The Steel Pipe Hobbles the Pen
By Sean at 19 March, 2009, 3:46 pm
“I’m typing with one hand. The second doesn’t work. Moreover, I’m very bruised in two places on the thigh of my left leg , in my left kidney, and on the middle of my back, and my face still stings. But I am lucky. I’m very lucky.” These are the words of Maksim Zolotarev, who goes by the ZhZh handle zeelot, in a blog post retelling how he was attacked by three men as he left home last Thursday. Zolotarev is the editor of Molva Iuzhnoe Podmoskove and one of the hundreds of journalists violently attacked in recent years.
Yesterday, 12 March 2009 I, Maksim Sergeevich Zolotarev, left home at 12:30. I made my way to my car so I could go to work. The car was 20 meters from my home. As I approached my car I saw another car-a Mitsubishi. I noticed that the number of the car was covered in dirt. The car turned around to face the front windshield of my car.
Only when I began to approach my car, did three men exit the Mitsubishi in identical short black ski jackets with hoods over their heads. I had a bad feeling.
One of the tall strangers (30-35 years old, under 2 meters, Slavic features) quickly came up to me and asked, “Where is building No. 18.” As I turned toward him, a shot from an air gun went into my face, after that they laid a blow to my legs, and I fell.
The second person (40-45 years old, medium height) pulled out a short steel rod encased in rubber and laid 10-15 blows on my entire body. Especially on my arms and spine. I could not open my eyes and could not breath and therefore didn’t see anyone. People nearby started running toward me. I remember that the incident occurred in the middle of day, around one o’clock. After the beating, the attackers got in the automobile and left in an unknown direction.
Zolotarev is another statistic in the number of journalists beaten in Russia this year. The assailants are almost never found or prosecuted. His beating is just another indication that being a journalist in Russia is a life or death profession.
There have been eight recorded incidents of attacks on journalists so far this year according to the Glasnost Defense Fund. But that number only includes January and February. We are almost at the end of March, and including Zolotarev, we can add the attack on Vzglyad reporter Vadim Rogozhin in Saratov on 5 March.
Rogozhin received more than ten blows to the head. He now lies in a coma. Rogozhin is said to been working on an investigation of illegal business activities. His bosses at Vzglyad are offering 1 million rubles for any information on the assailants.
If Rogozhin dies, he will become the third Russian journalist killed this year following the murder of Anastasia Baburova and Shafig Amrakhov. The former is well known. The latter was the editor of RIA-51 in Murmansk. He died from severe head wounds from an air gun an unknown assailant shot him with on December 30. The specific reason why he was attacked is unknown. But I bet it has something to do with his work.
It’s almost getting rote to chronicle these stories. And unlike most reports, I don’t think that any of this has to do with the Kremlin or even a particular aspect of Putinist Russia. The truth of the matter is that for the vast majority of Russian journalists beaten and killed, the assailants are more likely to be local, and probably connected to business interests–legal or otherwise. These attacks are a reminder that Russian capitalism is one where localized violence plays in fundamental role.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
These attacks are a reminder that Russian capitalism is one where localized violence plays in fundamental role.
And powerful business interests have no connection with local authorities in Russia at all, oh no; and they in turn have nothing to do with the Kremlin, or the way Putin’s government operates.
Attacks on journalists? Just another part of capitalism.
What else?
And of course, the fact that “the assailants are almost never found or prosecuted” is also no reflection on the government.
It’s all down to who owns the means of production, see?
I think my first comment got caught in the spam filter…
“I don’t think that any of this has to do with the Kremlin or even a particular aspect of Putinist Russia”
There’s no doubt that causation on this topic can take the wrong direction, or make spectacular jumps. I’ve no doubt that a Western editor would have no problems putting a headline like “Putin continues to crack down on journalists” on a headline like this. But it’s not part of a Putin-led campaign against journalists or civil society in general.
Autocratic, unaccountable bureaucracies are highly threatened by a free press. This happens at all levels of Russia (and indeed elsewhere in the world, otherwise that poor British arms control inspector would still be alive). Bureaucracies react vigorously and violently against any curtailment of their power. Democracies have learned that they function better if the press and NGOs are protected from politicians and civil servants, to act as part of the system of checks and balances.
No government official in Russia, from Putin downwards, has anything against a free press in principle. In fact, it can serve to help inform them about what’s going on in their country, and is a useful weapon in their internecine conflicts. But when it starts to infringe on their own space, they are very very against it. And this is what we are seeing in practice. Politkovskaya was not killed because she criticised Russia’s policies in Chechnya, but because she threatened specific economic interests (that were making money out of Russia’s policies in Chechnya).
This journalist was attacked because he was publishing embarrassing information about a lucrative, and probably corrupt property deal. Actually, the instigators of the attack were probably not worried about the general public finding out, but about their superiors finding out. And not because their superiors would stop it, but because they would either demand a cut, or take over the entire deal. Russia becomes a lot easier to understand when you realise that it’s not about ideology, but about money.
And powerful business interests have no connection with local authorities in Russia at all, oh no; and they in turn have nothing to do with the Kremlin, or the way Putin’s government operates.
So you think the particular type of capitalist system in Russia doesn’t play a role? Russian capitalism is nothing like the US or Western Europe. It’s different and far more locally violent. More like Latin America or even Asia.
The last paragraph is certainly provoking for those who didn’t live in Russia in good ole times of Yeltsinist Russia.
The same rate for dead journalists but no food in the fridge.
So you think the particular type of capitalist system in Russia doesn’t play a role? Russian capitalism is nothing like the US or Western Europe. It’s different and far more locally violent. More like Latin America or even Asia.
Actually, Russian capitalism is not much different from capitalism in the US or Western Europe. Companies raise and use capital in order to operate in much the same way they do in the west, i.e by borrowing it from a bank or flogging shares.
It is Russian business, and the methods of doing business, which differ from its American and Western European counterparts. Capitalism has nothing to do with it.
Sean, I suspect it’s more similar to Sicilian “capitalism”. Well, I don’t know how things are now in Sicily (perhaps much better than 20-years ago), but you get my drift. Surely it was a local matter and Putin had nothing to do with that beating, but it’s the whole corrupt system that make such things common: a structure in which “entrepeneurs” and bureaucrats are intimely enmeshed in a mutually beneficial relationship and anyone who is either too uppity or honest is coerced into submission, forced into silence or eliminated.
One of the truly sad aspects of the Zolotarev post is how he ended it. I cannot blame him, but this is what he wrote (rough translation):
“Now I simply want to warn all journalists writing on political matters–walking on the brink. We had Khimki, then Saratov, now Serpukhov. Think a thousand times before taking on a story. I was lucky. If they wanted they could have kill me, maim me. But this did not happen. I was warned. And now I’m warning you. And, yes, I resigned from the newspaper.”
So in this particular case the title of your post should have been “The Steel Pipe Silences the Pen.”
I think Newman has this topic locked up.
It’s true what Kolya says, regarding a corrupt system that makes such things possible. But, you can easily make the case that Putin not only tolerates, but cultivates and maintains this system. The selective enforcement of laws sends the signal that certain crimes are acceptable. Beating or killing the right kind of journalists is one of them.
As far as capitalisms go, I think Lenin’s ГМК is the best way to describe Russia.
There is a memorable episode in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” where a free-spirited priest Casy is killed by a blow to the head by some local “law enforcer” in black leather jacket wielding a length of pipe in 1930-s US. Apparently such things happen everywhere in times of uncertainty and social upheaval. The problem with Russia seems to be that it’s always in the state of uncertainty…
A joke from 1997…
A patient with a knife protruding from his shoulder-blades is taken to the resuscitation department. A doctor asks him: “Do you feel pain?” The patiens respondes: “Only when I laugh.”
It’s all normal in Russia. You feel the pain only if you laugh.
“The selective enforcement of laws sends the signal that certain crimes are acceptable.”
Oh c’mon. Like the Chicago mob looks to Obama’s legal actions to determine what actions are acceptable and what aren’t. “Hey boss, can we stick this guy in the concrete boots already?” “Hold on, Rico! We need to see how Obama handles banking malfeasance first!”