5. Blog grid — background overlap

Is it pos­si­ble to intro­duce cen­sor­ship bypass­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion? Eas­i­ly. All one needs to do is to con­struct an appro­pri­ate sys­tem, get the “right” peo­ple to ini­ti­ate the process in par­lia­ment in order to give it the appear­ance of legal­i­ty, intro­duce the word “for­eign agent” which sounds sus­pi­cious to the aver­age cit­i­zen, incite law enforcement…

In the mid-1980s, my first big jour­nal­is­tic busi­ness trip hap­pened. It was to the North, and one of the stops on the way was Noril­sk. I remem­ber leav­ing my hotel on a June day that was too sul­try for those places and find­ing myself inside a “sand­storm” — the city was enveloped in a yellowish…