Legislating a Free Press

It would seem that former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi started a new political tradition in the summer of 1993 when he appeared on the tribunal of the Supreme Soviet with his now famous "suitcase of compromising documents." The essence of this tradition is the resolution of political conflicts through accusations of criminal activity that themselves have little to do with the policy in question.


This tradition has been constantly before the Russian public ever since, and the latest example was when the chairman of the State Duma's Information Policy Committee, Mikhail Poltoranin, accused the government press chief, Sergei Gryzunov, of improprieties in the distribution of state subsidies to magazines and newspapers. Thus the debate between these two government figures over who has the best plan for guaranteeing true freedom of the press took on a more familiar form.


Before this turn of events, the two opponents had waged active media campaigns to present their points of view. But none of these explanations answered the question that was really on everyone's mind: How is it that Poltoranin, once a leading democrat and reformer, ended up isolated from his former colleagues? How is it that President Boris Yeltsin's former best friend now accuses the president of totalitarian methods and of betraying the ideals of democracy? In response, Yeltsin went so far as to refuse to see Poltoranin, even ordering that his calls not be put through.


Some analysts see the roots of the conflict in Yeltsin's instruction to the Duma. In the part of the instruction concerning the mass media, Yeltsin outlined two main problems: the gradual withdrawal of government control over the mass media and the transition to a system of laws regulating its activity. The latter is all the more important because Russia still does not have the legal framework necessary to regulate relations between the media, the government and society.


These analysts suppose that Poltoranin took these ideas seriously as a mandate for action, deciding even "to overfulfill the plan." His committee immediately began working out no fewer than five new draft laws and, simultaneously, began taking steps to get government out of the media business -- not "gradually," but immediately.


Naturally enough, this policy met sharp resistance from the then-newly appointed chairman of the State Press Committee, Gryzunov. He argued that a hasty government withdrawal would simply lead to a new form of enslavement of the press (especially the regional press) and that new legislation in this area must be clearly defined, must coincide with the goals of the state and must be worked out openly with input from the public. Proponents of this theory speculate that Poltoranin came to see Gryzunov as an obstacle preventing him from distinguishing himself in front of Yeltsin.


However, there is another version of events. This theory proceeds from the fact that the Russian media -- especially, the regional media -- is on the threshold of serious changes. In the very near future, a grandiose redistribution of media-related property will begin, including the privatization of publishing complexes and printing facilities. It seems clear enough that whoever manages to control that process stands to acquire both considerable profit and considerable power.


The draft legislation being worked out by Poltoranin's committee, then, is designed to minimize government influence on the media and on the privatization process. At the same time, a national media-support fund would be created that would accumulate state funding while pursuing an independent media policy.


"A free press must have money in the bank and a roof over its head," declared Poltoranin recently, though he did not explain that both the "bank" and the "roof" would most likely be controlled by none other than Poltoranin himself.


Experts who have studied Poltoranin's drafts believe that creating this fund would lead to a system of media control such as the ideological department of the old Soviet Communist Party never dared dream of and that the head of the fund would become a more powerful figure than Brezhnev's chief of ideology, Mikhail Suslov, ever was. For the sake of this kind of power, one might even sacrifice one's friendship with the president.


But there is a third version. Close consideration of Poltoranin's draft legislation convinces one that it is designed not so much to reduce government influence over the mass media as to reduce the executive branch's influence. Through the media-support fund, the legislature will retain its controls over the media. As a result, if one of these projects becomes law, the legislature would acquire a clearly unconstitutional function of direct administration.


Who can forget how Poltoranin, as press minister, struggled intensely against Ruslan Khasbulatov's Supreme Soviet when it attempted to seize control of Russia's mass media? Today, it would seem, he is fighting with equal intensity for diametrically opposed ideas.


Most likely none of these three versions is 100 percent correct. However, it is not hard to find a common thread running through all three theories. All three see the Duma's desire to increase its own power as a prime motivation. In this context, the idea that the whole controversy is nothing more than a reflection of Poltoranin's personal desire to get himself a cozy position has the head of the media-support fund is simply laughable. While clearly he intends to control the fund, there is plenty of reason to believe that Poltoranin considers the position beneath him. For now, though, he finds himself in a tricky position. His old friends are turning away from him and finding new ones is proving difficult. It is unlikely, though, that this situation will last long for an ambitious man like Mikhail Poltoranin.





Sergei Chugayev is a political commentator for Izvestia. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.