Freedom of Speech Now Far More Important for Russians than It was at Start of Putin’s Reign – and That’s a Problem for the Kremlin Leader, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 9 – When Putin first came to power and began his assault on the media, many Russians sided with him rather than with outlets like NTV because they placed their hopes in the new president to improve their lives and associated the liberal media with a past that they wanted to escape, Abbas Gallyamov says.

    That pattern defined how many opposition figures still view Russian attitudes about media freedom, the Russian commentator says; but these are no longer appropriate because Russians don’t place their hopes in the aging Kremlin leader but instead see a free media as a means to improve things (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/7589 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67F6AEB633F66).

    And thus, Russians now see Putin’s attacks on the media, including most recently on Telegram channels, as attacks on them, something that is driving down their support for him and even creating a revolutionary situation because many revolutions begin with concerns about the ability of the media to report the truth.

    Over the last decade, the former Putin speechwriter says, the importance of media freedom for Russians has risen in polls seeking information on what things matter most to them even as the significance of material goods have fallen, Gallyamov says, something neither Putin or most of the opposition fully appreciate.

    In a 2017 survey, only 34 percent of Russians said that freedom of speech was among the most important issues for them. But by 2019, it had risen to 58 percent; and by 2021, it reached 61 percent, almost twice the figure of only four years earlier and a clear majority of the Russian population.

    In part as a result, Putin has been losing popularity; and he has decided that he “can’t count on anything other than repression, even though it needs to be understood that today, the actions of the authorities in this regard are at odds with the values of the majority of the citizens. That means in turn that people’s loyalty will continue to fall.”

    According to Gallyamov, “it is precisely these thing which will lead to the formation of a revolutionary situation as it is well known that dissatisfaction with censorship and the demand for freedom of speech have been at the root of many revolutions from the Great French Revolution to the events of the Arab Spring.”