Picture courtesy of 1968.Digital.
By Helen McHenry
The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies continued its fall lecture series on Friday, October 26 with Mikhail Zygar, a prominent author and former journalist. Zygar began as a correspondent for the Russian newspaper Kommersant, covering multiple wars in Asia and the Middle East before opting for a change of pace. He chose, as he quipped, a “more peaceful” career in Russian media as a member of the team that established TV-Rain.
Picture courtesy of Sergei Pugachev.
At the time of its creation, TV-Rain was Russia’s only independent TV channel. Built to be both accurate and freshly optimistic, the channel employed investigative reporters to cover corruption, as well as the protests of 2011 and 2012. TV-Rain’s following grew to twenty million households by 2014, when a series of phone calls from the Kremlin led to the channel being dropped from the air – one week before the annexation of Crimea.
TV-Rain adapted, switching to subscription-based viewing. This allowed the channel to survive, but at the price of millions of viewers – today the channel has 70,000 subscriptions. Along with this change came a shift in the channel’s attitude. In Zygar’s opinion, TV-Rain began to cover increasingly unimportant stories in an attempt to recount current events “minute by minute.” Its journalists began to feel as if they were fighting a war against those they were investigating, leading Zygar to quit in 2015.
Mikhail Zygar’s disillusionment with the Russian media landscape led him to change tactics, narrowing his audience to the Russian youth, particularly those who were not already reading or watching the news. Because young people are not as set in their opinions as their elders, he believes that they are the ones in need of accurate information.
He began with a yearlong project on the Russian Revolution, modifying primary sources from the era to be uploaded onto a Facebook account. This allowed audiences to follow the events of 1917 one hundred years after they happened (For more information on this project, please see August Hagemann’s piece on the topic).
Zygar’s latest project is an ongoing web series based on the turbulent year of 1968. From my studies of modern history, his choice makes sense – 1968 was the year of the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the Prague Spring. The year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. The year marked by protests worldwide regarding human rights and the Vietnam War. The reaction in Russia, however, is surprising – he is frequently asked, “Why 1968?”
According to Zygar, 1968 was the last year the Soviet Union was viewed as a legitimate alternative to the West. Until 1968, many throughout the United States and Europe saw the Soviet model as fairer than democracy. The primary shift was in attitude amongst the younger generations. Rejecting the notion that only their elders should be heard, young people wanted to play a more active role – to be heroes, as opposed to simply, in Zygar’s words, “part of the mechanism.”
This project, released 50 years after these events initially took place, includes 40 episodes that have been published throughout the year in Russian, English, and French. Zygar made a point of adding that while both English and French media outlets have agreed to partner with the project, no Russian outlet has offered the same.
Picture courtesy of 1968.Digital.
As part of the lecture, we watched Episode 19, from which I chose the title for this piece. “For Our Freedom and Yours” took place on a replication of a phone screen, flipping back and forth between various apps to display historical events in real time. Two figures featured in the episode were Jerry Rubin and Natalya Gorbanevskaya, an American and a Russian who led protest movements in their various countries.
Rubin was a prominent character in the anti-Vietnam movement in the United States, creating the anti-establishment Yippie Party and calling for the protests that turned so violent at the Democratic National Convention. Gorbanevskaya was carted in and out of a psychiatric hospital in Moscow for her part in a series of protests centered on human rights and condemning the Soviet response to the Prague Spring. The episode also mentioned milestones in LGBTQ and women’s rights that took place around the same time.
Mikhail Zygar’s experience in journalism has taught him that Russia’s current political situation has led to a nationwide attitude of cynicism and apathy. As traditional media dies worldwide, Zygar’s method adapts with technology to “fill those smartphones…with something useful.” In his opinion, this “something useful” comes in the form of history.
With his work, Zygar aspires to change the attitude of Russians today. He endeavors to inspire change in the present through a better understanding of history – in his words, the “rehearsal of the future.” In light of political and social trends in Russia, as well as worldwide, we can only hope he is right.
For more information on Mikhail Zygar’s lecture, please see Emily Erdmann’s piece, which provides a complete picture of his visit. The Havighurst Center’s fall lecture series will conclude on November 6 with Masha Gessen, who will be discussing Journalism as a Tool of Resistance in a Post-Truth World. Influenced by her recent book, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, her talk will take place in Shideler 152.
Helen McHenry is a sophomore majoring in International Studies and REEES.