#32 | March 12 - 19, 1998 
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By Boris Kagarlitsky
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TV reports with pictures of Muscovites enjoying McDonald's and Coca Cola can reassure them somewhat about the economic part; if they want more detailed reassurance, every business publication from the Wall Street Journal on downward is happy to comply with tales of a raw but flourishing capitalist economy.
The free press is a harder thing to demonstrate, mostly because it doesn't really exist in the way anyone hoped it would. Though the United States continues to insist that Russia is "on the right path," the truth is that the rise of a powerful press in post-communist Russia has nothing in common with the rosy picture of editorial freedom the Western cold warriors insisted would come into focus after 1991.
In the Soviet era the press was part of the State. Not just as an instrument of propaganda, but as a representative of the power structures.
Today's Russian press is still influential not because it is free, but precisely because it has maintained this Soviet tradition. The symbiosis of the press and the State has simply taken on a new form. The State has been privatized, and for the most part is controlled by competing oligarchical clans. These oligarchs also happen to own most of the mass media.
Where the press can still remain independent under such conditions the reader himself can judge from the example of the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. This publication, created in 1990-1 by Vitaly Tretyakov as an example of the new, free press, was initially one of first mouthpieces of "reform."
At that time, however, the newspaper's editorial slant simply coincided with the prevailing mood in society (at least that part of the society which lives in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other large cities). The majority of Moscow's intelligentsia at that time sincerely believed in the benificience of capitalism. Yet the newspaper's desire to avoid being a mere propaganda organ quickly led, in spite of its popularity, to serious financial problems. The more often the newspaper offended Yeltsin and the government of Yegor Gaidar, the more difficult it became to get a hold of money. And the role of money swiftly grew.
When Nezavisimaya Gazeta was founded, the Moscow Municipal Soviet gave the newspaper a small, one-time subsidy, which carried it through half a year of work. After the beginning of reform, that same amount of money, even in dollar terms, could only support the newspaper for a maximum of two months. The price of paper alone rose dramatically. Journalists' salaries dropped, in the face of inflation, to almost nothing.
Then, suddenly, MOST bank appeared on the publishing scene, putting out its own daily newspaper-Segodnya. The new publication not only plundered the entire staff of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, for whom money turned out to be more important than freedom, but somehow also managed to acquire Nezavisimaya Gazeta's subscription list as well. In the space of a few months, the readers of Nezavisimaya Gazeta were also receiving Segodnya for free as part of a marketing campaign.
However, the overwhelming majority of the subscribers remained faithful to Nezavisimaya. The newspaper not only survived, but went decidedly to the left. Those that remained with the newspaper still believed in the free press, and a new cadre of young employees joined up. In October 1993, the newspaper survived a new crisis, printing with entirely white pages: the editors refused to take out those pages that were censored by the Yeltsin regime. They put out these blank pages over and over again.
Having survived the censor's pressure, the newspaper in 1995 became the victim of another in a series of financial crises. Money needed to pay for the paper ran out, and salaries were no longer paid. Tretyakov suggested to those journalists who weren't receiving their pay that they publish Nezavisimaya Gazeta themselves. Most of the free-lancers were willing to agree, but for journalists it was more difficult. Most of the publication's employees sought extra work on the side, leaving them less and less time for their main professional duties. In 1992-3, people were able to work just out of enthusiasm.
But the psychological circumstances in society soon changed completely. Reputation (not to mention convictions) was suddenly valued less, while there was more temptation than ever to make money at the expense of editorial integrity. Many people who were very young when they came to the paper three or four years before the big crisis now felt that the situation had changed. They wanted stability, and they felt that their efforts gave them back something quite different.
A mutiny started up in the newspaper. Tretyakov was overthrown. Desperate to do something, the editor-in-chief left for Italy in order to rest and calm his nerves. Here, the omnipotent businessman Boris Berezovsky searched Tretyakov out. The infamous banker flew the journalist back to Russia on his own jet, and Berezovsky's own armed guards suddenly assumed security for the building. The mutiny was suppressed, and salaries were paid. Those who were unhappy tried to put out their own magazine, Ponedelnik, which closed down after the third issue because of a lack of funds.
Ponedelnik, eXile readers may recall, was the brainchild of publishing strike-out king Andrew Paulson, whose most recent failures included a bitter falling-out with Time Out London and Vechernyaya Moskva, a nightlife magazine which now cannot be found at a single kiosk in greater Moscow.
Berezovsky, with Paulson's help, had added yet another publication to his empire. You've got give him credit: after all of those shake-ups, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, to the amazement of many, maintained its image. Perhaps this is all thanks to Tretyakov, who stood up for the newspaper-or maybe Berezovsky simply understood that the press can have a function other than propaganda as well.
Even after the change in lifestyle under Berezovsky's patronage, Nezavisimaya Gazeta remained a newspaper that paid its employees very little. Staff employees received, and still receive, about 1200 to 1500 new rubles a month. But at the same time a new internal elite formed: heads of departments, their deputies, and the editors of special supplements. Their salaries are five to ten times more, making them, at the very least, no worse off than those at competing newspapers.
A gap between the "elite" and the "masses" is characteristic of most publications, with the only question being the scale of the gap. Several newspapers intentionally keep their new employees on beggars' salaries, on the assumption that you can always find new entry-level employees. This is due mainly to the efforts of the journalism schools, which pump out a new batch of young people every year, ready to work practically for free for a year or two while they try to break in and make connections with the professional world. Once they gain a certain level of professional success, the young as a rule will move to another publication. The turnover in Moscow newspapers is unbelievable: people move rapidly from one publication to the next, often changing even their political orientation.
More than anywhere else, most young journalists cut their teeth at Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Moskovksy Komsomolets before going on to other publications. A few others start out at Kommersant. Even though journalists were always paid well there, at the first opportunity they invariably jump ship. The reason is simple: the owners of Kommersant figure that for good money they buy not only the journalist's man-hours, but also his persona. The editors of that paper believe that a newspaper should have a consistent editorial slant and a consistent style in each article. As a result, Kommersant keeps a team of special "rewriters" in order to unify the text, through whom all material must pass. Much of the text that passes through these people comes out unrecognizable. A significant number of the articles are even published without the authors' approval. It isn't surprising, therefore, that journalists who consider themselves creative quickly bail on Kommersant. One winds up at Obshchaya Gazeta, another at Moscow News, while still others prefer to go unemployed and make money as they can. The last mass exodus from Kommersant took place in 1997, when the new newspaper Russky Telegraph was founded. If writers complained before about ideological oppression, they now fled in reaction to the editorial policy of a "consistent editorial slant." It turned out that the style of work that evolved didn't correspond to their own conception of their personal styles.
A shortage of funds forced most newspapers to return to their network of correspondents within Russia and beyond. There, the correspondents usually have some other relationship or work going with a local newspaper. For their part, Moscow journalists make money under the table by working with provincial newspapers or even with foreign publications, especially as what is understood as "foreign" has grown. For example, Anna Ostapchuk, having written for Moscow News, at the same time represents the Kiev-based television company "Nova Mova" here in Moscow, as well as the Ukrainian-language BBC. She has a rare advantage over local Moscow journalists: fluency in Ukrainian.
Of course, the pay for journalists in Russia isn't the only source of income. While the major businesses fight for political influence, buying newspapers and television channels, and the government places its own people at the head of mass media organs, small-time players in political and business world are trying to solve their problems by placing so-called "zakazniye materialy," paid-for articles.
Which is why you shouldn't be surprised if in the middle of a news program on the television they show a tedious press conference of some little-known character or a piece about the production success of some private company, right in the best tradition of Soviet propaganda. There's nothing strange in the fact that when some important event takes place, they ask some statesman who has no relationship to the event in question to comment on it (just as they ask an independent deputy to comment on internal discord in the Communist Party factions, and ask politicians of dubious reputations to comment on economic issues). All of these are ordered and paid-for.
The "orders" are usually the most diverse of all. Sometimes they have to pay just to show some face or other on the TV screen, or to send some journalists to their press conferences. Often they pay not for the article, but just in order to have the article or TV spot appear on the right day, so that it corresponds to the commentary. Everything has its price. A curious thing is that even though he demands money for his "zayavka," the journalist will often insist that the information is reliable and interesting to the public. It is a kind of professional ethics. In professional circles, articles that are obviously false and also boring are called "jeans." During Nikolai Goncharov's election campaign, I managed to place, through a friend, several radio pieces for one hundred fifty bucks apiece.
"Just make sure there are no jeans!" my friends shouted as they stuffed dollar bills in their pockets. Personally, I greatly value this kind of principled attitude toward one's work. It's just too bad that an interesting piece can't get published just like that, for no reason, without a special fee. The price for prepaid articles runs from a hundred dollars to a few thousand. The forms of payment vary. Far from every journalist is prepared to accept cash. Some even insist on drawing up documents with receipts for "informational services." Often the payment method depends on the ruling morality in that particular journalist's publication.
As far as I can tell from my experience, practically every journalist in town runs "zakazniye" stories, but the attitude towards them varies from place to place. In many publications, the leadership of the paper is against these kinds of materials on principle, but accepts them as a necessary evil borne of their own inability to pay their employees real salaries. That attitude is most characteristic of opposition publications. In Pravda-5, for instance, where the very best writers are paid less than $400 a month, the paper's official ban on "zakazniye materialy" is impossible to enforce. Vitaly Tretyakov led a prolonged battle against these kinds of pieces in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, but managed minor successes only when he was able to raise salaries-and officially incorporate "zakazy" into the paper's policy. Today, when a business-minded person wants information favorable to his personal goal published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, he has to apply to the advertising department and formally fill out an order. The journalist receives a 15% commission. Only clear disinformation is rejected.
These kinds of restrictions tend not to exist in the more libertarian publications, which more openly propagandize the "Get Rich!" attitude. While journalists in these papers already receive decent salaries, nobody ever gets fired for "moonlighting." In any case, I'm not aware of a single example of this ever happening. Furthermore, the rank-and-file journalist in these papers always clears his "zakaz" with his immediate superior, usually the department editor, who takes a cut for himself.
Of course, no matter how sweet the "zakaz" fee might be, the piece won't run if it contradicts the general editorial slant of the paper. At Pravda-5, I was told that after Komsomolskaya Pravda fell into the hands of Oneximbank, a whole range of commercial structures were suddenly deprived of the ability to place articles in that paper. The only alternative for these people was to place their stories in opposition papers.
There are even scandalous instances in which money is paid, but the articles are never published. Since the money isn't paid, officially, for anything in particular, there's no legal avenue to get it back-and not everybody has the muscle to wrest it away from the more powerful publications.
All the same, it's wrong to look upon all Russian journalists as beady-eyed, greedy little creatures only worried about their own pockets. Often a reporter will write some garbage on behalf of some businessman for a few hundred bucks, then turn around the next day and risk his life to publish some serious article that is sure to arouse the anger of his sponsors and imperil his position in the paper. You can moralize all you want about this sort of thing, but everybody needs money. Just not everybody is prepared to change his political convictions in order to get it.
In the end, everything in this country still depends more than anything else on personal relationships between individuals. In 1992-93, I had a chance to work in the Russian Federation of Independent Unions. We managed to get the stories we wanted published in the press, and we didn't pay a single kopeck. The fact was, the journalists who wrote these stories happened to agree with us. Instead of stuffing money in people's pockets, we just invited them to our offices for coffee.
In those days the press secretary for the Russian Federation of Independent Unions, Alexander Segal, had a great reputation for attracting the attention of journalists, in particular female journalists. He fed them cake and told them Jewish jokes.
I don't know how much money he saved the Unions, but he was repaid in black ingratitude. When the unions, after the bombardment of the White House in 1993, started to demonstrate loyalty to the government, Segal, who continued to toe the more radical line of the former union leaders, was fired.
Today he works as the press secretary for the Tyumein Oil Company.
