Responding to efforts to formulate a concept of public-service broadcasting in Russia, legendary television personality Anatoly Lysenko quipped: "The authorities tossed the public a bone, and rather than chew on the bone members of the public began gnawing on one another."

Some members of the Moscow intelligentsia have been working overtime to come up with rather outlandish material for the media.

I recently bumped into an old acquaintance who, without even bothering to say hello, immediately asked, "Are you going to the next protest rally on Feb. 4?"

I spoke with about 100 pleasant young people last week at the monthly meeting that Russian Reporter magazine editors and journalists hold with readers. Some of the young people had posted election reports on the magazine's web site.

Last week, the army ceremoniously laid to rest retired Colonel Vitaly Shlykov with a three-volley salute and an honor guard marching under the Russian flag. At the memorial service, Valentina Melnikova, secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, recalled how Shlykov had helped make that organization truly professional and effective back in the early 1990s.

The State Duma election television campaign kicked off Nov. 5 by intruding on the usual morning programming. In nonelection times, the programming follows a standard pattern. But now, politics have invaded this television paradise.

According to a joke that circulated at the recent Russian Internet Week forum, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not allow President Dmitry Medvedev to run for a second term "because he spent too much time on the Internet." The forum is the main annual event of the domestic Internet industry and closely reflects the main development trends in this most dynamic of all segments of Russia's public life.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper called former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was given a seven-year sentence last week, "Yulia Khodorkovskaya."

The Russian media discussed Kudrin's dismissal even more enthusiastically than it did the news of the tandem switch announced at United Russia's convention on Sept. 24.

Columnists consider it a major stroke of luck when an important political event occurs on a Thursday. That gives them the opportunity to discuss it with colleagues and friends during their habitual Friday night jaunts to the local pub. Last Friday, the conversation quickly focused on Mikhail Prokhorov's decision to resign as chairman of the Right Cause party.

Soviet communism was ultimately buried by two of its most prominent native sons — Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and Moscow Communist Party chief Boris Yeltsin. Now it seems that Russia's neoliberal capitalism will also fail thanks to two of its greatest beneficiaries — former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and billionaire Right Cause leader Mikhail Prokhorov.

It is difficult to imagine a greater joy than visiting Georgia. Amazingly, the blood spilled in the Russia-Georgia war three years ago has not cooled the warm feelings that Georgians feel toward Russians, and that is the result of several centuries of living together in one nation.

During the Petersburg Dialogue public forum held in Hanover in late July, President Dmitry Medvedev posted comments on his blog under the heading: "Public television is good. How could it work for us?"

When I visited my friend, political scientist Dmitry Furman, on Aug. 18, 1991, our intense discussion of the political situation in the country lasted so long that I ended up staying the night at his place. The next morning, Furman woke me up, exclaiming: "There's been a coup! Gorbachev is out!"

Journalism is a dangerous profession. Journalists have a high mortality rate — and not just because of torture chambers in repressive regimes, contract killings, or work in dangerous war zones.

Ever since 2005, when I was the editor of the opinion page at Izvestia, one minor detail has stuck in my memory. The editor-in-chief read a stack of major newspapers every morning before our daily staff meetings, but the publication that was on the top of the heap was the tabloid Zhizn.

President Dmitry Medvedev recently wrote on his blog that he favors privatizing state-controlled media. But Medvedev has a history of flip-flopping on this issue.

Sometimes I think President Dmitry Medvedev has a split personality. On one hand, he stubbornly fights legal nihilism in public and official life. On the other hand, he sometimes displays an astonishing level of legal nihilism himself.

In the years leading up to the Soviet collapse, a friend of mine kept saying the only way to save the country would be to wipe out Moscow with a flood. His reasoning: The conflicting messages issued from the nation's leaders would drive away not only the other republics, but also dozens of Russia's own regions. Now it seems that a similar rift has developed between Medvedev and Putin.  

It seems as if Russia's best journalists have set out to completely undermine President Dmitry Medvedev's stated ideology that "freedom is better than a lack of freedom." At least, it seems that way after reading the nasty bickering between journalists on the blogosphere during the past week.

The Mikhail Khodorkovsky affair is a classic tragedy — a plot unfolding against the back-drop of modern democratic mass culture. This became clear recently when Ekho Moskvy radio dedicated a full day of coverage to ballerina Anastasia Volochkova's condemnation of an open letter by 55 signatories.

Russia is headed for some major shocks. I came to that conclusion after reading a news release with the heading: "Yabloko Party Activists Detained at Putin's Black Sea Dacha." The key word here is "dacha."

If television and the Internet ended their standoff, the result would be a richer and more informative discussion of every subject, from Yeltsin’s legacy to modernization. For now, however, the major television stations are bent on proving that the Kremlin can’t order them around.

The public knows little about what President Dmitry Medvedev and Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin really talked when they met in Israel last week because the Kremlin censored the interview.

When President Dmitry Medvedev spoke recently in his video blog about the country’s political stagnation, it appeared that glasnost had returned to Russia. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used the word “stagnation” to criticize his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, and now that Medvedev is using the same word. It means that another period of glasnost must be near.

At a recent round table on the Internet and democracy, a dispute broke out over the Tver governor's decision to post a blog photo of a worm allegedly found in his Kremlin salad. That dispute then aroused expletives from a man billed as “director of ideology for United Russia."

Until just recently, ordinary television viewers could be certain that there were two perfect people in Russia: President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Now there are three. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has become as permanent a fixture on national news as Medvedev and Putin.

The Russian Reporter weekly magazine recently published a list of the 100 most memorable political events of the year. First place went to former Novorossiisk police Major Alexei Dymovsky, whose appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led to nationwide Interior Ministry reforms.

Georgy Arbatov — scholar, founder of the U.S.A. and Canada Institute and adviser to Soviet leaders from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev — died on Oct. 1. Shortly thereafter, I received a letter that led me to reminisce about the years I worked under him.

During the past weeks, Russians watching state-controlled television channels were treated to a spectacle as President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin competed to prove who could do a better job of copying Mayor Yury Luzhkov's management style.