I think that today it is appropriate to remind everyone that I am the person whom Alisher Usmanov and the Russian Federation (in whose name the ruling was issued) forbade from saying that there is censorship at the Kommersant publishing house, and that it is enforced by the oligarch Usmanov.
Why did this happen?
Yes, Usmanov is vile. Yes, it was *telefonnoye pravo* ("telephone justice," meaning informal pressure from above on the courts).
But above all, it happened because at that moment both former and current Kommersant journalists turned out to be pathetic, miserable cowards.
Not one of them came to court to testify to something everyone already knew. Not one of them even said or wrote anything.
What is striking is that even Usmanov’s representatives did not expect such cowardice from the journalists, so just in case they dragged in that loathsome Andrei Kolesnikov. He stood in the hallway, and if there had been any journalists on my side, they would have brought him in as a witness. As if to say: well, here is this famous journalist saying there is no censorship.
But Andrei Kolesnikov turned out not to be needed. So he just stood there in the hallway.
Of course, I do not want to roll out the whole “when they came for them, I stayed silent, and then blah blah” line here. And I am not gloating either. Despite everything, I genuinely admire the journalists from Kommersant’s politics desk, who today all resigned in protest against censorship and the dismissal of their colleagues.
And yet that is exactly what happened:
- they were afraid and kept silent when some scarecrow from the Zvezda TV channel was appointed as their editor-in-chief;
- they were afraid and kept silent when Usmanov was suing me. I was defending them, and they giggled: oh, no need for that, everything is fine with us;
they were afraid and kept silent during the Rotonda affair
Just do not say, “we are hired workers, we have families.” Everyone has families. And I have yet to see journalists starving to death, living on the street, or having a gun held to their temple. These are not matters of life and death. This is specifically a question of whether to have dignity or to live like a cowardly nonentity, hiding behind performative cynicism.
We, for example, helped a medical workers’ union that organized a strike of doctors and nurses in the Novgorod backwoods. A hospital orderly nearing retirement age and earning 11,000 rubles a month (about 110 euros / 120 U.S. dollars at the time) is probably more afraid than a 30-year-old Moscow journalist. And yet they were afraid, but they still came out to protest and got results.
All this is to say that it is very important: - to support those who left. If they need legal assistance, the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) will provide it.
- not to pity those who did not leave. They are cowards. You could have sympathized with such people in 2012 or 2015, but not now.
- to despise those who come to work at Kommersant’s politics desk in place of those who were forced out. They are strikebreakers, the worst kind of people. Do not dare shake their hand, even if you studied journalism with them or drank beer in the same newsroom.
Where there is solidarity and resolve, any Usmanov or Putin will back down.
If there is no solidarity, and moral relativism takes the place of resolve, then we will go on writing “hang in there” to each other. In private.