[CivilSoc] Two Russian Parties Award Prizes Supporting Civil Society

[Center for Civil Society International]

This item comes from Johnson's Russia List
#5508
25 October 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com
Moscow Times
October 25, 2001
A Tale of 2 Liberal Parties and 2 Contests
By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
Staff Writer
It was a coincidence, but a telling one. This week two leading
liberal parties--Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS--gave
out prizes to writers.
Both competitions were organized by professional groups, and
politicians were there for the sake of prominence and funding. Both
shared the stated goal of fostering the rise of a civil society. Yet
the difference between their prizes and mottoes gave an indication of
the different mindsets on the liberal flank of Russian politics--who
sees the glass as half empty, who sees it as half full.
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky presented electric tea kettles and
cameras, along with bouquets and diplomas, to provincial journalists
chosen as winners of a competition called Vopreki, or Against All
Odds.
The annual contest, held for the fourth year, is named in honor of
Larisa Yudina--the editor of Sovietskaya Kalmykia newspaper and a
Yabloko activist who was killed in 1998, allegedly for exposing
corruption in Kalmykia's regional government. The competition is
meant for journalists from regional publications who write courageous
reports "against all odds"--whether the odds be pressure from local
authorities or personal dramas such as debilitating disease.
The stories of 14 reporters and four newspapers selected from among
some 400 applications--including some articles that went unpublished,
ostensibly due to censorship--covered such topics as chemical weapons
dumping, the Chechnya war, corruption and local governments' attempts
to control media, organizers said.
In his remarks, Yavlinsky stressed the role of the press as a voice
of the people and not as an "imitation of free speech," which, he
said, the Kremlin is trying to create.
"The more disintegrated society is, the more people are encouraged to
think only about petty tasks in their personal lives, and the less
people are concerned about what is happening in their town, the
easier it gets to manipulate society," Yavlinsky told the small,
poorly dressed group of winners, for whom a two-day paid trip to
Moscow was the main part of the prize.
The event, held Monday afternoon at the House of Journalists, was
co-sponsored by press freedom watchdog the Glasnost Defense
Foundation, Yabloko and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
That evening, a second ceremony took place at the House of
Cinematography. On behalf of SPS, former acting Prime Minister Yegor
Gaidar and State Duma Deputy Eduard Vorobyov presented Alfa Bank
checks of $5,000 to $10,000 to 14 screenwriters. The winners were
picked from about 500 proposals for movies and television series
under the motto "Normal Life in a Normal Country."
Organizers said the cash prizes increased the chances of getting the
winning film ideas to the production phase, adding that the more
important goal was to replace the crime-ridden, catastrophic picture
of Russian life depicted over the past decade with the constructive
approach of self-reliant, "normal" people--in other words, to promote
middle-class values to the broader public.
SPS was not after "political dividends" from the contest, Gaidar
said, but was interested in promoting a more positive approach to
Russian life.
"We have selected scripts about a difficult life, real life, but not
about total and ultimate catastrophe," Gaidar said. "This is not what
we have seen ... from 1988 to 1996, when the vast majority of films
were about a perverted life in a perverted country."
"I hope that in our country every other man doesn't work as a
security guard, one out of three women is not a prostitute and
two-thirds of the nation is not sitting at home waiting for miracles
from the government," said Daniil Dondurei, editor of the Iskusstvo
Kino cinema journal and the contest's key organizer.
"We believe we have [in Russia] educated people of substance, who
rely on themselves and are able to cope with challenges. Such things
exist, but we don't see it in movies or, especially, in television
series, where bandits in uniforms pursue bandits without uniforms and
all businessmen are idiots or vampires."
Yavlinsky denied that there was any fundamental difference between
Yabloko and SPS' prizes. "In essence, we do the same thing," he said.
"Only we support print press and SPS is interested in film."
But Sergei Kolmakov, vice president of the Foundation for
Parliamentary Development in Russia, agreed in a telephone interview
that the difference in mottoes--Against All Odds vs. Normal Life--was
indicative of the two parties' different stances.
Although both political groups see themselves as liberal
standard-bearers, they appeal to different electorates and thus
emphasize different aspects of the liberal agenda--one negative, the
other positive.
"Yabloko appeals to a less [socially] adapted, less successful
segment of intellectuals and has a stronger human rights emphasis,"
Kolmakov said. SPS, on the other hand, seeks to expand its
middle-class base by going after "progressive" youth and self-reliant
people who can eventually become middle class.
"Yabloko gives a negative, human-rights and anti-bureaucracy spin to
liberal values," Kolmakov said. "SPS stresses that liberal values
should be achieved not through endless opposition to the government,
but by offering an alternative."