The Kursk: The End of Privately Owned Televison in Russia
October 10th, 2008 · No Comments
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The Sunken Kursk
In 2000, the submarine Kursk gave us real insight into the state of the Russian navy when on August 12, the Russian flagship suffered an explosion and then sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The 118 man crew, indeed the pride of the fleet, ran out of oxygen as they tapped distress signals on the wall, waiting to be rescued. A note was found inside indicating that many had survived the explosion. True to form, Russia refused all offers of international assistance. The problem was that Russia had no equipment to open up the underwater hatch. As Lilia Shevtsova says in her book, Putin’s Russia, “The same country that launched sputnik couldn’t even open up to hatch of its own submarine.”
This event was directly responsible for the end of privately owned television in Russia. President Putin was televised jet-skiing during the tragedy and his approval raitings plummeted. A slave to these ratings, Putin almost immediately went after Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky ’s privately owned television station. Gusinsky was Russia’s most powerful oligarch at that time and is now exiled to Israel. So Putin got rid of two birds with one stone- a powerful man who could have challenged Putin’s claim to the throne and a media outlet that could potentially damage his approval ratings.
One seemingly positive note is that Russia does not put the same restrictions on internet access as China does. This would be more comforting if more Russians had regular access to the internet. In major cities, internet cafes are often frequented by Russians. (My own experiece with internet cafes in Russia was trying to avoid seeing men masturbate to porn sites.) By contrast, the vast majority of Russians live outside the major cities and thus do not have such access. Supposedly the rate of frequent internet use across Russia has increased in recent years but I believe the number is still below 10% of the population.
The printed press enjoys much more freedom than that televisied. Interestingly, Putin has been quoted as saying that Russians don’t read newspapers. This is true in some sense. When glasnost and perestroika were enacted, so many people subscribed to newspapers that mailmen had trouble delivering them all. Russians were so hungry to read about what they never had a chance to before. There are countless printed publications in Russia sold at kiosks around the country but the number of people reading them has drastically decreased over the years.
The reality is that most Russians get their news from watching state-owned television stations and are thus privy only to that which the state (or Putin) wants.
Tags: History · Military · Politics
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