Boris Ieltin, Cecenia si Canalul Rus

My television reception in Mereseni is limited to three channels: Romanian state television, Russian state television and Moldovan state television. The Moldovan station broadcasts only in the evening and rarely shows anything interesting—Telebingo being the closest thing to entertainment. Romanian TV can be interesting from time to time, but usually the best programming is on the Russian station. So I've got one interesting channel, right? Wait; I don't speak Russian.

Nevertheless, my host family and I often eat dinner together while watching the Russian 8 p.m. news and whatever program follows it. I don't begrudge my family the fact that I don't speak Russian yet, because we will also sometimes watch an American movie with Romanian subtitles that my family can't read fast enough. Anyway, I can still learn about Russian culture just from watching the images on TV, and my host father, Dumitru, translates into Romanian any bit that he thinks I need to know.

Something that Russian television does much more than Romanian or Moldovan TV is only present one side of the story. This contradicts my belief in an independent press—whoever the Danish visitor was to this page, I support your country in this ridiculous cartoon debate—and I feel obligated to point out biased news to my host family. The ability to pick apart possible media biases and separate fact from opinion is a cornerstone of Western thinking, although America is increasingly becoming a media-stupid nation. After so many decades of reading Pravda, the Soviet newspaper (literally meaning "Truth" in Russian), Moldovans don't have as much practice as Westerners at analyzing the news and evaluating multiple sources of information. A couple instances from the past two weeks are good examples:

1) One evening newscast in early February featured an uninterrupted 20-minute interview with former president Boris Yeltsin. To start with, I impressed my host parents by saying, "He was the mayor of Moscow, right? He was always on TV and became very popular, right? Then Gorbachev went on vacation and Yeltsin staged a takeover of the government, right?" The answers were yes, yes and yes. Thanks to Professor Connors for those Soviet Politics lectures in the Fall 2004 semester.

Twenty minutes of softball questions with a former president is not anything particularly despicable; if Clinton wanted to give an exclusive interview next week, all three networks would be climbing over one another for it. My host parents enjoyed the interview, telling me, "Just the other day, we were saying that we hadn't seen Yeltsin for a long time." The questions about his health (much better than in the mid-90s) and how he enjoys spending more time with family didn't interest me very much, but I started listening more attentively when I started hearing the word "America" repeated, without the happiest look on Yeltsin's face. He didn't just say "America". He also threw in "Iraq," "Afghanistan" and "Iran".

I turned to Maria and Dumitru and said, "I don't want to know what he's saying about America, do I?"

"He's saying that he doesn't like how America went into Iraq without a reason and that now they want to go into Iran alone," Dumitru said.

"Iran?" I said. "America is working with England, France, Germany, China /and Russia/ to talk to Iran. America doesn't want to go into Iran, and we don't have the army to go there now. If he says that America wants to go into Iran and wants to do it alone, he's lying."

No more was said on the subject, since when I make claims like that and can only back it up with English-language news clippings, my host mom just shrugs and speaks for the whole family: "Maybe you're right. I don't know."

I wasn't vindicated until the next night, when we watched the Romanian news and they talked about the multilateral talks among all the different countries trying to deter Iran.

"See?" I said. "America is working alone, just like Yeltsin said."

They laughed and said I was right. My point was accepted.

2) Tuesday night after the news, Russian TV broadcasted an action movie showing Russian soldiers in Chechnya. Mr. Myers the Journalist showed up at the dinner table again.

"If it's a film on the state channel about Chechnya, it'll probably only have good things to say about the soldiers and nothing good to say about the Muslims," I predicted. "You have to always be careful about /who/ is talking."

I watched 20 minutes of the movie. The scenes I saw were centered on soldiers posted on a hill-top, talking and even snapping photos of each other until a rebel sniper suddenly attacked and shot the photo subject in the face and the chest. The soldiers reacted by firing into the woods around the hill, routing out the sniper. Later, there were several conversations among the soldiers in a casual setting, and one soldier had a flashback to when he once came home and found his wife and child gunned down in a huge rebel slaughter of innocent victims. The entire time I watched, the only characters who talked were the soldiers. No Chechen was shown closer than a full shot (with the entire body in the frame), or if the shot was tighter, the rebel's face was obscured by a sniper rifle as he aimed at a Russian. The effect was to present a one-sided view of the current conflict, sympathetic to the soldiers and unwilling to see these rebels as people. As the film broke for a commercial, I once again turned to my family.

"You see? Not a single Muslim spoke the entire time," I said. "They're just the enemy. They're not people."

I'm not saying that this Chechnya film is endemic of all Russian (it was more than a Freudian slip that I started to type "Soviet") war films. But this is the only Russian war film I've seen other than the classic Soviet film dramatizing the war between the Reds and the Whites that features the baby carriage rolling down the stairs while the battle takes place (someone, please e-mail me the name of the film and the director). And since it is only the second Russian war film I've seen, it informs my opinions more than a single movie probably should. My initial observation is that Russia still treats war films as a sort of propaganda, continuing from the Soviet tradition. The sense of propaganda is increased because it is describing a war that is currently taking place and because it is villifying the enemy. Absent is a sense of introspection and doubt in the justification of the war, as well as a willingness to view the enemy as people; these are vital characteristics of the great Western war films, such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket and Three Kings. I would love to be more informed and possibly proven wrong on the subject of Russian war films, if any readers have information to share.

In the meantime, to paraphrase truth icon Stephen Colbert, "Russian state television, you're on notice."