"Information Direct from the Manufacturer": An interview with the guys behind Privesc.Eu

First off, apologies for the long absence from this space - things have been genuinely busy at work, and I just haven't had the time.  Fortunately, something I initiated back in early October, before I got busy, has finally born fruit.

I think I first wrote about Privesc.Eu back in July, on Moldova's second election day of 2009.  At the time, I described it as

a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission... rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

And that evening, I watched on a laptop in my kitchen as the results came in and Privesc.Eu's live feed and open mic from the Central Electoral Commission picked up random conversations of journalists and election officials, including one where two people were discussing, in Russian, whether the country that had just voted should be called "Moldova" or "Moldavia." 

Anyway, I was familiar with Privesc.Eu founder Mihai Moscovici as one of the first Moldovan bloggers I saw on the interwebs, and more recently from his prolific Facebook updates, and decided to ask if he and his collaborators on this interesting project would mind answering a few questions about what it has been like to launch an online public-access channel in the midst of what has to have been one of the most politically tumultuous years in Moldova's history.

To put this in an American context, these guys have created something that is a cross between CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, and hip-hop (rap music being, in the immortal words of Public Enemy's Chuck D, "CNN for Black people"), all with a level of interactivity that makes full use of all the capabilities Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?).  I don't think they were the first to do it in Moldova (Public TV and JurnalTV were first, I think, by a matter of months), but the team behind Privesc.Eu has done a great job working with hardly any resources other than what they have contributed from their own time and pockets.

Before (or after) you read the interview, please consider contributing some amount, however small (or large!) to support the work of these young Moldovans who are working to improve transparency and people's access to government in their country and for the many labor migrants who might otherwise be out of touch with political developments at home.  You can donate via PayPal (which takes all major credit cards) right here.

What motivated you to start this project?

On the way to democracy, Moldovan media find themselves forced to play the games of diverse political and economic interest groups, thus losing neutrality in presenting information to citizens. As a result, the Moldovan public is confused and is not discerning with respect to media coverage. Lately, international monitoring organizations have often criticized the Moldovan media for lack of objectivity, misleading reporting and one-sided presentations of information.

Since the Internet penetration rate in Moldova grows about 50% every year, online media coverage has long been a challenging journey for existing mainstream media, amateurs and new media projects. Still, there is a need for innovation and intense exploration to create new initiatives and progressively successful projects to satisfy the need of the Moldovan public for access to information online.

Information consumers, particularly youth, are looking to avoid media that only offer one-way information sharing and prefer to become participants in events and play their own role in the decision-making process.

We have started Privesc.Eu because there was a need for an innovative online platform which will give young people opportunities to share their opinions on real-time ongoing events, to instantly react and interact with each other, to ask questions, to be active and get involved in the country's daily life, to share and discuss their know-how, to organize and promote their own events, and, more than that, to share their activism by maintaining that platform.

Privesc.Eu is now an innovative online project, integrated with the latest social media elements and modern real-time data transmission technologies, that focuses on exposure of current events and on providing opportunities for social engagement for the Moldovan online youth community.

Did you start with a detailed business plan and specific goals, or just with a camera and a dream?

We started this project on July 5^th, 2009 in the central park in Chisinau. We had no business plan, but we had a dream, inspiration, and enthusiasm. In a few weeks, we realized that a business plan is necessary for the future of project, and eventually drafted one.

It occurred to me that Privesc.eu's content and goals are sort of like those of the C-SPAN channel in the U.S.  Are you familiar with this channel, and if so, what do you think of the comparison?

One of our team members watched this TV channel while living in the US, but we didn’t know about it until we launched the project. We started Privesc.Eu following the needs of the Moldovan society. As for comparison, we look forward to establishing such a TV channel in Moldova :)

When did you begin broadcasting online, and how did you promote the site when you launched it?  How quickly did you develop an audience, and how large is that audience now?

We started our broadcast on July 5^th, 2009, in the central park in Chisinau. On that day we set up the domain name for the project: www.Privesc.Eu (translated from Romanian as www.Watch.I).

We established two main directions of activity: provide live video streaming from the major events in the country (politics, economy, social, civil society, etc.); and establish user interaction to enable them communicate with each other and with the event organizers.

Since launching www.Privesc.Eu in July 2009, the site has continuously grown in traffic and user participation. In the first four months, the project has already become well-known among Moldovan young people in the country and abroad. Now we have more than 30,000 viewers per month. Every live stream on www.Privesc.Eu is watched and commented in real-time by 200 to 2000 visitors, depending on the event.

In addition, Privesc.Eu has more than 1000 fans on Facebook.

If you could start the project over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

If we would start over again, perhaps we would think more about better promotional methods than we have used so far.

Do the people involved have journalism backgrounds or more IT backgrounds?  (Please feel free to discuss what the various members of the Privesc.eu team do professionally or not, and/or their educational backgrounds, as you prefer)

Privesc.Eu was developed and is maintained by an innovative and creative team of volunteer young professionals: two high-skilled web developers, a professional journalist, a marketing/PR specialist, and an inspired and dedicated project manager.

You and your partners have obviously spent a lot of your own time on this project - how have you found time for this in addition to doing whatever your "day jobs" are?  And how much of your own money have you had to spend on equipment and other expenses (hosting, etc.)?

Five people are involved in this project: Eugeniu Luchianiuc, Vitalie Eşanu, Mihai Moscovici, Radu Chivriga, Oleg Ciubotaru. Each of them is responsible for a specific department: Tehnical Department - Vitalie Eşanu and Oleg Ciubotaru; Promotion and Marketing Department - Mihai Moscovici; Journalism and LIVE Video Streaming Department - Radu Chivriga and Eugeniu Luchianiuc. Every one of us has a primary job, but Privesc.Eu is more than just a hobby, it is a way for changing our society for better. We use our own equipment: laptops, microphones, webcams and 3G mobile internet services. Privesc.Eu is grown on enthusiasm and we don't seek any financial benefits from this project.

Have your expenses been covered by advertising revenue?  Do you have any other sources of funding for the project (private donors, grants)?

On our web-site, we have a page where people can donate money through PayPal or to donate money to cover our mobile internet expenses through top-up terminals. Until now, we have 13 private donors who have donated a total of 400 USD.  Also, we applied for a Soros Foundation grant and are currently waiting for their decision.

Why do you think online broadcasting is important in Moldova?

Privesc.Eu helps Moldovan internet users to have open access to unbiased, democratic, interactive, objective, as-is coverage of important events in Moldova.  It helps citizens to form their own opinions based on pure and as-is information, avoiding journalistic comments and opinions.

Privesc.Eu fills the void of information about the situation and events in Moldova currently experienced by citizens working abroad, as well as by those living in the breakaway Transnistria region.

What do you think Privesc.eu provides viewers that they cannot get from TV or other mainstream media, or from already existing online sources such as YouTube?

Primarily, Privesc.Eu is a source of pure and as-is information about Moldova’s major events for citizens, as well as for international internet users, tourists, business people, potential investors, researchers and other people interested in Moldova.

Do you view your primary audience as being located in Chisinau?  Moldovans overseas?  Rural areas of the country?  Romanians sympathetic to Moldova?

According to Google Analytics, last month we had viewers from 58 countries . Most of them are from Moldova – 27,000, Romania – 1,500, United States - 540, France - 500, Italy - 455. Moldovan viewers came mainly from 5 cities: Chişinău, Rîbniţa, Bender, Tiraspol and Balti.

Many Moldovan websites have Romanian-language and Russian-language versions (and often English-language as well) - is there a reason that Privesc.eu has only a Romanian-language interface?

We don't think this is a problem for Russian-speakers. Any visitor can easily click on the video and watch it as it is. Sometimes we cover events where people speak Russian. Also, there are many comments in Russian language during our live broadcast.

What has been the most memorable or most significant event you were able to broadcast this year (in the opinion of you and/or your partners)?

The day when we had the most traffic and the highest number of viewers so far, was July 29^th, when we presented the results of the elections in Moldova.  On that day we had more than 6,000 live viewers. Also, some Romanian TV channels and national web-sites used our live video stream.

Have you had any difficulties with hackers attacking your site or with people spamming or acting as provocateurs in the comments section?

Yes, we have lots of provocateurs in the comments section, but didn’t have any hacker attacks.

 Do you have any advice for people who might want to start similar projects in countries with semi-closed media systems?  Why do you think it was possible for you to make a project like this happen in Moldova, and do you think it would be possible for people in places with more authoritarian governments, for example in Central Asia (or Transnistria)?

The main problem is with the quality of internet coverage in the country, and it depends also on the country's government. Live video streaming requires a good Internet connection, without it you can only do live blogging from the events. 

 What are your future plans for Privesc.eu?  Do you have any plans to generate original content (roundtable discussions or interviews which would be exclusive to Privesc.eu), or will you continue to focus on providing direct coverage of government-related events without commentary?

We have lots of ideas, but it takes time and resources to develop them all, so we take one idea at a time. We already have a talk show called "Fara cenzura" ("No Censorship") it's a show that seeks to present the facts without editing the video. Follow Privesc.Eu and you’ll see many great things in the coming months.

Жертва Телевидения*

While the video below (titled "Attention: Lukashism is hazardous to your health" by the person who posted it to YouTube) shows an individual who is an extreme case, it nevertheless is instructive to anyone who wonders why political opposition is so unsuccessful at gaining traction in places like Russia and Belarus.

There are many reasons, of course: incompetence of the opposition overall, lack of an appealing platform or practical solutions, limited access to media or the "administrative resource," and opposition leaders who refuse to cooperate with each other. But one very important reason is the potency of government propaganda, which portrays any non-loyal opposition as externally funded and dedicated to the collapse of the state, and the susceptibility of certain segments of the population to that propaganda.

The interview subject here talks at various times about shooting, skinning alive, and gassing to death those who protest Lukashenko's rule, and makes repeated and irate references to their American funding, before completely losing it at the end and cursing out whoever is doing the interview. Apparently this was filmed in either early or late 2008 in Gomel', Belarus.

This comes via drugoi - where commenters pointed out that this clip did not actually appear on Belarusian TV and wondered whether the person shown might be mentally ill (watch the clip and you'll see that's not an outlandish question).

*With apologies to Vysotsky.

Russian TV online

An earlier post on this topic has proven to be quite a magnet for Google searches - apparently many people share my interest in watching Russian TV over the internet.

Previously, I offered one option for watching a wide array of post-Soviet TV programming online; now I'd like to plug a site which I recently saw for the first time and which seems to allow one to watch three major networks' evening news shows (with a slight delay) for free, albeit in a small-screen preview format. The site is logically called "Russian TV Online," and it allowed me to observe what seems to be (though perhaps I'm misremembering his earlier style) Prez. Medvedev's newly Putinized deeper-voiced, shorter-sentence-using style of speech delivery in his remarks at a couple of the photo ops with CIS leaders in St. Petersburg.

At least on NTV, though, Putin made it onto the broadcast earlier...though I suppose a sample size of one doesn't really allow me to draw any broader conclusions.

For more reading roughly related to this topic, check out a much longer recent post here as well as the relatively recent (from 2006) issue of Pro et Contra dedicated to the theme of "[Russian] Television in Search of Ideology."

Breaking News: The Cold War Is Over!

I knew there had to be some reason I was channel-surfing at 1:30am on a school night. Now I know the reason - it was my destiny to be one of the few East-Coast viewers to see President Bush's speech from Bucharest live (on MSNBC, which seemed to be the only channel to carry it) and to receive this "breaking news":


To be fair to Bush, he delivered the line about the Cold War being over and Russia no longer being our enemy in the manner of one stating the obvious, and its appearance under the "BREAKING NEWS" tagline is the result of MSNBC's laziness with on-screen graphics. What's sad is that in some circles, thanks to the industriousness of the "New Cold War" school of thought, the reminder that the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago might actually seem like news.

Bush also reiterated his support for NATO Membership Action Plans for Georgia and Ukraine (predictably, the immediate mainstream Russian media reaction seems to be headlining this aspect of the speech). This not exactly breaking news, either - some of the opposition to Bush's stance from our European allies is discussed in this NPR piece, and Matt Rojansky of PSA posted an interesting and thoughtful piece yesterday about NATO expansion, concluding with an April 1st take on Bush's remarks in Kiev:

If I had the President’s ear today, I would advise him to place a call to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s incoming successor. He should tell the Russian leaders that this morning’s tough talk about cutting Russia out of the NATO expansion dialogue was just a very poor April Fool’s Day joke. The US-Russia relationship is of great importance to us, and we respect Russia’s legitimate security concerns. It is because we recognize that the Cold War is long over that we want to give Russia a real seat at NATO’s collective security table.

[The rest of the post is worth reading as well, for its look back at NATO expansion rounds past.]


Actually, Bush's Bucharest speech tried to have it both ways, suggesting that NATO should expand but at the same time trying to reassure Moscow that this would not be directed against Russia, and that his pet project white elephant European missile defense system is also not designed to counter Russia's arsenal. Interestingly, RIA Novosti is headlining its initial story on the Bush speech "Bush Calls on Russia to Combat Missile Threat Together," playing up Bush's call for US-Russian cooperation (of course, RIAN also posted, 20 minutes later, an atypically short one-sentence "article" headlined "Kremlin Seriously Considers Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia")


It seems like a difficult needle to thread - promoting NATO's expansion as a way of cementing Ukraine and Georgia's "independence" (that's Bush's word choice, and he is not alone in believing that their independence is imperiled), meanwhile arguing that Russia is not seen as a threat.

The Russian government, though, has its own needle to thread. Although its opposition to NATO expansion into Russia's underbelly is understandable and genuine (NATO expansionists who argue that Russia will eventually fold or that it has little real leverage are in effect advocating a game of chicken with Russia on the issue), it seems unlikely that Russia really wants to make good in the short term on its explicit threats to recognize Abkhazia's independence if Georgia is accepted into the MAP program. It will be very interesting to see what Putin says in his public statements while at the NATO summit. One issue appears to be that he may not get the chance to publicly address the summit - the Russian press is displaying its world-class talent for taking umbrage at imagined national slights.

In any event, it's difficult to imagine that Bush plans to have a positive and productive meeting with Putin later this week if Ukraine and Georgia get MAPs in Bucharest. So perhaps they will get nicely worded statements about cooperation and partnership with NATO but no actual MAPs, and the story of Bush's transatlantic trip will turn out to be the return to a realistic approach - if not an actual rapprochement - with Russia which a number of pundits have advocated of late. I wouldn't want to make any predictions, though, other than the obvious one - that this is going to be an interesting week.

Here's a bonus bit on the idea of a changing US approach to Russia (not immediately relevant, but I've been meaning to post this for a while) from Stephen Sestanovich of CFR, from an event in late February:

I think the phase of, sort of, Western commentary on Russian democratic progress and human rights performance is, sort of, over. The phase that we began at the end -- toward the end of the Cold War has, kind of, played out. And the idea that there's a lot of influence, just in moral opprobrium, is -- that one is not going to work for us as it has. And it -- you know, we might as well think of something, of something new.

If we're going to think of something new, the one thought I would suggest, as this, sort of, starting point for anything, is that it can't be an American attack on, you know, Russia's -- you know, the degree of Russian democratic virtue. It has to be something more broadly agreed among democratic states, and particularly the United States and Europe.

I would say that the administration, in general, has been weak in trying to develop a consensus with Europe about how to deal with Russia -- across the board, whether it's security issues, economic issues, political issues, democracy. And that is now, I think, recognized by the Europeans as something that really does need to be on the agenda of the -- for the U.S. and the Europeans if they want to have any influence in the future.

When enmity gets in the way of friendship

The free rein given to Kremlin-controlled mass media to whip up anti-Western sentiment briefly upset Russia's relationship with Serbia over the weekend. Somewhat ironically, this occurred just as the Russian government was accusing the U.S. of seeking to "humiliate" Serbia.

Serbia has forgiven Russia for the offensive comment made on "Vesti"
Lenta.ru, Feb. 25, 2005 [my translation]

Serbian President Boris Tadic accepted the explanation provided by a Russian delegation headed by Dmitrii Medvedev for a scandalous comment on the "Vesti +" TV show during a report on the massive protests in Belgrade against Kosovo's separation from Serbia, reports RIA Novosti.

According to a Russian diplomatic source, "an exhaustive explanation was given for this regrettable incident, and it was accepted." "Boris Tadic emphasized that he of course understands that these statements, which are unacceptable to Serbia, cannot possibly reflect Russia's position,"* said the source.

Reporting on the "Rossiia" channel on a mass protest in Belgrade, anchor Dmitrii [sic] Semin stated that today the Serbs had remembered "how a country stupefied by liberal promises mourned the loss of the Western puppet Zoran Djindjic, a man who destroyed the legendary Serbian army and special forces, selling out the heroes of Serbian resistance to the Hague for abstract economic assistance, and received for that a much-deserved bullet."

In response, Serbia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the "Rossiia" channel a note of protest, which stated that "the comment of journalist Konstantin Semin, which insulted democratically elected Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and excused his murder, is absolutely unacceptable for Serbia."

A video clip of the statement in question is up on RuTube and has collected some predictable comments there.

New Times journalist Ilya Barabanov diagnoses this on his blog as "smoldering schizophrenia" on the part of the Russian media, but one of his commenters takes a more reserved view:

Ilya, this isn't schizophrenia at all. It's ignoble, politically incorrect, short-sighted - call it what you want, but not schizophrenia. These people are not idiots, they understand perfectly well what they want and what they are doing. That doesn't justify their actions, but it shows that the diagnosis should really be a different one.

The reaction of another commenter:

When all kinds of scum started writing on the internet after Anna Politkovskaya's murder that she deserved to be killed, it was disgusting and bitter... When news broadcasts are conducted in this manner, I don't even know how to react.

And another interesting series of comments is here, suggesting how the rhetoric used by the Kremlin's court commentator with respect to Serbia's own passivity leading to their loss of Kosovo (in this case, the anchor's statement about having two options - "option A, to resist; option B, to give in, and this relates not only to Serbia") can with some creativity be applied to the Russian domestic political situation.

* Yes, I know this suggests that an alternative argument could be made that this incident actually demonstrates the Kremlin's inability to control the people who do its TV reporting.

[Update 2/27]

Two articles in today's Eurasia Daily Monitor mention this incident - here and here. The TV anchor's name is of course pronounced Syomin, not Semin.

And the Moscow Times has just put on its website a blistering editorial, which will run in tomorrow's print edition:

Rossia Should Bite the Bullet And Apologize

Thursday, February 28, 2008. Issue 3851. Page 08.

Rossia television has laid to rest any lingering doubts about whether the level of propaganda on state television has returned to record Cold War highs. Konstantin Syomin, an anchor with "Vesti Plus," opined on the nightly news program last Thursday that Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic had deserved to be assassinated for "selling out" to the West.

Syomin described Djindjic as "a Western puppet" who "destroyed the legendary Serbian army." He accused Djindjic of "selling the heroes of Serbian resistance" to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. Therefore, Djindjic "got a well-deserved bullet" in 2003, Syomin said.

One has to wonder whether even Soviet television anchors made such outrageous observations after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Moscow's Cold War foe.

The Serbian Foreign Ministry has filed an official protest, and Serbian lawmakers have complained. But neither the Russian Foreign Ministry nor Rossia have deemed it necessary to apologize.

Lax reporting standards allowing television anchors to opine on their news programs have long been a tradition in Russia. Another tradition has been state control of television management and the editorial content of news programs. The anti-Western bias, if not borderline hysteria, fomented on the national channels these days is part of this carefully planned coverage.

But to call the assassination of a prime minister "well deserved" is beyond the realm of biased reporting. It is simply appalling and unacceptable. It is also unsatisfactory for a democratic country and for any media outlet, whether it is state-controlled or not, to refuse to apologize.

The anchor's remarks were so shocking that one might be tempted to speculate that they were an attempt to undermine presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev ahead of his trip to Serbia on Monday.

Not only do Rossia and the Foreign Ministry owe an apology, but the channel would do well to fire the anchor and whoever allowed -- or instructed -- him to put such a "spin" on the bullet that killed Djindjic.

State media and its Kremlin supervisors should stop fomenting irrational anti-Western hysteria. True, there is a divergence of interests between Russia and Western countries on many key issues. But this does not mean that coverage of the West should be based on groundless or unacceptable invectives, such as the one voiced about Djindjic.

Sooner or later ordinary people will begin to wonder why the country's rulers want them to hate the "evil" West but send their own children to study there, keep their money in banks there, and buy real estate there.

Strangely enough, the Politburo, which guided the anti-Western propaganda on Soviet television, was more honest with the people because it did none of that.

Consolidating support for the President's course

Now that articles are appearing with titles like "You Must Not Leave Again. The Campaign for a Third Term Signifies That Both a 'Designated Successor' and a 'Caretaker Czar' Have Been Demonstrated to Be Excessively Risky Solutions to the '2008 Problem'" (Andrei Ryabov, Nov. 3, Gazeta.ru) - the 2008 problem looks like it really has become a problem, even for the people supposedly with their hands on all the levers.

Notwithstanding the elaborate versii (a post I had hoped to translate, but it's over a month old and thus may already be hopelessly stale by the standards of Russian politics - anyway, Google does an OK job of translating it here.) cooked up by professional political handicapper, blogger and anticompromat webmaster Vladimir Pribylovsky, it can be said rather simply that a lot of people - powerful and not-so-powerful alike, it would seem - want Putin to stick around in one Tsar-like guise or another. Others have been writing about how it would be the biggest mistake of his career for him to do so, and that if he really believed in or wanted to construct the institutions of democracy in Russia, he would step down.

Apparently, Putin is being "Driven to the Kremlin Wall" by his supporters - certainly those among the narod, but presumably more importantly, those among the elites, fretting in their Maybachs and Rublyovka mansions about what might become of their cash flow in a post-Putin Russia.

I ran across a crazy and somehow very disturbing website that seems to be part of the universal Putin love-in (last week, K-Vlast' got Russian politicians to respond to the question "Does the universal love [всенародная любовь] alarm you?" - another article I'd like to translate but haven't had time to; here's Google's best effort at a translation). The website is zaputina.ru, which launched last week and apparently is all set to become part of a nationwide "For Putin!" movement. I think I'll let the article from ostensibly objective business news portal RBC (an article which I found through a link on the zaputina website) speak for itself and also show how RBC seems to have been reduced to shilling for the regime on this story (my translation):

Virtual voting "For Putin!" is taking place on the Internet
[Nov. 8, 2007]

The internet campaign [Интернет-акция] "For Putin!" taking place on the Russian-language internet, has collected over 16 thousand votes in support of the President of Russia in a day and a half of existence. The creators of the project state that their goal is not to campaign for Vladimir Putin but to consolidate his supporters on the Internet.

As the organizers note, it is not only residents of Russian cities who are voting for Putin. Votes are coming in from London, New York, Kiev, Khar'kov and the other cities of the world.* "We don't want to convince anyone or encourage them to change their political views in favor of Putin's course," says one of the initiators of the project, political scientist Aleksei Zharich.** According to him, the goal of the project is to consolidate supporters of the president and his course.

Writer and former head of Boris Yeltsin's press service Marina Yudenich says that she decided to become involved in the project because she "watches the positive changes in the life of the country very closely." Lawyer [on TV, at least - trans.] Pavel Astakhov, another participant in the project, agrees with Marina Yudenich. "As a lawyer, I better than others understand and see the results of Vladimir Putin's work over the past eight years. These are lower taxes, social projects, and children's programs, and the development of the economy in such private-sector areas as consumer credits," says Astakhov.

The project's goal, in Pavel Astakhov's opinion, is "to show ourselves that we can choose our own leadership [власть] and can preserve those gains [завоевания] and successes which have already been achieved." Marina Yudenich thinks that the "For Putin!" project will show the part of society which is in doubt that the country's president really "possesses nationwide [всенародной] support."

The project allows internet users, aside from just voting, to publish their photo and leave a link to their web page. This personalization, according to Marina Yudenich, is very meaningful, since it "demonstrates that people are not just voting for the president, but they are doing this openly, showing their face and identifying themselves by name."***

* Here we see one of the more bizarre fixations of Putin's team (and often of Russians in general): a fixation on the support of foreigners, even those from countries perceived as enemies.
** Calling a campaign PR specialist or "polittekhnolog" a "political scientist" is such a very "virtual politics" thing to do. Or perhaps Zharich majored in politologiia at the MVD university (yes, that really is his alma mater, at least according to his LJ profile). Zharich's main contribution to the project appears to be that he had bought the zaputina.ru domain awhile back - I wonder if there is anything interesting lurking in the cached earlier pages from that domain?
*** I guess the secret ballot is no longer good enough. Ms. Yudenich neglects to mention how easy it is to manipulate such a website by posting fake photos and identities or filtering out ones the webmaster would rather not have appear; not to mention the comical idea of a "vote" on a website where there is only one choice.

It seems to me that Pribylovsky gets it just about right when he dubs this project "licking together" (a play on the name of the now-defunct, original pro-Putin youth movement, Walking Together).Strangely, there is also a za-putina project (the hyphen makes all the difference) which has been around longer and thus has more "votes"; according to Zharich, though, it's run by the same person who runs an anti-Putin site. Predictably housed at protiv-putina.ru, at least this website allows "voters" to leave comments. These sites could perhaps be seen as metaphors for the Russian political process - such polarization between a certain wing of the opposition and the mainstream that they can't even have their "voting" on the same website! And of course the more perfect way in which the official zaputina project simulates the Kremlin's view of the proper way for the people to interact with the authorities - the only form of acceptable feedback is a vote of approval; no comments, please.

Zharich is not particularly modest about the project he apparently manages. On his livejournal (his handle is brigadier - is that a coincidence?) he writes about what he sees as the main strengths of the zaputina.ru website:

1. Everything on one page!!! On one page.
2. Easy-to-use interface. The possibility of changing something around is excluded, but it's simple and maximally easy for a person to leave their vote.
3. Technologicity [Технологичность]: Video, audio, photo, entertainment [энтертеймент].* [...]
5. This is the real web two [point] zero.
(For those who want it to, their photo links to their web page, blog or online project, by the way. And that's the whole point. It's not a grey mass - but real people. You click and learn about the person, it's cool)
6. If Hillary, for example, had a project like this, the whole world would talk about it.**

* This sums up how Putin has managed to keep people watching TV even with all controversial or potentially controversial news programs dumbed down or removed. It is amusing that this guy seems to have forgotten that there are many perfectly good words in Russian for "entertainment."
** I wonder if this jackass savvy political operator knows anything about Moveon.org or other internet projects that made a splash in US campaigns. They weren't talked about by "the whole world" because they were domestic political phenomena. Why exactly should anyone (other than Russophiles/Russia-watchers like myself) outside of Russia care about this uncreative propaganda website?

For a guy who was born exactly a week before I was and cannot therefore pass as a callow youth, he has a strangely childlike glee about the whole thing.

Gazeta.ru covered the zaputina project and the affiliated (embedded, actually) russia.ru website, which is sort of like a unidirectional version of YouTube (you can watch what the webmasters have uploaded but cannot upload anything of your own or leave comments), in an article appropriately titled Путин-tube (here is a Google translation). The zaputina website is compared to a flash-mob ("where many people repeat the same, most often pointless, action") and it is suggested that these websites are efforts to attract some of the campaign funds which are no doubt flooding the country. You can follow what Russian blogs are saying about the zaputina website here.

So, is this a transparent, "democratic" feedback loop? Or a colossal, polittekhnolog-orchestrated circle jerk? Here at Scraps of Moscow, we report - and you decide.

Moving on to the partner site, Russia.ru calls itself a "Telechannel" (actually, the full text of the title that pops up in your browser window is "Telechannel Russia.ru: Glory to Russia!") and aspires to Internet TV status, although in the lower left-hand corner of the site is the logo and media license information of Kremlin-friendly news portal Vzglyad. As one commenter on a blog post about this story noted:

What do you think, will Russia ever have normal democracy? I think hope is dying out with each passing day...

Even Vladimir.Vladimirovich.ru - which is back in operation, hooray! - had a vignette last Friday about the zaputina project, which I'm too tired to translate and which Google doesn't really do justice. And others are laughing about the whole effort to keep Putin in office as well:

The soundtrack to the above video (really a slideshow of entertaining Putin images) is a song narrating Putin's imagined interior monologue as he arrives at the conclusion that he must remain in charge of the country "for the people."

Meanwhile, from all indications, the runup to to Duma elections is less amusing for parties not enjoying the benefit of the "administrative resource" and is anything but democratic. SPS, for example, has had one of its regional offices vandalized (and was then not allowed to use its allotted campaigning time slot on the local state-run TV channel), its website hacked, and its campaign literature confiscated on a rather thin pretext:

News Friday, November 9, 2007. Issue 3782. Page 3. Police Seize SPS Election Booklets The Moscow Times Union of Right Forces said Thursday that police had seized 14 million copies of its officially approved campaign booklet in more than 20 regions this week. In an entry on his LiveJournal blog, party leader Nikita Belykh said police justified the confiscations by saying it was necessary to examine the campaign materials for content possibly violating extremism or anti-monopoly laws. The Neo-Print printing house in Moscow, which prints most of the campaign materials for Union of Right Forces, or SPS, was raided by police on Thursday and had its operations suspended pending inspections expected to last at least until Dec. 2, when State Duma elections will be held, he wrote. A woman who answered the phone Thursday at Neo-Print said the company was operating as usual and declined to confirm whether it was raided by police. An SPS spokeswoman could not specify which police department had conducted the raid. Meanwhile, Vadim Gologuzov, a senior police official in Krasnoyarsk, said his officers had seized 2 million copies of the party's booklet because it contained an advertisement in violation of election laws, Interfax reported. In Izhevsk, police official Nikolai Shvetsov said police had seized 800,000 copies after an anonymous caller reported a hostage-taking in a garage, Interfax reported. Police found no hostages in the garage, only the campaign materials, which were confiscated to establish their legality.

Things have gotten so bad for SPS (and this time, none of it appears to be the party's own doing, as is sometimes the case with the misfortunes of Russian liberals) that they have even appealed to the OSCE for help, complaining about a "wave of persecution." Good luck.

Update, Nov. 12, 11am: I see this website is a popular topic. Today's Moscow Times in a story titled "United Behind a Putin Third Term", rehashes Gazeta's coverage and provides some more denials and perspective:

[...] [S]ix days after it opened, 27,000 people have already voted on a web site, Zaputina.ru, calling for Putin to stay on despite the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms.

Zaputina.ru did not provide any information regarding its creators, while a United Russia spokesman denied any official party involvement Friday.

"If there is no party's logo on the web site, then it's not the party's project," he said on condition of anonymity, because only the party's chief spokesman was authorized to comment.

Gazeta.ru, however, has identified the site's creator as Konstantin Rykov, who is on the United Russia party list in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

"This could have been a personal initiative on Rykov's part," the party spokesman said.

Gazeta.ru identified Alexei Zharich as the web-site project manager, and the Nic.ru domain registration center said it was registered in his name in October 2004. Zharich is listed by the web site Vybory.ru as the general director of the Political Technologies company and a former Interior Ministry employee.

A secretary who answered the joint work telephone number for Rykov and Zharich said Friday that both were too busy to talk.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reached on his cell phone Friday, said the presidential administration had no relation to the site. [...]

"United Russia's traces can be found everywhere in one or another form," Alexei Mukhin of the Center for Political Information said Friday. "Because the party has put Putin on top of its federal list, everything done in support of Putin is done in support of United Russia."

Mukhin said the regional rallies and Za Putina, despite United Russia's denials of involvement, could be aimed at pushing United Russia's share of the vote on Dec. 2 to 80 percent and "not permitting any other party pass the 7 percent barrier" to get into the Duma.

From the vault - the Russian media 3 years ago

My inactivity here in the past couple of weeks has been matched by my activity in real life (v reale, kak govorit'sia) - including a take-home midterm that is due Friday morning. Gah.

A couple of nights ago, I was looking through my personal emails from five years ago, trying to recall what I was writing in response to concerned emails from my friends and family in the US at the time that the Nord-Ost hostage crisis was happening. As it turns out, nothing that seems insightful or non-personal enough to share at the moment - maybe when five more years have passed. But I did find something else interesting - a translation I did of an article in Aktsiia (or, to be more precise, @ktsiia), a free youth-oriented newspaper which used to be available in the racks at the McCafe on Pushkin Square. If I had time, I would go through and insert links to relevant Wikipedia pages or pages of the TV shows mentioned, but hopefully the article is relevant enough as is. Remember what Russian TV used to be like?

"See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil"*
By Vasilii Bereza | Special to @ktsiia
Published on the internet September 7, 2004, and in the September print issue of @ktsiia

During the past few years, all more or less memorable events on Russian TV have been as a rule connected with the removal from the air of journalists or entire channels inconvenient to the Kremlin. The increasing number of topics which are "forbidden" to develop programming or broadcast about has steadily led not only to a crisis of content, but also to a crisis of format. The new television season starting in September visibly (and it can't be otherwise on television) demonstrates the utter stagnation of the domestic television industry.

This fall there will most likely not be any revolutionary changes on channels one and two [ORT and Rossiia/RTR]; these channels are betting on entertainment programs with a strong track record. Channel one will renew its broadcasts of the latest season of "Star Factory" ("Fabrika zviozd") and "The Last Hero" ("Poslednii geroi"). Possibly, the participants of "Hero" will be people who previously appeared on "Factory." On Rossiia, a new project called "People's Performer-2" ("Narodnyi artist-2") will start at the beginning of September and will be hosted by Fekla Tolstaya and Ivan Urgant. A new show by Dmitry Dibrov, originally developed for Channel One, will appear evenings on RTR.

To a large extent, the changes in the programming grids of the major broadcast channels are driven simply by the movement of shows from one channel to another. Thus, "School for Scandal" ("Shkola zlosloviia"), hosted by Tatiana Tolstaya and Dunya Smirnova, which used to run on the Kultura channel, will now appear on NTV. NTV's lineup has undergone the most extensive changes of all, which is linked to the personnel changes at the network. Leonid Parfyonov, fired from NTV in early summer for violating its corporate ethics, decided to dedicate himself to documentary journalism and made a film in Athens called "O, Sport, You Are the World" ("O, sport, ty - mir"). In the halls of Ostankino the former anchorman is now known as "Lyonya Riefenstahl."

A month after the scandalous departure of one of the NTV's leading journalists, the channel got a new general director, as Vladimir Kulistikov assumed that role. Right after his appointment, Kulistikov announced that Savik Shuster's "Freedom of Speech" ("Svoboda Slova") and Alexander Gerasimov's "Personal Input" ("Lichny Vklad") would be cancelled. The "Red Arrow" ("Krasnaya Strela") also left NTV. Stepan Kapusta the rabbit and Khriun Morzhov the pig went off the air supposedly because of either low ratings or flat humor. On the bright side, Tamara Gavrilova, who studied with Vladimir Putin at university, is now deputy general director. It's
not hard to guess who "calls the tune" now at the network.

How NTV's new programming lineup will look is difficult to tell for now. Ever since a ban was imposed on employees talking to the press, a lot of contradictory information has emerged. Some sources at the network say that the changes will first affect news programming, which has traditionally been NTV's strong suit. Starting in the beginning of September there was already a reduction in the number of daily installments of the "Today" ("Segodnya") news program -- instead of every two hours, the program now runs every three hours, and its length has been shortened to 12 minutes.

"The Country and the World" ("Strana i mir") and the 7:00 evening news, anchored by Mikhail Osokin and Olga Belova, have kept their places in the programming schedule. Former anchor Tatiana Mitkova now works on the news department's overall policies in the role of chief editor.

The situation with the Sunday analytical show is less clear. Even the network's journalists themselves say privately that they don't know what sort of format they will be asked to work in. Probably a clearer picture will emerge later, when NTV's new chief producer, Alexander Levin, gets the hang of his new role -- Levin was the progenitor of the first and most successful Russian reality show "Behind the Glass" ("Za steklom" -- a "Big Brother" clone). Most likely, NTV will slowly but surely be transformed into an entertainment-oriented format, which was predicted by observers back in 2001 when the network' ownership changed.

A state-held monopoly on the news is the market situation at the start of the 2004-05 television season. This leads, on the one hand, to a lack of competition between news bureaus, and as a result socio-political programming is steadily losing ground to entertainment shows and movies. On the other hand, a whole genre -- political discussion -- has left our TV screens, but as everyone knows, nature abhors a vaccuum, and the discussion will continue, it's just a question of what forms it will take.

The mass media are no longer fulfilling their main responsibility -- enabling a dialogue between society and the authorities. The impossibility of open, public debate has the potential to foster the marginalization of political movements, especially youth movements. Young activists have already thrown paint-filled balloons at the building on Lubyanka and seized ministerial offices to call attention to their issues.

Apparently, the authorities are determined not to notice the effect on Russian society of a total informational vacuum. This determination could potentially lead to dramatic consequences, first of all for the government.

"The hysteria surrounding this issue must stop" (V. Putin on the Yukos case). And sure enough, we are stopping the hysteria, not only about Yukos and freedom of speech, but also about the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya, which is yet again entering its final phase. Soon we will no
longer get hysterical about explosions in the center of the city and about passenger planes crashing. Well, no, actually we will, but only in our kitchens. However, Mr. President will not notice this and will "bless" us with the doubling or perhaps even tripling of the GDP. Not just the
president -- soon we ourselves won't notice any hysterical people, or more precisely, they're all gone already. That which is meant to inform us (forgive the impersonal construction) has turned into a mix of Verka Serdiuchka and the infamous doubling of the GDP.


What do you watch on Russian TV?
[from a sidebar on the same page of the same issue of @ktsiia]

Dmitry Itskovich, president of the "OGI" group of companies, publisher of Polit.ru:

Television is not really my way of life, I watch TV pretty rarely, and when I do watch it's usually movies, which after all aren't really television. I don't think people watch TV in order to get information or news -- for that purpose there are many other sources -- but in order to experience certain emotions, so as to relate their thoughts and feelings to standards and images which they trust.

With respect to the changes which have taken place recently and the disappearance of many independent projects from the programming schedules, I think this is entirely logical. My friend Kolya Pobol' told me once about a type of fish called the taimen, or actually he told me about why you can't find this fish wherever there are people. Taimen live in pairs in which the strongest individual fish unite. So a pair like this occupies the best spot in the river and holds onto it for some time. And then along comes a person and catches those leaders, and their place is rather quickly taken by weaker fish, which are also caught, and so on. That sort of degradation is taking place currently in television.

Bright people come on the scene, like Parfyonov, they work hard and create a personal brand. Then they get pulled out, each time for different reasons, but the general reason is nonetheless the same: to show "who's in charge of the river." And so space is created for accidental, or perhaps just the opposite, absolutely non-accidental, people.

Today, one can clearly see a tendency toward the weakening of public opinion, toward the disappearance of its leaders. The leaders are being forced out to the tributaries and backwaters, where they have little influence on the general mood. But there is no such thing as a silent society, that would violate the laws of social nature; of course, sometimes it does happen that there is no society, and such situations have their own rules and consequences.


Vladimir Kara-Murza, journalist, TV presenter:

You know, I like to watch the old shows from our channel ­ TVS. I have them on videotape, so anytime I want I can watch old editions of "Sum Total" ("Itogo"), "Free Cheese" ("Besplatnyi syr"), or "V nashu gavan' zakhodili korabli"...those are the kind of shows I like.

What have I watched recently? The miniseries based on "The Idiot" on RTR. Lately I find myself terribly irritated by the so-called analytical programs. In particular, I've found I can't stand watching "News of the Week" ("Vesti nedeli"), whether it's anchored by Revenko or Brilev. I started watching Lyonya Parfyonov less right before his program was shut down, after he started to give in to the pressure.

The same thing with Marianna Maksimovskaya and Sasha Gerasimov -- I can't forgive them for being live on the air as Khodorkovsky was being arrested and not saying a word about what was happening. They just continued to run their show as scheduled, when their choice of topics had a real chance to change the situation.

Overall, of course, it's sad to watch Russian ("nashe") television...although I still buy the TV schedule, and I try to pretend everything is the way it used to be (laughs).

Yes, I just remembered ­- there was a good show on STS, "Public People" ("Publichnye liudi"), now it's called "Istoriia v detaliakh." And I totally boycott the Sport channel, since they took over our frequency. Since I was directly involved with television production, I am, of course, an atypical viewer. But I think that I've been able to keep the ability to look at things freshly from the viewer's point of view and that I can realistically assess my own work and the work of others.


*I don't have the original of this article anymore, and it's not online anymore either, but for some reason I originally translated the title as "I see nothing, I hear nothing, I won't tell anyone anything." The revised translation seems more likely to be correct, plus it sounds better!

The end of the Putin Era (?) in posters

The folks at Grani.ru, who brought us the Free Khodorkovsky! poster contest a few years ago, have updated the contest concept for the 2007-08 political season. This time, the theme of the contest is "The End of the Putin Era." The contest asked artists to respond to a few questions:

What awaits the country in 2008? When and how will the ruling regime in Russia change? What are the results of Putin's rule? Where will the new leaders take Russia?

I've decided to post a few of these posters here and will even attempt (no doubt futilely, in some cases) to explain the humor or multiple meanings behind some of them.

First, a few of my favorites:

This one I love because it's a photo that anyone in Moscow could have taken - a photo of
an ad for Putinka vodka's toast hotline underneath the sign for the Lubyanka metro station.

This one positions a glass in front of a bunch of bottles of
Putinka in such a way that letters spelling "Kaput" are hightlighted.

Self-explanatory.

This one I liked because it represents the role of broadcast media in inflating
the popularity ratings or visibility of various public figures in Russia (the 1 on the
pump is the logo of the state-run Channel 1 network, also known as ORT).

Represented are Putin, Ivanov and Medvedev, and also, among others, Ksenia Sobchak
(who's sort of like Russia's answer to Paris Hilton) and ORT political commentator
Mikhail Leont'ev, who was already delivering blisteringly anti-American monologues a
few years ago, so I can only imagine what he's progressed to lately.

"A king is made by his retinue," reads the poster, which has the king surrounded by
sixes ("шестёрки") of various suits. In Russian slang, to be someone's "шестёрка"
means to be their "flunky" or "gofer" (according to Multitran), but to give the word its
proper prison slang meaning (since VVP likes to throw around a bit of prison slang
himself now and again), it's best translated in this context as being someone's bitch.

A number of the posters dealt with the possibility that Putin might stay in power or continue to run things from behind the scenes, and with the Russian electorate's lack of choices:

This is another great play on an image from pop-culture: "лохотрон" means any kind
of a scam designed to ensnare suckers or "лохи." The smaller text reads "the future does
not depend on you." The reference is to an ad campaign by mobile telephony provider
Megafon, which had the tag line "the future depends on you." Megafon was originally a
St. Petersburg-based company (Northwest GSM) which exploded onto the national scene
in the early years of Putin's rule, allegedly thanks to help from Putins telecoms minister
Leonid Reiman, who supposedly has an interest in the company.

The lenses of the glasses read "the end of the Putin era," and the
text below reads "visible only through rose-colored glasses."

Pretty much self-explanatory; the small print
reads, "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse..."

The hand is making the "fig," a hand gesture sort of (though not entirely) like giving
someone the finger in the US. The gesture can be used in Russia to signify refusal
when asked to do something, as if to say, "like hell I will." The creative tilting of
the 8 in 2008 to make the infinity symbol suggests who is telling whom to go нафиг.

Another frequently recurring theme in the posters submitted for the contest was Russia's oil wealth, and all of its consequences - from international braggadocio to domestic dependency to good old-fashioned class struggle:

Self-explanatory.

"We are sitting well!"
This expression can mean "everyone's having a good time" when used in the
context of a social gathering; but "to sit on the needle" or "become seated on the
needle" is Russian slang for becoming hooked on intravenous drugs.

"The Chekists are on duty until the last drop..."

This one may be my very favorite, because it incorporates themes of both oil
wealth and the power of the broadcast media. The figure with its feet propped
up on the barrel of oil is labeled "the authorities" (власть can be a difficult word to
translate), and the submissive figure watching TV is labeled "the people."
The caption below reads "an earth-shaking (or 'epochal') age."

Russian TV online

For those of you no longer in Russia who miss Russian TV, it looks like there's a new service called WebTelek which might satisfy your longings. They offer a subscription, but at the same time it's possible to view many Russian channels live for free on their website (at least for some amount of time - maybe they cut you off eventually). The channels are sorted by country of origin using the pull-down menu in the top right corner. So whether it's AZTV, Romania's Antena 3, or even Belarus TV, if it's post-Soviet or in the neighborhood (or not - they also have Chinese and
channels), they've got your fix. Enjoy!