international n repression


a vibrant alternative media landscape. Together, they combine to make a mockery of the prevailing narrative that citizens are blinded by an all-conquering propaganda machine. YouTube’s political vloggers remain free of censorship and


dominate influence, Ovchinnikov says. Then there are the news sites that emboldened the editor himself. These are led by NoyaGazetta, which has survived the alleged assassinations of several of its reporters. Growing in status is MediaZona, founded by a member of Pussy Riot. “We share information with all of them about our cases,” he says, breezily. “They share information with us. We have a good connection with them. There is no comparison, no competition. We work together.” Politics may have few radical voices in Russia but journalism has an alliance of many.


Rewriting the rules


Russia has a rich history of writers wrestling censorship in creative ways. The Team 29 offices are


just a short walk from a former home of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the revered novelist and journalist. The Crime and


Punishment author was famously dispatched to a Siberian prison camp after joining a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, which discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. Mikhail Petrashevsky, a friend of Dostoevsky’s, wrote the Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words so as to express radical ideas without being censored. The pair “weren’t rebels,


they were dissidents,” says historian Vera Biron. “Objectivity was always very important to Dostoevsky and he wrote what he thought. He didn’t invite people to


destroy the regime. But he would tell the truth. “In Russia, dissidents


who think differently are always punished severely. It’s our national tradition.” Where does it come from?


Author Martin Sixsmith suggests the terrain Russian heads of state have to control, coupled with the length of its land borders, makes a level of insecurity inevitable. Is expression becoming


any freer? Prison awaits people who dare to suggest Crimea is part of Ukraine rather than Russia, as Shaun Walker – a Moscow correspondent first for The Independent and now for The Guardian – reminds us in The Long Hangover.


I wonder what Mikhail


Bulgakov (pictured), one of Russia’s most celebrated social commentators, would make of historical comparisons of censorship. The Kiev-born journalist


and author of Master and Margarita was born into a wealthy family but had a miserable ‘career’ of largely unpublished journalism, books and plays through the Josef Stalin years. “Bulgakov tried to write


like Aesop, using all manner of metaphors,” says Peter Mansilla, director of one of two Moscow museums dedicated to the writer which opened after a thaw in censorship. Even Bulgakov’s writing


set in the future was banned until the last years of the Soviet Union. It is all available and celebrated now. It is progress, although perhaps not a revolution.


theJournalist | 15


ITAR-TASS NEWS AGENCY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28