The world is turning to conservatism. In the US, Europe and even Asia, conservatives are winning victory after victory. Russia was no exception, where conservatism at the state level finally took shape several years ago.
The world is turning to conservatism. In the US, Europe and even Asia, conservatives are winning victory after victory. Russia was no exception, where conservatism at the state level finally took shape several years ago. At the same time, conservative processes are not at all spontaneous: behind them there are very specific factors, among which scientific and technological progress is not the least important. Gazeta Nedeli spoke more about this with Kirill Martynov, editor of the politics department of Novaya Gazeta, associate professor of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Higher School of Economics.
Kirill, you are of the opinion that the world is turning towards conservatism. What do you understand by conservatism and how does this turn manifest itself?
By conservatism in the broad sense of the word I mean a type of politics that asserts that there was a certain exemplary period in the past to which it would now be good to return. Right now, political figures are becoming increasingly popular in the world who say that once in our great past there was a moment, a return to which will save us all from a frightening present and an even more frightening future. There are plenty of examples of this.
First of all, this is the election of Donald Trump, known for his conservative rhetoric. Next, the decision to withdraw Great Britain from the European Union. His supporters, among others, played the card of returning “good old England.” This year we will have elections in France and Germany. In France, thanks to the efforts of the current president, Francois Hollande, the socialists finally lost popularity. And although the radical right National Front party, led by Marine Le Pen, is unlikely to win, political competition in these elections will still unfold on the conservative flank: between moderate and radical conservatives. In Germany, amid terrorist attacks and migrant scandals, the popularity of the Alternative for Germany party is growing. This is such a typically anti-migrant project: they say, let's close the borders and return to Germany of the 20th century, isolated from the world and ethnically homogeneous. While the party’s popularity is relatively low, they can already become a stable minority in parliament, which in itself is significant. There are also a number of conservative processes taking place in Asia and Latin America. The rise to power in India of Narendra Modi with his specific Hindu nationalism fits well into this.
- Perhaps we are talking not so much about conservatives taking over the world, but about populists?
These concepts often overlap. The idea of returning to the “great happy past” fits perfectly into the concept of populism. After all, populism is precisely the willingness to say what people want to hear, without being able to fulfill these promises. The slogan “Let's go back to the industrial America of 1955, bring back the American dream and make our country great again” is, of course, what a significant part of Americans now wants to hear. However, in practice, it is apparently simply impossible to implement this slogan.
- What is the reason for the world turn to conservatism?
Logically, there are three possible answers here. First: the Conservatives are indeed right, and voters feel it. Second: the conservative electorate is uneducated people, fools, rednecks (residents of rural areas of the United States, an analogue of the Russian word “hillbilly.” - Note ed.) and so on, who do not understand anything. And three: conservatism is a simplistic answer to a set of deep problems facing the world for which we do not yet have solutions. That’s why conservatives come to the fore because they were the first to find an answer: “We need to go back to the past and hide from problems there.” Personally, I prefer the last option. I don’t trust conservatives, but I don’t think people are fools either.
- What are the deep problems that society faces?
I think there are three interrelated reasons why Western-style political systems are in crisis. First: significant changes in the global economy. In a nutshell, the end of the industrial world is coming. We in Russia are very familiar with the concept of deindustrialization: in the 90s, factories were closed, many Russians were left without work, and it was difficult both for individuals and for entire cities and regions. The whole world is experiencing similar processes today.
Trump voters are largely citizens who have lost their jobs. There are depressed regions in the United States where people receive food cards from the government. Trump says we need to return industrial production to the United States and thereby return to the American way of life of the middle of the last century. But now, even in China, people in factories, under the influence of natural market laws - expanding domestic demand and increasing labor productivity - began to receive too much. Therefore, sites for cheaper production are being sought in South Asia. Yes, Apple is indeed discussing the possibility of moving assembly lines to the United States - and it would seem that this is Trump's dream come true. But there is one problem: this will be an automated process with minimal human intervention. Such a factory will not be able to create many jobs. In the current conditions, everything is heading exactly towards this: it doesn’t matter where your production is located, but what matters is what technologies you use. So the revival of production will still not allow us to solve social problems.
- And over time, production automation will continue to increase...
And in the future, this could deal a serious blow not only to ordinary workers, but also to the middle class. Another symptom of economic problems: a giant leap in wealth inequality around the world. The famous Gini coefficient (a statistical indicator of the degree of stratification of society. - Note ed.) is now growing everywhere, including Europe, the USA and Russia. And people don’t like it for good reason.
The second reason for the global crisis: the modern economy imposes stringent demands on the labor market. In fact, these are the same requirements that we place on services and capital: a person must be extremely flexible, infinitely mobile and not subject to nostalgic desires to live in one place. But people themselves are not too ready to live in such a world. A situation arises when, on the one hand, a person needs to look for a job where they will pay him more, but on the other hand, he does not want to do this. However, more mobile people had already come to his city in search of a better life, and they found this life.
For example, now in Moscow there are huge numbers of immigrants from Kyrgyzstan working in cafes. Workers from Central Asia are gradually beginning to apply for better-paid jobs in the service sector - not everyone is already working as illegal immigrants on construction sites. It becomes difficult for people to live in such a multicultural and highly competitive society, they do not have enough skills to do so. If the United States was created as a country of migrants, then, for example, in Europe there were completely different conditions: for centuries, stable ethnic groups professing the same faith lived there in each specific territory.
- And the third reason?
It is connected with the development of the Internet. In recent years, everyone has come online, not just the educated part of society. And then it turned out that on such an Internet, the majority of the inhabitants are exactly the same conservative as in the real world. The logic “fashionable kids hang out online, while the rest of us watch TV” no longer works. It became clear that the Internet is perfect not only for liberal, but also for conservative mobilization. This was shown by Trump, who conducted his election campaign on social networks, although ten years ago his electorate was almost non-existent on the Internet.
Previously, there was an illusion that as soon as you connected the Internet somewhere, liberal freedoms would immediately begin to flourish: Obama-style democracy, the legalization of gay marriage, tolerance and free-thinking. As it turns out, this is not the case. Moreover, we find ourselves in a world where a huge portion of the media sphere is controlled by just a few private companies. And, for example, the rules of Facebook, the largest media with an audience of more than a billion users, and the desires of its owners can influence the entire media situation. Well, the Internet, due to its horizontal structure, has turned out to be a very toxic environment where trolls, “white noise” and generally any nonsense can flourish. In such conditions, the old institution of expert knowledge, the old democracy of mass newspapers and television are destroyed.
- What’s wrong with the institution of expert knowledge? Is anyone disputing it?
An expert in the 20th century is a person who, say, a prestigious radio station gave time on the air, he came to the editorial office and said something smart. And you, the radio listener, listen to him. But with the advent of the Internet, anyone has the opportunity to become an expert. Now everyone can write notes about politics on a blog, they will even invite you on TV later. And many have already made a career out of it. For example, I have an acquaintance who wrote on Twitter for a long time, then went to the Public Chamber and is now broadcasting something on TV about our national interests. Moreover, he does not even have a higher education.
But the main thing is that now we know for sure that the experts are wrong. Today we can easily find on the Internet what an expert said before Trump was elected president and see that he was most likely wrong. This is a crisis of expertocracy. Previously, experts explained to you how everything works, but now you see at close range on the Internet that they are just some talkers. Now you have your own experts on Facebook who have their own point of view on everything.
- Has such a global turn to conservatism ever happened in the world? And how did it end?
An analogy with the events of the mid-19th century comes to mind. At that time, developed industrial capitalism already reigned in certain parts of the world, but alongside it, old feudal empires existed in parallel. The world was changing, but in some places people responded to these new challenges with attempts to restore the monarchy, support the class regime, and clung to religion as a sign of political stability. However, in the end, all these structures that relied on conservation died. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it seems to me that now the scale of the problem is no less: the economic changes that are leading to social changes are so serious that it still won’t be possible to cover them up with a conservative agenda. This will only delay facing the problems in full.
- We talked about America, Europe and even India. Is there a conservative turn in Russia?
Russia's conservative turn has already occurred, and it has been accomplished in less than 10 years. In 2007, its first lines were outlined, and in 2013-2014 it expanded to its full potential. In Russia, the path to conservatism was especially rapid and difficult.
At the beginning of the 2000s, Vladimir Putin, with his good German, made a splash in the Bundestag when he talked about how close democracy was to him and what a modern country Russia had become. In the West, he developed the image of a brilliant young democratic president. But then at some point we found ourselves in a situation of developed authoritarianism - this is such an ironic allusion to the term “developed socialism.”
In order to explain to the people the reasons why a narrow group of friends, classmates and old acquaintances remained in power for almost two decades, the use of ideological models was required. They became rhetoric about the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” and about restoring our “wounded pride” on the foreign policy scene. By the way, I believe that such a problem as “post-imperial trauma” is quite real.
In parallel, the theme of “traditional values” developed, explaining the differences between “us” and “them.” Why has one group of people been in power in Russia for a long time? Yes, because everything here is completely different from that in this despicable Europe. We have order. And the people who guard it also protect our values. By the way, it seems to me that the Russian example clearly shows the lie of this conservative rhetoric about traditional values. Because we consider the Netherlands to be the source of evil, where soft drugs, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia are legalized. But if we look at the number of divorces in Russia and the Netherlands, we will see that in the Netherlands there are significantly fewer of them. And there are no orphans there whom no one wants to take from orphanages.
Kirill Martynov about the fate of the agreement between Moscow and Kazan, censored media and why in Russia it is desirable to know not only the Russian language
The thinking generation of the 2000s, who settled on Facebook, unexpectedly discovered that a new generation of Internet users had emerged. And these youth are politically active, courageous and critical of the authorities. The head of the political department of Novaya Gazeta, Kirill Martynov, spoke in an interview with Realnoe Vremya about what to expect from her, what opportunities the country provides her and why she would be ready to follow anyone who will pull her out of “doom.”
We are returning to a world in which a teenager dreams of becoming a security officer, an FSB officer or an army general.
Kirill, one gets the feeling that Russian youth have recently become politicized. You have been teaching philosophy to students for many years, observing their moods, what is your opinion on this matter?
I will note here two points that ultimately give a fairly strong effect.
First trend. The first mass Internet generation, which I also belong to, are people who came to the Internet in the early 2000s. They are accustomed to the fact that the most advanced, the youngest, the most technologically savvy, the most fashionable, and so on collide on the Internet. But time passes, there is a natural change of generations, and now we are seeing a situation where Internet users of the 2000s are gradually withdrawing into themselves. They have familiar platforms for communication - in the Russian context, this is, first of all, Facebook, where there is an intelligent audience that considers itself thoughtful (sometimes justified, sometimes not). And since we had such an attitude that cool guys are on the Internet, we did not notice how another generation appeared on other platforms - VKontakte, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube. These guys are not only too young to catch LiveJournal or become seriously interested in Facebook. Even things that, as it seems to us, happened just yesterday, like Bolotnaya Square in 2011, did not become part of their history; at that time they were in school in the lower grades.
We didn’t imagine that you could grow old on the Internet, so we didn’t notice how the generation and with it the platforms and formats changed. This idea still reaches people with difficulty. But then politically active youth emerged and began to discuss something on the Internet and go beyond it, which we observed in the spring.
“Young people, who are now about 20 years old, have found themselves in a bad story, I would even say dirty. This is the story of what has happened to the country over the past three years." Photo by Oleg Tikhonov
The second trend, which has almost nothing to do with media. Young people, who are now about 20 years old, have found themselves in a bad story, I would even say dirty. This is the story of what has happened to the country over the past three years. In 2014, they were 15 or 17 years old, they all remember the Sochi Olympics, they remember the strange story around Crimea, they remember the conflict with Ukraine, how the ruble collapsed, how many families could not count on the standard of living to which they were accustomed. Many of them, especially from big cities, had to say goodbye to plans to go study abroad. Many people have begun to realize that if their only laptop breaks, they will have a hard time replacing it, which is a pretty scary prospect in today's world.
That is, these are young people who saw that some kind of normal life that they found was transformed into something else - both due to propaganda, and due to strict social expectations that the screws would be tightened and the time of denunciations would begin, and due to the deteriorating economic situation of Russian families over the past three to four years.
- And there are probably different forms of young people’s response to such a situation?
A modern 20-year-old young man in our country has a trivial overview of opportunities. Purely logically, he only has three. Some people try not to notice all this and live in their own interests. Most people do this. Someone is trying to romanticize what is happening in the country, sign up for the Sputnik and Pogrom website, and dream about how he will go to burn in a tank in the Donbass. This is, of course, a small number of people. From this group, for natural reasons, young people are recruited into the third group, which is increasingly surprised by what kind of country the older generation is leaving them as a legacy, how it happened, who is to blame for this, what alternatives exist or could be.
Therefore, I believe there are objective reasons why politicians who will offer some kind of alternative to the existing state of affairs have almost unlimited human resources in this generation. After all, more and more young people realize that they have been deceived, that they are left with a country with an inflated military budget, plundered by officials, increasingly closed in on themselves, where representatives of the elite, the same officials, still send their children to study abroad, but at the same time they say that everyone should be patriots. That is, a country that is not only not developing quite normally now, but also deeply hypocritical.
And to summarize what happened with the protests this year, I would say that it was a rebellion against the hypocrisy that exists in the older generation, in schools, universities and so on. Not all Russian young people want to integrate into the system of social practices and social order that their older colleagues are now offering them. This is a very important turn that could potentially take us very far. Because for those young people who do not want to integrate into the food patron-client chains, there is no bright path and set of opportunities in Russia, there is simply no place for them in Russia.
“If I sum up what happened with the protests this year, I would say that it was a rebellion against the hypocrisy that exists in the older generation, in schools, universities and so on.” Photo by Oleg Tikhonov
In this regard, you can ask a slightly artificial question: what do you think a modern 16-year-old Russian teenager is dreaming about now? Who is his life reference, what does he want to become?
Recently, when our government rhetoric was built around modernization, which we are considered to have successfully talked about, it was assumed that Russia should return to its positive experience of the 20th century - a country of engineers, a country developing advanced technology. And our talented young people could see themselves in the future as Russian Elon Musks. But now this scenario is not in great demand among us. It seems that we have never given up on modernization in a purely technical sense, but it’s strange to dream about it because of American sanctions, because studying in the West most likely won’t work, working in the global world is also quite difficult, many Western companies are leaving Russia .
In general, this is a world in which a teenager should dream of becoming a security officer, an FSB officer or an army general. This world is quite archaic. It feels like we're going back to the 19th century in terms of what we can dream about.
In your blog you write about young people “from good universities and families” who “found themselves in the bullpen for the first time”, who met “Russian institutions” for the first time. You write that “this experience cannot be obtained in any other way. Both in a Russian school, and even when faced with military registration and enlistment offices, people still feel at least a little free. The Russian court is a completely different matter. So this is an acquaintance with tradition, initiation.” What kind of tradition is this?
This is a dual experience. It is really important, because now thousands of people are involved in it, hundreds of those detained and serving administrative sentences. And also their friends and families. And they all go through the experience, on the one hand, of confrontation with the state, on the other hand, the experience of their own powerlessness, when you understand that the state is ready to constantly recruit, and it is not entirely clear in whose interests it is doing this. To describe the actions of the state, you can use the primitive metaphor of a hydra - you won an appeal in court, but after that new judges appeared, several more witnesses that you behaved badly at the rally, you were again given a fine, you again ended up in the bullpen, and you again I felt powerless. The people who have this experience and return to society are completely different. Officials do not think at all about what seeds the state sows.
- And what do they look like?
Different conclusions can be drawn. Someone will understand that they need to stop with this, that all this is too dangerous. Someone will turn into a person who, on the contrary, is not afraid of anything, because he has already seen the utmost meanness and nonsense in relation to himself, has faced imprisonment, albeit for a short period, and in some sense of the word is no longer afraid of this . Because if a person goes through this once, he can go through it again. This is a person who does not see the state as a potential interlocutor: the state pursues its own goals, and they have nothing resembling the interests of protecting people. I think this is a major life change.
“If a person goes through this once, he can go through it again. This is a person who does not see the state as a potential interlocutor: the state pursues its own goals, and there is nothing like the interests of protecting people.” Photo by Maxim Platonov
“Sooner or later free media will return”
- What pushes young people to do things like what Varvara Karaulova did?
The story with Karaulova is quite simple. She was an impressionable teenager who thought she was, or was, lonely. For me this is a very clear figure. I knew quite a few people like her. And she studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, from which I graduated. I believe that her trial is extremely insulting to our society, and the saddest thing is that we could not achieve any change in her fate, because she will apparently serve 4.5 years. We can only hope that she will be released on parole sooner. But in her case, everything is clear: she was 16 years old, she was communicating on the Internet with some bad guy, a heroic man, as she imagined him. And in the end, her whole crime came down to the intention of going to where these bad guys are. Some people made comparisons with an American couple who also traveled, being propagandized by these Islamists, to the Middle East. They were detained at the airport and also given prison sentences. Karaulova was convicted formally according to the law, which is not very obvious to me. I think that even in this case the law does not work correctly. Because society should rather protect people like Karaulova from such risks - as long as she has not committed real crimes.
The youth media market in Russia can be said to be dead. Who is the information authority for young people and teenagers today? Vloggers?
I agree that vlogging culture has been viewed by this age group as a kind of home culture for the past few years. They are almost not interested in the media for the reason that they are censored, false, unreliable, and uninteresting. As for the media market for teenagers, it really died, its place was taken by popular video bloggers, and if we look at the topics that are discussed by them, we will see that they intersect with the topics that were discussed in the teenage press when it was relevant and fashionable and when this press was relatively uncensored and free - that is, back in the early 2000s.
There is a problem that now two media realities - the media and those sources that are of interest to the young active Internet audience - do not intersect with each other. When the video bloggers were dragged to the State Duma, we tried to talk to them and ask them why they needed this. And I found out that it is quite difficult to contact these video bloggers because, first of all, they are not very interested in communicating with the media, since they are their own media, and if they make a successful video, then it gets more attention than publications in press. And secondly, because journalists are not particularly interested in them. I judge by the fact that in large contact databases for professional journalists, most of the names of bloggers and their pseudonyms are completely absent. Let's say there is a blogger Sokolovsky, who became a defendant in a high-profile criminal case in Yekaterinburg. A number of bloggers who go to his trials and make high-profile video reports from there are absent from these databases.
“Vlog audiences are inevitably aging, and people can’t watch meme videos forever. They realized, accepted, mastered this format, and then video blogs are also developing towards analytics and more serious investigations.” Photo svoboda.org
Navalny is also a kind of video blogger, and his most successful investigation about Medvedev did not contain new information, but he managed to take the information that was published, add vivid graphic images, fly drones over different places, like a dacha in Ples, and submit it as the form in which the Internet was ready to accept it. Perhaps if we had some free federal TV channel, such an investigation about some official would have come out earlier, and then these video bloggers would not have been needed. But now we have censored and, moreover, edited in real time by curators from the presidential administration, which works according to topics, and there are white topics and black ones that cannot be discussed. It does not compete with anyone, it is focused on itself and its audience. We also have an increasingly shrinking sphere of official media, which is still trying to work within the bounds of decency and professional ethics, to do its job, to tell what is happening. There are fewer and fewer of them before our eyes. And the only growing alternative to both are vloggers. In a sense, this is a trend towards segmentation of the media space, towards a more or less still uncensored Internet with the growing popularity of people who are ready to show a free picture on YouTube (maybe not very well made). This is a consequence of the state into which the Russian media market as a whole has entered, when there are two parallel, non-overlapping realities that speak different languages.
There is a solution to this problem. The vlog audience is inevitably aging, and people can't watch meme videos forever. They realized, accepted, mastered this format, and then video blogs are also developing towards analytics and more serious investigations. And the growing audience switches to some more serious sources or at least dilutes its news agenda.
My work at Novaya Gazeta is largely connected with this plot. We have a responsibility to young audiences because when they need what we do, we will have to provide them with modern content that they are ready to consume. It is clear that this newspaper is no longer in the form in which it was published 15 years ago.
And Russian censorship is not eternal either. Society cannot live by keeping silent for decades about what is actually happening in society. Sooner or later, free media will return to Russia. Perhaps this process will be long and probably difficult, but one day the media will, it seems to me, begin to fulfill their function. So in the long run things won't be so bad.
“Something interesting comes from diversity of cultures.”
In your recent interview on Ekho Moskvy you mentioned “such a complex region as Tatarstan.” What is the complexity of our region?
Tatarstan is a unique region where there is an agreement on a special division of powers between Kazan and Moscow. This agreement, according to various rumors, now seems to be about to cease to exist. And the difficulty is that local authorities, accustomed to a certain level of independence and extremely negative about anyone interfering in their affairs, will react more nervously to an attempt at what is usually called restoring order from Moscow, the Kremlin, but what in reality is often simply a redistribution of resources, when some federal security officials appear and close financial interests on themselves or their bosses from Moscow, and not on representatives of the local elite. But, as Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev taught us, “there is no money” and there is less and less of it, and competition between strong local elites and these people who are trying to transfer cash flows to themselves is a potentially risky scenario in a situation where the central government is losing its legitimacy and the ability to invoke Putin’s personal authority.
“I like it when the signs are in different languages. In Kazan there are even signs in three languages. And such bilingualism is a curious political and linguistic game.” Photo prokazan.ru
- In your opinion, are national republics necessary?
This is almost a rhetorical question. It is clear that we will not be able to get rid of the legacy of the RSFSR, within the framework of which these national republics were invented. National republics in the Soviet Union had such a two-level character. 15 republics had formal sovereignty. The remaining national republics were part of the Russian Federation and did not have such status, many were offended.
I could dream of a Russian Federation built on a model more reminiscent of the territorial division of the United States, where the states are devoid of this national specificity, and many of them have their own strong, almost national, identity, but at the same time there is also a common American idea, and this does not come down to a discussion about the right of a particular ethnic group to self-government.
I have a contradictory attitude towards ethno-national entities. On the one hand, this can be very interesting. I like it when the signs are in different languages. In Kazan there are even signs in three languages. And such bilingualism is a curious political and linguistic game.
There are many regions where a significant part of the population is not ethnic Russian, but at the same time the language policy there is such that there is no formal support for the local culture; it is considered something indecent and unnecessary. Like Chuvashia, for example, or Mordovia. These are regions where there seems to be a local language, but at the city level it is not used. I don't think this is very healthy. I love the diversity of cultures, something interesting and curious emerges from this, and there are many historical examples of this. But I am not close to the fact that within the state you have implemented the principle of political nationalism in a specific Soviet version... Moreover, “political nationalism” in the sense in which Ernst Gellner used it, who did not attach any value to the word, he simply said that political nationalism is the principle of “one people - one state”. When this principle also begins to be implemented in our national republics, and somewhat half-heartedly, it looks strange, I am not delighted. Although since I like the signs, the only way to support these signs is to have national republics.
But often this bilingualism is formal, and many Tatars do not know their language, rarely use it in everyday life, and experts have many complaints about the way Tatar is taught in schools.
It seems to me that interest in the Tatar language is growing. This is a global trend when people, being in a global world (and Russia has not yet been completely erased from there, despite recent political events), begin to look for real or fictitious features that are rooted in some distant or not-so-distant past . And as long as it doesn't turn into a completely absurd idea that Russians are better than Tatars or Tatars are better than Russians, I think it's pretty cool. People who lost Tatar in the past, but learned it in the present, I am sure, are serious people with whom I would be interested to talk about Tatar literature, Tatar history, written from a different perspective, not a Moscow-centric one. The same processes are developing in Europe. They are residents of the global world, they have the European Union, and at the same time there are strong regional trends - in Catalonia, Scotland, northern Spain, Leon.
“I love the diversity of cultures, something interesting and curious emerges from this, and there are many historical examples of this. But I am not close to the fact that within the state the principle of political nationalism is implemented in a specific Soviet version...” Photo by Oleg Tikhonov
In general, I really like the topic of the non-Russian-speaking Russian Federation. If we somehow connect our lives with Russia, then it would be good to know some non-Russian language, which, however, is widespread in Russia. There is such a project, which is not very successful from the point of view of animation: the cartoon “At the Lukomorye Green Oak” is voiced in either 15 or 20 languages that are common in Russia. This is very cool, because the languages spoken there range from dialects of Belarusian, which are common in the Smolensk region, to the Chukchi language, and there is an even larger group of Turkic languages and completely different Finno-Ugric languages. It is very interesting. Such a monstrous and dirty thing as patriotism manifests itself, among other things, in the form of interest in what is really happening where you live. And this means that in addition to English and Russian, you need to be interested in something else.
To be continued
Natalia Fedorova
Reference
Kirill Martynov- Russian philosopher, specialist in the field of modern political theories, analytical philosophy and sociology; journalist, publicist, translator and blogger. Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor. Political commentator for Novaya Gazeta, lecturer at the Higher School of Economics.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Number
Lithuanian military personnel are in Iraq as part of various international missions
All materials (6) / All articles (6) / All reports (0) / Discussed materials / in Articles in RSS
-
Turkish friendship
06/30/2016 / Politics“Russian turn” to put pressure on the EU. Why did Erdogan make new contact with the Kremlin right now?
-
After the "Bridge of Spies"
05.26.2016 / PoliticsAleksandrov, Erofeev and Savchenko returned to their homeland - and this is good news. The bad news is that hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian citizens remain in prisons on both sides of the border, as well as in the “DPR/LPR” territory, awaiting exchange. It was not possible to attract as much public attention to their fate as to Savchenko (by the way, criticism of Savchenko’s lawyers, who were advised by many to be quieter and get a calm “ten” for their client in a Russian prison, somehow suddenly subsided). We won't see any other captives and convicts in this modern version of Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which, alas, is no longer set between two superpowers during the Cold War. The analogy with the story filmed by Hollywood is not only in the number of mutually betrayed “spies”, but also in the fact that Erofeev and Alexandrov were not “embraced” on the bridge - no one, except, of course, their wives.
-
Ten non-fiction books of 2015
01/16/2016 / CultureRadical inequality, mass fears regarding GMOs and terrorism, the funeral of one leader that lasted 60 years, anthropogenesis and retromania, archeology of Russian culture and montage as a method of its survival, current practical philosophy and crimes of the motherland. Editor of the Department of Politics and Economics Kirill MARTYNOV selected 10 non-fiction books published in 2015 that claim to convey something important about the times in which we live.
-
Twenty anti-terrorism
11/18/2015 / PoliticsResults of the G20 summit in Turkey: tension in relations between Russia and the West is decreasing. In the face of the terrorist threat, the parties are forced to look for common ground on all controversial issues
Novaya Gazeta is a well-known Russian socio-political publication that has been published since 1993 and has specialized in investigative journalism since the beginning of its existence. The publication has more than once found itself at the center of scandals, including due to more than dubious statements by its employees, as well as due to the appearance on its pages of unverified or subsequently recognized false information.
Who pays for the music
If you believe information from open sources, a controlling stake in Novaya Gazeta (76%) belongs to the publication’s staff, 14% belongs to a notorious businessman (in particular, for a public fight with the subsequent serving of a criminal sentence). Alexander Lebedev, 10% - to the first and only president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev.
At the beginning of the 2000s, there was talk that a foundation had a hand in financing Novaya Gazeta. George Soros, and according to Izvestia, the publication also received “sponsorship” from the Dutch government. The data was given for 2015, when the downed Malaysian Boeing was mentioned in more than a hundred Novaya publications and the bulk of these materials were anti-Russian in nature, Izvestia reports.
Also, judging by information from open sources, one of the financial donors of Novaya Gazeta is the co-owner of Yota Devices Sergey Adoniev.
Thinning ranks
Novaya Gazeta was created in the spring of 1993 by a group of journalists who left Komsomolskaya Pravda. At the origins of newspapers stood Dmitry Muratov, who headed the publication until 2017, Pavel Voshchanov, Akram Murtazaev, Dmitry Sabov and others.
Gave his first money to the newspaper Mikhail Gorbachev, who used part of the funds from his Nobel Prize to buy eight computers for Novaya.
In November 2017, Dmitry Muratov left the post of editor-in-chief; now the editor-in-chief of Novaya is Sergei Kozheurov.
Yes, Novaya Gazeta has long been considered a leader in investigative journalism. Yes, the list of awards of its journalists does not fit on two printed pages. But, alas, in recent years this publication has increasingly become a refuge for losers, and the “old staff” is slowly, as they say, running out of steam.
A little dead
The most striking example of exactly what kind of people have found and are finding refuge in this publication is a former participant in two Chechen campaigns, a once good war correspondent Arkady Babchenko, who today from Kyiv is pouring out abuse on Russia and Russians. But most of all, Babchenko, of course, “became famous” for his imaginary death. This story did not just cover Babchenko with indelible shame. The noise will settle down sooner or later, the media will forget about this story, but Arkady Babchenko will never again have the chance to work as a journalist either at Novaya Gazeta or in any even remotely decent publication. Now they won’t let him near any hot spot even within range of a cannon shot. For potential employers, he is now a man who has lost confidence, a loser.
Unpleasant episode
Novaya Gazeta has always actively commented on the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the publication’s publications often included “information” about the alleged “presence” of Russian military personnel there (recall that Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is not a party to the conflict in Donbass and that there are no active Russian military personnel there).
Once upon a time, a Novaya journalist Pavel Kanygin, commenting live on a Ukrainian channel on the situation in Donbass, he did this while presumably in a state of drug intoxication. Pavel started talking, behaved inappropriately, involuntarily jerked his head and hands, which, according to experts, could indicate his use of certain chemical substances. Moscow narcologist Nikolay Vlatsky in a comment to the Reedus agency, he stated that Kanygin’s condition, judging by the video, “is 99% similar to drug intoxication.”
Let us note that Kanygin himself denied the fact of drug intoxication and claimed that he had a cold.
Expulsion of Khudoberdi Nurmatov (Ali Feruza)
Journalist at Novaya Gazeta Khudoberdi Nurmatov(nickname - Ali Feruz) caused a lot of problems for his employers. He arrived in Russia illegally in 2011, and since 2012 he has been in the country without any identification documents at all. According to him, he “lost” his expired Uzbekistan passport and for five years he has not been able to restore it. Since 2015, Nurmatov worked at Novaya Gazeta without having any documents or work permit, which predictably attracted the attention of Russian law enforcement officers, who began the process of extraditing him to his homeland - Uzbekistan.
According to RIA Novosti, Nurmatov at one time held radical Islamist views and even recruited people into the Islamist underground. According to the publication, in 2008, Ali Feruz was involved in the case of recruitment into the extremist organization At Takfir wal-Hijra, banned in the Russian Federation.
In August last year, the Basmanny Court of Moscow decided to expel Nurmatov from Russia to his homeland for violating the regime of stay in the country. During the hearing, right in the courtroom, the journalist attempted suicide, he was so afraid, according to his friends, to return to his native Uzbekistan. As a result, Nurmatov was met halfway and allowed to leave for the country of his choice.
Later, the Basmanny Court of Moscow found the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta guilty of illegally recruiting a foreigner to work and fined the publication 400 thousand rubles.
"Gay" theme
Journalist at Novaya Gazeta Elena Milashina quite well known in the Chechen Republic. But recently, serious complaints have arisen against her in connection with the topic of alleged “persecution” of LGBT people in Chechnya. Elena was repeatedly accused of bias.
It got to the point that in 2017, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Shamsail Saraliev sent parliamentary requests to the Prosecutor General, the head of the Investigative Committee and the head of Roskomnadzor with a request to check Novaya Gazeta for the presence of extremism and incitement of ethnic hatred in Milashina’s article “Panic and sabotage in Chechnya.”
Saraliev found signs of violation of the law in phrases from the article:
“Not only Chechens, but also Russians became victims of the anti-gay campaign in Chechnya,” “they later began to look for this man and killed him on Russian territory.”
According to the deputy, these fragments of material contain a contrast between people based on nationality, as well as an attempt to incite ethnic hatred and call into question the territorial integrity of Russia.
Earlier - in May 2015 - the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya announced its intention to go to court for spreading slander if Elena Milashina did not report who exactly advised her to “closely monitor her personal safety.” Then the journalist stated that while in Chechnya, she allegedly received threats.
Currently, Elena Milashina travels to Chechnya quite calmly and no longer accuses the Chechen authorities of “excessive attention” to her person.
Has Europe gone nuts?
One of the “pillars” of Novaya Gazeta Yulia Latynina has repeatedly caused sharp criticism with its more than dubious statements.
Latynina was criticized for her racist views and contempt for the lower strata of society even by representatives of the liberal camp. Yes, journalist Andrey Loshak called Latynina’s views “wild and morally outdated.”
Earlier - in October 2010 - representatives of the Russian Muslim community accused Latynina of Islamophobia and inciting interfaith hatred.
Many critics point to negligence, manipulation of facts and outright errors in Latynina’s articles and books, as well as in her statements on air (she regularly appears on the Ekho Moskvy radio station).
Hater of Crimea
Editor of the political department of Novaya Gazeta Kirill Martynov also became famous for his scandalous statements. So, in July 2014, while on vacation in Crimea (which had just reunited with the Russian Federation), Martynov wrote a series of rather rude comments on the microblog on Twitter about the state of the peninsula and the people who vacation there.
Here is an example of Martynov’s statements: “The peninsula is occupied by cattle,” “Redneckness, hatred of one’s business, the desire to cheat a sucker, inactivity, fear of the boss.”
Martynov is or was married to Antonina Martynova (Fedorova), a participant in the so-called “Novgorod case,” which was widely discussed in 2007–2008 in the then still active Live Journal.
Fedorova was accused of attempted murder of her three-year-old daughter Alisa from her first marriage. Currently, the whereabouts of the woman and her daughter are unknown; they have been on the federal wanted list since July 2008. The disappearance was preceded by Antonina's failure to appear at the trial, at which the jury returned a guilty verdict. Martynov himself claimed that his wife and adopted daughter were allegedly kidnapped by unknown people.
In January 2017, poet and publicist Lyubava Malysheva wrote a harsh article for the Radio Liberty website, in which she sharply attacked Martynov for his allegedly anti-feminist views, and also reminded him of the “Novgorod Affair”. According to Malysheva, in the story of the alleged attempt on the life of a child, there were people on Martynov’s side who “knew little about his past,” which helped him take a significant position in Novaya Gazeta.
It seems that Novaya Gazeta often attracts individuals with deviant behavior, with strange, to put it mildly, views, and simply losers who find it difficult to fit in in any other publication.
16 August 2015, 18:31We are talking about the “Novgorod Case” - a sensational criminal case against Antonina Fedorova (Martynova), a 21-year-old girl from Veliky Novgorod, who was accused of attempted murder of her child. The story is very strange and vague, there are a lot of discussions on the Internet, which, however, ended in 2012; what the fate of Antonina and her daughter is now is unknown. In the post I will give a retelling of events from Wikipedia and some other sources (LJ, Antonina’s husband’s blog) and my own reasoning.
At the center of this story is a family consisting of three people: Antonina, a young girl from Veliky Novgorod, her daughter from her first marriage, Alisa (2.7 months), and Antonina’s husband, Kirill Martynov, a teacher at a Moscow university. At the beginning of February 2007, Antonina and her daughter went to their hometown to visit the girl’s mother.
On February 26, Antonina’s mother, Ninel Bulatovna, went to work, and they decided not to close the door to the stairwell, since the neighbors’ children were knocking loudly on it (the woman lives in a sectional dormitory).
When Antonina went to the bathroom, Alice ran out onto the landing and climbed over the railing. Antonina, running onto the landing, did not have time to grab her, and the girl fell down two flights of stairs. Fortunately, Alice escaped with minor injuries (which were later classified as “mild injuries”). Antonina ran downstairs and called an ambulance.
At the same time, there was an 11-year-old boy, Yegor K., on the staircase, who ran to the neighbors and said that he saw “one girl pushing another girl.” The neighbors called the police. The police arrived at the hospital and took some statements from Antonina - which ones, the girl could not remember, because... was in a state of shock and did not remember the questions that were asked to her. Three days later, the girl and her daughter had to leave the hospital due to lack of space. The girl decided not to return to Moscow for some time, because... Alice had a Novgorod policy. In order not to return to the scene of the tragic incident, they rented an apartment in the suburbs of Novgorod.
Almost a month passed, Antonina and Alisa were getting ready to return home to Moscow, when a police operative came to the girl and handed her a summons to the prosecutor’s office with the words that everyone was sure that Alisa’s fall was not an accident, and the young mother would be prosecuted under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Murder”) ").
The girl gave evidence to the investigator, after which she came to Moscow and underwent an independent polygraphic test (lie detector), which showed that the girl had no malicious intentions. (The later investigation refused to recognize the results of this study, but did not conduct their own lie detector examination).
On March 22, 2007, a criminal case was initiated under Article 30, Part 3, Art. 105, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
On April 19, the girl was arrested. In the evening of this day, Kirill Martynov publishes a message about this criminal case on his blog. The case is receiving wide publicity on the Internet, and a community is being created on LiveJournal in support of Antonina and her family.
According to investigators, the main motive for the crime was that the little daughter allegedly interfered with the construction of her personal life. It was obvious to many that such a motive was nothing more than a fiction - Antonina and Kirill had been in a relationship since 2005, began living together in 2006, Alice called her stepfather dad.
During the investigation, all kinds of pressure were put on the young girl, including threats of reclassification to another, “execution” article, and she signed an undertaking not to disclose the data of the preliminary investigation.
On May 7, 2007, Antonina was released from the pre-trial detention center on her own recognizance. During her imprisonment, the girl’s health deteriorated significantly; she lost weight to 36 kg.
As for the main witness, whose testimony formed the basis of the criminal case, in his interviews the boy gets confused in the evidence. According to one of his versions, Antonina pushed her daughter through the railing and let her go, while shouting something, according to another version, everything happened in complete silence (it’s strange that the almost three-year-old daughter did not make a sound, while the mother forcibly dragged her towards the opening). According to the third version, his friend Artem was also an eyewitness to the murder attempt. Due to his age, the witness was not involved in a polygraph questioning.
I will not retell the progress of the investigation and the prosecution’s version in detail; all the information is on the Internet, including a very detailed article with all links on Wikipedia. You can also find a lot of information in a special community on LiveJournal and in Kirill Martynov’s blog.
It is known that the investigation was very subjective in nature - the testimony of neighbors in the hostel was involved, who gave Antonina fictitious, superficial characteristics. These characteristics served to create a certain image of a young girl - they say, an unemployed single mother who strives at all costs to marry her Moscow partner. The only obstacle to this goal is a young daughter from a previous marriage. Objective data confirming the couple’s relationship, love for each other and for their daughter, who became Kirill’s own, and the absence of financial problems, were not considered.
At the end of July 2008, a jury found the girl guilty and not deserving of leniency.
Kirill Martynov assures that he knows nothing about their whereabouts. Mother and daughter are put on the federal wanted list. Whether it was an escape or a kidnapping is unknown.
In October 2008, a certain Oleg published a scan of a letter from Antonina, in which she wrote that everything was fine with her and her daughter, and asked to send financial assistance through this same Oleg, who created a special community to coordinate fundraising. Kirill recognized Antonina's handwriting, but noted that the writing style was not typical for Antonina. He is sure that his wife wrote this letter under duress. It is also strange that the girl does not mention Kirill in her letter.
All that is known about Oleg is that he lives in Israel and may be a member of an Islamist organization. Kirill is convinced that his wife and daughter were kidnapped in order to receive monthly payments.
This letter is the last message from Antonina. In LiveJournal, I saw Oleg’s messages dated 2010, in which he recalled the material need of Antonina and Alisa, but he no longer received any response to them. Kirill Martynov stopped commenting on this situation at the end of 2008 - beginning of 2009.
Present tense:
Kirill Martynov continues to lead an active social life - he has thousands of subscribers on Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook. I subscribed to him after he started lecturing on my course (a couple of years ago), but I didn’t see a single mention of that case.
His personal impression is generally positive - interesting, very educated, albeit a little arrogant. Cheerfulness is in full swing - and there is no hint of a tragic past.
Yesterday I wondered if Tonya really was what the prosecution tried to portray her as - calculating and greedy - and I looked into her LiveJournal (last updated in 2008). I liked the entries - humorous, touching (especially about my daughter and husband), and not without grace. I believe that there was no calculation on her part - she and Kirill really seemed to be in love and alike in many ways. Following Kirill, Tonya wanted to become a philosopher and in the year of those terrible events she was preparing to enter Moscow State University.
In general, I have no doubt about her innocence, but one thing is unclear to me in this wild and dark story - so where did Tonya and Alice go? What role did Kirill play in their escape? And what kind of Oleg appeared on the horizon - a blackmailer or a really kind guy who wanted to save two defenseless girls?
In one of his comments on LiveJournal, Kirill expressed doubts as to whether his wife and daughter were alive. Indeed, is it possible that in our world, where it is easy to track all money transfers and calls, people could so easily evaporate? Has Antonina really cut off contact not only with her husband, but also with her mother and other relatives?
And wasn’t it reckless to write a letter revealing your whereabouts while being wanted? But Antonina, apparently, was not a stupid girl...
There are also questions for the investigation: the representatives of the prosecution took up the case so zealously that they did not even allow the girl to go to Moscow for exams (although she had not yet been found guilty), they sent her for a psychiatric examination, kept her in a cell... But it was worth the mother and daughter to disappear, as everything was immediately released on the brakes. It’s as if they crossed it out, threw the folder in the trash and decided not to bother anymore. What was that, comrades? Has your enthusiasm faded? Or what?...
I think that in this strange and muddy story there will be only question marks.
