From Russia, with perplexity
Flowers mark the place where Putin opponent Boris Nemtsov was killed recently. St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin and the outline of Red Square are in the background. | Photos courtesy of Philippe Marcoux
Turns out the Russians do love their children, too — thanks for asking Mr. Sting — the first thing I saw when I arrived in Moscow was a public service announcement that encouraged parents to use a child seat in their car.
Everything else in the Russian capital, in St. Petersburg and even in Perm — a city in the Ural Mountains that I also visited — was just as you would expect in a European city. People are busily going about their business, dressed just as we are, at the wheel of, well, the same cars we drive (not a Lada in sight) and carrying bags from absolutely the same shops.
Surely these people have the benefit of all basic freedoms, including a free press. Then why was the Canadian embassy inviting a journalism lecturer from Concordia to present a series of conferences on press freedom, to journalism students from different universities in Russia?
Well, if Russian journalists had a Facebook status on their relationship with the Putin government it would read: It’s complicated!
'No one said the press was free in Russia'
Over the last week, I had the privilege to talk not only with journalism professors, but also with several practicing journalists and NGO leaders, who are pushing back against the government.
These were very public meetings in smart cafés or journalist association’s headquarters. Everyone was speaking openly, without apparent fear of angering the powers that be, and no one said that it was impossible to publish a story against the Russian government, or its friends in Russia. But then, no one said the press was free in Russia — far from it.
Every time I encountered something that seemed to me like a zone of freedom for the press, I was told another story which shattered that impression.
There was the journalist who is teaching in a small one-off civic journalism program funded by a public grant, where classes are given in a large room, with state of the art equipment, in a public library. But then it’s the same journalist who told me he had no real hope that his students would one day be able to use his teachings freely, and that he felt the program was allowed to exist because it wasn’t threatening anyone … yet!
A newspaper editor told us of an important story about Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine. The reporter was at the funeral of one of those soldiers in a remote city. The story was published, but the government simply said it was a pack of lies and carried on.
Philippe Marcoux (left) at the union of journalists' headquarters in Moscow. The bust on the mantle is of Pushkin, who, says Marcoux, "publicly read some of his poems in that very room!"
'Russia is not China'
We met with people running an NGO set up to help the aging victims of Soviet era repression, and preserve their memory. Here again, the NGO was allowed to operate, until it voiced an opposition to the government’s actions in Ukraine. Soon after it was labeled a foreign agent — a common accusation for those who get funding from outside Russia — and its existence is now threatened.
And then there was that journalist who told us of unbelievable voting fraud he had witnessed. Surreal situations, where voting officials ended up running away from journalists, carrying piles of fraudulent ballots. He published the story, but was then arrested and interrogated by police for attempting to “derail the electoral process.”
An expression I heard a lot there was, “Russia is not China.” True, but it is definitely not Canada either. Obviously, I told classrooms full of students about the problems faced by Canadian news media, and we have lots of them. But I felt like an impostor, like the guy complaining about the price of caviar to a starving crowd.
The press isn’t free in Russia, but there are journalists who still try, and when you ask them why they do it, they all answer two things: because someone has to and because they don’t know what else they could do. Unfortunately none of them felt their efforts were making even a small dent in the wall of propaganda and sometimes-heavy repression the government has raised in front of them. But who knows, they all say, maybe tomorrow…
My trip back went through London. Unfortunately the layover was only a couple of hours long. If time had allowed, I would have visited my old stomping grounds near the Notting Hill Gate tube station. I felt the urge to have a moment of quiet reflection, in front of a house I know around there. It has a blue sign on it that reads, “George Orwell lived here.”
Philippe Marcoux is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism. Marcoux is also a host and columnist on CBC/Radio-Canada. He has worked for 18 years for the public broadcaster as a journalist, host, columnist and newsreader in both French and English in Regina, Toronto, Montreal, Bangkok and London.
Find out more about Concordia’s Department of Journalism.
Thumbnail by Luis Sarabia (Flickr Creative Commons.)