The days of Europe euphoria in the early 1990s seem an eternity ago. But not in Yekaterinburg’s Yeltsin Museum, in the Yeltsin Center on Yeltsin Street. Russia’s first democratically elected president spent the majority of his life in the country’s fourth-largest city. That’s why they erected this museum on the banks of the Iset as a monument to him, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The sievelike walls and huge window facade signal transparency. From the square in front of the building, you can see the dome of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, on the opposite side of the river. It’s located on the site of the murder of the last czar, Nicholas II, and his entire family, in July of 1918. Only a little over a mile as the crow flies separates a monument to the beginning of Communist rule from a monument to its demise.
The tour of the museum begins in a movie theater. A technically elaborately produced, wide-screen animated film condenses a thousand years of Russian history into eight minutes. From Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II, from Peter the Great to Brezhnev, almost all of the rulers look like boss villains from video games. A female voice speaks of the dark times of Stalin’s Great Purge, when “ten to twenty million people died.” Toward the end you see Gorbachev in a crane with a wrecking ball, because he came to the conclusion that if you “couldn’t improve or reform the system, then it has to be destroyed.” The final image shows the ten most important rulers from the past gathered together; Yeltsin is at the far right of the line at “the beginning of the history of a new, free Russia.”
The video is remarkable because it doesn’t relativize the many gruesome acts of history, unlike the typical Russian history books. The economic advances under Stalin remain unmentioned and Lenin is depicted as a deceiver, promising the people a brighter future but leading them into an era of fear and violence.
Conservative commentators reacted pretty angrily to these eight minutes of scary cinema. The accusations went as far as suggesting that American propagandists were behind the whole thing. Critics considered it absurd to allow school classes into this showing. A version of the video available online was only “liked” 70 times but had more than 750 thumbs down.
Sure enough the exhibition glorifies Yeltsin as a saint, although in a pretty entertaining way. Like the Seven Days of Creation, the seven most important days in the political life of the president are depicted in photos and film documents, with voiceovers from comrades and experts. A historian states that Yeltsin himself admitted it was a mistake to start the Chechen War, but that history later proved his decision was right. Gradually a picture emerges of a statesman who in the most difficult times made forward-looking (and somehow always correct) choices. As proof, every visitor can take home a copy of the constitution, which took effect after a referendum toward the end of 1993. A young red-haired museum guest gets pretty upset as she reads through the various points. “‘No one should be forced to follow an ideology’? It happens. ‘Free university education’? Not true. ‘Freedom of expression’? No. ‘Sexual liberty’? ‘Equal rights for men and women’? Also no!” Today’s realities do not live up to these ideals.
Head of the government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya, and often termed the Kremlin’s chief propagandist. While Americans might settle down on Sunday evenings in front of a crime show on TV, at the same time in Russia, on Kiselyov’s program Vesti Nedeli (“News of the Week”), the crime is always Western politics. As a host, Kiselyov enjoys being provocative, sometimes hitting the wrong note: once he compared Obama to an ape; another time he compared Putin to Stalin (and he meant it in a positive sense); and once he proudly announced that Russia was “the only country that could turn America into radioactive ash.”
The walk-in exhibits, which include a trolley bus (Yeltsin was a man of the people and sometimes used public transport) and a food store from the crisis times of the ’90s, are particularly evocative. There are only two types of goods on offer—a pyramid of canned seaweed salad and Mason jars of pear juice.
The room marked “Day seven” contains an exact replica of the leader’s office. A jacket hangs above the leather seat, four telephones sit in an orderly row, and the dominant colors are beige and light green, against which the tinseled Christmas tree fits in perfectly. All Russians recognize this office and tree from a historic TV moment on December 31, 1999. That was when the agitated president, breathing deeply, announced his resignation. On the seventh day God ended his work, so to say. He had done what he could; now it was time for a younger successor. He apologized for the things he hadn’t managed to do, declared Vladimir Putin interim president and the best candidate for the forthcoming elections in March, and ended by saying: “Be happy. You deserve happiness and peace. Happy New Year. Happy New Century, my dear people.”
NOVOSIBIRSK
Population: 1,474,000
Federal District: Siberia
NEWS AND NARRATIVES
YELTSIN TALKED ABOUT happiness and peace, and both can be found in Siberia by just glancing out the train window at the sheer endless forests. During the journey there’s plenty of time for reflection: the 076Э to Novosibirsk takes twenty-two hours. I lie on the bed in the coach and observe what’s happening around me. An elderly gentleman in colorful shorts and polished leather shoes nibbles at some sushki cookies, which he’s eating with his pot noodles; two small children are comparing belly buttons and come to the conclusion that they’re both really funny. Once I’ve had my fill of landscape and people, I catch up on some news.
From Sputnik I learn something unsettling: “German Federal Government prepares citizens for war—Media” is the headline of one article. Have I missed something on my travels? I carry on reading and realize that the headline was misleading. It was referring to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung about a government plan for recommendations to citizens in the event of a crisis, which involves stocking up on food and water at home. However, in the sixth paragraph, Sputnik quotes from the document: “An attack on German territory requiring conventional national defense is unlikely.”
The article is technically true; it’s just that the verb “prepare” in the headline suggests a different story. Soccer players prepare themselves for the World Championships; schoolkids prepare for exams. So normally it describes things that are sure or highly likely to happen. Such subtleties are important, as many readers just scroll through the headlines.
If you regularly read the news through channels financed by the Russian government, like Sputnik or RT, you soon begin to notice a pattern.
Naturally, all negative reports about the Russian government are missing, just like an Apple advertising brochure wouldn’t mention details about working conditions in China. If something critical of Putin is mentioned, it’s only in the context of an absurd attack by foreign media or politicians who apparently have no evidence. Apart from that, they’re not principally concerned with spreading fake stories—that would be too obvious. What is presented is a daily selection from the thousands of breaking news items that support the broader picture, with tones and formulations that further the narrative: there’s a huge difference in whether you speak of “rebels” or “terrorists,” refer to someone as a “human rights activist” or an “agitator,” or call a leader “legally elected” or “autocratic.” Reports that fit the government agenda are prominently placed, implying more relevance, even when they might be objectively not that important.