Photos from Sunday after the banya...

...on the walk to the office.


Perekhod still-life, under Tverskaya at Ul. Yuliusa Fuchika.


On Gasheka St.

Both photos taken around 2:30pm, Feb, 6, 2005.

Free speech on TV in Putin's Russia

This article requires no further commentary:

Monday, February 7, 2005. Issue 3100. Page 8.
Free Speech Does Not Fit the Script
By Yevgenia Albats

It was a rather unexpected phone call for these days. The producer of a talk show at one of the major television channels called to invite me as an expert on an upcoming program. "Are you sure? Did you run my name by your boss?" I asked. I know where I live, and I'm aware that there are lists of those who are allowed on national television and those who are not.

The young woman was confident: "I never cancel guests. The topic to be discussed is the increase of violence on television. So what is your take? Do we need a law banning violent scenes from television?" No, we don't, I said. There is no need to get the state involved in the realm of people's personal choices. Obviously, she didn't remember the Soviet era, when the state chose to play "Big Father" to us all, cutting sex, violence and, of course, unwelcome politics from television screens and feeding us a boring diet of the better world of communism to come. It never came, however.

"Sure, but violence is even on the evening news. Some say that those who run the networks are pushing violence to get higher ratings and more ads. Do you agree?" she asked. Yes, I told her, I did think that television should be socially conscious and responsible. Yet the reason why there is a constant supply of corpses on the news is not just because journalists lack taste, but also because the news menu is far too short nowadays. This, in turn, is because the Kremlin allows too few things to be broadcast by the major television channels. Chechnya is off-limits, for example, yet people are dying there on a daily basis. To cut a long story short, I said, if all television moguls care about is what President Vladimir Putin said, where he went and whom he handed out awards to -- of course, I was exaggerating a bit -- then you have no choice but to show police blotters on the news.

She said she needed to talk to someone and would call me back. She did. "You know, your point of view doesn't fit the script," she said. "No kidding. It doesn't?" I replied sarcastically. "You had better be careful when acknowledging such things to a journalist," I warned her. She didn't get me: "This is what we always do. We have to call several people before we find someone whose point of view fits the script." I laughed. After all, you had to give her credit: At least she was straightforward.

Another young woman from another major television channel who called me a couple of months ago was not. The topic of her show was a hot one, the new law that the Moscow City Duma was about to pass that would free the hands of confidential informers in a way reminiscent of the Soviet era. Sure, I was interested, I said, and asked right away if she had checked my name with her superiors. Her answer was an unexpected pleasure. She said she had read my book on the KGB, which came out in Russia in the early 1990s, and she believed I was the right person for the discussion. I asked her to e-mail me the legislation, so I could do some homework before the show. And, yes, I asked her to consult her superiors again, just in case. She was confident: Everything was set, and all I had to do was come into the studio in the next couple of days.

She did e-mail me the bill the next morning. But she never called back.

I wasn't and I am not surprised. Yet there is always room for curiosity. For instance, last Thursday, NTV ran the pre-recorded debate show "K Baryeru!" It featured zealous anti-Semite and member of the State Duma General Albert Makashov ranting about Jews for more than an hour.

Much of what he said was in direct violation of the Constitution and in any court would be declared the fomenting of ethnic and religious intolerance.

My question is a simple one: Why did that view fit the script? And who authorized it?

In memoriam

My father would have been 64 today. We miss him. Rest in peace, Dad.


Church at Nikitskie Vorota, around 7:30pm,
February 7, 2005.

See page 11 of this pdf (page 9 of the magazine), also here and here for more articles.

More on Russian blogs

Russian blogger Yakoff has a post up inviting Russian-language bloggers to leave comments with their blogs' URLs. When I have time, I think I'll do a separate blogroll of Russian-language blogs. There are not that many outside of LiveJournal, it looks like, and several of the ones I've found seem like thinly-disguised moneymaking endeavors with lots of links to porn sites and other likely paying advertisers.

Pics of Russia

Check out someone else's pictures from their trip to Russia a few years ago. The internet is full of surprises.

Reflection

The church at the start of Novy Arbat, as reflected in the facade of one of the hideous "book" buildings on that street:


Novy Arbat, around 3pm, February 5, 2005.

Sunday night at home

I was going to spend a bit more time blogging tonight, but got caught up in the outstanding entertainment programming on Russian TV: first a domestically produced, sitcom-like show, "Bachelors," on REN-TV. This show is apparently another product of the A-Media group, the geniuses behind some of the most successful Russian-made TV shows of the past couple of years. Then I caught the TV premiere of an outstanding movie about provincial youth gone wild, which I somehow missed in the theaters - "Moth Games" ("Игры Мотыльков") -- here's a link to some rather sparse English-language info about the movie -- on NTV.

It is definitely nice that in the past few years it's become possible to watch quality, Russian-produced programming (both movies and made-for-TV fare) on TV here instead of second-rate Western sitcoms and soap operas or Hollywood blockbusters (though there are still plenty of the latter) -- it almost makes this viewer not miss all of the fine news and informational programs that have been shut down in those same past few years. Almost.

Russian blogs

Poking around online this evening (OK, this morning by now) I found several interesting Russian blogs - if you read Russian, check out the links in the list over on the right-hand side of the screen (I haven't broken them out as a separate category, although I may do that at some point). Enjoy!

Sunshine

There was lovely sunny weather on Friday, so I took a lunchtime excursion to the antiques store at Malaya Nikitskaya 16, which also has a books section that specializes in dictionaries and foreign-language (i.e., non-Russian) used and rare books. Not the most interesting bookstore in the city for me by a long shot, but it's close to the office and I hadn't been there in a long time. When I arrived, I found the store's power out and numerous employees sitting in the dark discussing (1) how this might have happened -- the consensus was that some construction workers in a neighboring building were to blame -- and (2) how they might be able to boil water for a cup of tea without the use of their electric teakettle.

The sun shining into the darkened, dusty air of the store, coupled with some well-placed antique busts, created an interesting effect:





The store's exterior has a classic "книги" ("books") sign, which I will try to snap the next time I am in the area. Somehow I didn't think of that today, but I did get this rather spontaneous photo of an elderly lady shoveling snow in front of a neighboring building:

On a lighter note...

...is it really time for Eurovision 2005 already?! My, how time flies.