The tokens and symbols of the "era of stability": who created them and how
Guest article by Slava TOROSHCHINA, Gazeta columnist
When Novaya Gazeta asked me what television personalities I would have liked to invite to my New Year's party, I was at a loss. It had been such a lackluster year that it left me no choice. The main strategists, creative directors, authors and actors ended up being just two people: Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Not that I was crying tears into my pillow on long winter nights dreaming of celebrating the New Year with that particular couple - it was just that these two, the Prime Minister and the President, dominated the television screens during the outgoing year.
The winds of change on CheKa Day
The tandem was formed in December 2007 on the eve of the Day of State Security Agencies, so it makes sense to look at the phenomenon of the tandem through the prism of the official gala concerts held on that day last year and this year. Such a comparison, I thought, would best highlight the changes in political accents.
A year ago the concert was informed by a sense of hope for change. It broke the traditional mould from the very start. When the national anthem was played, the normally status-conscious TV camera lingered not on Putin, but on his successor, Medvedev. What is more, the concert was opened not by the Red Army Orchestra, but by the Oleg Lundstrem jazz band. No girls with braids reaching down to their backsides, no Petrosyan with the "Discoteka Avariya" (Disaster Disco) pop music group. The crooner Leshchenko, the trade union darling, Tolkunova, and even Pugacheva were conspicuously absent. Instead there were Khvorostovsky, Bashmet, Vanessa Mae, and Patricia Kaas. As the final stamp of flamboyance, the Scorpions group was put on the bill. Hard rock enthusiasts among the security men reserved their biggest applause for a composition called "The Wind of Change". To remind the reader, this is not just another ballad, but a sign and a symbol of the new Russia. It was to the sound of this ballad that the Scorpions joined Rostropovich in smashing the Berlin Wall, and it was sung at the Kremlin in 1991. At the time there was no question as to which way the winds of change were blowing. "And which way are they blowing now?" the bemused crystal ball-gazers wondered.
The answer could be gleaned from the next concert, market 2008's State Security Man's Day. The winds were no longer blowing: Medvedev was not there; Putin made a speech. It was a good and long speech, except that some of his reflections on the unchallenged authority of the security bodies inside and outside the country sounded somewhat ambivalent.
The format of the concert was a cross between imperial grandeur and austerity dictated by the economic crisis. The indispensable and steely Svetlana Morgunova was not presenting the concert, which featured the standard set of vocalists from Valeria to Lyube singing Reznik's lyrics, de rigeur like the carnations on the podium where Soviet leaders once sat presiding over party congresses. Reznik, ever the synonym for civic spirit, adorned the mantra of unity with some deviations from the canon. The fact that the rhyming and the meter lurched in these lyrical digressions was more than made up for by the swelling sense of patriotism. The children surrounding the poet as he came on stage enthusiastically pledged to the audience of austere uniformed security men: "When we grow up a little/ We will all join your agency/ I will go to uncle Zhenya at the Federal Security Service /And I prefer the FSB, where Alexander Vasilich is the boss." The poker faces in the audience indicated that the men were not yet ready to receive these new recruits. There was some tension in the air. The closing number was Gazmanov performing an uninspiring song called "Paint Your Dream". The difference was palpable: instead of last year's wind of change, we were offered a dream that had yet to be painted.
Choice and elections
During the year separating the two concerts, television had to do some clever manuevering to cope with the unexpected dual power. For a long time, the entire content of politics and its programmes had been all about loving Putin - and suddenly we were in an era when, to use Klyuchevsky's formula, we had to "live in two minds" and "present two different faces to the world" (the Russian historian's description of Alexander I, who had to steer a middle course between his beloved grandmother, Catherine II, and his somewhat less loved father, Pavel I). The problem facing the political classes and television studios in Russia is even more complicated, as they have to steer a middle course between the two leaders of the nation, the de facto and the de jure leaders.
In the end, television fell back on the time tested principle: there can never be too much praise. Television continued to pay homage to Vladimir Putin. The paeans to Mr Putin reached a crescendo during the State Duma elections, which ended in Putin's re-election (because regardless of who we have been electing over the last 8 years, we invariably elected Putin). Starting in the early morning all the national channels were falling over themselves reporting the unnervingly high turnout at the polls: one wondered what the channels would be saying in the afternoon when the turnout was set to top 100%. The Ingushetia highlands were vying with icebound Arctic regions; Chukotka, graced by the eternal half-smile of its governor, Abramovich, was featured prominently; Russian-speaking voters in Israel were worried that there would not be enough ballot sheets to go around.
In all fairness, it must be said that the official pressure was not lost on the electorate. The ratings of news and analysis programmes on election day was near zero, whereas the film "Liquidation", wisely aired at primetime when polling stations were closing, was a runaway success, with one in every five viewers tuning in to watch it. A detective story set in postwar Odessa and masterfully directed by Sergei Ursulyak, it instantly became a national hit. The title of that serial was symbolic, echoing as it did the process of "liquidation" of social life in the country. The former order when elections made at least some sense was vanishing.
Virtual reality replaced real life. The Kremlin artists had found out by trial and error that television could do everything: re-elect presidents, appoint successors, ensure their sky-high approval ratings, format elections in such a way that the high approval rating of the successor would not exceed the approval rating of the previous head of state in 2004. Granted, it was not an easy job. On March 2 television people faced the impossible task of creating suspense in a spectacle that was totally devoid of drama. True, there was one intriguing aspect, which had more to do with medicine than with art: the turnout quota was first cancelled and then turned into a fetish. Calls to people to go to the polls came from the unlikeliest of places: Andrei Malakhov, who normally specializes in washing people's dirty linen in public, and from an unexpectedly aired stadium concert with Darya Dontsova as MC and a line of stone-faced Moscow bureaucrats. Hampered by their paunches, they diligently raised their hands and joined in the chorus: "It's great that we have all gathered here."
The results come in: a resounding victory. Putin and Medvedev , despite bad weather, walk briskly towards the stage. From the stage comes the habitual mix of rock and pop and the "Russia-Forward" concert strikes up as the country's two bosses climb the stage to the sound of Rastorguyev singing. Their speeches did not contain a single quotable passage simply because words did not matter - what mattered was the picture. The epoch-making minutes are immortalized in video clips.
TV's workaday reality
After rock comes the humdrum day-to-day life. TV is not very comfortable living "with two minds", with the need to "show two faces". The whole spectrum of political life is still embodied by a single person. President Putin wishes the people a Happy New Year (this time on all the channels); he kicks off the Year of the Family in the shadow of the Christmas tree at the Kremlin Palace (surrounded by stars and introduced by the moderators, Shukshina and Urgant); he goes to Veliky Ustyug to meet Santa Claus. The main creative idea at the start of the year was to show Putin and Santa Claus, two gentlemen on whom we pin all our hopes.
The channels simultaneously gave a high profile to Medvedev. The waves of popular love gradually begin to lap at Putin's successor as well. Leading the way are the cultural personalities. Their answer to the eternal question "Who are you with?" is unanimous: "We are with the same old fellows." The Poet and the Tsar problem is solved very simply - the poets are where the tsars are. Even the best of the best, Alisa Freindlikh, receiving a prize at the Kremlin, deemed it her duty to effusively thank Medvedev and, of course, Putin, because her artistic intuition told her that "you cannot score a goal without a good assist". Whether it was the imperial splendor of St. George's Hall, the tawdry theatricality of the whole event, or the guards in their bearskin caps that enthralled the actress, she had momentarily forgotten that her talent, which no amount of prizes can do justice, had not been bestowed on her by the current President or even by the previous President.
Significantly, art workers are not shy of saying things that people even during the Brezhnev era would have avoided saying. The General Director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, Vladimir Kekhman, outdid them all. Gushing about the fact that Dmitry Medvedev had attended his production of the opera Cavalleria Rusticana, he said, "They (Putin and Medvedev) should give us a cue, and why not? After all, they pay the piper." He was echoed by Mikhail Boyarsky: "I would not mind having the country's number one as my censor."
The number one man, Putin, did not seem to have time for Boyarsky or indeed for opera artists. He did, however, have a go at interpreting literary classics. During a tea party at Sovremennik Theatre after a performance of Woe from Wit, the President expressed disappointment with the wimpish Chatsky and said he preferred Alexander Matrosov. That wartime orphan threw himself on a German pillbox to block a machine-gun with his body because he was a strong man. As the camera lingered on the bewildered face of director Rimas Tuminas, the reviewer reminded everyone, especially the director, about a "Frenchman from Bordeaux" who is telling us how to live, likening him to the new members of the European Economic Community. The startling analogies, the gift of metaphor, and the passionate delivery held out the promise of a new job for Putin (after 2020), suggesting the makings of a writer. (For him sky is the limit. After all, he was the Head of the Russian Government's Film Industry Committee). It is not accidental that many of our rulers, from the tempestuous empress Catherine II to the self-effacing Lukyanov, alias the poet Osenev, dabbled in writing verses.
However, Medvedev too is no stranger to aphorisms. After he repeated several times the phrase "freedom is better than non-freedom," the word got a new lease on life. Until then it seemed to have been dropped from TV's vocabulary. It had been banished as a symbol of the liberal view of life incompatible with the era of Putin's stability. All of a sudden everything changed, as frequently happens in Russia. The rehabilitation of the word "freedom" reminds me of an amusing episode involving Vladimir Pozner. For several days he was in the limelight after revealing the awful secret that there was no freedom of expression on television. Many took the TV grandee's words as a harbinger of a long-awaited "thaw". Their joy, however, was short-lived; before long, Pozner was putting a different spin on his own words. It turned out that he had been misunderstood: there is no freedom without responsibility, whereas most journalists in Russia are irresponsible and interpret freedom as "anything goes". It is interesting - where had he found such brave people? Surely not in the realm of television, where every word goes through a triple filter. To cut a long story short, after letting off some steam, freedom of expression was forgotten and the topic ceased to be relevant.
Watch and learn, guys.
Freedom of expression was finally overshadowed by a far more important theme. The spin doctors and the chattering classes became suddenly obsessed with numbers. Comparative mathematics yielded surprising results: Medvedev appeared on television much more frequently than Putin, but opinion polls doggedly indicate that Putin is still better-liked among the electorate, and indeed many people are still sure that Putin is their President. This means that the magic of office, which has never misfired in our land, has misfired in the case of Medvedev. The spin doctors sounded the alarm and even organized a roundtable discussion. During the discussion, some unorthodox views were expressed. Allegedly, television was killing the new President. He was being shown meeting female textile workers, farmers and schoolgirls, but because of his short stature, the President was at a loss as to whether or not he should kiss them. Gleb Pavlovsky chimed in with the final verdict: "Putin's best formats look derivative when applied to Medvedev."
Mr Pavlovsky is a past master of ambiguity. To whom is he addressing his advice? Is it not he who over the past years has claimed the monopoly on creating the image of the top leaders? Only recently, he was singing Putin's praises in the final issue of his programme "Real Politics". He said that Putin was the first good choice of political leader in the last hundred years. He has proved himself not only as President, but as a person who knows the workings of Russian power. Stalin, according to Gleb Pavlovsky, could not resist the temptation, but Putin could, so he is even stronger than Stalin. The tell-tale word "even" hints at a change of political orientation. Six years ago Gleb Pavlovsky described Putin as the first serious head of state since the times of Alexander I; now he feels that a comparison with Stalin is more appropriate. Explaining his attitude toward his idol (Putin, not Stalin) he delivers a candid remark that may well go down in history: "This is not propaganda, I still admire him." As for Medvedev, Gleb Pavlovsky reserved for him the language of literary classics. With a parting remark to the effect that Putin had overturned the political life of Russia with a single deft move, he advised his flock: watch and learn, guys. It is hard to say to whom the appeal is addressed, but the "guys", including the top guys, are doing their best to learn.
The war in the Caucasus brought a sharp change to President Medvedev's behaviour and rhetoric. More and more often he sounds and acts like vintage Putin. However, something is still missing in his television image. Television seems to be rather unfair to Mr.Medvedev; though Medvedev is very fond of our television, and television is very fond of him, a happy format somehow eludes both. By contrast, the Prime Minister does everything with amazing ease: he tames an Ussuri tiger (with a soporific) and tames a nation of millions ("Conversation with Vladimir Putin"). The flock's love for the shepherd was not even shaken by the presentation of a film about judo against the background of "Black Monday", the stock market collapse and the run on bank deposits.
The President and Prime Minister created by television hold it as sacred and miss no opportunity to pay their homage to television. True, there are many opportunities: it is not for us to reason why Putin stayed away from the VGTRK jubilee, but showed up at Ostankino to congratulate the NTV company on its 15th anniversary. The scene was Gogolian. A beaming Kulistikov, flanked by Pyanykh on one side and Solovyov on the other. Mitkova in the forefront, with Ernst and Dobrodeyev standing a little to the back. The latter, the founder of NTV, is visibly nervous, which leads him to commit a blunder. Recalling the hectic early days of NTV, he remarked, "That was a revolution in our TV, and we had better people then." This triggered a spate of jokes and chatter, but the embarrassment lingered. Memories are still fresh of the crackdown on the old NTV, when the very best were the first to be taken out.
Putin's surprise visit had a personal element to it - it was as if he wanted to be reassured that he had been right in treating NTV as he did. He was obviously pleased with everything he saw at NTV (significantly dubbed "Frankenstein TV" by the people). True, when discussing content he remarked that some of the programmes had problems with morality, but that equally applied to other channels as well. Surely people like Lyona Zakoshansky and Doctor Knyazkin are pillars of morality. The former looks into every bedroom exclaiming, "You wouldn't believe it!", and the latter, the author and presenter of the programme "Das ist Fantastisch", runs an erotic museum in St Petersburg, is the proud owner of the phallus of none other than Grigory Rasputin, and is ever ready to hand out sex advice. President Medvedev likes NTV even more than the Prime Minister does. During a meeting with Kulistikov, which somewhat oddly took place in a forest outside Moscow, he described the company's birthday as a "red-letter day". Kulistikov waxed lyrical and began to explain how and why he and his company had backed and would continue to back Medvedev. His talk was confused but inspired. Kulistikov was brimming with creative ideas: "We tried to reflect Russian life dispassionately, but to tell about it with passion".
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The chances are that following Kulistikov's recipe, the channels would have continued to reflect the life of the President and the Prime Minister "dispassionately, but with passion", but for the crisis that broke out. Displaying a muscular bare torso and taming tigers are good building material for a TV image in happy times. At such times, the electorate is as docile as Connie, the dog with a radio built into its collar. The crisis changes people's views on habitual things, including television. Only yesterday people's minds were engaged in lofty things, as they asked the good and great, like the clients of Chumak, "please charge our borshch". The quotation from Kashpirovsky is not fortuitous: exactly 20 years ago, he was named Man of the Year, as we were reminded by the film "Kashpirovsky Versus Chumak". Today Putin has become Man of the Year, according to the Public Opinion Fund. So, the demand for the rainmaker is still there, but immediately following the New Year holiday, one of them, either the President or the Prime Minister, will have to forget his habitual TV image and tell the people something about the nitty-gritty facts of life before all our motorists take to the streets.
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"The President and the Premier, being the products of television, hold it sacred. But immediately following the New Year holiday, one of them, either the President or the Premier, will have to forget his habitual TV image and tell the people something about the nitty-gritty facts of life before all our motorists take to the streets."
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Slava Toroshchina
