The NTV turned out modern and new although obviously it bore the owner’s stamp. In June 1999 Gusinsky’s television merits were marked by the Teffi award – for his personal contribution to the development of television.
Until his forced leave outside the country Gusinsky’s political sympathies invariably laid on the side of Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov and his structures supported the movement Fatherland – All Russia on the 1999 elections. Gusinsky made the acquaintance of Luzhkov and his wife, Elena Baturina, back in 1987 when he was starting his businessman career.
By creating the Media-Most holding in 1997 Gusinky practically turned out to be the first Russia’s “media-magnate”, someone like Rupert Murdok or Ted Turner on Russia’s scale. He considered the mass media as a source of revenues. Here it should be mentioned that the mass media created for profits doubtlessly tend to give the viewer, listener or reader all the true, all the sensational, all the secrete information, while the mass media that serve as instruments of propaganda in someone’s favor will always distort, cut, hide information in their favor. Mass media can be politically engaged, why not, but in this case there has to be enough of them and they have to belong to different political forces. The citizen will have the total possible set of various points of view and switching channels on his television he will be able to receive the complete information. Like the National-Bolsheviks Decembrists have justly pointed out, now, Putin’s group has usurped all the information – it has taken over all the largest TV channels and thus daily presents only one kind of information to the viewer – the one it wants. And thus it forms the worldview of most of the country’s population, tells them how to understand. People weak of will and feeble of mind are satisfied with the official version of reality. Those who are stronger look for information like in dissidents’ times: in Radio Liberty or BBC for example. This is informational violence; it is in fact a crime of Putin’s group. But let us return to Gusinsky.
Here Gusinsky interests us not so much as an oligarch, but as a media-magnate. He has discovered that exclusively non-engaged mass media can be commercially lucrative (and not needing financing from interested structures). This is the role aspired by the mass media of Gusinsky’s holding. Nevertheless, Gusinsky was not spared by the total inclusion of the economical elite into the political whirlwind and has introduced serious corrections into his position. In other words he did not manage to stay unengaged and his principal creation – NTV – did not stay unengaged. Television is a serious political weapon; a Siegfried’s sword of sorts and the temptation to use it was great. By putting NTV and himself in opposition to Putin Gusinsky has signed his death warrant. Actually, it should be noticed in Gusinsky’s justification that Putin and his group would have taken the channel from him anyway because they govern the country from the position of absolutism and just physically do not tolerate the presence of such a powerful weapon as a TV channel in someone else’s hands.
Gusinsky has drawn many fresh talents into NTV. His producer’s education came at hand here. They say that Gusinsky did not like to personally meddle with politics until 1999. They affirm that it was Igor Malashenko, NTV’s general director, who has enthralled him with political projects. (Although back in January 1996 Gusinsky joined a coalition of bankers created by Boris Berezovsky in Davos to support Boris Yeltsin in the presidential elections).
The first attack on Gusinsky was made back in 1994. Employees of the main department of the president’s security attacked the Most-Bank office in the city hall, without presenting any charges. It was Korzhakov who gave the order. This attack is interpreted differently but most probably it was the first sign of resentment of the people in should-straps. In the end today we see even sharper oppositions of the same forces: people in should-straps have put Khodorkovsky in prison. At the time Gusinsky went to London for six months. Repressions did not follow and soon Yeltsin dismissed Korzhakov. Actually, now we are interested by the freedom of the mass media and the access of the citizen to total information about what happens in this country and in the world and not about the war between bankers and officers.
The next attack on Gusinsky and on the NTV Company happened in December 1997. The State antitrust committee opened a case against NTV about the violation of the antitrust legislation. The goal was to make NTV pay for the broadcasting of the television signal on commercial and not State tariffs, which were two-three times lower. Then NTV was saved by the presidential order of January 28th 1998 that gave NTV the status of an all-Russian television company. Then there was the scandal about the protest of patriarch Alexy II against the airing of Martin Scorsese’s The Passion of Christ on NTV. Bu these were minor problems.
Large-scale confrontations with the Kremlin began in 1999 in the midst of the electoral campaign to the State Duma. The competition between the Kremlin who supported the Unity block, it has created, and Fatherland – All Russia, supported by Gusinsky, kept growing. Gusinsky has actively joined the informational war on Luzhkov’s side, competing with the ORT channel, which continued its attacks on Luzhkov and Primakov more harshly. The Russians did not yet forget the vicissitudes of this story, unprecedented by its rage, vividness and scandal. Here is how it looked like in short. Dorenko accused Luzhkov of taking part in the murder of the American Tate, shareholder of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel. Primakov was accused of taking part in an attempt on Georgia’s president Shevarnadze. Less large-scale accusations were news about Moscow’s Bank financing Luzhkov’s pedigree stallion in Germany at a cost of about $300-400 million. After Primakov has had an operation on his hip, Dorenko made it the subject of his program. He demonstrated a video made during the operation (naturally, not Primakov’s). ORT won in this confrontation between ORT and NTV. The fight between two political clans and two TV giants was added spice by the fact that the ORT owner who hired the TV killer Dorenko was Berezovsky. (There is some information that Korzhakov effectuated the first attack on Gusinsky’s people on Berezovsky’s demand). The scandalous confrontation of the two TV channels in 1999 with the participation of the brilliant (someone would say disgusting) TV killer Dorenko is a clear example of the scandalous freedom of speech. Its contrary is the infamous silence of today’s channels, their total submission to a single boss, their hiding of the truth.
The Kremlin remembered Gusinsky’s position on the State Duma elections and started its vengeance. Even before the elections Vnesheconombank demanded Media-Most and NTV Plus to return two credits of $62,2 million. The Kremlin’s position was voiced by the former head of the president’s administration Voloshin who declared that Media-Most was receiving more State credits than the rest of the media and that it must pay. Evgeny Kisilev accused the head of administration of lying and in the Segodnya newspaper Vnesheconombank was called “a bureau that executes special orders from the president’s administration”. On December 14th 1999 a court order followed: it had to pay. Most-Bank was forced to agree and pay. At the same time Most-Bank was accused of not paying 650 million rubles to the State Customs Committee. Verifications of the Most-Bank and Media-Most documents followed one after another.