Journalist deconstructs the myth of the great Russia
Mikhail Zygar
Simon & Schuster
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The war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s motivations. The way Americans perceive Russia, and Putin. The state of American democracy. These large topics and others were explored in a conversation with an expatriate Russian journalist Saturday, Jan. 13, at the Cornwall Library.
Mikhail Zygar is a journalist, writer, filmmaker and founding editor-in-chief of the Russia-banned TV Rain, an online broadcaster now based in exile in the Netherlands. Some have described his journalistic approach as a new form of literature. At age 42, Zygar, a Moscow native, has acquired a seeming lifetime of experience, having also served as a war correspondent in Iraq, Lebanon and Darfur. In 2014, Zygar won an International Press Freedom Award.
His latest book, “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” begins with a confession on Zygar’s part, and he adds in other contemporaries and forebears that include writers and historians who are “complicit” in promoting the notion of Russia as a “great empire,” he writes in his introduction.
“We overlooked the fact that for many centuries, ‘great Russian culture’ belittled other countries and peoples, suppressed and destroyed them,” he continues, adding that the words and thoughts perpetuating this notion of greatness in fact sowed the seeds of fascism and allowed it to flourish.
Before a full house at the library, Zygar talked with Joel Simon, an author, journalist and founder/director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Zygar began by discussing what he termed the “four phases” of his career in journalism. It began at age 21, when he was sent to cover the Iraq War for the Russian business daily Kommersant. He said he landed the assignment because “I spoke Arabic” and the assignment led to more war correspondent work. After Iraq, he covered the war in Lebanon and then genocide in Darfur.
“At age 29, after all these bloody massacres, I needed to quit. To stop,” he said.
Simon asked Zygar about his role in 2010 as one of the founders of the TV station Rain, which was the only independent news channel in Russia.
“We were not only for the young people,” Zygar said. “It was mostly for the middle class to be able to get unbiased information about what was happening.” And Zygar said, during the first years of operation, Rain was very popular, with 20 million households watching daily. Then, in 2014, a month before the occupation of Crimea, Rain was effectively shut down by an order for all Russian cable and satellite networks to switch it off.
Simon & Schuster
“One by one, we lost 95% of our audience in one week,” Zygar said, who said he then began to focus his thinking on Russian history.
“Somehow I realized that broadcasting news for an audience was not enough,” he said. “I realized that I need to talk about history.”
“You’re a journalist,” Simon interrupted. “Why history?”
“If I’m thinking about the future of Russia, I should focus on a younger audience, and talk about values with them.”
Zygar, understanding that the “20-minus” age-based audience is riveted to social media, he created something to meet them where they are. Together with historians, journalists and others he launched “Project 17,” a simulated social network that retraces the Russian Revolution on a daily basis. Go to www.openhistoryarchive.com.
The new book was started before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Bringing a journalistic framework to history, Zygar takes apart the narrative around the idea of Russian greatness, describing how the myth was constructed. How Putin justified the invasion. How Russian history justified all that Putin approached. “My mission is to start addressing … why we as Russian intellectuals missed that point. We have never started thinking about the propaganda approach to Russian history.”
Audience questions sought answers to where the war in Ukraine will be in one year, and if a longer war poses the threat to Putin, to which Zygar commented. “He’s gotten rid of the people who protested, and oil and gas revenues are enough.”
Asked another question about rising autocracy across the world, and whether the author thinks Putin might have intentions to expand beyond Ukraine, Zygar said, “It’s important to make Russia great again, not bigger.”
“He needs the war to be continued,” Zygar said in a nod to three and a half centuries of Russian myth-making. Zygar also is the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men” and is the recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2014 International Press Freedom Award.
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.