Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [114]
The New York Times’ bureau chief came from Moscow to London to interview Boris, and then traveled to Ryazan to recap the story of the foiled attack there, producing two front-page articles within a week. Time magazine compared the Putin-Berezovsky contest to that of Stalin and Trotsky. Then, on March 5, in a packed hall in London, Boris presided over the world premiere of the documentary Assassination of Russia. The film was made by two French producers who had initially worked with NTV to expand the “Sugar of Ryazan” program. When NTV was taken over by Gazprom and its journalists defected to TV-6, the project traveled with them. In January 2002, however, the authorities closed TV-6. Boris lost his remaining voice on Russia’s airwaves, and the film, 70 percent completed, hung in limbo. The producers came to Boris to finance the remaining work. From that moment Sasha and Felshtinsky became the film’s principal consultants.
Leaders of Liberal Russia, Sergey Yushenkov and Yuli Rybakov, flew in from Moscow specifically for the premiere. They said they planned to promote the film around the world “to expose the government cover-up of the horrific crime that led to war.” Admittedly, the film did not present any new facts, but in the words of Kommersant, “For the first time, the filmmakers collected all the facts and minor details related to the Ryazan case, placed them chronologically,” and put them in the context of “some controversial testimony and statements made by the highest officials, including then-Prime Minister Putin.”
The London screening was an opening shot in a campaign planned by Yushenkov as a principal theme for the new party.
“The evidence contained in the film is rather persuasive,” declared Yushenkov, as he distributed copies among reporters who met him at Sheremetievo Airport upon return from London. “It demonstrates how the secret services deceived Russian citizens.” He announced that Liberal Russia would distribute copies of the film around the country. Hopefully, “a television channel can be found that is not afraid to show the film,” he told Radio Echo Moscow. He added that screenings at movie theaters were also planned.
From the outset, the FSB mounted a fierce campaign to block the film. Rybakov brought a hundred copies from London to St. Petersburg, but they were confiscated at Customs, in violation of his parliamentary immunity. He later received death threats. His staff members, who organized screenings around St. Petersburg, were harassed and beaten by strangers. Alexander Kostarev, a member of the Liberal Russia governing council, was severely beaten on the street in Perm after he arranged a public screening. No TV station in Russia dared to show the film. However, the main channels in the three former Soviet Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, showed it, under IFCL sponsorship.
In the meantime, Russian video pirates sniffed the money that was to be made; there was a growing demand for the film on the street. The pirates eagerly accepted a couple of master tapes quietly provided by the IFCL and filled the outdoor markets and railway station kiosks with tens of thousands of copies of Assassination of Russia, making it an underground best seller. In early April, Liberal Russia deputies distributed copies of the film in the Duma. Everyone wanted to have it, even though the deputies promptly voted down a motion to set up a parliamentary investigation of the 1999 bombings.
On April 14, Agence France-Presse reported the results of a poll by Russia’s public opinion research center: 6 percent of the respondents said they were sure that the FSB staged the bombings; 37 percent refused to rule out the possibility; 38 percent did not believe the allegation, but only 16 percent were completely convinced that the bombs were planted by Chechen rebels; 39 percent insisted that the allegations should be thoroughly investigated. Over half said that Berezovsky’s film should be