Debate: “Where Are the Honest Journalists?” — Transcript

Political Debates — III April 18 BILINGUA Club Viktor Shenderovich VS Oleg Kashin Topic: “Where Are the Honest Journalists?” Round I Alexei Navalny, moderator. For technical reasons, the first round was not recorded in full. V. Sh.: …But after the story of Marina Litvinovich being beaten up… it seems to me this is some kind of turning point in the conversation, in the conversation about the evolution both of Marina Litvinovich and of our opponents. A. N.: All right! Thank you. Oleg! About moral transformation. Tell the people who don’t believe in coincidences: when you worked at Kommersant, you were friends with all the young opposition politicians, you wrote flattering reports about them, you promoted them, you… O. K.: I didn’t write flattering ones. A. N.: At the very least, you were inseparable friends with them. The moment you left Kommersant, you suddenly developed some amazing ties with Fet. You’ve now become this kind of internet magnate, paying fees to people who write for your various online publications… And then—bang! You became a conservative, an ultra-conservative journalist who hates the Orange Revolution and just generally… Maybe we misunderstood you, maybe you didn’t really change your views that much, but there was a shift! That’s a moral transformation too. O. K.: Lesh! We’ve known each other for a year and a half. Let’s go point by point: what was my attitude toward Lukashenko from the start, for example? A. N.: Well… no, you were always something of a statist, really… of course you weren’t a liberal, but still… There’s Ilya Yashin standing there. Ilya! Wave to us. Come on, let me invite Ilya Yashin up here. O. K.: As for Ilya Yashin, I have nothing to say; I was badly mistaken about him. The man turned out to be, bluntly, a piece of shit. I was probably more naive at the beginning of our acquaintance, but in that sense, of course… Well, I was wrong… Sorry. A. N.: But now you praise the Nashi movement.. O. K.: Wait, wait, wait… Stop. Where exactly do I praise the Nashi movement? Show me. A. N.: Come on… You sent me a million text messages saying, “Nashi totally rules,” and so on… O. K.: Nashi rules! Nashi obviously rules. A. N.: The people in the Nashi movement. O. K.: Yes, the people in the Nashi movement. But again, I refer the esteemed audience to the next issue of the newspaper Reaktsiya, where I’m writing the most objective report in the world on the Nashi congress, because it consists of two parts. The first part is completely anti-Nashi, the second is completely pro-Nashi. So I’m entirely objective about Nashi when it sets itself up—and right now it is setting itself up. Besides, we remember how Nashi went after Ilya Barabanov, who is sitting here, and who was the supposedly “pro-Putin” journalist who defended Barabanov? A. N.: So over the last year and a half absolutely no changes at all have taken place in your… O. K.: Once again! My views remain the same: just as I loved Russia, yes, so I still love Russia. Just as I feel sympathy for figures from its history, broadly speaking… so if I say “Glory to Russia” now, then I… Shouts from the audience: Glory to Russia! Glory to Russia! O. K.: Thank you. A. N.: Let’s see who can shout “Glory to Russia!” louder, and let’s applaud that person. O. K.: Absolutely. A. N.: All right… One last question. Viktor! So… V. Sh.: I’d like to clarify something. Wait. A. N.: Yes. V. Sh.: I’d like to clarify that love for Russia is not a view, it’s a feeling, if it exists. Love cannot be a viewpoint. O. K.: But, Viktor! I’ll interrupt you. You see… V. Sh.: Don’t interrupt me! O. K.: Oh, but let me interrupt. V. Sh.: Let’s not have you interrupting me. O. K.: And yet I will. V. Sh.: Let’s not have you interrupting me! One more piece of advice from an older comrade to a still-fellow colleague. So, if… O. K.: Not a colleague, not a colleague. V. Sh.: If you read a little more… not just me—I’m not insisting you read me—but your older comrades, colleagues, say, Yuri Rost… someone of that caliber… O. K.: Tell me… V. Sh.: …then perhaps in time you’ll learn to express your feelings in some subtler way than with the phrase “piece of shit.” O. K.: Piece of crap. V. Sh.: Yes. A. N.: All right… I have a question. Viktor! A question for you! Some of the people who were supposed to come to that rally on Sunday… they seem to be outcast journalists, they’re against censorship, but they’re in the middle of negotiations… So the question is: what’s the point of us defending freedom of the press at all, shouting ourselves hoarse about censorship and so on, when all these opposition journalists defend press freedom only up to the moment when negotiations start going their way? V. Sh.: Alyosha… A. N.: The moment Konstantin Lvovich calls, everyone just forgets about freedom of the press… V. Sh.: Let me answer you in two ways. A. N.: Yes. V. Sh.: First: don’t generalize and say “everyone.” A. N.: No, I’m saying not everyone. V. Sh.: No, you said “everyone.” A. N.: Fine. V. Sh.: Let’s be more precise. Second, I’ll answer with my favorite quote from Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo Galilei. When the student says to Galileo after his recantation, “Unhappy is the land that has no hero,” Galileo replies: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” If some people—and there are many of them—people who embodied for us, for the public, people who symbolized freedom of speech, democracy, certain values, behaved in some way… well, not very well… let’s put it mildly, that is a problem for those people and for their own image, their own reputation, which changes, and sometimes changes very seriously—to the exact opposite. I just want to understand this rather pathetic logic. I wrote about it back in 2001, so I already have the words ready. It was in a letter to Koch: “Tell me, if Nekrasov gambled away peasants in card games, does that mean we shouldn’t fight serfdom? Tell me, if someone who called himself a democrat turned out to be a scoundrel or a self-interested person, does that mean we should turn into Turkmenistan? Or does it mean that, as Churchill said, we should ‘be disappointed in democrats, but not in democracy,’ and move on, looking for new points of support?” If we do not learn to separate these things, then very soon, through this cheap demagoguery, this swapping of concepts, this replacing of democracy with an equals sign and then with a piece of, well, that very thing… If because of that we reject democracy, if we allow ourselves to be tricked by this terminology, we will very soon end up much farther gone than today’s Belarus. I assure you of that. A. N.: All right. Thank you. Last question. Oleg! You said you hadn’t encountered any manifestations of censorship at all, etc. You worked at Izvestia—are you just laughing at us, or what? O. K.: Why? A. N.: Tell me, wasn’t Shakirov fired over that Beslan issue? O. K.: No, of course not. Shakirov… There are people here who work at Izvestia… I worked there for two months and never encountered the problem of censorship at all. More than that: if we’re talking about that case with Shenderovich, which… V. Sh.: That wasn’t a case of censorship, it was a case of lying, excuse me, that’s a different case. O. K.: So we should say: a case of so-called lying, right? What does censorship or non-censorship even mean? There was a rally among whose organizers Shenderovich was listed, as Sergei Parkhomenko said on Echo of Moscow radio. I wrote a piece about that rally in which I didn’t mention Shenderovich, because Shenderovich simply wasn’t there. My section editor asked me, “Where’s Shenderovich?” I called—you know who. That person is here, in Yabloko. The person told me: “Well, I suppose Shenderovich was too embarrassed to share a platform with Masha Gaidar.” So I wrote that, citing a source in the Yabloko party. Shenderovich calls that lying. In other words, in Shenderovich’s opinion, lying is anything that diverges from his view of the world. I want to disappoint Viktor Shenderovich, because his view of the world… and democracy, and freedom of speech, are rather different things. V. Sh.: May I jump in… O. K.: Don’t interrupt me, Viktor Shenderovich! Interrupting is not allowed. As a younger comrade to an older one, I can tell you what freedom of speech is, and I’ll give a simple example. Recently, Dmitry Olshansky, well known to everyone here, was fired from the online publication GlobalRus. Fired on the slippery charge of violating corporate ethics. Now that I am, in a certain sense, a boss at Russky Zhurnal, the first thing I did was say to Olshansky: “Mitya! Write against me.” That, to me, really is freedom of speech, because if a person slips up somewhere, that’s no reason to drive him out of journalism. What’s more, there’s a man in this hall named Yegor Kholmogorov—a commentator for the radio station Mayak. A man who presents himself as a Russian nationalist and in principle speaks from that position on a state radio station. I want to recall that in those years which, again, Shenderovich calls the heyday of freedom of speech, nobody, nobody at all, not a single person who considered himself a Russian nationalist, could have a platform either on Mayak radio or even in a more or less respectable newspaper, except perhaps Zavtra. Now those people, alongside those considered liberals, have that opportunity. And if we’re talking about when there was more freedom of speech—then or now—I say: now, because now there is Yegor Kholmogorov on Mayak, and Shenderovich on Echo of Moscow, and me in the publications where I work, and, say, Pyotr Tolstoy on Channel One, and Pozner on Channel One, and so on. There is more freedom of speech now. Another matter is that if some people—loud people, scandalous people—have been left overboard, then that’s their problem, right? Nothing personal.. A. N.: All right. Thank you. On that “cheerful” note, let’s thank them and move on to the second round, where our esteemed opponents will ask each other questions. Oleg started last time. Viktor! Please, your question for Oleg. Round II V. Sh.: I have no questions for Oleg; I have several answers about Oleg, but… A. N.: Let’s hear the answers. V. Sh.: But I don’t want to call them that… I have no questions. I read a few things before the broadcast, before this meeting, and I learned a few things about my interlocutor today… O. K.: Please, tell us. A. N.: You know, you’ve intrigued us—tell us. V. Sh.: You know, Oleg, seriously speaking: too much honor. The fact is that two good journalists—Sergei Parkhomenko and Semyon Novoprudsky—have already tried to explain a few things to you. O. K.: You’re confusing Novoprudsky with Panyushkin. V. Sh.: Yes. O. K.: They all look the same to you, right? V. Sh.: No. They do not all look the same. I really did confuse them… No. One second! I read Novoprudsky’s remark. So that makes three. They tried to explain a few things to you. O. K.: Novoprudsky never wrote anything about me. Only I write about myself. A. N.: Colleagues! I’m afraid most of the audience doesn’t understand what this is about… V. Sh.: I can explain. Most of the audience understands perfectly well—it’s about the story with the Soldiers’ Mothers, about the article devoted to Andrei Sychyov, and, shall we say, another case—put mildly—of Oleg’s monstrous unprofessionalism, when once again he failed to get through by phone. Last time he failed to get through to me and somebody told him something; this time he failed to get through to the soldier’s mother in Chelyabinsk, whom everyone else managed to reach and who was actively seeking contact with journalists, and he slandered her. That story is fairly well known. O. K.: Tell it in more detail. I don’t know this story. Where exactly did I slander her? Please. V. Sh.: I didn’t want to. I repeat: too much honor. Sergei Parkhomenko… Noise in the hall V. Sh.: …No, it’s a detailed story, and I wouldn’t like to retell it in my own words; I’m a journalist… O. K.: You’re lying! A. N.: All right, fine. Oleg! You’ve… V. Sh.: You see, here’s the thing, I’ll tell you one thing now… honestly, I’ll tell the truth, because it’s easier for me that way. I really did hesitate about whether to come here, I really did, and I was warned that it would descend into boorishness very quickly. Voice from the audience: I was warned! V. Sh.: Warned, warned. Of course. Nevertheless, I came, because it seemed important to me—and the topic had been announced as quite serious—to talk about this serious subject. I was invited here to talk about censorship, not to discuss Oleg Kashin’s personal case, which seems to me rather uninteresting. If we are ready for a substantive discussion… O. K.: Please explain that to me. A. N.: Are you ready? Tell us, are we ready for a substantive discussion? V. Sh.: …then let’s talk about that. A. N.: Let’s. Are you ready to ask Oleg Kashin questions about censorship? V. Sh.: I have no questions for Kashin about censorship! A. N.: Let’s take not cases of censorship, but say whether he is now an agent of that bloody chekist machine that has imposed terrible, nightmarish censorship everywhere. Oleg! Do you have questions for Viktor Shenderovich? O. K.: Well, if he’s not asking me, I won’t ask him either. Too much honor as well. How is he better than me? For God’s sake… V. Sh.: I can tell you later… O. K.: Well, tell us… V. Sh.: Look, look, here’s the thing: let’s talk about censorship, not about me and Kashin, but about censorship. This is a very serious matter: let’s talk about freedom of speech as part of a certain mechanism. There is a four-cylinder mechanism, and one cylinder is called “freedom of speech”; attached to it in this four-cylinder mechanism are an independent judiciary, an honest parliament, freedom to go out into the street, freedom of assembly. When these mechanisms function for real—not in a managed way, as in “managed democracy,” but really function—then after some time this mechanism does not eliminate evil in society, does not eliminate vice in human beings, but it minimizes them. Examples of this are scattered in abundance to our west, sometimes geographically to the east, but more often to the west. Examples are scattered around of how losses are minimized, of how, where there is real freedom of speech, the gravest and most dramatic social problems are resolved in a civilized way. A simple example: we can take ethnic unrest in France, or the economic crisis in Germany. Society faces a real problem and cannot cope. Yes, there was mistaken economic policy—what happens in Germany? Germany becomes the subject of public discussion, of sociological measurement, absolutely independent, where percentages are not ordered up but discovered… From the audience: Where are the questions? V. Sh.: There are no questions. We’re talking… So, there are broad discussions, an opposition appears that concentrates within itself another view of how to solve the problem, then comes an election campaign where everything is timed to the minute, with a stopwatch, all the courts, all the campaign headquarters (and God forbid the opposition get one second less than the ruling party!), then elections take place without Vishnyakov, and Angela Merkel wins. Schröder could have won again! But society voted for the opposition, the course changed, in an evolutionary way. And they began doing things differently. Maybe they are mistaken. Maybe. Then they’ll be voted out later, and they’ll keep adjusting course. This system of gentle pressure by society on the authorities through the press, then through public life, then through elections, then through a change of government—this is what allows losses to be minimized. What happens in the other case? In the other case you have Ceaușescu, the Genius of the Carpathians. He is the Genius of the Carpathians, the Genius of the Carpathians, the Genius of the Carpathians. Then one day he is shot without trial along with his wife, because problems accumulate that are not solved—not even because he is a villain, but because he has no idea they exist. So freedom of speech, the absence of censorship, is the starting mechanism for launching that very feedback loop. Therefore, when you have the dreadful Dorenko, the very ambiguous Kiselyov, and God knows what other Svanidze, but they are on three different channels and they compete with one another, then you have a choice. You, we, as a people may make mistakes a thousand times, but we can also correct ourselves. The moment some piece of filth appears, someone who knows how things should be, the moment there is only one point of view—no matter what it is—that is a direct road to degradation. This is a simple thing that must be understood. If a person does not understand this, he pays for it with his fate. When we were driven out of NTV, the favorite song was: “a dispute between business entities,” “they’re fighting over Gusinsky’s money.” Partly, that really was true. It really… A. N.: Time limit, time limit… V. Sh.: Time limit. Fine, I’ll cover that in the next part of the lecture. A. N.: Oleg! You answer too, and then we’ll move on to the third round. O. K.: Let me also give a short monologue on a free topic. A. N.: Fine, a short one. O. K.: The problem with today’s older liberals—or not a problem, rather their competitive advantage, not an entirely fair one, but still an advantage—is that the audience they most often appeal to is this very young youth, the kind who were in elementary school in the 1990s. Back then, many people don’t remember much, and when they say there was censorship in the 1990s and all that, that’s exactly the kind of legend designed for… Not censorship, pardon me, competition! Sorry! A Freudian slip, yes. There was competition, and everyone hears that and thinks… what, a struggle for competition!? Cool! Now there isn’t any. Now, everyone knows, competition exists in the battle of TV series. On Channel One they show The Little Golden Calf, on Channel Two The First Circle, and people sit there with remotes while all kinds of sociologists measure things… 1996: when NTV’s general director, Igor Malashenko, was effectively running the information side of President Yeltsin’s campaign headquarters, commanding all the channels, not just NTV. We remember the program Puppets, which for some reason aired before the election, on Friday, June 14, 1996, on Channel One; on NTV, Puppets aired paired with Field of Miracles. V. Sh.: I wrote it. O. K.: Right, and Viktor Shenderovich wrote it, where the Zyuganov puppet looked like a complete idiot, and the Yeltsin puppet looked like a man of the people destined for victory… And this is what they’re now trying to present to us as democracy, as competition. It was the most nightmarish totalitarianism Russia had seen since the death of Joseph Stalin. Next, when people say: yes, it was a dispute between business entities, yes, it was Gusinsky’s money, but we were for freedom. Excuse me, what comes first is that it was Gusinsky’s money, that it was a dispute over Gusinsky’s money. Again, there’s no need to… V. Sh.: For whom does that come first? O. K.: It comes first in an absolute reckoning, because… V. Sh.: You possess an absolute reckoning? O. K.: It’s not me who possesses it, history does… V. Sh.: And you possess history? O. K.: Yes, history… V. Sh.: You’ve already fucked us over enough with this history of yours. Applause O. K.: Thank you for the applause. History threw that unique journalistic collective out of the building on Akademika Korolyova Street, and one can only hope that this unique journalistic collective never returns there, because what they were doing… V. Sh.: At Ostankino? O. K.: In this case, at Ostankino. Please don’t interrupt. What they were doing… once again: the Svyazinvest affair, trashing Zyuganov, trashing, I don’t know, well… when they were trashing Potanin both on Itogi and on Dorenko’s program, all in harmony, in chorus—that’s what is now called competition. When Kiselyov and Dorenko were singing about the threat to democracy, the threat to the free market posed by that evil Potanin, who, I don’t know, had taken part in buying Svyazinvest. Guys! That’s not competition, that’s not freedom! It was such vulgar trash that thank God it’s gone. A. N.: Thank you. I can see from the jury members’ faces that they’ve accumulated questions for our participants, so let’s move on to the third round… There’s the microphone, your questions? Round III Jury member: I have a question for Viktor Shenderovich. At the very beginning of the debate, you said in passing that the thousands of journalists now working on television don’t track ratings, they don’t care, they aren’t competitive, and so on. So my question is: at the Higher School of Economics, at the business journalism faculty, this year there are six applicants per place! Why are they going there if things are so bad? V. Sh.: Those are not directly related things at all; I’m no expert in economics… People go into economics because they can realize themselves there. Jury member: Into business journalism. V. Sh.: Into business journalism? Evidently they’re looking for a way to realize themselves, and they even know how, only I suspect that for the most part… Jury member: So it’s a mass of future unemployed people? V. Sh.: No, no, what are you talking about? They won’t be unemployed. They’ll be people who work in PR; that’s a different profession. And people often confuse the two. PR is politically…. Jury member: And at Vedomosti, are all the staff doing PR too? V. Sh.: What are we doing here? Are you asking a question? Or… Jury member: I’m just clarifying as we go, to understand. V. Sh.: Formulate the question, and I’ll formulate the answer. Jury member: I did formulate it. V. Sh.: So: why do people go into business journalism? Jury member: More generally, why do people go into journalism at all? V. Sh.: They’re very different, and they go into journalism for very different reasons. Many go sincerely, because they feel it’s their calling, they see something and want to share it. A journalist is like a nerve. I’m saying something banal, but it’s like a nerve. He sees something, he has to convey it; he sees something, he has to tell it. That’s one type of person. There’s another type who realized that journalism is a fairly lucrative profession: the journalist as bureaucrat, the journalist as PR service. And it’s rampant: five out of six… From my own experience, the people working in journalism today, at least those who write, there are many of them. These are people who have nothing to do with journalism proper… Jury member: I suggest we count off here: first through sixth. V. Sh.: …as service to society, excuse the lofty style, as service… You’re taking part in a debate—haven’t you noticed that you’re asking a question… Jury member: There is no debate, really, and I listen to Echo of Moscow along with 25 million of your other listeners, so I’m simply interested in talking to you. V. Sh.: Wonderful. Echo of Moscow, in my view, is an example of an information service, an example of journalism. At least no one has yet disproved what they say, the facts they present. Unlike the fully fictional serials masquerading as news journalism on the federal channels. A. N.: All right, thank you. Alexei! There’s a question for Kashin. Alexei: My question is this: you probably remember the story connected with NTV or with the “dispute between business entities” pretty well… O. K.: Shenderovich remembers it better. Alexei: Even so, you know the story well—don’t you remember where the journalists from NTV went? O. K.: Yes, they went… thanks for the setup! Yes, naturally, they went to… V. Sh.: Been rehearsing that long? O. K.: More than a year! A. N.: They were whispering at the beginning, whispering… O. K.: Probably not about that. They really did go to TV-6, where people worked whom we all remember: Mikhail Ponomaryov, Anna Pavlova… and they simply shamelessly threw those people out… Alexei: I’m just interested in where those people… O. K.: Well, they got lost… Alexei: Ponomaryov has now finally become head of TV Center, replacing Poptsov… O. K.: A different Ponomaryov, a different one; that Ponomaryov disappeared off somewhere, nobody knows where… Alexei: Why aren’t they at the rally? A. N.: The answer is clear. Alexei: Right… A. N.: Ksenia! Ask something. V. Sh.: Does anyone need clarification on Ponomaryov? A. N.: Yes, tell us, tell us. V. Sh.: You see, here’s the thing… When Real and Chelsea are shut down and Ronaldinho comes to play for Shinnik, he will push some striker out of Shinnik’s starting lineup. I guarantee it. Absolutely. When, by the will of fate (and this was not Berezovsky’s idea and not Kiselyov’s), Osokin’s team comes into the news broadcasting of TV-6, whose rating under Mikhail Ponomaryov was 0.8, and in the first week delivers a tenfold increase in ratings, then of course it turns out that Osokin’s team does the news, not Ponomaryov’s team, because the former works better. A. N.: Understood. O. K.: One thing former NTV people will never have a problem with is very high self-esteem. V. Sh.: That’s a ratings assessment—0.8%. O. K.: And when people say, “I’m so blunt…” a poet comes out and says, “I am a poet.” And so on. V. Sh.: One second! In high jump, you can measure it. A person jumped to a certain height; you can seethe with malice afterward, but he jumped that height. Osokin spent a decade delivering ratings for news broadcasting! A. N.: Ksenia Veretennikova! Your question! K. V.: I have a question for Shenderovich. You’ve talked a lot here about morality, about human vices, and in that connection my question is: I recently read your report from Yakovlev’s funeral in St. Petersburg, where in your characteristic… V. Sh.: Don’t scare me! Which… K. V.: Alexander Yakovlev! V. Sh.: Are you a journalist? Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev was buried in Moscow, and the former governor, thank God, is alive. K. V.: Fine, I have a question for you about morality. There, of course, brilliantly, no question, you mocked the way people stumbled over their words at the coffin, stammered, you watched them… Don’t you think that’s immoral? V. Sh.: At Yakovlev’s funeral? Can you bring me my text? K. V.: …I can. A. N.: You didn’t write any texts connected with Yakovlev’s funeral? V. Sh.: You’ve confused not only the Yakovlevs, but the Shenderoviches too. K. V.: Well, all right, then I’ll send it to you… A. N.: Ksenia! Do you have a question for Kashin? K. V.: Kashin! Please tell us what happened between you and Yashin. V. Sh.: My dear! Why are we here!? Just to suffocate in here? Or do we have other tasks? O. K.: The question wasn’t for you, all right? And I’ll answer: Yashin and I had a falling-out. V. Sh.: I propose an act of censorship in the name of freedom of speech. K. V.: Or perhaps you won’t play the censor here? V. Sh.: A brief remark about the role of censor. After that very rally for freedom of speech, two print publications are interviewing me by my truck, simple ones. Nearby stands a woman in a headscarf and starts saying in this steady, trained, high-pitched voice: “Shenderovich is the Antichrist! Don’t ask him anything. He is the Antichrist!” She’s literally acting as a jammer, physically. She stands there and talks loudly right here. When, in the fifth minute of this jamming, I turn to her and say: “I don’t mind, I am the Antichrist, but could you take that text five meters to the side… I’m giving an interview here, these two women are asking me questions for some reason…” She shouted: “Aha! A rally against censorship, and you’re silencing me!” That is a marvelous, still very much alive contemporary view of censorship. So when someone is jamming you and you ask them to step aside, that is supposedly censorship. All right, carry on. A. N.: Oleg! Briefly tell us what happened with Yashin. O. K.: Yes, I already said: we had a falling-out. That’s all. A. N.: All right, thank you. Alexei Korolkov! Please. A. K.: First a question for Viktor Shenderovich. We’ve heard a lot that independent journalism is a consequence of circumstances, that there is a coincidence of interests among different social groups, there is censorship—so if we imagine a situation where, under some kind of censorship, an opposition media outlet is in charge, and Olshansky and Kashin come to you and ask whether you would take them on, because you are democrats, you are for freedom of speech. Presumably you would say yes. In what case would you work with them? V. Sh.: I wouldn’t work with them, because I’m not satisfied with Kashin’s level as a journalist, but if I were not only an editor-in-chief but also president, I would not send the tax police after the magazine Kashin went to work for. Excuse me, when our side won and Yeltsin, in his joy, decided to shut down the newspapers Den and Pravda, your humble servant signed letters demanding that journalists be allowed to publish that monstrous pogromist newspaper! What you are talking about, and what that woman was talking about, is not censorship. Censorship is when there is one source of power; when there are many, people split according to interests. Voice from the audience: But now there are many, you are employed, you have a platform. V. Sh.: I have a platform, but that’s already scraping the bottom. Next, as Liza Listova said, we’ll be telling the news into a gramophone. That’s the next step. You see, the people in power are not idiots (though of course there are clinical cases); they understand that destroying Echo of Moscow today would cause quite a large and noisy scandal, while Echo of Moscow poses no electoral danger to the authorities. With NTV, which was watched by 80 million people, it was clear that as long as it existed, it would be impossible to come to power and do politics—it would get in the way, so NTV had to be destroyed. Echo of Moscow—well, one or two million listeners—a cut-off slice, they tolerate that. A. N.: Thank you. Oleg! As I understand it, you’ve already answered this question—would you take Olshansky? O. K.: I’d take Shenderovich too…. Voice from the audience: I have a different question for Oleg. We’ve heard a lot from you now that the situation has changed compared with the Yeltsin years, and I agree with that. Does that mean it has changed unambiguously for the better? O. K.: No, it needs changing. I’m saying again that the situation with the news services on the state channels is, of course, monstrous. When a large group of journalists, including me and Channel One correspondent Alexander Anichkin, went to the Nashi camp at Seliger, Mr. Anichkin was running up to Yakemenko all agitated and saying: “Vasily! Tell me, you are going to fight the defeatists, aren’t you? You are, right?” And then later he wrote an article on the website saying he had gone to Seliger and they were zombies, scoundrels, it smelled of money there. A situation where people (above all on the state channels) defend a position they themselves share seems monstrous to me, of course. That has to be fought. How? Right now Ernst and Dobrodeev are in a situation where they are accountable to no one. Right? Two major oligarchs. To remove Ernst… I can’t imagine how to do it… Probably by analogy with Beria’s arrest, that is, to arrest him you’d have to bring tanks into the city. It’s the same now. How do you remove Ernst without tanks? But I think he’ll leave after the gentlemen from NTV, because he’s from the same crowd and, as far as I can tell, his relations with Kiselyov and the others haven’t soured. A. N.: Ilya Kormiltsev! Your question! I. K.: I have a series of questions for Kashin. Question one: Suppose journalist Oleg Kashin suddenly learns from completely reliable, competent sources some terrible things that overturn his entire worldview, everything he has zealously served, his ideas. Will journalist Kashin write about it, or will he prefer to conceal those facts so that his convictions remain what they were before, so that nothing threatens the integrity of his discourse? O. K.: Honestly, I don’t know. Is Alexei Baikov in the hall? No. Too bad. It so happened that he and I met when the news about Sychyov appeared on the agency wires. He came to see me at Expert. I said: have you heard the biggest news? In Chelyabinsk, a soldier had his legs amputated, and Minister Ivanov said it was nothing serious. And my voice was literally shaking, tears were coming to my eyes, because, well… for fuck’s sake! The guy had his legs cut off! Ivanov said it was nothing serious. Then I went to Chelyabinsk, saw the whole picture, and I wrote it. I swear that if, say, tomorrow I learn that the beating of NBP members on Avtozavodskaya was organized by the Nashi movement, I will write about it, I promise. Or if I learn that Surkov eats babies, I’ll write that too. I. K.: After that, despite the absence of censorship, as you say—we don’t have any—and to your great surprise, you are fired from the place where you wrote it (any place where you work). They tell you: “We don’t need that point of view. You disclosed a state secret. Goodbye.” And at that very moment a demonstration is organized on Pushkin Square, involving the Kiselyovs, Parkhomenskos, and others you dislike, against censorship. Will you go there? O. K.: No. It is my deep conviction that if a journalist is a professional, he won’t be lost, he’ll keep working. If I’m kicked out of Expert over some article, what will I do? I’ll take it to Russky Zhurnal; if they kick me out of there, I’ll take it to Reaktsiya or post it on LiveJournal. And as for making a living, I’d find a way; I have an engineering degree. I. K.: The truth you learned is so monstrous, and you ask to have it published, but they fire you from everywhere. A. N.: Maybe Surkov really does eat babies after all? I. K.: Possibly, but that’s not the point… V. Sh.: But if babies eat Surkov, he’ll definitely write about it! I. K.: And suddenly, when you are left completely without work, despite your professionalism, which runs so counter to the interests of every publication, Venediktov calls you and says: “Oleg! Your zeal in the struggle for truth has made such a strong impression on us that we invite you to Echo of Moscow.” Will you go to him, or will you go work as a loader, a waiter at Bilingua Club, and so on? O. K.: You chose a bad example with Venediktov, because he is on much better terms with Surkov than I am, and I can tell you that Venediktov would never publish anything that goes beyond the reservation allotted to Echo. I. K.: The question is whether you would go work there or not. O. K.: No, because Venediktov will never call me. I. K.: Would you go work as a waiter at Bilingua? O. K.: Not here, but I’d go to sea, become a sailor. A. N.: Konstantin Krylov! K. K.: I have two simple questions. First for Kashin. Do you believe censorship can be useful in some cases, and if so, in which ones? O. K.: Well, apart from the specific case when the assault on Nord-Ost was being prepared and footage of the preparations was being shown live on NTV… Audience: It wasn’t! O. K.: Actually, that’s a lie, it was. V. Sh.: Another lie, Oleg! O. K.: I couldn’t tear myself away from the screen then. If you say it’s a lie, then it’s a lie. Stop monopolizing the right to decide what is or isn’t a lie. In cases like that, I think censorship is necessary. V. Sh.: May I clarify the answer to this very important question? A. N.: Yes, please. V. Sh.: I studied this question in considerable detail, minute by minute, because I was writing a book at the time. So. There was no live broadcast of the Nord-Ost assault. Correspondent Kolpakov and his crew, being professionals, found a vantage point and did indeed film troop movements. This was at five-twenty-something. The company filmed it and returned to the TV station. Tatyana Mitkova showed me the log of when the tape went on air; the material aired at the beginning of the seventh hour, at 6:10 or 6:12—I may be off in the minutes, but not in the hours. By then the assault was already underway, when the hostages were dying from the gas used by the special forces… So: there was no live broadcast of the Nord-Ost assault. Applause. V. Sh.: Therefore, the country’s president was either misled—which means he did not control the situation and did not understand what was happening in his own security services—or he lied in order to have a pretext to fire the last remaining management at NTV and carry out another purge after April 2001. Which version you choose for yourself is up to you. O. K.: A brief remark. Notice this: a year and a half after that unique journalistic collective was fired from NTV, NTV employee Tatyana Mitkova is showing a for-official-use document to a complete outsider, Shenderovich. That’s how this whole тусовка (insider clique) works! And then they talk about some people being for censorship and others against it. No. There are specific clans that will always come to an agreement among themselves… V. Sh.: Tatyana Mitkova, telling me… Oleg! Have you lost your mind! A journalist giving information to someone who is not a classified person—there was no military secret there, no state secret. They were insulted, publicly slapped in the face! Tatyana Mitkova’s choice was to take that slap and remain publicly silent! For my book, I called Tatyana Mitkova and asked her to tell me whether it was true that they had done this. “No,” Tatyana Rostislavovna replied. I believe her. O. K.: And as for your books, for some reason my note about you was called anonymous… V. Sh.: Not true! Does anyone have my book? Voice from the audience: Yes! A. N.: While they look for the book, Konstantin Krylov will ask his question. K. K.: Today our state, preoccupied with fighting Russian fascism and the Russian people in general, is demanding censorship measures, the restoration of special restricted collections for certain books, proposals to sideline or politically destroy certain figures associated with Russian nationalism. I would like to know Mr. Kashin’s opinion of these measures. O. K.: I condemn both the creation of restricted collections and the removal of literature from sale, as well as the compilation of lists of Russian fascists, because every blacklist carries the risk that the person compiling it will end up on it. I consider the fight against Russian fascism a very dangerous game, one in which those waging it will sooner or later overplay their hand and lose. V. Sh.: May I quote? A. N.: Yes! V. Sh.: “A week later I read in Izvestia an authoritative ‘anonymous opinion on the reasons for his failure to attend the rally at the Solovetsky Stone.’” Your source of information was not named; it was only said that it was a person in the party leadership. That is an “authoritative anonymous opinion.” O. K.: Come on! Maybe you’ll finally admit who you are (half a year has passed)? V. Sh.: One second! That’s a different question! You accused me of calling your note anonymous. Learn to read Russian. O. K.: Learn to read Russian! It says here: “I read in Izvestia an anonymous opinion.” V. Sh.: “I read in Izvestia an anonymous opinion.” The opinion about the reasons for my absence was anonymous. You did not name your source. Period. Any more questions about the Russian language? Or do I need to start dictating one? A. N.: Konstantin Krylov! Second question! K. K.: Mr. Shenderovich, do you believe democracy is above all the observance of procedure? V. Sh.: There is a trap in your question, but I believe democracy is the observance of democratic procedure, note that. Turkmenistan also has procedure, just a different procedure. K. K.: Do you believe democracy implies, at a minimum, compliance with rules that a person has himself agreed to? V. Sh.: Of course. K. K.: In that case, I don’t quite understand why during this debate you rather substantially changed the procedure that had been envisaged; in particular, you refused to answer your opponent’s questions, stating… V. Sh.: I did not refuse to answ… K. K.: Wait! I haven’t finished my question! V. Sh.: I did not refuse to answer my opponent’s questions, I refused to ask them! K. K.: Even better! V. Sh.: The problem is not only with eyesight but with hearing too—let’s all get treatment, comrades! K. K.: And I suggest that instead of treatment, we talk about why you disrupted, if you like, the event, why you allowed yourself to change the script as you pleased, why you then used your wonderful little punchlines, clearly aimed at your clique, which is quite large here? V. Sh.: I gathered them all, paid them all! Not a single free one! They’re all paid! Gusinsky wouldn’t let up… K. K.: Did I say anything about money, gentlemen?! Did I say anything about money!? So what I really want to know is how your respect for procedure is compatible with what you are doing here. That’s all. V. Sh.: I was given the right to ask Oleg Kashin three questions. That is a citizen’s right, just like the right to go vote. But he also has the right not to go vote. I have the right to ask Oleg Kashin three questions, but I also have the right not to ask them. The procedure says that I may answer. I am ready to answer, but I had no questions. So. I did not violate the procedure; I used the possibilities it provided. Period. Round IV A. N.: Let’s thank our participants for that round, and move on to the most interesting part—to questions from the audience. Audience member: I wanted to ask a question of my favorite satirical writer Viktor Shenderovich, but unfortunately the awful politician Viktor Shenderovich keeps interrupting all his opponents, so it doesn’t really matter whom I ask. I’m a former journalist for the newspaper Reaktsiya, where Oleg now works. A. N.: The question! Audience member: The question is short: not long ago I wrote an article while in a very bad state of mind; it really was bad, I later realized that myself. The editor rejected it. So tell me: how is that fundamentally different, in terms of censorship, from my writing an openly stupid article propagandizing liberalism (well, obviously it’s stupid to propagandize liberalism) and.. Applause. Audience member: …Please tell me what the difference is between my writing a stupid article saying Zenit is the best football club in the world and an article saying liberalism is the best system in the world. Thank you. V. Sh.: I’m ready to answer your question. Because if you write that Zenit is the best team in the world and find a St. Petersburg fan club… at the very least, there is one place where they will definitely print it, that is, one editorial office where they share that opinion, right? So you can go to that editorial office and publish your opinion. One second! If you go to another editorial office—to Spartak’s fan club—and try to publish that Zenit is the best team, you’ll barely get out alive. That is a manifestation of the wildness of our immature democracy, but not censorship, not censorship, not censorship, because you have the opportunity, no one is forbidding it, you just have to find the field. There is a field… right? As in other countries, where you can cross the street (say, in Manhattan) and go from the office of a Republican newspaper to the office of a Democratic one. That is not censorship. It seems to me a fairly simple question. Audience member: Now the second question. Suppose I write an article about how useful it is to have sex with minors, and I find… I hope no one doubts that I will find an editorial office that will immediately publish all that? V. Sh.: Ready to answer right away. Audience member: So, I find it now, they publish it. V. Sh.: Right. Audience member: If they are then shut down for it and I am given a prison sentence, do you consider that a manifestation of censorship? V. Sh.: I consider that a manifestation of the law! By publishing that article… Audience member: Censorship and law are one and the same. V. Sh.: No! In a democratic state, they are different things. So. You write that article… Audience member: Ours is democratic, and you’re still interrupting! Alexei Navalny: Colleagues! We are not having a dialogue with the audience! Please put down the microphone, the respondent is asking… V. Sh.: No, if the question isn’t for me, I won’t answer; if it is for me, I will. No offense. A. N.: Yes, yes, yes, answer! V. Sh.: For me! So. If you write that article (fair winds to you!), and some wonderful editorial office is found that… A. N.: The publication Ultra-Kultura. V. Sh.: Yes! And a publication is found that wants to print it, and there really will be… Audience member: I doubt Alexei Kormiltsev was constantly telling people to go fuck themselves on LiveJournal. I doubt it. V. Sh.: What a lovely society! I envy it. A. N.: All right, next question! Please! An audience member quietly asks a question. A. N.: I’ll repeat the question. About manifestations of censorship. You were fired from Kommersant, you were fired from NTV. Do you consider that a manifestation of censorship? O. K.: Listen! Well, that’s a stereotype, there’s nothing to object to. I left Kommersant of my own accord. If you like (especially since I have the chance to speak), I’ll tell the story in detail, because it’s a fairly peaceful one. Katya Savina is standing here, my colleague; she is, by the way, my successor in the position I held there, so she won’t let me lie. I came to Kommersant in the fall of 2003. At that time the editorial office was headed by Andrei Vasilyev, who today, incidentally, resigned as editor-in-chief of Kommersant-Ukraine, and back then Kommersant was, naturally, the best newspaper in the country, as I have said more than once. And that excellence showed itself, among other things, in the fact that articles by Boris Berezovsky (which for some reason he loved to write then) appeared there only as paid advertising, although no one had abolished the owner’s right to the newspaper. He could perfectly well have printed them not as advertising. I truly valued the opportunity to work at Vasilyev’s Kommersant, and when in June of last year I learned that Berezovsky intended to force Vasilyev out, I immediately, as soon as Vasilyev left, began discussing with friends (over a beer or something else) where I should go next. Because I knew with absolute certainty that once Vasilyev was gone, it would be time to leave Kommersant. So I chose Izvestia, and by August, having written perhaps the best piece of my life (many here have read it, I hope) about the mini-submarine in Kamchatka, I wrote my resignation letter rather elegantly and, after working one more week, left. I was not fired, no, I left on my own. A. N.: Viktor! Answer the same question briefly. V. Sh.: Same answer: I left NTV on my own, no one fired me. Five years ago, on the night of April 14, the security guards were changed, the owner changed, and it became clear to me that I had to leave. Those on our team who believed—or pretended to believe—that everything would remain the same formed the very control group needed in medicine to see what happens if you act differently. And we saw what was done to them afterward. So I was right to leave. A. N.: Thank you. (To audience member) Your question! A. Navalny repeats the question again because not everyone could hear it: Some time ago you began engaging in political activity. How does that fit with your journalistic role, if a politician is forced to defend a certain point of view all the time? V. Sh.: It fits easily. My first journalistic publications appeared in 1986. Of course I evolved in some ways, but I never changed polarity; my convictions have not changed fundamentally since the late 1980s. So I work calmly in journalism, writing what I consider important. As for politics, you see, I would still call it public activity. Both Committee-2008 and my run in the elections in District 201—this is political activity, but more a possibility of participating in public life than in politics proper. A. N.: All right, good. Thank you! More questions. Young lady! Go ahead. Young woman: I have a question for Viktor Shenderovich. I am an absolute opponent of censorship, and for me freedom of speech is an absolute life value, and I have absolutely no desire to support Mr. Kashin in anything, but my question is this: there is a large share of truth in some of what he said. The point is this: don’t you think that democratic journalism in the 1990s partly traded freedom of speech for power, for property, for support of certain principles, and always took one side, and that in the early 1990s it adopted the position that “the end justifies the means”… You spoke about 1996. But after 1996, in the fall, the head of the presidential administration, as Kiselyov recently admitted, introduced editorial planning meetings for the first time. And democratic journalism swallowed that too. Then democratic journalism fought Primakov and Luzhkov and therefore supported the slogan: “Kiriyenko to the Duma, Putin for president!” My question is rhetorical, maybe childish: how are we supposed to believe in democratic journalism now? Applause. V. Sh.: A simple answer to your correct question. First of all, I sign my name under everything you said. I saw it all from fairly close up… I was lucky… lucky not because I’m better, but because that’s just how things turned out, the cards fell that way, perhaps fortunately… that I did not take part in those wars over Svyazinvest, I did not take part in oligarchic wars. The Puppets I made, I made consciously; I was expressing my own opinion. Faced with the choice between Zyuganov and Yeltsin, I, Viktor Shenderovich, chose Yeltsin. In 1996. I did! No one gave me instructions about whom to trash and whom not to trash; during the entire existence of Puppets, I never… O. K.: You trashed Zyuganov? V. Sh.: I… Voice from the audience: And rightly so! V. Sh.: …wrote what I thought needed to be written, I, Viktor Shenderovich… O. K.: Didn’t it bother you that Zyuganov had no opportunity to answer you? V. Sh.: You know what, he answered me for 70 years! O. K.: He didn’t answer… V. Sh.: He answered me for 70 years! O. K.: Are you 70 years old or what? V. Sh.: Millions of people heard his answer in Kolyma, millions!. O. K.: In what Kolyma, what are you even talking about? Loud astonishment in the hall. V. Sh.: One second! One second! We were answering. We were answering. That was my position. I understand it… It’s a difficult question… Zyuganov is a man at whose rallies there were portraits of Stalin, and still are… Zyuganov wrote of Stalin as the greatest… O. K.: But half the country voted for Zyuganov! V. Sh.: So. That was their right… O. K.: Once again. Half the country voted for Zyuganov. V. Sh.: That was their right, and it was my right not to vote for Zyuganov and… O. K.: And your right to pour buckets of filth on Zyuganov? V. Sh.: You can… O. K.: I can, I can, I can! V. Sh.: …I made the program Puppets, which people watched. It was funny, they say. O. K.: Yes. V. Sh.: It was funny, they say, it was talented, they say. Quite a lot of people worked on it. We made a good program, and Field of Miracles is also one of the best, in my view. But that’s not what we’re discussing. I’ll try to answer your question… O. K.: One second! You interrupted often, let me do it too. I remember those jokes from Puppets, and I’ll quote one so the esteemed audience can judge whether it was funny or not. The program Puppets shows a scene from the distant future—a parade on Red Square. Tanks roll across Red Square, missiles crawl along… but meanwhile, by Lenin’s Mausoleum stand Stalin and Zyuganov, and in Brezhnev’s voice he says: “Dear comrades…” Is that funny? Voices from the audience: Yes! V. Sh.: Are you asking me? Other voices: No! No! No! V. Sh.: People laughed. How should I know whether it was funny or not? The audience roared. One second! Stop. This is not an artistic council… Or is it an artistic council judging my candidacy? If it is, of course I’ll listen, I find it terribly interesting. But we’re talking about something else. A. N.: All right. Next question. V. Sh.: I don’t think I answered that young woman’s question. A. N.: Yes. V. Sh.: I stand by what you said. It’s true: democratic journalism was terribly imperfect! Sometimes monstrous. Constantly: criminality, paid-for planted stories… Yes, very ambiguous positions, all the time… editorial meetings, agreements with the Kremlin over the permissible level of criticism… I know all that no worse than you, better than you. Nevertheless, when you ask what to do, I answer: “Face control.” You look a person in the eyes and say: “I believe this one! I believe what he says. At the very least, that it is what he thinks, and not what he was paid to say.” A. N.: Thank you. Young man! Audience member: Dear colleagues! I have a two-part question for you: am I right in understanding that, for you, the absence of censorship means the freedom to distribute information within the framework of existing law? V. Sh.: That’s right. Of course. O. K.: Well, yes. Audience member: In that case, please tell me, what about the ethical dimension? The law is cold and lifeless, while information, as we know, can kill. O. K.: In fact, there’s a very simple mechanism, right? Information might kill you. Fine. There’s some article in a newspaper, some program on television, that violated certain ethical norms, offended someone, slandered someone, and so on. There’s a wonderful mechanism called the judiciary, judicial practice. File a lawsuit. Audience member: A dead person can’t file a lawsuit. O. K.: Anyone can file a lawsuit. Audience member: A dead person can’t! O. K.: Wait! If he died because of the person who wrote that article… Audience member: Then of course that person will be convicted. But you still can’t bring the dead person back! O. K.: Listen! You’re asking a question, and I’m answering it. But what’s the difference between that and censorship? You can sue after publication. If some bald idiot sitting at a desk in some office decides in advance that a publication is unethical, that’s censorship. If it’s dealt with after publication, that’s normal judicial practice. V. Sh.: Please note the time. At 9:36 p.m. I agreed with Kashin! Applause. V. Sh.: On the same issue, as a continuation, not a rebuttal. Here’s how it works in a normal society: on the one hand, there is, I stress, an independent court that will consider the situation not with the aim of pleasing one side or the other, but simply by putting the law in front of itself and comparing whether it was violated or not. Next. When you say the law is cold—well, the law always lags behind life, everywhere and always. The question is by how much. For that, there is parliament, which can change the law, which can respond—again, assuming it is a normal parliament representing people’s interests. And after some time, society will step on that rake once, get hit in the face, there will be a court ruling, there will be parliamentary review, and there will be a different law. A. N.: Please, Maxim Kononenko! Your question! M. K.: I have a question for Viktor Anatolyevich, perhaps a slightly personal one. I apologize for that. In your latest book, during the election campaign, you wrote that I had become very much favored by the authorities and now attended Kremlin receptions as a VIP. I’d like to know what you meant by that. V. Sh.: I meant information from several female correspondents who told me they had seen… M. K.: Seen me at a reception. Thank you very much. V. Sh.: Thank you. M. K.: At that same reception—it was a reception for charitable organizations—Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov was also present. We spoke there. Does that mean he, too, is favored by the authorities and admitted to Kremlin receptions as a VIP? Applause. V. Sh.: Alexei Venediktov is admitted there, and he is the last person trying to thread the needle, yes, with certain difficulties and compromises, to preserve democratic broadcasting. In my observation, Venediktov and you go there for different reasons. A. N.: Thank you… M. K.: No! Wait! I completely agree that Alexei Venediktov runs a thoroughly democratic media outlet, which I love very much, but I would still like to know: does that mean Alexei Alexeyevich is favored by the authorities? Voice from the audience: Yes! V. Sh.: It doesn’t mean that, no, it… M. K.: And if I attend a reception, does that mean I’m favored by the authorities? V. Sh.: You know, taken as a whole, based on my observations of you and your evolution, if I may say so, I draw certain conclusions about you, and your latest LiveJournal post about the beating of Litvinovich brilliantly confirms my observations—though perhaps it wasn’t your latest, of course. M. K.: So this is your speculation? About me being favored by the authorities? V. Sh.: It’s my… Calm down! There are journalists here. Let’s distinguish between fact and interpretation. I present a certain number of facts in my programs, quite a lot of them. And then there are my observations, my comments; my comment is simply how I see it. As for facts, I present them. I quoted you, for example… M. K.: But the lie consists at least in the fact that I was there as a VIP… A. N.: Stop! Maxim! Let’s stop before we get to— M. K.: I would simply like the audience to note the fact that Viktor Shenderovich lied in his book! A. N.: Right. A question from the gallery! Question from the gallery: Kashin! If I’m not mistaken, you didn’t ask Shenderovich a single question. Tell me, was it just that nobody on LiveJournal prompted you? Laughter in the hall. O. K.: Well, people on LiveJournal did prompt me… (inaudible after this) …well, I didn’t ask him a single question simply because he didn’t ask me any. That’s the only reason, believe me. A. N.: Right, thank you! Question! Yes! Audience member: I have one question for Mr. Shenderovich and one for Kashin. Briefly. Is Mr. Shenderovich’s political career over, and is a political career possible for Mr. Kashin? That’s all. V. Sh.: I never planned a political career for myself. There was one attempt to go after power, and I experienced it firsthand… A successful one, very successful. I learned a great deal more about my colleagues, about the country, met voters, wrote a book. A successful experience. I had no plans to break through to federal funding, so I consider the experience a success. I won’t do it again. A. N.: All right, Oleg! Are you striving for federal funding? O. K.: Yes, people for whom politics means getting federal funding—there never was, is not, and never will be any place for them in federal politics. That I know for sure. Audience member: A question for Mr. Shenderovich. At the rally on Sunday dedicated to freedom of speech, a correspondent from Student Truth was not let in. Why? V. Sh.: You should ask those who didn’t let him in. I’m not an administrator. A. N.: Nonsense! How can you not let a correspondent into a rally!? Explain! What does “not let into a rally” even mean? O. K.: I can explain. There was some young man standing there with police officers, pointing with his finger: let that one in, don’t let that one in. Laughter in the hall. V. Sh.: Listen! They let in an old lady who was explaining to me that I was the Antichrist! So I think he probably could have gotten in… A. N.: Right. Second-to-last question! Yes! Audience member: Is there censorship at Echo of Moscow? V. Sh.: Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov listens to my programs live on air. After that, various characters start calling him… To which Venediktov replies with a phrase Vladimir Alexandrovich Gusinsky taught him. He says: “He’s crazy! There’s nothing I can do with him!” Applause. A. N.: Yes, please, a question! The young woman! Young woman: My name is Natalya Rostova, I write about the media for Novaya Gazeta. I wanted to ask about something the participants said that caught my attention. Viktor Anatolyevich! You said that you defended the newspaper Den. I just wanted to ask: do you consider it a nationalist newspaper? V. Sh.: I consider it nationalist, monstrous, pogrom-inciting… N. R.: Then why did you defend it? V. Sh.: I’ll explain. The point is that this ideology exists in society, and it can only be shut down by a court decision! I would very much like such a publication—not just any publication in general, but this specific one… Let me finish. There is a Criminal Code. Under the law, an independent court, measuring a publication against the Criminal Code, can shut down one publication or another. I won’t cry myself to sleep if that publication is shut down. But! It is very important to understand that the ideology exists! If you shut it down, it will become stronger, not weaker! It has to be argued against. A. N.: The answer is clear, clear enough. Briefly, please! N. R.: And two more questions for Oleg Kashin, also based on what he said. You said that you simply had a falling-out with Yashin. I wanted to know: did you regard Yashin simply as a newsmaker? O. K.: Not anymore. I no longer write about youth politics… N. R.: No, at the time when you were writing about youth politics, did you regard Yashin simply as a newsmaker? O. K.: Yes, absolutely. To continue: if you read my articles about Yashin from that period, I can say they are much harsher than they would have been if they had really been written by a friend of Yashin’s. N. R.: And do you think it’s necessary to be friends with or enemies of newsmakers? O. K.: No, I don’t, but if it happens that you’re friends with a newsmaker or not friends with one, then be friends, by all means—the main thing is that it must not interfere with your work. It didn’t interfere with my work. N. R.: Last question. Oleg Kashin said that today there are two oligarchs on television, Ernst and Dobrodeyev. I’d like to clarify: which oligarchs are you against—Ernst and Dobrodeyev, or Gusinsky? O. K.: Me? N. R.: Yes. O. K.: It’s pointless to oppose Gusinsky, because today he lives in Tel Aviv, and opposing someone who is outside all this… is pointless. Yes, I’m against Ernst, I’m against Dobrodeyev. They are my enemies—literally, enemies of an honest citizen of Russia. N. R.: Kashin! But all evening today you were speaking against Gusinsky’s NTV. O. K.: That’s none of your business, Natalya! A. N.: Right, last question? Audience member: Oleg! About a year ago in Russky Zhurnal you wrote something along these lines, in a piece called “Let’s Go to War!” It was about the fact that Russian society contains two groups that cannot find common ground, and in today’s debate you sort of decoded that group further—you called your opponents, conditionally speaking, shit. A. N.: Young man! What is your question? Audience member: Are you now ready once again to call for war, to fight, for what… O. K.: Oh! I feel like I’m about to punch someone in the face… Audience member: What should we fight for, and what exactly is the essence of this “shit,” as you put it? O. K.: Once again, the question comes down to Yashin. I called him shit, and I am indeed prepared to explain what I meant, if the esteemed public is so interested. A. N.: No, Oleg! Thank you. We’re not going to discuss that. Answer: war or not? O. K.: You see, here’s the thing: last year General Denikin was buried with full state honors. It seems to me that this was a symbol of the formal consolidation of the victory of those people who were called the Whites. I also know perfectly well that in Russia there are many people who remain supporters of those they called the Reds. I believe these people are being unfairly slighted now, and sooner or later they will have to take revenge. So in that sense, I am sure that sooner or later the Whites and the Reds in Russia will fight. V. Sh.: A brief comment. About the symbol. This is a very important issue. Denikin was buried with full state honors, including the anthem of the Soviet Union played over his grave. Applause. O. K.: Happy Russian Federation Day! Alexei Navalny: Right, thank you very much! Let’s thank our guests and move on to summing up the results. As you all know, we have three stages of voting: the LiveJournal jury vote, the audience vote, and then the internet vote after we post the transcripts. We will declare the winner to be the person who gets the majority of the jury’s votes. Please, raise your cards! A reminder: we are voting not for political views, but for who won today’s debate, who was more convincing. Please, jury. They’re looking at each other, looking at each other… I see. Kormiltsev tore up his card. Four votes for Kashin. So then. Kormiltsev’s comments. Ilya Kormiltsev: What I saw today confirmed my worst suspicions. I did not see a clash of two independent journalists. I saw a dialogue between a propagandist and a politician. Propagandist Oleg Kashin clearly stated that he is not going to reveal the truth that has become known to him if he would have to voice it in the voice of the enemy. He would prefer to work in silence. O. K.: Well, Ilya, you’re twisting things… I. K.: I’m not twisting anything. I asked you: if the only outlet through which you could say this information was Echo of Moscow, you said that would be impossible and you’d go become a sailor. Do you think everything else is impossible too? Do you think Putin is an alien… O. K.: No, Putin is the elected president of the Russian Federation. I. K.: Wonderful. So Viktor Shenderovich has polished, brilliant answers to every question. They don’t really satisfy me, but that’s my problem, not Viktor Shenderovich’s. But that isn’t journalism either; it isn’t a striving for fact, it’s propaganda for a particular point of view. Therefore, you will have to admit that we have no independent journalism at all, neither on the right nor on the left. What we have are warring politicized clans that generate censorship themselves, and it objectively arises from their confrontation, because our liberal democracy is just as much a totalitarian sect as the nationalist-conservatives are; their clashes are deadly. And if this situation continues and keeps recurring, then we’re all fucked. Clear? Thank you! A. N.: Alexei Trankova! A. T.: We’re all LiveJournal people here, we all know what a flop is and what a win is. I just sat there marking pluses and minuses. A plus for a win, a minus for a flop. They ended up with roughly the same number of pluses—10 and 11—but Kashin had 7 flops, while Shenderovich had 16. Because a debate is not a sermon. It’s one thing when a person uses expressions like “piece of shit,” right? He got his minus for that. But expressions like “too much honor” and “pink elephants”… A. N.: Ksenia! Two words! Why Kashin? K. V.: Honestly, I never doubted Kashin’s sincerity…and I think he believes… V. Sh.: The way you smiled at him!. A. N.: Why did Kashin win today’s debate? Voice from the audience: She loves him!. K. V.: It’s clear that he is searching, searching for the truth and… A. N.: Kashin?! Laughter from the audience K. V.: …and sometimes he even confidently assumes he’s found it, but that will pass… whereas Shenderovich knows in advance that everything is obvious, and that will never pass. A. N.: Alexei Zharich! Two words. A. Zh.: I think Mr. Shenderovich is an established figure: he participates in political life, in public life, writes books, he’s a well-known journalist, everyone knows him, reads him and… I find it strange to ask where the censorship is here. The man does everything he wants, everything he thinks necessary. Oleg… I think the future belongs to him. Going back to that passage about the insane competition to get into journalism—well, other people will come, and they’re not idiots, they’re normal, there are lots of good guys. Make way for them. A. N.: Konstantin Krylov! Why did Kashin win? K. K.: I’ll confess honestly: at first I wanted to give my vote to Shenderovich. I find Shenderovich disgusting, I find everything he stands for disgusting; he is an enemy of my people. Forgive me, I am Russian. But I must say that as a polemicist, he was stronger. However, I gave my vote to Kashin for only one reason: for Shenderovich’s phrase “too much honor” and “breaking the format.” For that alone. I consider that unprofessional play. A person operating at that level simply has no right to resort to such cheap tricks. Sorry. A. N.: Thank you very much. We move on to the audience vote. Please raise your cards or hands if you think Oleg Kashin won. Cards or hands! We’re counting. Keep them up! A couple of minutes. Don’t forget to count the gallery and the balcony. Keep them up, keep them up. Voices from the audience: Kashin! Kashin! Yashin! Yashin! Voice: Why Yashin? A. N.: Keep them up a little longer… Oleg Kashin: 33–35. Please raise your hands if you think Viktor Shenderovich won today’s debate. Right, let’s count, let’s count for the record. It’s hard, but let’s count, at least plus or minus five votes. Voice from the audience: Biased voting! Voices: Shenderovich! Shenderovich! Shenderovich!. A. N.: My friends! I’m asking you! Let’s… V. Sh.: They’ve all been paid off! A. N.: We can carry him out of there in our arms if we want, but right now let’s just count the votes. Voice from the audience: Whose money? V. Sh.: We won’t say, we won’t say! Voice: We’ll settle up on the way out! Another: And when will you settle up? Konstantin Krylov: You’ll settle up with Litvinovich! A. N.: For Viktor Shenderovich, 91… Voice: No!. A. N.: 187! My apologies. Voices: Kashin! Kashin! Kashin!. Viktor Shenderovich’s comments after the vote: I really came here because all this… Originally, when I was invited here, they said it would be about censorship. I want to start from… I was reminded of this by Oleg Kashin’s latest article in Kommersant, about that bathyscaphe. Here is a pure experiment, a precise answer to why it is good when there is no censorship, why censorship is impermissible. Those eight sailors—if I remember correctly, there were eight—who stayed alive, survived because the last battered remnants of freedom of speech still remained! When, remember, there was an accidental leak of information that it was stuck. That was being concealed. There were no rescue operations. Those people were doomed. But! Through a chain of leaks, it reached a correspondent from state television! Honor and praise to her! State television! ITAR-TASS, I think. O. K.: RIA Novosti. V. Sh.: RIA Novosti, right? And they put it on the wire! And then it started rolling! And the public rose up, and they began the operation, and eight people were saved! If it had all been fully suppressed, they wouldn’t have been saved… It’s an absolutely pure experiment! An experiment of the opposite kind, unfortunately, in my view. In general… since I did not go into politics, I will never again speak on behalf of the people. I speak only on my own behalf. Voice from the audience: More like politics didn’t go into him… V. Sh.: Well, people have joked about that already… already joked about it. So then, the opposite case is Beslan. I ask for your attention for just a second, I’ll finish in a minute! This is very important. Try to imagine: would such an outcome to the Beslan story, such a resolution of that tragedy, have been possible if there had been 15 TV cameras standing nearby, broadcasting live from the scene the whole time, all those days? If we had known the number of hostages, if we had known what the headquarters was doing, if we had known the journalists’ demands, if we had known that Maskhadov was on his way as a mediator! Is there any superior officer, any tank commander, who would open fire on a mined school knowing that it was being shown live? The answer is no! The answer is no! The outcome would have been dramatic, terrible, but somehow different… somehow different. This is our price—Beslan, our price… Voice from the audience: For liberalism. V. Sh.: …for neglect, for neglect of simple things like freedom of speech… Voice from the audience: It’s your price for betraying Russians! V. Sh.: I see. I’ve been hearing that for 15 years. Back when you were still running around under the table, I was already a CIA agent. Respect the people! A. N.: Thank you. Oleg Kashin will also speak with something equally grand… O. K.: No, these were excellent debates. I think everything is clear to everyone. And of course, thanks to those who voted for me and those who came. Glory to Russia, yes. V. Sh.: Yes, yes, yes! Voices from the audience: Glory to Russia! Glory to Russia! Glory to Russia!. A. N.: By tradition, we present prizes to our jury. Thank you very much to our jury. It was hard for us to assemble them, such different people. Please thank them. Applause. A. N.: The story from the first debates repeated itself exactly: the jury reached one decision, and the audience reached another. And we award the winner’s prize to Oleg Kashin, whom the jury supported. Follow the internet voting. And the “I Was Robbed by the Judges!” prize goes to Viktor Shenderovich. Kashin and Shenderovich are handed T-shirts. By mistake, Shenderovich was given the winner’s T-shirt, and Kashin the “I Was Robbed by the Judges!” one. Audience: The other way around, the other way around! A. N.: The other way around. Natasha mixed them up. The costs of democracy. Thank you very much to our participants, thank you very much to all of you—it was terribly hard for you, thank you for coming. Please visit the website. And vote—the third stage of voting is the decisive one. Goodbye!