Revenge: The Quiet Part Out Loud

Michael Hedges July 6, 2022 - Follow on Twitter

Autocrats and their minions want nothing more than to exact revenge, best if levered on lessor souls. They are empowered by revenge. Psychiatrists have tremendous insight on this behavior. So do criminologists.

Former Russian TV news producer Marina Ovsyannikova had little comprehension how her world would change after March 14th. As some will recall, she created an anti-war poster and carried it onto the set of state TV Channel One, stopped behind the news anchor, said a few choice words then left. To that point she was just a Moscow mom with a decent job at a big TV channel. The Russian establishment was so shaken by the episode they could hardly speak.

When they finally did, Ms Ovsyannikova was arrested on an unrelated charge, fined a nominal sum and completely ignored. Whether she quit or was fired, subject to interpretation, it was as if nothing happened. Then she had to contend with two children, an angry ex-husband and few places to turn. By the end of March she was offered a short-term contract with German newspaper Die Welt and relocated to Berlin where she composed several mostly first-person commentaries.

Back in Moscow, the authorities and the media outlets they control continued to relegate the episode to its alternative universe. The ever-efficient Russian disinformation machine carried by pliant proxies near and far spread the message. Protests were staged in Berlin and Kyiv calling her a puppet of “the West.” The ex-husband filed suit for spousal support and custody of the children, ages 17 and 11.

The Die Welt contract ended - “a unique experience in free journalism,” she said - and Ms Ovsyannikova returned to Moscow. “I will have to defend my parental rights in court,” she wrote on social media, quoted by independent Russian news portal New Times (July 5). “My ex-husband works for the propaganda channel RT under the leadership of the odious Margarita Simonyan, who threatens the whole world with nuclear war. After my live anti-war protest, he filed a lawsuit and demands that the children live with him in Moscow. He stopped communicating and does not want to negotiate.

“My son is already an adult, he is almost 18 years old, and he has the right to determine his own fate. But my 11-year-old daughter must live with me, outside the aggressor state. Only outside a warring Russia will I be able to instill in a child the right moral values. It must grow up in a free Western society, where every human life is priceless. Where children are taught kindness, and not provoked in them to hate people of other nationalities, forcing them to march in military uniform already in kindergarten, draw a swastika in the shape of the letter Z and praise the war.”

Literally hundreds of Russian media workers have fled to safer places. More than 250 have received Latvian visas, reported Globe and Mail (June 5). Russian courts have continued to order “arrests in abstentia” for those who have left. To hold back the exodus, last month state TV channels Rossiya 1 and Channel One gave newsroom employees 20% salary raises while imposing longer hours and more restrictions, reported The Moscow Times (June 27).

For some quitting is hardly an option. “Who will pay our loans and mortgages if we proudly leave our job? said a Channel One employee who preferred not to be identified. “Moreover, I can honestly say that people look at Marina Ovsyannikova’s case and how she is being endlessly criticized by everyone after quitting — and they don’t want to resign.”

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in the Russian Federation

• Hot Topics - Journalism

• Hot Topics - Press/Media Freedom