 |
|
| page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|
MISHAL HUSAIN: Did they use the freedom that they had?
ANN COOPER: Boy, did they. It was amazing. It was astonishing to pick up the newspapers every day, to turn on the TV. You know, Gorbachev for a long time seemed to feel that he could control this whole process, that he could decide just how much freedom people would have and what sorts of things they could talk about and what was still off limits. But people started pushing at those boundaries. And pushing very, very hard. Journalists were out there in the forefront on this. And you never knew when you picked up your paper, was there going to be a re-examination of Lenin and his economic policies? Were you going to see the first articles about Trotsky and Stalin and names that had been totally banned from discussion and certainly banned from the media for, literally, decades?
MISHAL HUSAIN: So, would it have been a fair assumption to make, at that point, that Russia was on the road to a fully free press?
ANN COOPER: It wasn't very clear at the beginning. There was always this kind of lingering doubt. Has this newspaper or that magazine gone too far this time? What's going to happen to them? Will they be reigned in? And we knew from editors that they were getting phone calls from the Kremlin sometimes. But they kept on going. And it was fascinating to talk to them about, "How do you know what you can do?" And, they didn't always. But they would decide, "O.K., you know, we've gotten some more freedom. This war is still going on in Afghanistan and thousands of Soviet soldiers are dying and that's not really being written about. Let's see what we can do there." And one by one these barriers would fall.
MISHAL HUSAIN: But, if it was a qualified freedom of the press -- in a sense -- at that time, how different is that to what we're seeing in Russia today?
ANN COOPER: Well, it was a qualified freedom of the press at the beginning and really for quite a long period. But, as I say, the press and other organizations -- other citizens groups within the Soviet Union -- started breaking down the barriers. They started talking about, for example, environmental damage -- you know, spots in history that had been blotted out for a long time. And after a while, you looked around and said, "Gee, what's still off limits?" There wasn't very much that was still off limits. And, at some point, I would say that it was a pretty free press. But, remember that all of the media was still controlled by the state and the Communist Party. It all belonged to party organs or local governments. So, there was always that potential for things being brought back under control.
MISHAL HUSAIN: So, you lived in Russia at that key transition time just as it was moving from Communism and starting on a road towards a democracy. How did the hopes and dreams of that time compare to the reality of life in Russia today?
ANN COOPER: It was a time of incredible optimism, I think, and great excitement. There was also a lot of anger and unhappiness because while people were given a lot more freedom to speak their minds and to discuss topics that had been forbidden in the past, the economy was collapsing. And on an everyday level, that was very, very difficult for people. Shelves in stores emptied out. There was nothing to buy. It was a struggle just to get food on the table every day because it simply wasn't in the stores. So, that old economic system was collapsing at the same time that there was this excitement about freedom of expression. And sometimes people would say, "I might be willing to give up a little bit of this freedom of expression if I could just go into the store and buy some stuff."
MISHAL HUSAIN: So, how far has Russia come, then, in these last 15 years or so? Because prosperity is there in abundance for many people, but it's certainly starting to come through a wider part of society.
ANN COOPER: I would say the prosperity is there for some people, but I think there are many people who feel that they have been left out of this. That their lives are not really, substantially, changed by everything that's happened in Russia in the last 15 years. There was a moment when we were meeting with the family of the second editor who was killed in Togliatti -- Alexei Sidorov. We were getting ready to leave and his family said, "Well, we could call a taxi for you." In Soviet times, there was supposedly a taxi service you could call, but the taxi might never show up or it might show up in two hours. Nowadays, you can call a taxi service and a taxi will come and get you rather promptly. So, it is a real service -- something that didn't exist in Soviet times. And Sidorov's father said, "Yeah, we do have this. You know, here's an example of something that's changed for the better." His family was living in a much nicer apartment than a Soviet-era apartment. But what good was that when his son was killed and justice was not being done. And not only was justice not being done, but the state had come up with what looks like a sham story that his son was killed in a common street murder. It was almost insulting to this family.
MISHAL HUSAIN: So, how far would you say that Russia's come politically in its journey over the last 15 years?
ANN COOPER: I think many people would say that Russia went some distance towards democracy and is not retreating. President Putin has spoken about the need for a managed democracy. Well, what is that? How do you manage democracy? That seems to be a code word for control, for repression. And what we've seen in the area of press freedom is that, since Putin took power, the Kremlin has gradually taken control of national broadcasting so that there isn't really much criticism left on national TV.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Would you still call Russia a democracy then?
ANN COOPER: That's an extremely difficult question. That's a large question that we could probably debate all day. You know, there were presidential elections this year. There were parliamentary elections late last year. Those parliamentary elections were severely criticized by the OSCE -- the European observers who went there to watch them. One of the things they criticized was the lack of press freedom and the lack of opportunity for rival candidates to get their message out through the media. You know, that's so fundamental to democracy that if it doesn't exist, if candidates in a competitive election can't get their voices heard through the media, then can you say that's democracy? It's pretty difficult.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Let me put it to you, though -- probably the argument that Vladimir Putin would make. He said that he does believe in the freedom of the press. But he also thinks that, perhaps, there are certain stages of Russian democracy; that certain things are right for Russia at different times. And, in fact, that he doesn't think Russia has the conditions needed to ensure full press freedom at this point. Would you buy that argument?
ANN COOPER: You know, the Committee to Protect Journalists hears that kind of argument from so many governments all over the world. "You know, we're different from your country. We're still struggling. We're trying to build democracy, but it's complicated." And so they use that as an excuse to say that the press shouldn't be criticizing the government. I mean, that's fundamentally what this is all about. Governments don't like criticism. That's pretty understandable. None of us likes to be criticized. But, if you're going to have democracy, if the people are going to elect a president, if they're going to elect legislatures, those people have a public trust and they have to submit themselves to scrutiny. And where does that scrutiny come from? First and foremost: from a free press.
MISHAL HUSAIN: But, are there stages of democracy, perhaps? I mean, lots of countries which are at a similar stage of economic development as Russia also have limited press freedom, limited judicial freedom, a problem with corruption, for instance.
ANN COOPER: Are there stages to democracy? Certainly, these things do not develop overnight. Since the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, we've seen almost 15 years of working towards democracy. Of investment by Western governments, in many cases. In building independent media and trying to build organs of civil society. And meanwhile, what's happening with the Russian government, and with local governments in many places, is their restrictions on the press, and on those civic organizations. So there really is a rolling back. It's a massive struggle that's going on right now.
MISHAL HUSAIN: And how integral would you see the press freedom issue to the overall development of democracy? Is it possible that you could manage the press freedom issue and still end up with a fully fledged democracy?
ANN COOPER: You've got to have a free press to build democracy. You've got to have a free press to have debate. You've got to have a free press to have free and fair elections. If you're the president of the country, and there are three rival candidates -- you're running for re-election and you control all of the state, all of the media, particularly broadcast media -- how are those other candidates going to get their message across? Particularly in a huge country like Russia. You know, that's how people get information, that's how they hear arguments, that's how they hear debate, and they've got to have that free flow of information if they're going to be able to reform society and move forward with democracy.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What do you think, then, of the elections that we just had, when President Putin was re-elected with a huge majority?
ANN COOPER: I don't think that anybody looked upon those as particularly serious elections. There were rival candidates, but the state essentially controls all of the national broadcast media. And that is crucial to holding on to power.
MISHAL HUSAIN: In the film, we actually hear Mikhail Gorbachev say something similar where he talks about the restrictions on the press ahead of the elections as being a big mistake. He, though, is someone who you would say, perhaps, doesn't have a totally unqualified record as a supporter of the freedom of the press?
ANN COOPER: In retrospect, during those years that Gorbachev was in power -- the late 1980s up through 1991 -- there was great freedom of the press towards the end of that time period. It wasn't just because of Gorbachev, it was partly because society and the press were pushing for greater freedom all the time. And I would say that the media, in the last days of the Soviet Union, was freer, was more freewheeling, was more critical than it is today in Russia.
|
|
| page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
continue to next page  |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists
|
|
