Freedom of Speech in Russia: Politics and Media from Gorbachev to Putin

This book traces the life of free speech in Russia from the final years of the Soviet Union to the present. It shows how long-cherished hopes for an open society in which people would speak freely and tell truth to power fared under Gorbachev’s glasnost; how free speech was a real, if fractured, achievement of Yeltsin’s years in power; and how easy it was for Putin to reverse these newly won freedoms, imposing a ‘patrimonial’ media that sits comfortably with old autocratic and feudal tradit...