Nevzorov’s ten-minute ‘reportage’ from Vilnius grew into a two-part documentary which he called Nashi – ‘Ours’, or ‘Our Guys’ – as opposed to Lithuanians or any non-Russians who were not ‘ours’. ‘Nashi’ is how Petr Verkhovensky, the scoundrel and agent provocateur in Dostoevsky’s The Devils, describes his circle of pseudo-socialists. (A decade later Nevzorov said he was infatuated with Dostoevsky, and in particular with The Devils. He was particularly fascinated by Nikolai Stavrogin, a charismatic prince of darkness and nihilist who confesses to seducing a fourteen-year-old girl and driving her to suicide.)
Nevzorov said that behind him stood Kryuchkov, the bald and bespectacled head of the KGB: ‘I always had connections with the KGB and it never ceased.’21 According to Nevzorov, he was brought up by his grandfather – a KGB general who, between 1946 and 1953, fought against Lithuanian partisans who organized an armed resistance to the Soviet occupation. ‘I grew up in the KGB family.’ Kryuchkov, Nevzorov boasted, was a friend who often asked him for favours. ‘To me, he was a romantic figure – the keeper of a great deal of explosive secrets, living under their spell.’22 How much of what Nevzorov says is actually true and how much is ‘romantic’ fiction is impossible to say.
As Nevzorov himself later admitted, it was not about what happened in Vilnius, it was about whose side he was on. The anonymous Lithuanians were ‘fascists’, who were shooting at ‘Nashi’. Standing by the window of the television tower and staring into the darkness outside, Nevzorov was told by one of the Russian officers how Lithuanian snipers were aiming at his soldiers. The fact that the room was lit by camera flashes and would therefore be an obvious target for any sniper persuaded Nevzorov’s critics that the whole thing was staged. ‘They did not understand that I turned on the lights in the hope that they would shoot at us. I needed an action shot, windows being shattered – that is why I did it,’ Nevzorov countered the criticism.23
Not a single Lithuanian was interviewed in the film. For Nevzorov’s purposes, the enemy had to be collective and anonymous. ‘I was very sincere then. I defended our soldiers not from the position of a Soviet man, but from the position of a Russian patriot. To support savages who rise against your country is not in the tradition of a Russian patriot.’24 The film was praised by Pravda and was subsequently shown fourteen times on national television. Whereas Soviet television propaganda was drab and dull, Nevzorov’s version was thrilling. Nevzorov set the precedent of an information offensive which was to be repeated many times over subsequent years, including during Russia’s conflict with Georgia in 2008 and then again –with tenfold vigour – against Ukraine in 2014.
Yet while the main purpose of Putin-era propaganda has been to consolidate the power of Vladimir Putin, in 1991 neither Nevzorov nor those who were outraged by his film looked favourably at the Soviet president. Nevzorov blamed Gorbachev for not acting more decisively and for abandoning Soviet soldiers in the Baltic republics without reinforcements. The intelligentsia blamed him for moving in on the troops in the first place. There was no decision that would have satisfied both sides. Gorbachev said he was asleep when the attack took place and blamed it on the local authorities.
For the generation of Yegor Yakovlev and Moskovskie novosti, the events in Vilnius were a breaking point that annulled everything they believed in and had worked towards since the beginning of Perestroika. It turned out that socialism with a human face was an illusion after all, that the only things that could hold the regime together were the violence and lies which poured out from state television screens.
The morning after the bloodshed in Lithuania, Moskovskie novosti was printed with a black mourning border and eight full pages of stories about events in Vilnius. The journalists and editors also hung a flag with black ribbon on the side of the building and put up a sign on the door: ‘The bloodshed in Lithuania is our blood.’ The front-page editorial, printed under a photograph of a young man holding a national Lithuanian flag against a Soviet tank, was headlined: ‘THE CRIME OF THE REGIME THAT DOES NOT WANT TO LEAVE THE STAGE’. ‘After the bloody Sunday in Vilnius, what is left of our president’s favourite topics of “humane socialism”, “new thinking” and a “common European home”? Virtually nothing,’ it said. (To be fair, it was not just Gorbachev’s favourite topic – it was theirs too.) The editorial concluded with an appeal that echoed Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Live Not by Lies’: ‘We particularly appeal to journalists: If you don’t have the strength or ability to tell the truth, at least do not participate in lies! This lie will become evident not tomorrow, not in the future. It is already obvious today.’25 In the bottom right-hand corner of its last page Moskovskie novosti printed the names of its own journalists who had decided to leave the party. In alphabetical order, the last name was that of Yegor Yakovlev. After thirty-six years as a member of the Communist Party, Yegor had finally called it quits.
Soon after the Lithuanian events, a few of Yegor’s closest friends came to mark his sixtieth birthday. His son Vladimir was also there. ‘It was a meeting of people who did not know what to say to one another,’ he told David Remnick afterwards. ‘The energy they used to have was gone, and the world around them was no longer their world. And, most important, they did not know how to relate to this world. It was the feeling you see at the traditional gatherings in Russia forty days after someone dies. No one is crying any more, but no one knows quite what to say. These birthday gatherings had always been such celebrations. Now it was just silence, a complete breakdown.’26
The turn-around by Moskovskie novosti and its readers made such an impression on Gorbachev that he proposed suspending the media law and putting the print and television media under the direct control of the Supreme Soviet – to ‘ensure its objectivity’. In anger, he referred to the newspaper by its English name, The Moscow News, to stress its foreignness and alienation. But the genie could not be put back in the bottle. The days of Glasnost, when Gorbachev had handed out to a select few a licence to speak up, were over.
When one of the newspaper’s journalists publicly and in his face challenged Gorbachev’s proposals about suspending the media law, Gorbachev backed off from the idea as easily as he had put it forward a few minutes earlier. Gorbachev’s swing to the right was easy to defy because it did not seem convincing. But the hardliners also sensed Gorbachev’s weakness and volatility and found his refusal to endorse their actions in Vilnius deeply worrying.
A month after the failed coup in Vilnius, Gorbachev received an analytical report from the head of the KGB which urged him to impose control over the media in the interests of protecting the Soviet constitutional order. ‘It is clear that the weakening of ideological work as a means of defending socialist ideals cannot be replaced by any other political force,’ Kryuchkov wrote.27 Just like in 1968 in Prague – the media were the biggest threat to the regime. And just like in 1968, the only tools available to the Soviet regime to save itself were tanks – with or without Gorbachev at the top.