Бархат.ru


In response to the protests in Moscow and Petersburg, which received a lot of press for the arrest of Kasparov, the very next day the channel Rossia (owned by the government) produced a program called Бархат.ru (trans. Velvet.ru, a reference to soft revolutions in the former Soviet Union). For those of you who understand Russian, check it out. It's hilarious and disturbing all at once. For those of you who don't, a brief synopsis: first, riot police practically beg the protesters to keep moving, then reporters go "undercover" to various "anti-government organizations" that tell them all the dirty tactics. They also character assassinate 25-year-old Maria Gaidar (daughter of Egor Gaidar and head of an opposition group) for celebrating her birthday at a bar.

If this was not Orwellian enough, an opposition party, the Union of Right Forces--led by the reformers of the 1990s--has commercials that effectively serve as the two-minutes hate from Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the commercial, Nikita Belykh, leader of the party, claims that 1990s Russia was poor but free, as pictures of people waiting in line for food flash across the screen. According to US government estimates the economic collapse in the 1990s was more devastating than the Great Depression in the United States. If you wanted to drive people away from your party, that's the way to do it.