The State Loves Silence

In Russia even more than in America, censorship is elite fashion

Anna Ochkina

The head of the Kremlin media project Russia Today, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, proposed to cancel the article of the Constitution that prohibits censorship. She stated that this article was written into our basic law by “them” to the detriment of “us.” It is clear from the context that “they” are Western liberals who, according to Margarita Simonovna, spoiled us in the 1990s as best they could, imposing values ​​that did not correspond to our traditions. Even before the appearance of printed monuments, “heretical interpretations of sacred books were censored,” said the head of RT, uttering the word “censored” with apparent pleasure.

Everything is beautiful in Margarita Simonovna’s statements, especially how easily and gracefully, childishly touching, pouting her lips and opening her huge eyes, she brushes off the historical stage the Inquisition with its victims: Protestantism, the Schism in Russian Orthodoxy, the struggle against centuries of serfdom, the Decembrist uprising, and, of course, the October Revolution. I think a significant part of Soviet history will also be banned, including things that Kremlin propagandists are supposed to be proud of: Gagarin’s flight into space, victory in the Great Patriotic War, Russian science and education, Russian literature, Soviet cinema, etc.

All these objects of pride, approved and not prohibited yet, are the result of a long struggle of people for a more just and free world, a world without censorship. Everything progressive made its way through history in a cruel, bloody struggle, and this struggle needed tribunes, needed freedom of speech. “I hate your beliefs, but I am ready to give my life for your right to express them” — Voltaire knew what he was talking about.

Censorship often offended and even killed those who made a huge contribution to everything useful and bright that we have today. Miguel Servet and Giordano Bruno, Thomas More and Jan Hus, Nikolai Vavilov and Osip Mandelstam, and many, many, many others were “censored.” Some survived after censure, some did not. But their deeds and discoveries remained, not the deeds of Margarita Simonyan and others like her.

It’s not rare that people will hate freedom and everyone who fights for it with such a passion. These same people try to ignore the truth that everything of value that humanity has today, we owe to this struggle: labor and social rights, gender equality (which, among other things, keeps Simonyan on TV and allows her to carry a considerable penny home), access for the masses to culture and education, an independent judiciary (for which it is precisely the absence of a free press that makes it possible for them to feel comfortable and profitable), a parliament (whose effectiveness also depends on the absence of a free press). Fans of a firm hand and censorship do not want to notice any of this, and when they notice, they ridicule or attempt to prove that none of this exists at all, and if it exists, it is very harmful and will contribute, as she says here, to a collapse of the state:

Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews

Meanwhile on Russian state TV: head of RT Margarita Simonyan remembers her days as a proud pioneer drummer, demands less freedom, more censorship—just like China or the USSR. "We're all waiting for this," she claims.

Because all these fighters for freedom only interfere with the state. Give them free rein, they will destroy the state with their chatter. Margarita Simonyan said so herself: the periods of freedom of speech in our country ended with the collapse of the state. Note that it was not the mistakes and failures of decision makers, not the neglect of economic laws, not incompetent diplomacy, not theft and lies, but it was freedom of speech that ruined empires. They would have censored it in time, you see, and it would have passed.

Simonyan ridiculed the thesis that there is no strong economy without freedom of speech, citing what she thought was the deadly example of China where there is a strong economy and no stupid freedom. “A large state cannot exist without control over information,” she snapped.

The Chinese economy is not as cloudless as it seems to our propagandists, but this is the subject of a separate serious discussion. I can only say that the creation of the image of a strong economy and a successful state is effectively supported in China, not least because those who do not agree with the state, those who built the economy with their work and sweat, under conditions of the most severe exploitation, are silent. If they are silent, then they are not there, and everything is fine.

No, not all is well. Because the unconditional and non-alternative control of the state over information is a double-edged sword, and one of its ends very painfully hits the same spot from time to time. Workers cannot effectively rein in a presumptuous employer and trade unions cannot fully defend their rights if there is no free press capable of writing about the problems of employees. Margarita Simonyan probably thinks that this is very good: people work for themselves, without thinking about various nonsense. But the employers, insolent and entitled, are used to pressuring and exploiting without wasting energy on “trivialities” like modernization and labor safety. The state, of course, can watch. But if all flow of information is blocked, if there is no criticism, then you cannot keep track of everything.

In the complete absence of freedom of the press, citizens do not have the leverage to fight the venality of judges and the corruption of governors, they do not have the ability to stop disastrous reforms in education or health care. By the way, free and fair elections are largely ensured by a strong independent press.

I won’t speak on China, but in our country all those small softening amendments to the government’s anti-social initiatives, from the monetization of benefits to pension reform, were made thanks to the protests of citizens. And the free press acted as a mobilization tool (the one that until just recently somehow existed).

Supporters of censorship in all countries do not want to understand that with a silent population, sooner or later the state will go blind. For some time, beautiful illusions will shield the eyes from the unattractive reality, but sooner or later it will declare itself. And strike. Because, neglecting reality, you run the risk of meeting her annoyed, embittered, vindictive version sooner or later.

Our enemies “wrote” the article about censorship, says Simonyan. No, this article logically fits into the idea of ​​the Constitution. According to this idea, it is the people who should have control over the state. In article 3 of chapter 1 it is so directly written:

1. The bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.

2. The people exercise their power directly, as well as through state authorities and local self-government bodies.

3. The highest direct expression of the power of the people are the referendum and free elections.

4. No one can appropriate power in the Russian Federation. The seizure of power or the appropriation of power is punishable under federal law.

So, according to the Constitution, the people are the source of power in Russia, and the state is an instrument for exercising this power. Censorship is nothing more than a way to prevent citizens from controlling the state that acts on their behalf. Censorship is one of the tools for turning the people into a submissive population that opens its mouth only when it is necessary to shout “Hurrah!”, another invention of power.

Margarita Simonyan would likely have declared even this article of the Constitution an enemy sabotage, but there is nuance here. Article three is in chapter one of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which is titled, “Fundamentals of the constitutional system.” However, I don’t doubt for a minute that Simonyan would not blink an eye in favor of the abolition of the Constitution, saying, for example, that our enemies wrote it for us. She’ll come up with something, she’s a girl with an imagination. The time has probably not come yet. And Margarita Simonovna very sensitively captures the spirit of the Epoch.

When your ideal of the world order is the prosperity of a privileged few (of which you automatically include yourself) at the expense of millions of the silent and submissive, you will fight for censorship uncompromisingly, with passion, with fire.

As if it were your life’s work.