July 16, 2014 – The Russian Reader

statia-2-ing8 — Alexander Bastrykin, Russian NGO head and friend of international socialists

One thing I love about the international socialist press is that it opens my eyes to problems and things I never even suspected existed, even in places I thought I knew well. For example, this morning, reading the World Socialist Web Site (no less!), I found out about a new NGO (apparently), “the Russian-based Investigative Committee”:

Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Russian-based Investigative Committee, said Monday that at least seven bullets were fired into Russian territory. The committee suspected those responsible were “soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, members of the National Guard and of Right Sector.”

Imagine my surprise when, a few minutes later, reading a non-socialist web site (I read those too, sometimes!), I learned the Petersburg branch of the same NGO, “the Russian-based Investigative Committee,” had just arrested a member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, accusing him of sodomy.

Intrigued by this broad spectrum of the NGO’s work, from monitoring Ukrainian fascists to rounding up Russian sodomites, I did a Google search on the Committee. What I discovered only increased my admiration for their work. It turned out its employees had recently been threatened by some very bad people who had started a riot in Moscow in 2012:

Officials investigating a 2012 anti-government protest that led to the sentencing of eight activists this week have been on the end of threats, the head of the country’s main investigative agency said Thursday.

Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin said, apparently responding to criticism of the case, that investigators had not only shown steady resolve and integrity in pursuing the matter, but had done so in the face of intimidation.

Bastrykin did not elaborate on the nature of the threats or which individuals had been targeted.

On Monday, seven activists were sentenced to prison terms of between 2 1/2 to four years for participating in rioting and violence at a rally on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square in May 2012, a day before Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a third term as president.

An eighth activist received a suspended sentence.

More than 400 people were detained at the demonstration, one of several large-scale street rallies in Moscow and other Russian cities that had taken place since December 2011 to oppose Putin’s return to the presidency.

I hope to learn more about the truly great work of “the Russian-based Investigative Committee” from the international socialist press in the coming weeks and months.

Image courtesy of newsworldrussia

Alexei Volin. Photo courtesy of Parlamentskaya gazeta

From an interview with Russian federal deputy communications minister Alexei Volin, broadcast on the TV Rain program “Hard Day’s Night” yesterday:

TV Rain: Among [Russian] TV channels who provides an alternative viewpoint in your opinion?

Volin: Among the general access channels, probably no one provides a strongly alternative viewpoint due to the fact that they think about their ratings. A TV channel or mass media outlet that today adopts a unpatriotic viewpoint will simply be economically unsuccessful because the audience will turn away from it.

TV Rain: Excuse me, I seem to be a little confused about terms. We asked you about alternatives, but you talked about being unpatriotic. You mean that an alternative viewpoint is a priori unpatriotic?

Volin: I don’t have the slightest doubt about this.

(A transcript of the interview can be read, in Russian, on journalist Andrei Amalgin’s blog.)

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Deputy minister Volin is no stranger to brutal authoritarian “honesty.” This is what he said in his keynote address at a conference held at Moscow State University’s journalism department in February 2013:

A journalist is tasked with making money for those who hired him. And you can only do that by making your resource interesting for your readers, viewers or listeners. The question, then, is, Do mass media serve a propaganda function? Of course they do, to the extent their owners believe appropriate. […] Propaganda should not be obvious; propaganda should be hidden — then and only then can it be effective. We need to make it clear to students that when they leave this building, they are going to go work for The Man. And The Man is going to tell them what to write and what not to write, and how to write about this or that. And The Man has a right to do this because he is paying them. […] You may like what I have told you or not, but it’s objective reality. It’s life. And it’s not like you are ever going to see a different life.