Though it's pretty hard to notice, recently Russia was blessed with a brand new president, Dmitry Medvedev, a shorter clumsier version of Putin with an illegally unlocked iPhone. He's considered to be a liberal by some demented minds and to prove that at one of journalist conferences he expressed deep love for freedom of speech as one of the key elements for building a well-balanced society. Ironically enough, the very same day eXile, Russia's last independent media was shut down.
Since 1997 the eXile provided a fresh bi-monthly dose of sharp satire on Russian lifestyle, politics and culture. Founded by Mark Ames, "exiled" from California to cold scary Moscow, his paper offered the most extreme and ruthless Gonzo journalism Russia ever had the chance to witness. The whole project was almost entirely built on enthusiasm, I personally never got paid except for an offer to go to a strip club which I eventually skipped. The pages of eXile held such columns as "Death Porn" covering the most obscure and gruesome crime acts in Russia, "Whore-R Stories" with extremely graphic and detailed reports of prostitute encounters or "the War Nerd", Gary Brechet's controversial views on various military conflicts. On top of mocking politicians, journalists, hipsters, celebrities, common folk and basically everyone, eXile carried out some truly spectacular stunts. Making fun of ridiculous Moscow club face control, eXile disguised their intern as a fake celebrity DJ Buns McGillicuddy for the night to storm the most elite VIP parties. In 2001 journalist Michael Wines received a horse sperm pie in the face for winning eXile's "most foul hack journalist" contest. These are some of the innocent pranks played in a nation traditionally terrorized by its own government.
The articles of Eduard Limonov, the leader of Russian opposition and banned National Bolshevik Party, mostly known for fellating well-hung African Americans in LA and writing a book about it aroused the most interest of the inspection that paid a visit to eXile that fateful day and lighted the spark; eXile was to be closely checked for "extremism", "pornography", "pro-drugs propaganda" and alike. You know, the usual. As soon as the first blow was dealt, eXile's investors got scared abandoned the paper immediately and honestly, you can't really blame them; any resistance would lead to an even more painful death.
For years eXile managed to avoid Kremlin's steady media takeover remaining the last truly independent paper in the whole country. It showed no threat to patriotic youth as it was published entirely in English and members of PutinJugend are hardly huge philanthropes. The language barrier is probably why eXile was the last on the list.
Russia's current state of free speech has such a huge resemblance to the Soviet era that it's almost comical if it wasn't so fucking sad. As cleverly stated by one of the government speakers recently, "Russia's media is the best in the world. America only shows Africa on TV when children start starving." That's right, you don't see that on Russian TV. It's so bizarrely positive, the news reports are almost fictional. If you watch it long enough, you might even get sucked into the acid dreamland shown on the blue screen and go outside at night to be murdered by hoodlums for a cell phone or an iPod.
During the late 2007 peak of Kremlin's patriotic charade Russian TV bent down lower than a Tenderloin hooker for a Safeway gift card. Movie stars and pop singers occupied half of the prime time confessing how much they adore the president. One of them, a well-respected actor actually said that he "insanely loves Putin." Mikhalkov stormed the world of cinema with his shitty parody on "12 angry men", wasting exactly 12 million dollars on building a private highway to his country house afterwards. I just hope he won't use any four-digit historical dates to name his next project. If a grand movie praising Russia's traditionally ugly views on justice wasn't enough, he directed a cute little documentary about Putin's era showing how Russia "got up from its knees" thanks to one man. That hypnotic session was shown almost every single day from morning till night. One of the brightest moments of modern Russian TV was a humble farmer girl barging into one of the numerous ruling party conferences and begging the "smart guys to think of something to let Putin stay for 3rd time." Up until Medvedev inherited the throne, degenerate thugs from outskirts of the nation were forced to wear bear costumes and march the streets of Moscow, causing massive traffic jams and scaring the citizens with their bizarre parades. A special children squadron was formed to brainwash middle school kids with pro-Kremlin propaganda via awful picture books and pamphlets. How low is that.
Publishing any international paper or magazine in Russia is a huge pain in the ass, soon enough it will be subject to Russian management takeover. This usually results in shutdown or complete degradation. Same happens to restaurants, cafes, stores, anything. Basically, evil Russian managers can turn anything into a generic disgusting piece of shit however nice and shiny your project appeared in the beginning. In a country where the Smiths are covered by teenage lesbians this is almost acceptable.
As if it wasn't enough, even the internet is under control, for instance the website of Committee to Protect Journalists is blocked for Russian IPs. Shortly after the shutdown, eXile moved their servers and was reborn as eXiled, an online-only media at exiledonline.com. With all the classic archives and new articles focusing on the vices of North America it's still as sharp and badass as ever, except that Moscow residents can no longer wipe their asses with the printed version. Oh well.
For the Gutenberg magazine