Dimbleby wins with his look at Putin’s gamesmanship
With the eyes of the world looking East for the World Cup, Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby (BBC One) took the opportunity to make an on-site assessment of the man who’s led the world’s largest country for 18 years.
“In the West, Vladimir Putin is seen as a threat… what is it Russians see in him that we don’t?” asked Dimbleby, as he set out to get under the skin of some of the millions of Russian citizens who overwhelmingly voted Putin back into power at the elections back in March.
What he found was fascinating: a Russia in which the overtly repressive Communist apparatus of old had been replaced by a more insidious corporate style of autocratic state control. It was largely exercised through the media, which relentlessly pushes the carefully curated image of Putin as a tough guy who will always protect Mother Russia against the malign West.
“It’s all very well to say I’ve come to Russia to find out what the Russians really think,” said Dimbleby. “But it’s not actually that easy in a country where the press, radio and television are all strictly controlled by an authoritarian government.”
Most people seem to happily accept a state machine that subtly controls every aspect of their lives. Putin’s backing of the Russian Orthodox church, and his concerted effort to rebuild the armed forces again in the wake of post-soviet decline, has led to a popular new emphasis on patriotism. Strikingly, those who appear to buy into the Putin myth most are Russia’s under-25s. Young writers, film directors and designers brought up under his regime collaborate eagerly to promote Putin’s image and message.
Behind the scenes, power is exercised ruthlessly. Protest is shut down rapidly and quietly. Media manipulation ensures few emerge as martyrs. The one great failure identified by Dimbleby was the underdeveloped Russian economy, which since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the subsequent imposition of international sanctions, has faltered badly. The Russian people may love Putin’s bravado but the oligarchs enriched by the country’s crony capitalism appear more distrustful, moving their billions abroad rather than reinvesting in Russia. Increasingly Putin’s only answer to domestic crises is to lash out at the West. The Russian media has manipulated coverage of events, such as the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, boosting Putin’s image.
In the end, it was hard to disagree with Dimbleby’s grim summation: “These are dangerous times for Russia, and dangerous times for Russia are dangerous times for us.”
Can a 150-year history of social inequality aid our understanding of a disaster like the Grenfell Tower fire? Before Grenfell: A Hidden History (BBC Two) made a good case for it. This spellbinding documentary told the story of the working-class communities of North Kensington in London, and how the richest borough in Britain has long tolerated the country’s worst levels of social inequality.
“If you understand the history of this place, you’ll understand how Grenfell could have happened here,” we were told at the outset. And what followed, from the moment a wall was erected in 1864 to keep the newly developed Notting Hill separate from Notting Dale, the worst slum in London, was a distinctly tale of Them and Us. When the wealthy fled Notting Hill during the Great Depression things got no better: their mansions were broken up into rat-infested tenements and there was the kind of division that led to the race riots of the 1950s.
Even the supposed panacea of the Sixties and Seventies council house building boom failed. Locals spoke of how Grenfell Tower was then a “symbol of hope” compared to what had gone before. But it wasn’t long before the area was on a downward curve again, and the blocks were poorly maintained by the council. Then came the yuppie invasion and stratospheric house prices. The wheel had come full circle. By 2016, the gulf between rich and poor again equalled that of Victorian times.
This was a thoughtful, thoroughly enjoyable documentary, even if at times the statistics seemed fanciful (are there really, proportionately, as many people in domestic service in London now as in Victorian times?) and the rich/poor dichotomy was too great an oversimplification to explain away all of North Kensington’s ills. Overall though, it was a beautifully made, richly textured film, packed with untold stories and the pride, anger and frustration of people whose voices have too often been drowned out by wealthier and more powerful neighbours.
Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby ★★★★ Before Grenfell: A Hidden History ★★★★