Echo in the Dark

By David Remnick
Issue: Sept 22

Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) is a tiny, rare, free Russian radio station broadcasting in Red Square since 1990. Because it is in many ways the only game in town (since Putin's crackdown), most of the native and visiting intelligentsia passes through at some point on their journeys.

At one point, the editor in chief, Aleksei Venediktov, kicked Bill Clinton under the table when he went on too long answering an open-ended question.

Here's Putin's attitude towards the media and a free press : “We have never had freedom of speech in Russia, so I don’t really understand what could be stifled. It seems to me that freedom is the ability to express one’s opinion, but there must exist certain boundaries, as laid out in the law.”

So how free is the station, and how threatened is Venediktov? At one point, Putin said “You have to answer for this, Aleksei Alekseevich!” And previously, Yeltsin said “Echo of Moscow, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” As of yet, no one has taken them off the air. “But no matter what we do,” Venediktov said, “no matter how clever we are, we always have to recognize that we can be gone in a flash.”