After Malashenko’s monologue, silence fell over the dining table. ‘Yeltsin said nothing. He just continued to eat in complete silence. After a long pause Yeltsin started to tell us again how everything was getting better in the country, how salaries and pensions were being paid on time.’
When Yeltsin finished, Malashenko spoke again: ‘Forgive me, Boris Nikolaevich, but I just raised a subject which I consider to be of extreme importance. You may disagree with me and tell me that I am completely wrong, but you can’t just ignore it.’ At that point Yeltsin became white with anger. Malashenko later said: ‘I suddenly remembered the story I heard at university explaining why a bear is so dangerous. It is because a bear’s facial muscles are weak, so he always looks as though he is smiling. There is no way to tell when he is turning angry, but by the time he does, it is usually too late.’ Barely able to control his temper, Yeltsin turned to Malashenko: ‘I speak. You speak. But we will not have a discussion.’73 The dinner ended in awkward silence with everyone staring at their plates.
Shortly afterwards, Gusinsky paid the ransom of $1.5 million through Berezovsky’s business partner, and on 17 August 1997, after three months in captivity, Masyuk was released – to coincide with a visit by Aslan Maskhadov to Moscow. Two days later, Malashenko, Dobrodeev and Kiselev gave a press conference at the Slavyankaya Hotel, where NTV usually celebrated its birthday. Malashenko announced that NTV had paid a ransom and pointed a finger at Maskhadov and his government. ‘We have every reason to assert that Maskhadov is well aware of the kidnapping business in Chechnya which is conducted by his lieutenants, including his vice-president Vakha Arsanov…’ Then, after a pause, Malashenko added: ‘I don’t know whether Yeltsin realized that [when he met with Maskhadov] he was talking to their main captor: I am convinced that only the captor could dovetail his visit to Moscow with the release of the journalist.’74 Malashenko concluded that the state was incapable of performing its constitutional duties and defending its own citizens.
Masyuk spoke about her experience in captivity where she had been guarded by drug-inhaling Chechens. ‘Sometimes we had an urge to kill them. There were situations when we could have simply stretched out our arms [to reach the weapons] and pulled the trigger… Today there is nothing for journalists to do in Chechnya. Let them sit there with no journalists. I don’t judge the whole of the Chechen people, but there are people I hate,’ she said angrily.75
The day after the press conference, Yeltsin publicly answered Malashenko. At a meeting of his Security Council, he said the peace process was taking place in Chechnya and some ill-informed people like Malashenko, who knew nothing about Chechnya, were trying to blacken it. Yeltsin was thinking about his own succession and was desperately eager to close the Chechen question and move on – hence his fury with Malashenko’s attempt to stir up the subject. Talks with Maskhadov were necessary because, however weak the Chechnya president was, he provided the only alternative to the war that NTV berated Yeltsin for.
After Yeltsin’s angry comments, Berezovsky came up to Malashenko to cheer him up. ‘“Don’t worry, Igor”, he told me. “The fact is that now, after Masyuk, we can do what the hell we like with Chechnya.”’76 Nobody incited the hatred towards Chechnya and criticized Yeltsin for his peace deal with Maskhadov more than Berezovsky’s Channel One, which put out a weekly programme presented by Nevzorov, who was hired by Berezovsky, called Dni (Days) – a reference to the ultra-national newspaper Den’ (Day), edited by Prokhanov. In the summer of 1996, Nevzorov’s programme showed Russian paratroopers brandishing the sun-cured ears of Chechen fighters, and mentioned crucifixions of federal soldiers that those fighters had performed.
In 1997 the disturbing images moved to the news slots. Soon after the release of Masyuk, NTV and Channel One showed gratuitous footage of public executions in Chechnya of people sentenced to death by the shariah law. ‘Now you see how the two convicted people are being led to a wall covered with black cloth,’ a good-looking Channel One female presenter explained calmly.77 ‘The execution is being set up in a way traditional for some Eastern countries.’ Both channels showed the actual moment of shooting in their prime-time news. This was clearly different from reporting a war. The purpose of the video was not to inform the public but to incite its repulsion and outrage.
The confluence of these two events – the demolition of the government of young reformers and the shift in the public attitude towards Chechnya – made stabilization in the country all but impossible. But stability was the last thing that television needed. Instability allowed television to exercise influence and keep the audience entertained. A fast succession of political faces on television meant the audience did not get bored. Politics followed the rules of consumerism: Lebed was the flavour of the month one day, gone another. So was Nemtsov.
The year 1997 was supposed to herald the beginning of a new country. It did not. The problem was not just the behaviour of the media or the shallowness of the elite. The problem was the lack of a new project or vision of the future that could unite the country. The threat of a communist revanche that helped Yeltsin’s side to consolidate his electorate, had been used up in the 1996 elections. Communist leaders now seemed more interested in cashing in on their ‘threat’ than realizing it. The defeat of the communists revealed the lack of further purpose. Nobody in Russia had any sense of direction, true identity, or history – and nobody cared.
Old Songs about Important Things
Russia’s post-communist constitution stated that no ideology could be imposed by the state. Yet, after the 1996 elections, the vacuum of a unifying idea became self-evident. Yeltsin charged his aides to come up with an answer to ‘what national idea or national ideology is most important for Russia’. As Kommersant wrote in 1997:
The search for a national ideology has become the Kremin’s idée-fixe. This is understandable. In the election of 2000, you can’t attract voters by saying ‘vote, or things will get worse’… The hitherto foggy wish of the rulers of our vast and muddled country to gain, at last, a national idea is starting to take practical shape. There is nothing objectionable in this wish. Any citizen would welcome a nice, clear and truly national unifying idea. But in an enlightened state – such an idea is not an object of first necessity. Quite the opposite – it is a luxury and it would be nice to be able to afford it.78
A special group was put together and even produced a pamphlet on the subject, but it did not amount to much. The very way in which this search was conducted was slightly comical. Like a tsar from a Russian fairy tale, Yeltsin was instructed to ‘go I know not whither and fetch I know not what’. The only possible idea could be a nationalist one, but Yeltsin who saw Russia’s future as a Western-style democracy did not go in that direction.
The lack of a new big project or idea was also evident in the lack of any coherent style. So the media turned to history – not by way of a serious examination, but as a form of entertainment. Having thwarted the communists, the young and bright stars of the media looked at the past as a fashion accessory or an artefact; Soviet civilization – whatever the merits of its political regime and ideology – had left behind a vast reserve that could be tapped to fill a stylistic void.