Patrushev approved the plan to counter “the ideology of terrorism”. The plan outlined a set of guidelines for the secret services for 2008-2012. Among the measures included in the plan was a special training course, known as “Bastion”, for journalists covering terrorism. The course, established by the security services, seems to be a sort of brainwashing for journalists, aimed at limiting journalistic coverage of scenes of terrorist attacks and counterterrorism operations. Interior Ministry officials said that if a journalist had not attended the courses, he or she may be not allowed access to the area, as the number of press accreditations is limited and priority will be given to graduates of Bastion. The plan signed by Patrushev confirmed this. According to the document, the security services are required “to develop the order of accreditation of journalists who passed the courses and to establish a special diploma that would become the grounds for a journalist’s accreditation with the operations staff during the counterterrorist operation.” This requirement is at odds with the Russian media law, in which there is no mention of the course as a prerequisite for journalistic accreditation.

In 2009 the Directorate of Assistance Programmes (which includes the Centre for Public Communications) was given new powers. On 15 July Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, expanded the list of FSB generals allowed to “initiate petitions to conduct counterintelligence measures that restrict the constitutional rights of citizens”. Under Bortnikov’s direction, these generals now have the authority to order wiretapping, surveillance, and the searching of premises.

The list, first established in 2007, was originally limited to heads of counterintelligence sections, the department of economic security, and the border guards, as well as FSB leadership. The order signed by Bortnikov in 2009 significantly expanded it to include the FSB Directorate for Assistance Programs. According to the law, the FSB may carry out counterintelligence measures under the following conditions: There is information regarding signs of intelligence and other activity by foreign states’ se cret services or by individuals aimed at damaging Russia’s security.

Russia’s journalists are obviously not “clients” of the list. They might divulge secrets or names of agents, but only if they are told this information by FSB officers or other officials with access to such material. But to protect well-guarded secrets, the FSB has special units, from its main Counterintelligence Service to the Military Counterintelligence unit, which typically initiate prosecutions after journalists divulge sensitive information in print.

The lawyers and FSB officers we questioned told us that the Directorate of Assistance Programs might have asked for a surveillance permit not to initiate criminal proceedings but to keep a closer eye on journalists. (Previously the chief of the directorate had to request permission from the head of the counterintelligence department to intercept journalists’ correspondence. Now the head of the FSB’s directorate in charge of dealing with journalists is able to carry out an order on his own.) Bortnikov’s order raises another question. FSB units are divided into operational and support units. The first (for instance, counterintelligence or counterterrorism) consist of operatives who recruit agents. Support units include, for example, the FSB’s capital con- struction directorate, department of medicine, human resources, and (it was long believed) its directorate in charge of dealing with journalists.

The ability to order eavesdropping is a method employed by operational units. Responding to our question as to whether the Directorate of Assistance Programmes is an operational unit, the officer on duty at the FSB Center for Public Communications replied,“It is defined by our internal regulatory documents, and nobody will [tell] you.”

See more:

• KGB methods in dealing with public opinion: the emphasis on propaganda efforts focused on cinema and TV, a competition for the best literary and artistic works about state security operatives, and the using the threat of withholding visas and access to the country as leverage in an effort to influence their coverage
• The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

Agentura.Ru, February 8, 2011

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia draws on several hundred family archives and thousands of interviews with survivors of the Stalinist regime which I conducted with Memorial, a nationwide human rights and historical research centre which for twenty years has pioneered the research of Stalinist repressions in the Soviet Union. Memorial has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in the past three years.

On 4 December a group of masked men from the Investigative Committee of the Russian General Prosecutor¹s Office forced their way with police truncheons into the St Petersburg offices of Memorial. After a search the men confiscated hard-drives containing the entire archive of Memorial in St Petersburg: databases with biographical information on victims of repression; details about burial sites in the St Petersburg area; family archives; sound recordings and transcripts of interviews.

Among the confiscated items was the entire collection of materials in the Virtual Gulag Museum, a much-needed initiative to rescue precious artefacts, photographs and documents from more than a hundred small exhibits under threat across Russia (a country where there is just one substantial museum of the Gulag, Perm-36, in the Urals).

All the materials I collected with Memorial in St Petersburg (about one-third of the sources used in The Whisperers) were also confiscated by the police. Luckily, I have copies of the documents on my website (www.orlandofiges.com). But the rest of the confiscated items remain in the hands of the police.

The raid on Memorial is part of a broader ideological struggle over the control of history publications and teaching in Russia that may have influenced the decision of Atticus to cancel my contract.

The Kremlin has been actively campaigning for the rehabilitation of Stalin. Its aim is not to deny Stalin’s crimes but to emphasise his achievements as the builder of the country’s ‘glorious Soviet past.’ It wants Russians to take pride in Soviet history and not to be burdened with a paralysing sense of guilt about the repressions of the Stalin period.

At a conference in June 2007, Putin called on Russia’s schoolteachers to portray the Stalin period in a more positive light. It was Stalin who made Soviet Union great, who won the war against Hitler, and his ‘mistakes’ were no worse than the crimes of Western states, he said. Textbooks dwelling on the Great Terror and the Gulag have been censored; historians attacked as ‘anti-patriotic’ for highlighting Stalin’s crimes.

The presidential administration has promoted its own textbook, The Modern History of Russia, 1945-2006: A Teacher’s Handbook. According to one of its authors, the Kremlin propagandist Pavel Danilin, its aim is to present Russian history ‘not as a depressing sequence of misfortunes and mistakes but as something to instill pride in one’s country. This is precisely how teachers much teach history and not smear the Motherland with mud.’

Danilin is a close associate of Gleb Pavlovsky, a presidential adviser and the editor of the Russian Journal, which aims to create an intellectual base for Putin’s pseudo-democracy.

A special December issue on the ‘Politics of Memory’ was published to coincide with the raid on Memorial. It contained two articles viciously attacking the work of Memorial for playing into the hands foreign historians accused of setting out to blacken Soviet history by focusing on Stalin’s crimes.

The Whisperers has been translated into 22 foreign languages, including all the European languages of the former Soviet Union – except Russian, it now seems.

Orlando Figes is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London

I actually laughed, ‘Stas killed? Get out of here! I’ll call him right away to inform him that he’s effectively dead. No worries.’ When pushing the buttons on my phone I automatically recalled a God awful scare a couple of weeks earlier, when news agencies reported the alleged killing of Victor Shenderovich, an immensely talented and funny independent journalist. His family and friends almost had a heart-attack before Shenderovich managed to reassure them that the whole thing was nothing but a provocation. So, here is another one… Come on, Stas, pick up the bloody phone… But the long beeps went on interminably.

Markelov was shot dead around three in the afternoon on Prechistenka Street in the heart of Moscow. Prechistinka is always lively, with heavy traffic and pedestrians rushing about. The killing was witnessed by many and even recorded on one of those surveillance video-cameras, which are common in central Moscow. Markelov was walking towards the metro from his own press conference where he had spoken about the terrible case of Yuri Budanov, a Russian military officer who had brutally killed a young Chechen woman, Elza (Kheda) Kungaeva back in 2000. Markelov represented Kungaeva’s family in court and it is largely owing to his efforts that Budanov was finally given a ten-year prison term in 2003. At that time, with thousands of the dead and disappeared and absolute impunity for perpetrators in Chechnya, this seemed like a miracle. On 15 January 2009, however, Badanov was released on parole. Markelov believed the granting of parole to be unlawful and promised to take the matter all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

Walking alongside Markelov was Anastaysia (Nastya) Baburova, an intern for Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s leading independent paper, whose star correspondent and human rights champion, Anna Politkovskaya, died in a contract killing in October 2006. Markelov worked to seek justice for some of the most blatant cases of abuses in Chechnya that Politkovskaya wrote about. After Anna’s murder he continued cooperating with Novaya Gazeta. When the gun-shot resounded and Stas fell to the ground, his head bleeding, Nastya saw the hitman and ran after him. Maybe she thought she could stop him. Or, even more likely, she did not think but did it impulsively, not able to bear the very idea of his escaping justice. The killer raised his gun again and shot her in the head. Several hours later, Nastya died in the hospital.

On 20 January, at noon, around 300 people, crushed by shock and sadness, came to Prechistenka St to lay flowers at the site of the killing. Next to the heap of carnations and roses there were lit candles, hand-made posters, and portraits of Stas and Nastya. On those photos they looked so young — But then Nastya was only 25 and Stas 34. He had two children, the youngest still a baby.

For victims of human rights abuses in Chechnya, Markelov’s name was synonymous with hope for justice. Markelov fought in court against numerous perpetrators in human rights abuses in Chechnya, not only Budanov. Among his clients was the Murdalov family, whose son was tortured and forcibly disappeared by Russian police in 2001 — another case made famous by Politkovskaya. Markelov also represented Mokhmadsalakh Masaev, a Chechen who said he was held in a secret prison in Tsenteroi, the native village of President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya, for more than four months in 2006-2007 and subjected to inhuman treatment. Masaev was abducted in the Chechen capital, Grozny, on 3 August 2008, several weeks after Novaya Gazeta published an interview in which he accused Kadyrov of running illegal prisons in Chechnya.

Several critics of the authorities in Russia, particularly those who sought justice for torture, abductions and extrajudicial executions in the North Caucasus, have lost their lives in the past six months. On 13 January, Umar Israilov, a Chechen who had filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights alleging that he had been tortured by Kadyrov, was shot dead in Vienna Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of Ingushetiya.Ru website, which reported on human rights abuses during counterterrorist operations in Ingushetia, a republic in the North Caucasus which borders Chechnya, was killed in a police car on 31 August, 2008, after he was taken in for questioning by police at Magas airport in Ingushetia. But Markelov’s killing truly evokes the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. The message these killers are sending clearly is, if you try to hold abusers to account you risk your life.

Like in the old nursery rhyme about ‘ten little Indians,’ the most vocal critics of the Russian government are disappearing one after the other. And unless Russia’s international partners open their eyes to the situation and push Moscow to ensure the security of people like Markelov, who are fighting for justice in Russia, soon ‘there shall be none’.

Tanya Lokshina is a Russia Researcher for Human Rights Watch in Moscow

The other group — a minority — were certain that the state authorities had been involved in the murder, that the investigation would never be completed, and that the killers would remain anonymous and wholly unpunished. Unlike the first group, whose position remains underpinned by regular references on television to the need for ‘strong leadership’ in Russia, the second has had to be content with the kind of kitchen-sink discourse dissidents held in Soviet times, occasionally supported by radio broadcasts on Ekho Moskvy or Radio Liberty.

There are plenty of justifications for the position of the first group. Hardly had Vladimir Putin walked into his Kremlin office in 2000, than he began to revive the time-honoured tradition of Soviet propaganda, especially on TV. Today, the six national television channels that broadcast news and comment are all — in different ways — subject to state control. Channels that are nominally private — such as NTV, which belongs to Russia’s biggest company Gazprom — give even more air time to decisions taken by the state authorities than channels that are formally state-run: Channel 1 (Pervyi kanal); Channel 2 (Rossiia); and Channel 3 (TVTs). Since Soviet times, the Russian public has credulously lapped up everything shown on TV. People are not hard to convince, especially as Russian television (with the exception of cable networks) is free and untaxed.

The sceptics have different arguments. Since 1993, the deaths of about 40 journalists, killed in connection with the fulfillment of their professional duties, have remained uninvestigated. Most of the murders were committed in the years when Vladimir Putin was president. One exception is the case mounted against the murderers of Larissa Yudina, the chief editor of an opposition newspaper in the small southern Russian republic of Kalmykia. The killers received a range of prison sentences, but the court made no attempt to identify those who ordered the assassination. The murders of other journalists, along with some disappearances also connected with carrying out journalistic duties, have not been investigated, and it would be vain to hope that the crimes will ever be solved.

The number of unresolved crimes, and the behaviour of state officials – particularly the security services – begs the question whether state agencies have some kind of direct or indirect link with these cases. As ever, when another journalist is killed, the president and the prosecutor-general announce that they are taking control of the investigation and promise that they will do everything in their power to solve the crime. But the events that follow consistently suggest that the authorities have an interest in covering up not only the motives of the crime, but any tracks left by the killers.

The aftermath of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder demonstrated a very similar pattern. About 20 people were placed under arrest at various times, and most were later released. Unexpected leaks about the main suspects and their identities began to emerge from the investigation committee. The position of Novaya Gazeta — the newspaper where Anna worked — was undemonstrative. Neither the editor nor her journalistic colleagues hinted at any dissatisfaction with the way the investigation was being conducted. Emotions were kept well under control and everyone hoped for at least some kind of positive outcome.

The editors were particularly careful to avoid discussing the identity of the figure behind the killing, although observers named both Putin and the president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, among those who might have gained from Anna‘s death. The fact that the murder occurred on Putin’s birthday (7 October) seemed a strange coincidence, for example, and raised speculation that the murder might have been a ‘gift’ for the president.

Two years on the investigation has not produced any substantive results. Consequently, the transfer of the case to court has been widely interpreted as a way for the authorities to rid themselves more quickly of a recurring issue constantly raised by international organisations and western leaders. None of the defendants has any direct link with the murder and, according to the investigation, the main suspects are to be found in a European country. For that reason, the beginning of the court case was unlikely to yield more than a standard press conference.

Nevertheless, the early stages of the case have been linked to some newsworthy items. First, the case was transferred to a military court because a former FSB officer, Pavel Ryaguzov, is being investigated — though not as a direct participant in the crime. According to the investigation, he merely helped the defendants by giving them information about where Anna Politkovskaya lived. Second, the court declared that it would hear the case in the presence of a jury. There have been a number of recent cases in Russia where jurors under pressure have upheld a viewpoint required by the authorities and, flying in the face of public opinion, vindicated criminals.

The military court may have been counting on the loyalty of the jury in this case as well; but, instead, it was put in an embarrassing position from the start. On the first day, the judge announced that the jury had refused to enter the courtroom while journalists were present and that, therefore, the case would be heard behind closed doors. It was exactly what lawyers representing Anna Politkovskaya’s family had feared. The absence of glasnost (openness) in a case generating worldwide interest would deprive lawyers, and Anna’s family, of the chance to speak out on the course of the proceedings.

But, out of the blue, one of the jurors telephoned the radio station Ekho Moskvy to say that the jury was not opposed to an open case. The jurors had only requested that cameras be removed and photographers leave the room. He also said that the court secretary had demanded that the jurors sign a document demanding that the case should be closed. The jurors had refused. It may be that the authorities have prepared yet more unexpected twists and turns to this important case but what happened in the first weeks of the trial will raise questions about the entire way in which the case is subsequently scrutinised. Doubtless the authorities are highly unwilling to take responsibility for this murder, and the events surrounding the case are doing a great deal to confirm that what we are seeing is not coincidental.

Oleg Panfilov is director of the director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations in Moscow

Translated by Irena Maryniak

On 4 March, to mark the publication of its latest issue, ‘How Free is the Russian Media?’, Index on Censorship hosted a discussion in London and Moscow on the future of the Russian media under President Medvedev. The discussion featured John Kampfner, Arkady Babchenko (author of One Soldier’s War in Chechnya), Maria Eismont (New Eurasia Foundation, Moscow), Alexander Verkhovsky (Sova Centre, Moscow), Natalia Rostova (Novaya Gazeta), Oleg Panfilov (Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations), Maria Yulikova (Carnegie Centre) and Sergei Bachinin (Vyatsky Nablyudatel’) and Anna Sevortian (Centre for Development of Democracy).

The event was supported by the Open Society Foundation and the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.

On 12 December, Vladimir Putin had an official meeting with the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, and with the chairmen of several regional election commissions. The president offered his congratulations with regard to the Constitution Day and thanked them for the ‘highly professional work’ done during the campaign season of the State Duma elections.

The Central Election Commission is an officially independent organisation, so this meeting, and many others like it, could be viewed with some surprise. However, the reality is that Russians are not surprised or worried about this in the slightest. Political aggression from President Putin’s supporters has long been the norm, and it does not seem to upset anyone. On the contrary, such behaviour is widely welcomed, as many regard Putin’s actions to be an expression of masculine power, supreme courage and strong arm tactics.

A few days before the above-mentioned meeting, Vladimir Churov officially declared that the elections were over, the results being fair and thus peremptory, even though The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly and other European organisations stated that the elections were ‘not fair’. However, their worries do not feature prominently on the President’s list of concerns. Eager to preserve his vast political influence, he is now putting all his energies into the preparations for the next presidential elections.

It follows that none of the cases of election law violation will ever be investigated. Of course this fact will only please those who have grown sick of watching lengthy coverage reports with only one protagonist, President Putin. Even though the number of such reports has marginally diminished 10 days after the elections, the gap has been filled by an equal amount of reports regarding Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s chosen successor.

It was televised news that caused one of the first conflicts regarding election law violation. According to statutory law, all the political contestants (the majority voting system has been dropped in Russia) are entitled to free airtime for coverage of their platforms and political agenda via promotional clips. They are also entitled to take part in moderated television debates. The United Russia Party that supports President Putin refused to participate in any such debates.

The law states that ‘free broadcasting time for promotional clips should be made available by relevant television or radio channels to all political contestants in equal measure during the prime-time news programmes’. However, the free political promotional clips were shown at either seven in the morning or after eleven at night.

Objective and balanced information about the contestants and their platforms could have been made available through everyday news coverage, shown every 2-3 hours on all five national channels. Instead, the audiences were fed the propaganda of one single party.

At this point, another speciality of Russian election law should be explained. The party puts forward their lead candidates at the top of the proposed party lists. Yet those candidates have the lawful right to drop their deputy seat after the elections. In this way regional party lists were headed by the governors who eventually dropped their deputy seats in the Duma, whereas United Russia’s chosen top candidate was Vladimir Putin, who was not even an official member of the party.

This is one of the main reasons we can regard United Russia as enjoying administrative privileges during the pre-election campaign season. In addition, we must point out that all five national TV companies are controlled by the government. The state exerts direct influence on the First Channel, Rossiya Channel and TV Centre. All three are state-managed or at least consulted by government officials. Two other channels, NTV and Ren-TV, are officially independent channels. However, NTV belongs to state fuel company Gazprom and Ren-TV is owned by a financial company with close connections to the Kremlin.

Russia has no public television and the legislation for its creation has been gathering dust in the Duma for about ten years. Besides, Russians do not pay television license fees, hence they do not have any influence over the management of the TV companies. The government does though, and so does the presidential administration. Private television companies are initially pressured into obedience by negotiation. When this fails, the uniformed services get involved and the company may end up completely ruined, as happened to the only independent national channel NTV in 2002. This company was taken over by Gazprom.

Another speciality of the mass-media environment in Russia is its relationship with the audiences, who have trusted everything that is shown or said on television since the Soviet era. Seven generations of Soviets have grown so used to propaganda and its ‘objective nature’ that Putin did not hesitate to use this to his advantage. During his first term as president in 2000, Putin’s initial goal was to gain total control over television and radio channels. He then proceeded to create a massive media-holding, which is currently comprised of 89 regional TV companies and a few channels in Moscow.

Control over television suggests complete power over the information provided to the audiences, to the point where the state could actually make sure that the public would remain oblivious to certain unfavourable news, such as the events in Chechnya, governmental corruption or the true facts surrounding Russia’s economic development.

More so, the independent newspaper market is extremely weak, as the most popular publications are also state-controlled. Besides, the standard of life in Russian provinces is extremely low. So when faced with a choice between a decent newspaper and a loaf of bread, a provincial dweller will naturally choose the latter.

As far back as a year and a half ago, the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) began monitoring the content of the prime-time news programmes of the five national channels. Usually such investigations are conducted during the pre-election campaign season in order to establish the fairness of the elections. Our aim, however, was to evaluate the mass-media’s overall performance, with the hope that come the pre-election time, the government might consider imposing changes for the best.

We were astonished by the amount of propaganda shown on television. Around 91-93 per cent of the total news coverage (news programmes being 25-30 minutes long), save the news on culture, sports and weather, was dedicated to the activities of Vladimir Putin (30-35 per cent); the government (35-40 per cent), and United Russia (20-22 per cent).

The CJES proceeded with the monitoring project up until October 2007, the month before the pre-election campaign. By then the amount of propaganda had increased even more (by 1-1.5 per cent on average). We witnessed the blatant violation of statutory law on elections, which requires a fair amount of media coverage for all party candidates. However, the Central Election Commission ignored our investigation, and even proclaimed it to be non-objective.

The worst violation of election law was the totally unrestricted coverage of the activities of President Putin. The law forbids governmental officials, who run for a seat in the Duma, from enjoying special privileges. More so, the officials are required to go on leave, yet the Central Election Commission decided this provision did not apply to President Putin.

History repeats itself. The next presidential elections will be held on 2 March. However, Russian television is already breaking records with regard to the amount of coverage dedicated to Putin’s successor, Medvedev. The pre-election campaign has not even started, the list of candidates has not yet been established, but TV and newspaper coverage is already presenting Medvedev as the incumbent president.

More and more Russia is starting to resemble the Soviet Union, and the Russian mass-media is being overrun by Soviet-style propaganda.

Translated by Olia Hercules