Journalism: The Most Dangerous Job in Russia

By Olivia Buvanova

Communism, fear, and censorship: the Soviet Union in a nutshell. For almost half a century, Soviet citizens were completely misled by the USSR’s infamous tactics of propaganda and control. Throughout history, the dissemination of information has played a crucial role in shaping societies and governments. In the case of the Soviet Union, the opposite happened. Government suppression of information was a reality of Soviet life, which kept its people in the dark about the harsh reality of their own country. Soviet media was forbidden from publishing stories about disasters, suicides, industrial accidents, or even bad weather: after all, the Soviet Union was a place of unquestionable good. This resulted in a skewed understanding of reality, as events and information were heavily censored, dissenting voices were silenced, and perspectives not endorsed by the government were suppressed.

However, began to change when, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union introduced Glasnost, or “openness.” Glasnost began to remove the strict confines of censorship which only recently had been in full force. It opened the doors to free speech, information, and a growing acceptance of Westernization. However, Glasnost did more than relieve censorship: it exposed the true corruptness of the USSR, and the terror and brutality that became ever more clear only stimulated the anti-communism movement. In just five short years, Glasnost shattered the three fundamental pillars on which the Soviet Union was built: propaganda, terror, and cen-

sorship, effectively breaking the Soviet Union.

The new Russian Federation headed by President Boris Yeltsin provided a glimmer of hope for freedom and democracy. However, Russia would never realize this dream. The 1990s sent Russia into economic and social collapse. Corruption was rampant in both government and industry, and territories like Chechnya and Dagestan attempted to break away from the Federation in bloody wars. None of this was helped by an inept Yeltsin Administration. This prospect of a brighter future was finally shattered when Vladimir Putin became president in 2000. Putin quickly created a regime under which his opponents are murdered, political prisoners are sent to Siberian prison camps for decades, minorities are suppressed, foreign territory is forcefully annexed, and Syria’s bloodthirsty president, Bashar Assad, enjoys direct military support for his massacres. Regrettably, Putin has erased much of the progress made by Glasnost era reforms regarding the dissemination of information. While the state of free speech in Russia has never been ideal, Glasnost era reforms and the Yeltsin era provided at least some safety for journalists and non-government perspectives. This all began to be eroded under Putin. This erosion came to a head during the invasion of Ukraine, which began in February of 2022 and marked a vital turning point, triggering a sudden surge in state-sponsored propaganda and censorship. Starting in 2022, Russian authorities have threatened to fine or block ten Russian independent media outlets if they did not delete publications about the war in Ukraine, according to Human Rights Watch.

On February 26, 2022, Roskomnadzor, the state media and communications regulator, accused the 10 outlets of publishing “false information” about the war. The alleged false information included documentation that the Russian military is shelling Ukrainian cities and causing civilian casualties and references to the armed conflict as “an attack,” “invasion,” or “declaration of war.” The Russian authorities appear to require outlets to refer to the war only as a “special operation in connection with the situation in Lugansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic.”

To further control what the Russian public knows about the invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that imposes stiff sentences on journalists who air “false information.” Since the invasion, more than 11,800 news items, posts, and other online materials containing “reports of massive losses of [Russian] armed forces in manpower and equipment, mass surrender, as well as attacks on civilian facilities, infrastructure, and the killing of civilians” have been removed from Russia’s leading search engines (rferl.org). Russia’s control of information, however, extends much beyond strict censorship. A recent New York Times investigation, reporting on thousands of leaked Roskomnadzor documents, shows that Russia’s internet censor is also a surveillance machine. The New York Times’ new investigation reveals that Roskomnadzor has gone far beyond managing website blocklists and filing censorship orders, more than was publicly known. For a couple of years now, the internet censor has compiled dossiers on individuals and organizations posting regime-critical content. It has monitored websites, social media, and news outlets to label

SPRING 2023

2023 them “pro-government,” “anti-government,” or “apolitical.” Roskomnadzor, per the Times, has “worked to unmask and surveil people behind anti-government accounts and provided detailed information on critics’ online activities to security agencies.”

Roskomnadzor has gone far beyond managing website blocklists to make that happen. The Putin regime has evidently improved its technical censoring and filtering capabilities in the last year or so, as previously half-botched attempts to block or slow websites gave way since February 2022 to somewhat more successful blocks on Facebook, Instagram, the BBC, Bellingcat, and many other websites. But the internet censor’s switch to monitoring public online information, tracking people, and filing information to security agents and police reminds that targeted surveillance and physical coercion remain inextricably tied within Russia’s internet censorship regime (cfr.org).

As Russian leaders tighten the grip on censorship and obstruction of information, the further absence in glasnost is ever more felt throughout the nation. As the promising era of Gorbachev’s glasnost reverts back to rituals of censorship and violence, Russia regresses back to a Stalinized state of fear.

Works Cited

Belovodyev, Daniil, and Anton Bayev. “Inside the Obscure Russian Agency That Censors the Internet: An RFE/RL Investigation.” Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, 9 Feb. 2023, www. rferl.org/a/russia-agency-internet-censorship/32262102.html. Accessed 14 May 2023. Kaminev, Denis. “Russia: With War, Censorship Reaches New Heights.” Human Rights Watch, 28 Feb. 2022, www.hrw.org/ news/2022/02/28/russia-war-censorship-reaches-new-heights. Accessed 14 May 2023.