Freedom of Speech
Well over
15 years after the fall of
communism, what is the status of
free speech, dissent, and
critical dialogue today in
Russia? Is there something
innate to Russian history and
culture that has produced this
decline in dissent and a seeming
retreat from liberal democracy?
Or is this simply a passing
phase which will soon blow over?
Russia! sat down with Nina
Khrushcheva to discuss this
complex and important issue.
Khrushcheva — granddaughter of
Nikita Khrushchev — boasts a
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
from Princeton and is Professor
of International Relations at
the New School University in New
York.
Q. Let’s talk about free speech
in Russia. My understanding of
the situation is that in Russia
right now there actually aren’t
any censorship laws, but rather
an institutional, cultural
censorship. Is this in fact the
case and how pervasive is it?
A: It’s a great question because
this is exactly what I happen to
work on. You know, my premise,
which is very much like that of
a lot of my Russian friends and
colleagues, is that
unfortunately for us, for
Russians, the history of
despotism and dictatorship has
transformed us to the point
where we no longer need gulags
to be built for us; We don’t
really need walls anymore,
because we’ve simply created a
mentality of servitude. We feel
it even when there is no fear,
no pressure from above. That’s
my thesis and I think that
answers your question in a way.
Putin is a brilliant man. He has
figured out that he doesn’t need
censorship laws because we hold
onto a nationalistic ideal of
great Russia more than anything
else, and we censor ourselves in
order to protect it. And that’s
what is so brilliant about the
situation: it’s not un-free,
it’s just partially free.
My point is that real
dictatorships breed dissidence
and dissidence creates
movements, and then you have an
actual opposition. But when you
are merely partially
free, then it can actually be
even more dangerous...
Q: But even in places like China
and Iran, we see the emergence
of dissidence in the form of
blogs and in certain newspapers.
Is there anything like this
happening in Russia now?
A: I think the answer is
twofold. In China and in Iran
there is clear censorship, and
there are “things you do not do”
rather than an outright
oppression, since it is a formal
communist state. Iran is a
fundamentalist state, so it’s
easy to breed dissidence
precisely because you have
specific things to oppose. In
Russia, because you are not
un-free it’s about what you are
opposing. There are some people,
people I tremendously respect,
like Masha Lipman, who would
speak out and they would be
dismissed by people saying, “Oh,
there they are blogging again.
What are they blogging about? We
are doing fine. We are doing
fine because our economy is
doing fine, we are respected on
the world stage.” That’s really
important for Russians.
I check the blogs all the time,
and some of them are political.
But I think the same thing about
Russian blogs as I do about the
ones in this country. Because
blogs speak to their own
audiences, they are not reaching
anything broader than that. I
don’t think they create such a
huge dialogue. In Russia, there
are blogs that follow whatever
the new fashions are: Putin is
bad, or Putin is good, and
Stalin was fantastic, and
Khrushchev was the one who
killed Stalin, etc.
Q: You know, I read a novel over
the summer which is definitely
well known in Russia but in
America is not: Vasily
Grossman’s Life and Fate. One of
the things that interested me
was what it said in the
introduction, that not only did
censors seize the actual
manuscript, but they took the
typewriter ribbons on which it
was typed. I started thinking
that Russia has had a vibrant
tradition of literary dissent in
the past. But what about the
literary culture now? Are there
dissident novelists or poets or
the essayists writing today in
Russia?
A: No, because I think for
literary dissent you need an
oppressive culture. Do you know
Boris Akunin? He is a detective
writer and he wrote a series of
very successful detective
novels. He once wrote something,
I think it was back in 1999,
which was exactly on this topic.
He argued that literature and
high culture do infinitely
better in dictatorships than in
democracies. In democracies, you
don’t need to write or read a
novel which opposes something,
because you can actually read it
in an article in a newspaper.
And he really does an analysis
of Iran and China, but he also
says why in Russia the high
intelligentsia should not
complain that no one cares about
literature anymore, because the
high intelligentsia were the
ones who brought down the
oppressive communist system and
actually promoted the freedom
that has killed this kind of
literary dissent.
Look, we don’t need to read
Solzhenitsyn to know what is
going on anymore. So we all
become part of this pop culture
system where once again — as
with the blogs — you pick and
choose what to think about the
leadership. So writers lost
their status as the beacons of
liberalism the minute the press
was opened up.
Let me give you an example of
what I mean. When Solzhenitsyn’s
novel The First Circle came out,
I was in Moscow and noticed huge
placard-sized photographs of
him. You can imagine the scene.
Here is this bearded man, very
patriarchal looking, smiling,
advertising his new novel, and I
could not help thinking: Oh my
god, only some years ago we had
Stalin’s images hanging like
that. But Solzhenitsyn is the
one who opposed Stalin, wrote
about Stalin, and now we’re in a
country where once again Stalin
is seen as this great victor in
the second World War. Everything
seems turned on its head.
Q: I guess the next inevitable
question is what kind of
democracy do you produce, what
kind of society do you produce,
without this kind of dissent,
this kind of questioning?
A: First it is important to say
that whatever kind of democracy
you have in America today is not
the same democracy that was here
previously. We can argue that
whatever the dissent is here or
whatever the opposition, the two
parties that are fighting with
each other could probably be
seen as two wings of the same
business party or slightly
different. But it’s not the same
dissent that is needed for the
creation of democracy.
The problem with Russia having
very little dissent and
supporting what I call a “new
Stalinism” is it creates a
society that is not conducive to
democratic thought and culture,
one that seems to be passively
accepting authority. One could
even simply call it “Putinism”
which has elements of Yeltsin’s
capitalism and even some dashes
of democracy. But the question
really is, it seems to me: are
we ready for democracy? Are we
ready for this very crippled
democracy after not having any
history of democracy at all?
Because the reality is that we
jumped from the very troublesome
Yeltsin era with some
possibilities into a kind of
postmodernism, but we never went
through modernism.
Once again, this is very
typically Russian: you jump
through stages of development
but then you ultimately get
thrown back because the nature
of evolution is that one stage
develops out of the next.
Russian history throughout the
20th century is a development
through revolution, not
evolution.
An example of this might make
this clearer. Anatoly Chubais,
one of the liberal-minded
fathers of Russian
privatization, edited a book,
Privatization Russian Style,
which basically argued that we
built capitalism in Russia in
three short years, something
that the rest of the world took
300 years to make. And then you
think to yourself, did we need
to do it in three years? Do we
want this new type of
capitalism? I don’t.
So what kind of democracy can
Russia have? I mean, you asked
whether it could be a democracy.
Sometimes I wonder if there can
be a democracy in the true sense
of the word in Russia because
every time that we have an
opportunity to realize democracy
and we reach for it, we then get
bored with evolution and go back
to revolution because it is easy
and simple. And since in
revolution you know who or what
the enemy is, you simply
eliminate that enemy and then
start all over again.
Please read the full interview
with Nina Khrushcheva in Russia!
(Sping 2007)
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