Ilguiz Latypov - My Blog

Peter Pomerantsev expressed the very essence of what I remember and sometimes see in the Russian television. He summarized his experience working with a TV production company and observing the customs of the country. The prevailing culture of the country instills expectation of humiliation and hardship into the minds of the citizens and downplays aspiration.

"Under siege from psychic spies and airborne fungi, audiences are kept in a constant state of panic."

Pomerantsev exposes ridiculous Soviet era traditions of the state television, such as the formula of subjects in the news broadcasts and the way nation leaders hold their meetings. Growing in that environment made these traditions invisible to me until now.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n03/peter-pomerantsev/diary

CBC's Q aired an interview with Pomerantsev this morning,

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20110222_45720.mp3

A script writer Anna Yablonskaya died in the Domodedovo bombing. Her play Pagans received recognition by a leading cinema magazine.

"По сюжету, молодая девушка, которая потеряла связь с друзьями, с родителями, со своим любимым пытается покончить с собой, но остается жива."

-- "By the plot line, a young woman who lost connection with friends, parents and the boyfriend attempts a suicide but survives".


Анна Яблонская. Убита в "Домодедово" - Елена Поляковская, 25 января 2011 г., Радио Свобода.

British journalist, former editor of the Russian Features department in BBC Masha Karp wrote that she received a written warning over airing a programme "The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko" December 18, 2006. Her managers found that the programme presented "much stronger and detailed arguments from one side of the discussion and under-represent[ed] the other". In a phone call the day after airing, a senior BBC Russian Service editor told her that "pro-Kremlin guys sound stupid and Bukovsky and the others sound intelligent".[1]

Karp wrote that BBC closed her department and removed the need to broadcast opinions "not heard on the state-controlled media" from its strategy.

One year later Martin Dewhirst, University of Glasgow, and Victor Suvorov complained about BBC Russian Service's lack of impartiality. In their letter to the complaints unit of the corporation they mentioned that Deputy Head of the region and Editor-in-Chief of the service could have regular contacts with KGB in the past.[2]

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[1] BBC plays by the Kremlin's Rules: Masha Karp, November 2010, Standpoint Magazine, http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3492/full

[2] Letter to the Editorial Complaints Unit of the BBC from Martin Dewhirst, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Glasgow and Viktor Suvorov, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Minutes of Evidence, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmfaff/50/7062714.htm

Human rights defender Yelena Vasilyeva, one of the top members of the Solidarnost opposition movement in Russia, was assaulted on her way back from the regional opposition conference in Tambov on April 5. Miss Vasilyeva helped free Larisa Arap in 2007.

A male approached her in the train and struck into her chest adding, "we will teach you to stop visiting Tambov region". Miss Vasilyeva lost conscience. An emergency service found her and carried her to intensive care.

http://community.livejournal.com/ru_solidarnost/132327.html

http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=49DB023D41BAC

This happened less than a week after another prominent opposition figure, [[Lev Ponomaryov]], was severely beaten on his way to his apartment in Moscow. Mr Ponomaryov carried civil investigations of human rights violations including the 2004 mass police mop-up in Blagoveschensk, Bashkiria.

http://www.democrat-info.ru/2009/04/01/zayavlenie-solidarnosti-neotvratimost-vozmezdiya-%E2%80%93-vot-o-chem-stoit-segodnya-podumat-tem-kto-podzhidaet-nas-v-temnyih-podvorotnyah/

Just some 150 years ago a theory that newborns died from "cadaverous particles" brought on to them after autopsies was considered backwards.

The physician who found the cause-effect link felt misunderstood and died from pyemia after a severe beating in the psychiatric asylum, according to references in a Wikipedia page on Ignaz Semmelweis,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

This mildly contradicts an article in a Russian pop magazine. The article says that the physician "died" after his spirits were broken and that his colleagues were backwards-oriented, as if they considered his idea anti-religious. But the references in the above page tell about his colleagues thinking that his idea was rooted in old beliefs.