Just over four years ago, I was in Moscow, reporting on one of the country's newest TV stations. The channel was called Dozhd, or TV Rain, and was staffed by a new generation of young Muscovites. Its output included voices that were openly critical of government policy.
The offices of Dozhd were in a repurposed chocolate factory in the centre of the city. The young people who staffed the channel were part of global youth culture, and seemed to share its innate tendency towards inclusivity and tolerance. One could imagine, for example, being openly gay employee of Dozhd and not suffering any abuse for it.
The channel discussed politics – while I was there, they ran a long interview with one of the Pussy Riot protestors. The concerns of the station matched the concerns of the protestors who had been demonstrating en masse on the streets of Moscow during the early part of 2012. When, they wondered, is Russia going to become a normal democratic country?
One evening, I went to Dozhd to watch a lively debate between the unofficial leaders of the protest movement: the TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak, her activist boyfriend, Ilya Yashin, and the politician Boris Nemtsov. There was something typically Russian about the moment when they all lit up cigarettes underneath a ‘No Smoking’ sign. Boris Nemtsov, a louche and charming figure from the early days of Russia's experiments with democracy, showed me a little booklet he'd put together about corruption in the Kremlin. The tone of it was more cheeky than scurrilous, but it mused openly about the sources of President Putin's wealth.
After more than thirty years of visiting Russia, I had the feeling I was seeing an image of the country's future – it felt like a place that had lost some of its fearsome otherness and would become more open, more hopeful and a better country for its citizens.
Well, I was pretty much 100 per cent wrong about all that. Dozhd is virtually off air now. It has had to give up its fancy office in the Red October chocolate factory. The presenter Ksenia Sobchak split up with her activist boyfriend. And Boris Nemtsov was murdered one evening two years ago, right by the walls of the Kremlin.
In a strange Groundhog Day-type twist, earlier this year I was back in Moscow, reporting on one of the country's newest TV stations.
This one is called Tsargrad TV. It's a stone's throw from the Kremlin. Its owner is barely 40 — another Russian who came of age in the 1990s. The offices were staffed with young Russian TV professionals, but that’s where the resemblances with Dozhd end.
Instead of hip young things talking about political change, Tsargrad has a sombre newsroom dedicated to conservative values, patriotism and the Russian Orthodox Church. The channel's studio is decorated with expensive religious imagery. Its owner, Konstantin Malofeev, is devoutly religious, extremely rich and a vocal supporter of President Putin.
“He is a genius,” Malofeev told me, with absolute conviction. Malofeev is a monarchist and suggested a scenario whereby some kind of constitutional assembly might persuade President Putin to become Russia's first post-revolutionary Tsar: Tsar Vladimir.
It's an extraordinary idea and would almost be funny, were it not for Malofeev's obvious power and political connections.
Tsargrad takes its editorial cues from President Putin and the Bible. When I asked Malofeev about the channel's hostile coverage of gay rights, he made his views on the matter clear. “The Bible says it's a sin. The Bible calls them sodomites, so we call them sodomites,” he told me.
Imagine being a gay employee at his channel?
Back in 2012, Dozhd TV seemed to herald change in Russia – the coming of age of a post-communist generation who were no longer afraid to challenge the government and demand a more democratic system and greater freedom.
Today, four and half years on, Tsargrad seems like proof that those hopes were in vain. Putin is solidly in power. A resurgent Orthodox Church is backing him to the hilt. Russia's government seems not only contemptuous of democracy, but to be actively exporting its contempt to other countries, meddling in elections in the USA and France.
Perhaps I can take some comfort from this: I was wrong about the significance of Dozhd. I could also be wrong about the significance of Tsargrad TV.
Marcel Theroux is a novelist and a reporter for Channel 4's Unreported World.
