Ernst did not suffer from cognitive dissonance. News and fiction were not two separate parts of his life but harmoniously complemented and interacted with one another. Night Watch featured a scene from Channel One’s nine o’clock news programme Vremya with a cameo appearance by one of its smooth-talking presenters who informs his audience about an approaching cataclysm.
Vremya was an antidote to chaos and disorder – a source of stability and routine, a matrix. Every programme followed the same repeated pattern – like a lullaby – starting with Putin travelling around the country or receiving ministers in his office, followed by examples of Russian resurgence and ending with (bad) news from abroad. Unlike any other programme on the channel, Vremya was (and still is) broadcast uninterrupted by commercials.
Strictly speaking, Vremya did not report news. Instead, it created a virtual reality according to the hierarchy of the state with Putin at the top. As a state news programme, Vremya did not allow itself any scorn, irony or ridicule. The tone of the presenter was always stern and serious. Its aim was to assure viewers that they could sleep peacefully in the knowledge that the country was being governed and guarded by a wise and caring president who would make the right decisions; that criminals and terrorists would be punished and champions of labour rewarded. ‘Any stabilization makes news calmer. If news works like a constant nerve irritant – as it did in Russia in the 1990s – it is a sign of instability rather than of the freedom of speech,’ Ernst explained.38
In fact, TV news did not reflect the country’s stabilization – it emanated an illusion of stability just as the violent crime dramas that flooded Russian television created an illusion of total lawlessness. Both news and soap operas were artefacts and they worked together to create a balance between dark and light as the plot of Night Watch would have it. While news was supposed to calm the audience, the violent crime dramas raised the level of adrenaline and aggression in the national bloodstream. As one high-powered Russian official and former FSB general explained, this deluge of graphic violence was not a response to high spectator demand, but a conscious policy formed in the high echelons of the Russian power structure, to create the impression that only the strong state portrayed in the news could protect the vulnerable population from the violence on the screen.
The question of what was good or bad for the audience was not decided by its tastes. ‘A doctor does not ask the patient under the knife what is good for him,’ Ernst said.39 It was his and Dobrodeev’s job to prescribe and administer the medicine.
The Battle Between Light and Darkness
Night Watch was released in Russia in early July 2004. A few weeks later, on 1 September, real horror struck the country – a school in Beslan in North Ossetia, with over 1,000 children, was taken hostage by Chechen terrorists. It was the worst terrorist attack in Russia’s history, more cruel and deadly than any other. Throughout the crisis the Russian media reported official figures fed by the Kremlin which put the number of hostages at 354. This was almost certainly a deliberate falsehood that infuriated the terrorists so much that they started to deny the children water and barred them from going to the toilet, forcing them to drink their own urine. According to one surviving hostage, the terrorists were listening to the news on radios. When they heard the number, one of them said: ‘Russia says there are only 300 of you here. Maybe we should kill enough of you to get down to that number.’40
After two days and three nights of negotiations, when independent Russian journalists and activists, including the courageous Anna Politkovskaya,[3] who commanded respect among Chechen fighters, were prevented from helping with negotiations, the security services began to storm the building.
On 3 September, at 1.03 p.m., two explosions were heard from the school’s gym where most of the hostages were being kept. As it later turned out, the explosions were caused by a thermobaric grenade fired by the Russian special forces. The terrorists started shooting the children, mayhem broke out and fighting began. Foreign networks such as CNN and the BBC broadcast the events live. In Russia, on the two state-controlled TV channels, normal programming continued. An hour later, they switched to what by then was turning into a massacre, but their coverage was confusing and brief. Channel One spent ten minutes on Beslan before returning to a Brazilian soap opera called Women in Love. Echo Moskvy, the city’s liberal radio station, kept its viewers up to date by watching events unfold on CNN.
Throughout the day, both state channels featured news bulletins on the hour, repeatedly reporting the official line: the authorities did not plan to storm the school; the terrorists had started the shooting; the siege was the work of an international terrorist organization whose numbers included ethnic Arabs and even an African (he later turned out to be Chechen).
Several hours into the clash, Russia Channel gave the impression that the fighting was over and that most of the hostages were now safe. Viewers saw children being carried by their parents and heard a relieved voice behind the camera saying: ‘They are alive, it is OK, they are alive, alive.’ As some were reunited with their parents, a correspondent commented: ‘There are tears here again, but this time these are tears of joy.’ A presenter gave figures of those taken to hospital, but carefully avoided giving estimates of the number of people killed. ‘According to the latest information,’ he said, ‘the fighting in the school is over. There are no dead or wounded there… we can’t give more exact figures of the injured… er… the precise figure of how many hostages were freed.’41
Then, at about 9 p.m., after more than 300 children and parents had died, and as the gunfight between the hostage-takers and special forces was still going on, viewers were treated to extraordinary programming. Russia Channel showed brave Russian soldiers fighting bearded Chechen bandits who were hiding in caves and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ These were scenes from the military drama On My Honour! Channel One meanwhile showed Die Hard, a film in which Bruce Willis saves hostages in a New York high-rise. The actors on the screen seemed to be taking fictional revenge on behalf of those who in Beslan were still dying.
Dobrodeev and Ernst were the demiurges who created myths and explained reality. As Ernst said afterwards: ‘Our task number two is to inform the country about what is going on. Today, the main task of the television is to mobilize the country. Russia needs consolidation.’42 Unlike Soviet television, which was closely guarded by censors, Ernst mostly made his own decisions. ‘Nobody calls me and orders me to do anything,’ he insisted.43 This was probably true. But even if it were not, he did not slavishly take instructions from the Kremlin, but willingly put his talent and imagination at its service.
‘I am a statist, a liberal statist,’ said Ernst a decade later.44 Throughout his years as the head of Channel One he has put his energy into consolidating the nation around spectacular television projects and creating common experiences based on a narrative of the state, removing any need for doubt, reflection or repentance. Unlike Dobrodeev, who turned into a political apparatchik and the master of the Kremlin’s propaganda, Ernst considers himself an artist, a creator, or, to use television language, a producer of the country.
3
Politkovskaya was poisoned with mysterious toxins while on a plane as she flew to Beslen to negotiate with hostage-takers. Two years later, on 7 October 2007, she was killed outside her Moscow apartment.