The story of western correspondents in Russia is the story of Russia's attitude to the west. Russia has at different times been alternately open to western ideas and contacts, cautious and distant or, for much of the twentieth century, all but closed off. From the revolutionary period of the First World War onwards, correspondents in Russia have striven to tell the story of a country known to few outsiders. Their stories have not always been well received by political elites, audiences, and even editors in their own countries-but their accounts have been a huge influence on how the West understands Russia. Not always perfect, at times downright misleading, they have, overall, been immensely valuable. In Assignment Moscow, former foreign correspondent James Rodgers analyses the news coverage of Russia throughout history, from the coverage of the siege of the Winter Palace and a plot to kill Stalin, to the Chernobyl explosion and the Salisbury poison scandal.
The story of western correspondents in Russia is the story of Russia's attitude to the west. Russia has at different times been alternately open to western ideas and contacts, cautious and distant or, for much of the twentieth century, all but closed off. From the revolutionary period of the First World War onwards, correspondents in Russia have striven to tell the story of a country known to few outsiders. Their stories have not always been well received by political elites, audiences, and even editors in their own countries-but their accounts have been a huge influence on how the West understands Russia. Not always perfect, at times downright misleading, they have, overall, been immensely valuable. In Assignment Moscow, former foreign correspondent James Rodgers analyses the news coverage of Russia throughout history, from the coverage of the siege of the Winter Palace and a plot to kill Stalin, to the Chernobyl explosion and the Salisbury poison scandal.
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Foreword by Martin Sixsmith
Introduction
1.Sympathies in the Struggle: Reporting Russia in Revolution,
1917
2.‘The press is lying, or does not know’: Russia goes to war with
itself
3.From ‘A Wild And Barbarous Country’ via Starvation to
Stalinism
4.Believe Everything But The Facts
5.But What A Story Everything Tells Here: The Great Patriotic
War
6.Secrets, Censorship, and Cocktails with the Central Committee
7.A Window On The Country: Reporting Reform and Ruin
8.‘Free for all’: the Yeltsin era
9.Becoming Strong Again?
10.Russia: My History
Bibliography
Index
An original and incisive story of western news correspondents in Russia from a former foreign correspondent for the BBC for fifteen years.
James Rodgers was a journalist and BBC Foreign Correspondent in Moscow, Brussels and Gaza, for twenty years, reporting from New York and Washington after 9/11, and covering the war in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. Since 2012, he has taught Journalism at City, University of London, where he lectures in the History of Journalism, and the Reporting of Armed Conflict. In May 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society,
Assignment Moscow exposes how the Moscow correspondent has had to
adapt to multiple manifestations of censorship, or compete with
state-run media, the severity of which has ebbed and flowed with
changes in regime.
*History Today*
Rodgers’s narrative rests on an enormous number of articles in
Anglo-American media, books by and about journalists, and his own
interviews with many Moscow correspondents.
*Foreign Affairs Magazine*
Rodgers retains his focus on the correspondent’s interactions with
Russia and Russians, rather than being sidetracked into discussions
of normative values or political controversy. This approach
prepares the reader for the conclusion, which celebrates the
openness and curiosity of the best Russia correspondents, reminding
the reader that what they have just read is a history not of Russia
but of how Western correspondents have told Russia’s stories.
Differentiating the two is an important and hitherto neglected task
but one that James Rodgers has achieved masterfully.
*Journalism*
Reporting from Russia has never been easy; Rodgers vividly captures
the changing fortunes of Moscow correspondents over the past
hundred years, as they penetrated the mysteries of life in Russia
and brought them to our newspapers and screens. Some were duped,
some were fellow-travellers or spies; most battled against censors
and blank-faced politicians; all have helped to shape our
understanding of the world’s biggest country.
*Angus Roxburgh, former Moscow correspondent for the BBC, Sunday
Times and Economist*
Writing about journalism in Russia since the revolution, James
Rodgers rightly emphasises that to understand Russia you have to
talk to people of all kinds. But he argues that even correspondents
who knew the language and the history found it hard to report
dispassionately because of official obstruction and their own
emotional involvement.
*Rodric Braithwaite*
A highly original, engrossing and accessible book, Assignment
Moscow stands out among journalistic accounts of Russia for its
subtlety, humility and historic scope. It tells the story of
British and American journalists who aimed to throw light on Russia
from Lenin to Putin, and in the process illuminated the West
itself.
*Arkady Ostrovsky, Author of The Invention of Russia: The Rise of
Putin and the age of Fake News, Winner of the 2016 Orwell
Prize*
It is hard to believe that in the torrent of books published on
Russia each year, that one could come along as original and
valuable as Assignment Moscow. One comes to appreciate the service
of our reporting men and women in Moscow. For all their
fallibilities, without their dedication, we wouldn’t have half the
understanding of Russia that we have today, imperfect as it will
always be. We therefore owe them – and especially Rodgers as
journalist, teacher, analyst and cataloguer – a huge debt.
*James Nixey, Chatham House*
[Rodgers'] experience has been wisely distilled in this
fair-minded, balanced and perceptive exploration of the problems
reporters have faced in trying to report from Russia.
*British Journalism Review*
Reveals how journalists’ experiences reporting from Russia for the
past 100 years mirrors its changing attitude to the West.
*The Journalist*
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