American Journalism and Russia's Tragedy (Page 3)

Poverty and health crises were, of course, reported, but usually as sidebars to the main story of Russia's "transition" and as legacies of the Communist past. Virtually all US correspondents and editorial writers were contemptuous of any Russian proposals for a gradual, "somehow less painful reform," whether by Yeltsin's own vice president in 1993 or Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1998 and 1999. Indeed, they seemed to think, following US officials and economists whose policies had already failed disastrously, that more shock therapy was needed, such as eliminating the housing and utilities subsidies that sustained millions of impoverished families, perhaps half the nation or more.[17]

Like old-time Soviet journalists, their latter-day US counterparts pardoned present deprivations in the name of a bright future that did not come. There was, for example, this astonishing but not unrepresentative assurance published by an especially influential US journalist in 1997: "While it is undoubtedly true that daily life in Russia today suffers from a painful economic, political, and social transition, the Russian prospect over the coming years and decades is more promising than ever before in its history."[18] The following year Moscow's fraudulent financial system collapsed and the "prospect" for tens of millions of Russians became even more "painful."

As Russia sank ever deeper into economic depression and poverty, US journalists continued to parrot Kremlin and Washington assertions that economic stability and takeoff, which still have not really come, were just around the corner. (Vice President Al Gore is quoted as having said in March 1998, "Optimism prevails universally among those who are familiar with what is going on in Russia.") On the eve of its 1998 financial meltdown (and even after), they still found ways to assure readers that Russia was "a remarkable success story."[19] Not even Putin's subsequent admission that "poverty exists on an unusually large scale in the country" would make it a focus of US reporting.

Many American correspondents clearly did not like "doom-and-gloom" stories about unpaid wages and pensions, malnutrition and abandoned provinces, where, a Russian journalist tells us, "desperation touches everyone." (Newsweek's correspondent advised the poor to continue living on bread: "They could do worse.")[20] Nor did they report more than a very few of the desperate acts of protest taking place around the country, and virtually none of the ways the "reform" government deprived workers of whatever rights and protection they once had in the Soviet system. American journalists preferred other "metaphors for Russia's metamorphosis"[21]--usually in the tiny segment of Moscow society that had prospered, from financial oligarchs to yuppies spawned by the temporary proliferation of Western enterprises.

Thus, for a Washington Post columnist who had recently been a correspondent, an especially successful insider beneficiary of state assets was a progressive "baby billionaire" and, for the Wall Street Journal, a "Russian Bill Gates."[22] For others, including a New York Times editorial writer and also former Moscow correspondent, "one of the best seats for observing the new Russia is on the terrace outside the cavernous McDonald's [that] serves as a mecca for affluent young Muscovites. They arrive in Jeep Cherokees and Toyota Land Cruisers, cell phones in hand."[23] In the new Russia at that time, the average monthly wage, when actually paid, was about $60, and falling.

No wonder few readers of the US press were prepared for Russia's economic collapse and financial scandals of the late nineties. Those who relied on the New York Times, for example, must have been startled to learn--from an investigative reporter, not a Russia-watcher--that contrary to its prior reporting and editorials, "The whole political struggle in Russia between 1992 and 1998 was between different groups trying to take control of state assets. It was not about democracy or market reform."[24]

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