These shows have brought a new glasnost, Glasnost 2.0, to Russia reminiscent of the new openness on state television during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika era.  The Perestroika 2.0 engineered by Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev and Prime Minister (and likely next Russian President Vladimir Putin) has featured an explosion of television talk shows, with heated debates on the burning questions of Russian life and politics.  For example, in a recent program on NTV’s ‘NTVshniki’ (NTV’ers) representatives of all political forces hotly debated the question: ‘If not Putin, then who?”  Among the featured debaters was one of the leaders of the nascent ‘white revolution’ representing the recent street demonstrators, former first deputy prime minister and Nizhnii Novgorod Governor Boris Nemtsov, who harshly condemned Putin and his regime, as he has in numerous newspaper articles, speeches, and a recent book.  No better sign of the new thaw in Russian politics could there be in the fact that Nemtsov was appearing on NTV for the first time in five years.

‘NTVshniki’ is joined by a long list of new talk shows and news programs that cover Russian politics through a much more critical lens than we have seen in nearly a decade: ‘Citizen Gordon’ (Grazhdanin Gordon), ‘Freedom and Justice’ (Svoboda i Spravedlivost’), ‘Central Television’ (Tsentral’noe Televidenie), ‘Honest Monday’ (Chestnyi Ponedel’nik), ‘Emergency Situation’ (ChP standing forChrezvychainoe Polozhenie), ‘Let Them Talk’ (Pust’ Govoryat), and many more.  In addition to these programs, pre-existing TV programs, such as Vladimir Pozner’s ‘Pozner’, have become much more open in their discussion of politics, rule of law, corruption, social issues, and the economy.

The new openness on state TV is just one aspect of the Glasnost 2.0, however.  It is also evident on radio, in the newspapers, and Russia’s completely free and uncensored Internet; a feature of Glasnost 2.0 that sets distinguishes it from its predecessor.  Yet Stanley confines her ‘reporting’ for the NYT’s inevitably poorly informed readership, to a superificial tour of Russian TV’s banalities, as if Russia is the only country where television is a landscape of empty mindlessness.  The only talk show she mentions, ‘Let Them Talk’, is described in undertones that completely hide from readers the program’s frequent coverage of previously banned political subjects.

It should be kept in mind that many of the gains of Glasnost 1.0 were preserved through the Yeltsin and Putin presidencies, so that recently Glasnost 2.0 has begun from a much more open foundation.  Glasnost 1.0 began in a totalitarian state which was completely centralized.  Control of all media, sophisticated systems of forced mobilization (and ‘agitation and propaganda’), left no space for messages anywhere in society.  In short, when it comes to information today, Russians do not live in a completely free media environment, but they do live in a largely free media environment.

But our independent U.S. mainstream media will make sure you do not hear a word about it. Thus, theWashington Post (Kathy Lally, “In Russia, cold is a matter of degree,” Washington Post, 12 February 2012), also has deleted Glasnost 2.0 and Perestroika 2.0 from its version of Russia’s recent history, however, she did manage to report that Russia is very cold in winter.  Putting a fine point on the stereotyped view of Russia and Russians, Lally added a final touch to this news story by adding two more stereotypes.  Noting that when she recently complained about her drafty hotel room to the reception desk clerk, she writes that the Russian “stared at me, contemptuous of my cluelessness. ‘Drink some vodka,’ he hissed.”

Gordon M. Hahn is Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Associate, Russia and Eurasia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program; Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002) and Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choicemagazine.  He has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and publishes the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report(IIPER) at CSIS at http://csis.org/program/russia-and-eurasia-program.