But I know plenty of people who watch Russia’s government-owned
“Kiselev TV” with no damage to their brains. They have no special immunity, and
there is no sanity vaccine. In fact,
there is no method to Russian propaganda’s madness. Actually, the opposite is
true: Russian television is run entirely for one single viewer, Vladimir Putin
– and he is a volatile and whimsical viewer at that.
Its purpose is to show to the Russian president that his
foreign policy is brilliant and that he’s winning – in Ukraine, in Syria and in
his broader standoff with the West. It changes focus the moment Putin develops
his next grand scheme to outsmart his foes. For a year and a half on its
television sets Russia was winning both the war in Eastern Ukraine and the
hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people. Then, when the war in Donbas came to
a standstill and the Russian economy entered a catastrophic crisis, Putin
developed a new idea: to insert himself into Syria, help Bashar al-Assad defeat
moderate Sunni opposition and then emerge as an arbiter of the Middle East,
trading his help in the region for Western recognition of his annexation of
Crimea and removal of sanctions. So far, he’s winning there too – at least on
the television screen.
As such, “Kiselev TV” is highly damaging to Putin as well as to
Russia. It supplies misinformation to the commander in chief, paints an overly
bright picture, brushes over complexities and forces him to pile mistake upon
mistake in his policy decisions.
At the same time, Russian propaganda seems highly effective
among its viewers. They readily believe what they see and hear. While their
refrigerators get progressively emptier, their television sets are still
winning the battle between those two household appliances hands down.
In the early 1970s, when color television was just starting in
the Soviet Union and, like everything else under communism, color TV sets were
in short supply, a joke was making rounds around the country. Apparently, the
announcer on the nightly color newscast would start the program with a greeting:
“Good evening, Comrade Brezhnev.”
Like many such jokes, that one managed to say something
important about the way Soviet propaganda functioned. All that was ultimately
required of it was to please TV Viewer Number One, i.e., the country’s boss.
That was true in equal measure of Soviet art. Another joke
defined socialist realism, the only artistic style in which Soviet writers,
artists and film directors were allowed to work, as “a way to glorify Soviet
leaders in a way that is accessible to them.”
It all goes back to Stalin, the true father of the nation. By
the time he died in 1953, the whole country functioned exclusively for his
benefit. People used to stay in their offices all night because there had been
a rumor that Stalin, a notorious night owl, sometimes phoned from his study in
the Kremlin to a random ministry in the middle of the night. And woe to the
minister whose employees weren’t there to answer his pointless calls.
Putin is an heir to that tradition. He doesn’t call people in
the middle of the night, but he does watch television – and Kiselev, Soloviev,
Tolstoy and a huge number of other people in front of the cameras and behind
the scenes are there to make sure he’s pleased with what he sees.
The Soviet Union was built on a myth that communism is a way of
the future for all humanity and the Soviets people are the ideological vanguard
of that bright future. That was what Viewer Number One expected to see on his
color TV screen, too.
Putin’s Russia has a different ideology. Its mentality is based
on career criminals’ rules and code of conduct, which divides the world into
“us” – the criminal fraternity – and the rest. A member of this fraternity has
obligations only to other criminals and doesn’t give a damn about anyone else.
Putin doesn’t care what the Russian people think about him – as
long as they don’t show direct signs of disrespect. When Boris Nemtsov publicly
called Purin “friggin nuts” he was blatantly murdered, execution-style. But
when people rallied against Putin’s return to presidency in 2011-12 under the
banner stating “Putin Is a Thief,” he didn’t seem to mind it much.
In fact, Russian criminals proudly call themselves thieves.
They also admit that they lie. Lying and perjuring yourself in court is a
natural thing for thieves to do – and they brag about it in front of his
companions. Which is what Putin did after annexing Crimea – first denying and
then bragging about his troops’ involvement.
Russian propagandists are well rewarded for telling the Boss
what he wants to hear. There is a traditional role in prisons and labor camps
for someone who can spin a good yarn. They too get nice crumbs from the
thieves’ table.
There is a paradox here. Soviet propagandists used to work hard
to make the masses believe them. Yet, even though the masses lived behind the
Iron Curtain, had little access to objective information and couldn’t travel
abroad, they were universally cynical about official propaganda claims.
The opposite is true today. Russian propagandists don’t care
what their audiences – with the notable exception of Putin – think of them. No
attempt has been made to censor the Internet, exclude foreign publications or
ban foreign travel. Yet, there is now widespread credulity about Russian
propaganda claims.
Putin at least has the excuse of actually initiating policy and
getting a kind of circular approval for it, while also refusing to use the
Internet. Ordinary citizens do not.
In my view, the explanation for this paradox lies in the fact
that communism’s ideological constructs were outside Russian society. The party
was an artificial institution that existed in a parallel universe, and its
alien messages fell mostly on deaf ears. Putin, by contrast, is Russia’s native son, bone of its bones and
flesh of its flesh. Like him, his supporters, all 86% of them, grew up in
lumpenized deracinated families in communal apartments, converted barracks and
dorms, poorly supervised by their working parents (in the rare instances when
they had both of them) and spending most of their childhood in the streets.
Like Putin, they became imbued with the criminal ethics by listening to guys
who had done time. They admired their strength and freedom, which contrasted
with the widespread corruption and cynicism of the Soviet era.
Putin’s conduct, speeches, sense of humor and modus operandi
are informed by the thugs’ code of conduct and as such are instantly
recognizable by Russian citizens of his generation. They admire him and this is
why newscasts designed for his personal consumption resonate so readily with so
many of his countrymen.
