On my airplane journey from Berlin back to Moscow I was looking through the Russian press. The front page stories were devoted to the G8 meeting and the counter-summit held in Heiligendamm and Rostock, respectively.

I was really astounded with what I read there. It was not only that the information was, to say the least, a bit inadequate (I’d rather reserve from writing that all the colleagues journalists are unscrupulous liars). I had a strong impression that all the Russian journalists had participated in some different Summit, somewhere in a different country - or was it in a parallel world?

Having read the press, one would assume that our native journalists either don’t have good command of foreign languages or hadn’t visited the event at all. Or even if they visited the Summit, they must have been staying in the hotel consuming vodka which they had providently fetched along. And you bet they hadn’t even watched TV!

Should you compare coverage of the two Summits by the Russian and German press, you will inevitably see the pivotal difference between the two cultures – the western journalist respond to the events (they may differently interpret or even pervert facts, but whatever interpretation, the event dominates the commentary). The Russian newsmen care in the first place about the status of a person or an event. The world political establishment gathered in Heiligendamm last week – and that was worth of our journalists’ attention. Tens of thousands of people were protesting in Rostock concurrently with the G8 Summit – Russian mass media simply ignored the ‘motley horde’, for the protesters didn’t seem to be of decent social status. But the journalists as usually were wrong, for in Rostock there were MPs, influential members of the Lutheran Church who invited the counter-summit to hold its sessions in the Gothic cathedrals of the town (Can you think of a similar act from the part of the Russian Orthodox church?). Right after the Summit the Germans participated in the Church Day (Kirchen Tag) – the event was just another occasion to voice all the issues raised in Rostock, and even the speakers were the same.

But neither the role of the Church nor the hordes of protesters, nor their successful blockade of the summit matters separately. What matters is that for the European society the G8 meeting was not the central event, while the opposition’s actions attracted attention of many. Even the conservative media covered the counter-summit more than the G8 meeting: in the beginning of a news spot they gave obligatory information from Heiligendamm and then turned to real events in Rostock where the young protesters were engaged in non-violent struggle with the police. Even the conservative journalists expressed indignation at the G8 leaders’ failure to undertake concerted actions in order to tackle climate change. And certainly nobody took seriously the promises to allocate 60 bln to Africa. They had promised the larger part of the money long ago, but still haven’t allocated it. So the world leaders continued summing up their promises!

All the commentators agreed that mere allocation of money won’t suffice without changing the policy. But the G8 leaders can’t agree on what to change and how. And that is their major failure.

The protests, on the contrary, kept the international community agitated. The news persons skipped the Heiligendamm official part (the ironical comments usually focused on the G8 weakness and inefficiency of the top-level talks).

Vladimir Putin managed to shock the public by the announcement about possible joint US-Russian exploitation of radar base in Azerbaijan. The general astonishment could be explained in terms of Russia making a U-turn – not long ago the Kremlin condemned the US policy in Iran, now Putin has proposed Bush cooperation against Iran.

It is not surprising that the comments were skeptical. And it must not surprise us in the future that Russia’s western partners will put little trust in its policy. For traditionally they trust partners who are predictable…

The opponents of globalization, in their turn, proved that they have social support. It became particularly evident in Rostock. Unlike the Prague burgers, who in 2000 had locked up in their houses at seeing the antiglobalists in their city, the Rostock citizens greeted the protesters with posters and flags in their windows and balconies of their houses, participated in discussions and supplied the young people from all over Germany with food and water. Even in the Warnemunde beach one could see the anti G8 placards. “Illegal, but right” (“Illegal aber richtig”) – that is how the left “die TAZ” qualified the antiglobalist actions, while the conservative “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” made the blockade of the Summit by the activists sound epic: “The march of five thousands”. Free from the protocol conventions the local press covered mainly the grassroots protests. On June 9, all the press had on the front pages similar pictures of lonely Angela Merkel in Heiligendamm and contrasting photos of hordes of protesters in Rostock.

The Heiligendamm boils down to acknowledging that the moral climate in Europe has drastically changed: ideas that only a year ago were considered to be marginal now are included in the public debate, while the traditional stances of the G8 leaders seem out-of-date. Heiligendamm gathered people of the past, while the hordes protesting in Rostock will make the future. It is not about age – the thing is that the society has changed.

The German press was smart enough to learn the Heiligendamm-Rostock lesson. Hopefully, a part of the German elite will try to meet the challenge. As for the Russian press and bureaucrats, they are too weak students, and Heiligendamm has once again proved it.

Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements

June 15, 2007

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