September 1st is a big day in Russia – it marks the beginning of a school year, and on this day thousands of kids present their first teachers with flowers and take their first steps in a long quest for knowledge. It is called den znanij – or the day of knowledge. But, since two years ago, the day is also marred by a tragedy. It was September 1, 2004, when armed men took more than a thousand people hostage (most of them kids) in the small town of Beslan in North Ossetia. Several days later, the rescue operation ended in a blood-bath, with hundreds of people killed and hundreds injured.
Having just returned from Moscow, I was surprised to see how little coverage the Beslan tragedy is getting in the news these days. There were many programs on TV about the preparedness of schools for the new school year – some dealing with security issues. While many schools in Moscow have silent alarms, guards at the door, cameras, and other protective measures in place, it seems like many schools throughout the country (especially in smaller cities and villages) are lagging behind, which underscores further the divide between the most expensive city in the world and the rest of the country. Further, in all these TV programs, I saw little analysis of the Beslan tragedy and the political and social fallout. Newspapers did a bit better, but very few.
Lack of attention to the problem does not stem solely from the ability of people to forget about the events in the past (however bad they are) and move on to the daily problems of getting to work or paying bills. There seems to be some top-down control of the information flow. For example, In Russia, according to law, you have to apply for a permit before holding a rally and there is essentially a ban on holding protests in front of government buildings. Few days ago, the request for a rally to mark the anniversary of events in North Ossetia was denied. It was nonetheless held on Sunday in Moscow, only to be broken up by police. Also, in an environment where media is controlled by the state directly (through ownership) and indirectly (through restrictive laws) getting something out that is frowned upon at the top is a difficult task.
Today’s Washington Post article captures well the problem of media control in Russia and contrasts the Beslan tragedy coverage in Russia with Katrina coverage in the U.S.
If there is one lesson the Kremlin has learned — or had confirmed for itself — since Beslan, it is that by maintaining tight control over political life and major media coverage, it can efficiently minimize the political fallout from just about any event, even a tragedy as huge as Beslan. By way of contrast, consider that in the United States, alleged mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina disaster continues to be a hot public and political issue a year later. In Russia, little is heard of Beslan.
According to a recent poll by the Levada Center, only 3% of Russians believe that security forces handled their job well in rescuing hostages. Also, as the Post reports:
In a public opinion poll released last week, only 5 percent said they believe that government authorities are telling the whole truth about events related to capture and release of the hostages, while 28 percent believe that they are hiding the truth and 50 percent say that only part of the truth is being told. But this has produced no demand that the truth be told.
To continue the last sentence — …and in the cases where the demand has appeared, it seems to have been suppressed by the artificial control of supply. For the two weeks I was there I really did get a feel of just how important the flow of information is in having a functional democracy. By functional democracy I mean the ability of people to participate in the process of governance (of which there seems to be little in Russia). The dialogue in many cases goes one way – from government officials to the people, but there is little feedback loop. Without a feedback loop it does not matter what people want to hear – they get the information that someone else decides they should get.
There remain many unanswered questions about the tragedy in Beslan and the political and social fallout. I hope that in time they will be answered. Today, however, lets take a second and remember the innocent children injured and killed two years ago.
Published Date: September 04, 2006