widthAfter Jonathan Steele moved to Moscow for the Guardian in 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform story became “more and more popular” . But under all the restrictions imposed by the Soviet Union on foreign journalists, the question is how to report. The sources are mainly local journalists who are authorized to talk to foreigners or dissidents. The phone may have been tapped. You cannot leave Moscow for more than 25 miles without permission, and you need to send your travel plan to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in advance by telex.
“It’s annoying, because you want to go somewhere because there is a story, but they don’t want to give you permission because there is a story,” Steele recalled.
For the next six years, until leaving in 1994, the veteran foreign journalist reported on the collapse of a superpower and the birth of a new politics, as journalists had access to many corners of a crumbling empire. “I often say I come Russia As a political reporter and leaving as a crime reporter,” he recalled how the story turned from the manipulation of the Politburo to the chaotic transition of the market economy. At times, he added, “it was ugly.”
Steele, who served as the Guardian’s chief foreign correspondent, has a long history with the Soviet Union. As a Russian student, he took a Land Rover to St. Petersburg, Moscow with four Cambridge classmates in 1961, and then traveled to Tbilisi via the Georgian military highway. It was a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out. A few months ago, Stalin’s body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square and buried in the walls of the Kremlin.
Although his family environment prevented him from reopening the “Guardian” Moscow branch in the mid-1980s, he “put down the mark” “as early as 1988” when he returned. His wife and teenage son studied in the Soviet Union. Special school. He recalled that it was a blessing to come here with his children because it gave a rare excuse to sit on a park bench and chat with Soviet parents.
Few people can predict the dramatic events of the next three years: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the independence movement of the Soviet republics, the failed Kremlin coup, and the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. “Everyone, including Western diplomats and reporters, has become accustomed to the unshakable system, and we have not seen the opportunity to change so quickly,” he recalled. “When things just broke up, we were surprised.”
Nevertheless, the incident is still developing rapidly. In July 1988, Gorbachev announced at the party’s 19th Congress that he would open the party to contested elections. Steele compares the experience of reporting on the resulting National People’s Congress to “just like a Western lobbyist in the Westminster Parliament: you can chat with members of Parliament, which is a whole new way for them and us. Experience.”
The pre-election meeting was also very noisy. He said: “Suddenly, things became a bottom-up revolution, because these election meetings are unbelievable.” “Unbelievably, people who have been silent and indifferent for decades suddenly have a say. It’s impolite…Some are questioning and yelling, if someone speaks for too long, someone will yell,’Get off the stage!'”
As the independence movement in the Baltic countries intensified in 1989, the Guardian used a combination of local special correspondents and mobile journalists to report on protests in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In some republics, the KGB lost interest in foreign journalists. During a trip to Yerevan in 1989, Steele asked his local host, an ecologist, whether he should inform the local KGB of their existence: “I can tell them, but they won’t care. “The answer is yes.
I asked him about one of his most famous exclusive news stories about how he managed to reach Gorbachev during the attempted coup in 1991, when hardliners imprisoned the Soviet leader in his Crimean on the Black Sea. Ya villa. Copies of the Guardian article signed by Gorbachev are hung on the wall of his study.
It takes a lot of intuition and luck to get this story, including “in the high-speed Saab” turning around and following the black Volgas convoy to Vnukovo Airport. It was not until he said to get on the plane (he was sitting quietly in the back seat so as not to be thrown off) that he realized that the plane was heading to Crimea, where Steele became a sight to see the Soviet leader One of the three reporters still alive. After being held in solitary confinement for several days.
But the greatest scoop of his career had a problem: it could not be reported. Neither the official nor the Kremlin operator would let him call the Guardian newsroom. When Gorbachev could call out the story, he had flown to Moscow, and the evening edition had passed. “When we got there, the hot news we got was cold,” he said; he had to write a descriptive function instead.
Today it is hard to imagine that a journalist can leave the Internet for nearly a day, especially when a coup is taking place in Moscow. Fortunately, someone spotted Steele while boarding, and news spread to London that he was “on a plane flying to a certain place.” Until more flight details appeared, his editors were not happy.
“There was no 24-hour news cycle back then,” he said, when asked how his experience was different from that of modern journalists. “Sometimes I sympathize with modern journalists. They can’t always reflect and truly polish a story. They must keep updating and changing the leadership [introductory paragraphs]. “
Despite the ruthless news cycle, as Steele’s newest successor, I have seen some of the benefits of the Internet revolution. In my ten-year report in Russia, the biggest improvement in the last three years of The Guardian may be how social media and smartphone cameras have made it more difficult to keep secrets here.
In many of the stories I have reported, from Russia’s role in the Ukrainian war to The Russian Federal Security Service’s combat team poisoned Alexei Navalny (Alexei Navalny), Try to cover up The true number of deaths from the coronavirus epidemic, The leaked information played a vital role. When a doctor in Dagestan or a doctor in Barnaul can upload photos of dead bodies stacked in a morgue, The optimistic official numbers are starting to look more suspicious.
However, paradoxically, people seem to be more afraid to speak publicly, especially to reporters from Western newspapers such as the Guardian. Some see it as an extension of the British Foreign Office (as a native of New York, it seems a bit humorous for me. in). Some potential sources worry that they might be arrested or fired, but usually social pressure — fear of online abuse, being Googled by a prospective employer, or losing friendship because of politics — discourages them.
As a result, the report in Russia today may be a puzzling experience. Everyone understands a simple fact, but no one wants to admit it. Although this is not a return to the Soviet Union, I have seen a shift towards internal immigration, in which case politics is left to the closed Telegram chat (modern equivalent of a kitchen table), or better not at all.
In the chaotic years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Steele recalled visiting a high school when the principal rented out the basement of the gymnasium to a cigarette company that stored Marlboro cigarettes to pay teachers’ salaries.
“The story has changed,” he said. “Through all the crime and corruption, I feel that the revolution brought by Gorbachev has been destroyed and poisoned.”
I asked him if he caused it to that era Vladimir Putin“I can understand why he was very popular in the beginning,” he said. “I don’t think I would predict that he will become so authoritarian and vindictive… but I think he is still very popular, maybe 50% or 60%. I think sometimes this may not get enough in Western reports. Reflect. People have developed a lazy equation, and a strong man equals unpopularity.”
