Russian Acts of Kindness

[Yevgeniy Slivkin]

Dmitry Bykov mentioned by the “devil’s advocate” plays in the Russian media the role of the court jester. Smart kings in the Middle Ages understood that their jesters’ “attacks” on them just made them look more powerful and splendid.
Actually, to compare the freedom of the media in the USA and Russia is like comparing the two physically different processes of flying and swimming (perhaps even in a swamp). The resistance of the environment and the necessary muscle efforts are so different that the comparison makes no sense.
Here anyone who subscribes to the Direct TV package which includes Russian TV (RT) broadcasting daily in English can see and hear many pleasantries about American life and critical views of American politics (voiced by discontented American academics and independent journalists). Similar American TV broadcasting in Russia will be possible probably only at the end of the twenty-first century. That is not to say that academic and journalistic freedom in the US is absolute. Yet the means to limit this freedom are significantly less dirty and more subtle in this country than in Russia.

Yevgeny Slivkin
Department of Languages and Literatures
University of Denver

________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Alina Israeli [aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU]
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 9:24 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian Acts of Kindness

Galina,

Have you asked yourself why in the country where there is such a great freedom of speech (Russia) there is such a long list of killed journalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia ?

It does not include those who were beaten up and harassed. Just recently Beketov died http://expert.ru/2013/04/8/himkinskaya-tragediya/; he was beaten up in 2008. Attacks on journalists are a daily business: http://www.cpj.org/europe/russia/

After Oleg Kashin was attacked http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulIYVd_0W2U Medvedev promised to get to the bottom of it. He is still getting to the bottom of it and will be till the second coming.

There was also a wonderful story when Bastrykin threatened a journalist of Novaya Gazeta to the point that he had to go into hiding: http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2012/06/13_e_4624421.shtml

Bastrykin was forced to apologize after weeks of denying the incident.

These are the measures of freedom of speech, not what we can say in our kitchen with impunity, although for 40 years that was also dangerous.

And we are not even talking about the repressions against the manifestation which occurred a year ago today. The number of people on trial promises to be very impressive.


On the subject of ecology, the attacks on the concept of global warming come from the right and from the left (Latynina). The debate reminds me the one about the roundness of the Earth. Not everybody is good at calculations, Latynina makes sometimes ridiculous blunders due to her inability to understand science, but together with the officialdom they got the issue covered.

Meantime Russia is ahead (впереди планеты всей) on some forms of pollution http://www.geotochka.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=274:---&catid=34&Itemid=119

But I believe the thinking is: It's going to get warmer, we are going to grow bananas in Russia.
Here's the projected temperature change: http://www.global-climate-change.ru/index.php/ru/climate-rf/78-about-climate-rf/184-climate-change-ggo
Not enough for bananas or even oranges, but permafrost is already melting.


On May 6, 2013, at 7:40 AM, Rylkova,Galina S wrote:

Dear Paul Gallagher,

Russian people (and intellectual in particular) have been traditionally infinitely more critical of any political regime than their American counterparts. In 2011-2012 Putin was accused of every possible failure and crimes. For the most extreme summary see Masha Gessen's "The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin" (2012). This book was highly advertised through various blogs and was on sale in one Moscow bookstore. Do you think that Putin (who had a meeting with Masha Gessen after this book's publication) was unaware of its content?

Russian journalists have been working extremely hard to uncover the truth and  often show extreme/unprecedented courage. Yet they think that what they do is a mere fraction of what their American counterparts are supposedly doing here. This phenomenon of living up to some non-existing standards is explored (albeit very gently) in Todorovsky's film "Stiliagi" (The Totalitarian Rock).


Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
WLC, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387  fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu<mailto:aisrael at american.edu>





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