In Russia, TV Becomes Battlefield

It’s Sunday night, the weekend is drawing to a close, and the family is settling into the sofa for a little TV. In the United States, this is the time for “The Wonderful World of Disney.” In Russia, it’s time for blood, sex, violence--and politics.

With national elections less than a month away, Russia’s Sunday night airwaves have become the central arena for a political battle literally gory and obscene. One recent show billed as a political analysis featured lengthy footage of saws and hammers hewing a human pelvis, followed by a portly man having sex with two prostitutes.

It’s not fun to watch. But, as the Russian republic of Bashkortostan discovered, it may be worse to turn it off.

The program in question, the “Sergei Dorenko Show,” makes no bones about its aim, which is to discredit the Kremlin’s political enemies.

Dorenko told viewers that they should watch the footage of hip replacement surgery because it shows that former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, who leads a major anti-Kremlin political bloc and needs a new hip, is a very sick, old man. Dorenko also said the seamy bedroom scenes demonstrate that the public official who appears to be cavorting with prostitutes--suspended Prosecutor General Yuri I. Skuratov, who launched corruption investigations of several Kremlin officials--is in no moral position to judge the behavior of others.

The “Dorenko” show is broadcast over the ORT network, partially state-owned but controlled by the Kremlin’s eminence grise, Boris A. Berezovsky.

The state TV network, RTR, also has gotten into the act with its Sunday political magazine, “Zerkalo,” which is tamer than “Dorenko” but similarly biased. A recent program purported to show footage of serious security lapses at Moscow police and metro stations. A few days later, an independent station broadcast evidence showing that at least some of the footage was faked.

Western observers would have a hard time calling the two shows anything except heavy-handed propaganda. There is no semblance of impartiality, and no effort to separate fact from innuendo.

Last weekend, the parliament of the ethnic republic of Bashkortostan decided that it had had enough, and deputies voted to pull the plug on “Dorenko” and “Zerkalo.” On Sunday, families in Bashkortostan instead watched Sylvester Stallone in “Cobra.”

“We had no other choice but to try to protect our people from shameless brainwashing,” said Sergei N. Semyonov, spokesman for the president of Bashkortostan. “Some researchers have concluded that these programs even use prohibited technologies, subliminal images designed to zombify the audience. This crosses the line, and it must be stopped.”

Experts say this is the first time any Russian region (except for the separatist republic of Chechnya) has blocked state television. And while Bashkortostan’s act of protest might look like a vote for decency and community standards, the full picture is more complex.

Bashkortostan is a republic of 4 million people in the southern Ural mountains. The republic is ruled by a near-authoritarian president, Murtaza G. Rakhimov, who just happens to be a top-ranking member of the political alliance that has been taking the most heat from “Dorenko”: the Fatherland-All Russia bloc headed by Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov.

The republic’s actions have raised howls of protest in Moscow even from liberal and moderate politicians, who accuse the republic of restricting voters’ access to “information.”

“Of course, what Dorenko and [‘Zerkalo’ host Nikolai] Svanidze do often goes beyond the limits of journalistic and simple human ethics,” Larisa Zlobina, a moderate deputy in the Russian parliament, complained this week. “But switching off the broadcasts . . . amounts to an arbitrary act and can be rightly described as censorship.”

Bashkortostan claims that the law is on its side and that the programs violate federal election rules by supporting one set of politicians and opposing another. Russia’s Ministry of Justice accuses Bashkortostan of violating the constitution by hindering freedom of speech.

However the standoff is resolved, it demonstrates how potent television remains in post-Soviet Russia, where nearly no other institution can span the vast country.

Nikolai V. Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, says it’s important not to dismiss the dispute as mere political shenanigans.

“The result of this war of ‘kompromat’ [scandal] may be a distrust of all authorities,” Petrov said. “It’s very dangerous for democracy and democratic institutions.”

*

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.