“Newspapers did not have to write about shortages,” writes Arkady Ostrovsky of the fading years of the Soviet Union, “they were literally visible in the poor quality of their paper and fading colour of the print.” Ostrovsky’s latest book The Invention of Russia traces a history of Russia through the story of its beleaguered media. As a veteran correspondent for both the Economist and Financial Times, Ostrovsky has reported from Russia for over 15 years, bringing professional insight into the characters and stories behind the emergence of post-Soviet Russia.
Recent months have cast a shadow on Russia’s already bleak media landscape. The axe has fallen on Tomsk’s TV2, and the entire editorial staff of popular lifestyle magazine Afisha were fired in early December. Legal wrangling over broadsheets dragged on last year over new prohibitions on foreign ownership, hitting the business daily Vedomosti. The Moscow Times, following the resignation of editor Nabi Abdullaev, is now to be published weekly, with a decidedly less political focus. The leading English-language newspaper joins the venerable Vedomosti as one of businessman Demyan Kudraytsev’s new acquisitions.
As Russia faces further economic woes and a parliamentary election this year, the newly-installed barbed wire at the large state-run Ostankino television centre is a grim omen. There is scant cause for optimism. As Ostrovsky notes, the ultimate paradox of critical and independent media in Russia has been its dependence on a sympathetic occupant in the Kremlin for its defence. A brief and turbulent experiment with media pluralism taught Russiaʼs journalists to become some of the worldʼs most courageous — and newly wary leaders to respond in kind.
