easier to commit crimes in the dark, so it is not surprising that the first target of the attack, Vladimir Putin became independent Russian television. Availability of alternative sources of information – in fact, the source of information, not propaganda – with access to tens of millions of TV viewers as a hindrance to the consolidation of unlimited political power, and for a pretty corrupt appetites of the Kremlin leaders. Obstacle to be eliminated. To address it embarked on the fifth (!) The day after Putin’s inauguration in May 2000, when the Prosecutor General’s staff, the FSB and the Interior Ministry raided the office of the country’s largest independent media holding “Media Bridge”, which was part of the NTV – the main stimulus for the Kremlin and personally for the newly created President. Its programs are regularly talked about corruption in the highest power and the crimes against the civilian population in the fr amework of the “counter-terrorist operations,” criticized the creeping resovetizatsiyu, provided the ether opposition leaders and sharply ridiculed the claim until recently a little-known bureaucrat-security officer to the “national leadership».
«The war on NTV” lasted a year and ended, as we know, forcible seizure of broadcasting facilities on the eighth floor of the telecentre “Ostankino” on the night of Holy Saturday in April 2001. That shameful function that performs for NTV power today – a direct consequence of the events. Despite the fact that what was going on was evident even then – Press Minister Mikhail Lessin personally signed the so-called “protocol number 6″, guaranteed the main shareholder of NTV Vladimir Gusinsky termination of criminal prosecution in exchange for control of the broadcaster – many respected people covered by their names Kremlin version of the “dispute of economic entities.” Formally capture channel was due to debt dispute with “Gazprom”, although he refused to sign a gas giant agreed restructuring plan. Even less convincing “economic” arguments appeared in the campaign for the closure of TV-6 ̵ 1; channel that went to work expelled from NTV journalists. “The sixth button” has been off the air in January 2002 formally on the suit’s minority shareholder, the fund “LUKOIL-Garant” (15%), is based on the provisions of the law, which at that time had already ceased to operate.
In case of TVS – the last independent federal TV channel in Russia – the power is not worried about the apparent “legality”. Broadcast television was stopped on the night of June 22, 2003 (journalists joked: “On the night of June 22, without a declaration of war …”) by order of the same Minister Yassin with derisive phrase “defense of the interests of viewers».
The way to protect these ten years, “the interests of viewers,” known. Kremlin’s monopoly on television – the main source of information for 80% of Russia’s population – and has made it possible to sweep the political space, and electoral fraud, and the transformation of parliament “is not a place for discussion” and “basmanizatsiyu” justice, and the shooting of children in the Beslan school and government corruption of this magnitude, which, perhaps, was not yet in Russian history. And it is hardly a coincidence that the beginning of “Yukos affair” has coincided with the closing of the last independent television station in the country. Alexei Pichugin was arrested on June 19, Platon Lebedev – July 2, 2003.
«Once upon a time in Russia people displeasing the powers that be pulled language. Zamolknet one – a dozen of these speeches will not hear. But progress has done his job. Now turn off one channel TVS – zamolknet dozen people, and hear, not see the millions – so reacted to the closure of the TV channel in the summer of 2003, Elena Bonner. – So little choice: either to blame the progress, or those who are disabled channel. Or maybe still blame the millions who are silent in this? ».
Over the past ten years, the situation with a TV in Russia has not changed. Society has changed. So much so that even the state monopoly on the airwaves is unable to stop the thousands of protesters that were unthinkable in 2003. Implemented in 2000-2003, trimming information space beyond doubt helped Putin seriously delay the development of Russian society and civic awareness. But to stop this process, neither he nor his staff propagandists have spent ten years in all airtime, were unable to.
Original – Institute of Modern Russia
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