A plea to save Russia from an enemy within

Under President Putin, Russians have pawned precious freedoms for economic growth.

from the May 17, 2007 edition

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Meanwhile, the Kremlin has passed a new law that will allow it to legally liquidate most of the remaining parties in the country, the majority of them opposition parties, of course. The presidential "election" next March is also likely to be a sham. Few Russians believe that the elections will be free, that opposition candidates will be registered, and that they will have access to TV or be able to seek financial support from the cowed business community. In the absence of a real struggle, it looks as if Putin's successor will stride into the Kremlin along a red carpet.

The sidelining of the opposition and the predetermining by the powers that be of the parliamentary and presidential elections have pushed Russia back to the old times when it was not the people, but the bosses who decided who would lead the country. That's why 60 percent of voters in some of the biggest cities have stopped going to the polls.

As the government has increasingly slid from popular control, society understands less and less about what is really happening in the country and the world. After free elections went, freedom of speech was next to come under attack.

In the years of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, Russians welcomed the principles of free information, openness, and independent journalism and publishing. On Russian television, which remained the main source of news for the great majority of Russians, political talk shows that presented diverse opinion and criticism of the government flourished. Now that's all in the past.

Television (all six federal channels) has turned into a tabloid-style "Kremlin TV."

Opposition politicians have been effectively blacklisted from TV. In Russia, where society is totally manipulated by television, he who is not on TV might as well be dead.

As a result, the Russian mass media have again, as in Soviet times, become obedient instruments of unbridled propaganda. Recently, one editor at a TV channel received a strict reprimand because, for an instant, a camera showed the back of the head of one of the opposition politicians.

For the first time since 1989, there are political prisoners in Russia. Apart from the world-famous Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev (former oil business partners), they include young opposition leaders who were sentenced to several years in prison for their involvement in peaceful, albeit banned, protests against the regime.

A disturbing new trend has been the introduction into legislation of the general and vague notion of "extremism," meaning that anyone who criticizes the government or takes part in peaceful protests can be declared an "extremist." A new, recently adopted law is also adding to the pressure on Russian and foreign nongovernmental organizations.

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