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As It Happens

Novelist Gary Shteyngart spent a week doing nothing but watching Russian TV

The Russian-born writer was glued to three sets. For almost every waking hour. For seven days.
CBC Radio ·
Shteyngart dining on Wagyu beef during his captivity at the Four Seasons. (Photo: Sasha Rudensky for The New York Times)

We often hear about the powerful influence of the Russian media -- and the state's tight control of its content. So Shteyngart decided to immerse himself in what he calls "The Putin Show."  He survived to write about it. The piece appears in the latest New York Times Magazine. 

"I think this is the most difficult assignment I've ever taken in my life and I've been to some scary places," Shteyngart tells As It Happens host Carol Off. "I was stuck in the Four Seasons living like an oligarch in a deluxe suite, but ever atom of my body wanted to jump out the window."

He had every comfort. He lived off room service. But he was surrounded by screens pumping out state-influenced Russian TV he was forced to watch.

"Unless I hid under the covers, I would establish eye contact with at least one monitor," he explains. "It was very 1984 with a touch of Brave New World and maybe some sort of Margaret Atwood thing."

Gary Shteyngart at the Four Seasons hotel in New York, where he watched Russian television for seven days. (Photo: Sasha Rudensky for The New York Times)

Watching, he learned that everything in the West was terrible. That it was a scandal-ridden, decadent place. And that Russia -- and Russians -- were the epitome of all that is good. Especially, peasants who shoot their own ducks, since the country is in a period of belt-tightening. Espresso-sipping Muscovites, on the other hand, were the butt of jokes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was largely absent, since Shteyngart's viewing took place over the holidays. But his worldview was on display, especially in news coverage of Ukraine.

In entertainment programming, blatant homophobia was on display in comedy after comedy. "They'd show a picture of some European man dressed in a Speedo and they'd make fun of that," he says. "The West was as homophobic as Russia is right now, but Russia can't seem to understand what happened."

By Day 4 he was having trouble sleeping. By Day 5 he called in his psychiatrist for a session at the hotel. By Day 6 he started drinking after breakfast.

"It's one of the most depressing things ever," Shteyngart explains. "When I go to Russia I do get depressed after a couple of weeks there, but the pleasure of being with the many, many wonderful people who live in Russia counterbalances the effect of all the awful stuff that goes on. But this was just the awful stuff with nothing else."

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