Law, Force, and the Russia Media

Looking at the development of mass media law in post-Soviet Russia is like examining the wrists of a recently freed prisoner where the marks of the chains are still present. The very claims for freedom and the guarantees of change bespeak past injustices and old allocations of power. In the short period that has transpired, issues of law in the defining of communication have already had a dramatic cycle: the rule of law has been followed by the assertion of military force and bloodshed, and force, in its turn, has been followed again by a clumsy reaffirmation of law. Television has been an arena for bitter struggle, political and armed. In this context, the evolution of rules for the organization and governance of the press has reflected changes in political and economic powers in a society seeking definition and stability. The forms of a media law - its words, its constructions, its hermeneutics - cannot be understood without its embedded context. Like other laws, those concerning broadcasting can be studied like shards from an archeological site, as clues to the nature of their social and political origins.