The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies presents: |
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The Russian Media: Lessons from the 1990s |
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A conversation with Russian journalists in partnership with
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Thursday, April 20, 2023
11:00am - 12:30pm EST
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in-person
Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Conference Room 602
1957 E St. NW Washington, D.C. 20052
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The latest crackdown on the press in Russia is the most severe in the last 30 years. At least 1,000 journalists and about 100,000 IT professionals have fled the country since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Net Freedoms Project, Russia has become the country with the highest number of VPN application downloads worldwide. At the same time, at least 779 persons have been convicted of a criminal offense for their opinions, posts, and reposts. Russian media was mostly free at the end of the last century. What went wrong? What lessons can we learn from the 1990s? Is there any hope for the future of Russian journalism? |
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Nataliya Rostova is a Russian journalist based in America. She was formerly a staff writer covering media life for Republic.ru, Slon.ru, Novaya Gazeta, and Gazeta.ru. She is a creator of two online projects, The Birth of the Russia Media, Gorbachev Epoch 1985-1991 and The Heyday of the Russian Media, Yeltsin Era 1992-1999, which cover the history of mass media and journalism during periods of groundbreaking change in Russia. Rostova earned an MA at Philip Merrill School of Journalism in UMD (2023) and School of Journalism at Moscow State University (2000). She was a Knight-Wallace Fellow (Ann Arbor, MI, 2009), Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (Kennan Institute, Washington DC, 2011-2), and a visiting scholar at the School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley (2015).
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Alexander Gubsky is a professional journalist and graduate of Moscow State University. In 1995, he joined The Moscow Times, which was established by Derk Sauer in 1992. Gubsky was one of the creators of the concept and editorial team of Vedomosti, a unique business and media project created in Russia in 1999 jointly by The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Sauer's Independent Media. Gubsky left his post as deputy editor-in-chief at Vedomosti in 2020 along with other key journalists after businessmen close to the Kremlin gained control of the publication. That same year, he and his colleagues founded a new Russian media project, VTimes, where he served as publisher. In May 2021, VTimes was designated as a "foreign agent" by the Russian Ministry of Justice and closed down in June 2021. Until 2014, Alexander was a member of the Expert Council of the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, and until 2022 he taught a course on media management at RANEPA University in Moscow. Mr. Gubsky has been the publisher of The Moscow Times since 2021. |
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The Russia Program at GW condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine and calls for the restoration of Ukraine's sovereignty. |
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The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW / Suite 412 / Washington, DC 20052
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