http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/international/europe/23moscow.html?pagewanted=print

December 23, 2005
Moscow Journal

A TV Extravaganza of Music! Comedy! Militia! K.G.B.!
By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW, Dec. 22 - Time and again, a phenomenon unfolds on Russian 
television. Stiff-faced bureaucrats pack a huge concert hall, and after a 
speech by a leading Kremlin official - often President Vladimir V. Putin 
himself - the show begins.
What a patriotic extravaganza it is, combining Las Vegas glitz and the 
stuffy formalities of a Communist Party congress. There is even a part 
evoking Bob Hope entertaining the troops.

Performers represent many genres, from torch singers to classical pianists 
to comedians, and from sequined pop stars to the players of balalaikas, 
Russia's stringed instruments. A virtually unchanging stable of performers 
migrates from concert to concert. These days they usually include Iosif 
Kobzon, an aging crooner; Denis Matsuyev, a winner of the Tchaikovsky piano 
competition; and Nikolai Baskov, a young tenor.

All this lures millions to television screens to enjoy a free concert that 
inspires patriotic feelings at a time when average Russians are often 
struggling and down on their country. There are Russian classics, Soviet 
standards and new favorites to mark holidays like Militia Day, Defenders of 
the Fatherland Day and the Day of Workers of the Security Organs. The last 
was celebrated Tuesday, in honor of the Federal Security Service, the 
successor to the K.G.B.

The concerts are usually in the State Kremlin Palace Concert Hall, the 
former site of party congresses. True to the hall's Soviet roots, a czarist 
double-headed eagle, reinstated as one of Russia's official symbols, hangs 
above the stage.

Mr. Putin opened Tuesday's concert, broadcast on prime-time national 
television, with a speech praising the security service for fighting 
terrorism and - recognizing Russia's growing problem with skinheads and hate 
crimes - xenophobia, and for providing for a safe investment climate.

He then sat through the concert and clapped while Prime Minister Mikhail Y. 
Fradkov, sitting next to him, appeared at times to doze. The concert ended 
with an announcer's rousing intonation, "Glory to the employees of the 
security organs of the Russian Federation!"
The ascent to power of Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. lieutenant colonel, has 
brought with it a new respect for the security services and landed a slew of 
former security officials in top government posts, where they support the 
holiday in their honor. Though it does not merit a day off work, news 
programs and congratulations in banners stretched across Moscow's main 
streets celebrate the heroism of the security services.

But without a big concert, it would mean nothing. Having nearly faded away 
in the 1990's, the genre has made a comeback under Mr. Putin, along with the 
Soviet concept of choreographed celebration, in the view of cultural 
critics, who note a bread-and-circuses aspect to the concerts.

"Big Soviet style is returning," said Viktor Shenderovich, a political 
satirist who recently lost an election for a seat in the federal Parliament, 
where he had hoped to fight what he said was the Kremlin's effort to turn 
back the clock. "They have to distract people with something."

Concerts like these, with their oozy sentiment and kitschy acts, certainly 
feel like an anachronism, although the men dancing bare-chested as the 
backup for this year's acts would hardly have been welcome in Soviet times.

The general director of Channel 1, Russia's main television channel, 
defended the concerts as a glue that united Russians on the "few days in the 
year when the country feels especially like a community." He spoke after the 
channel broadcast a grandiose concert on the 60th anniversary of Victory 
Day, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Slava Taroshchina, a television critic for the daily Gazeta, said she had 
watched the concerts with the eye of a Kremlinologist to note which way the 
political wind was blowing. "Why is television instilling this style that we 
fought against all of perestroika?" she asked, commenting on their "false 
grandeur."

Grigory Zaslavsky, a theater critic who writes about issues of power and 
culture, calls the concerts a "replacement for patriotism." He said he was 
so troubled by Russia's political and social situation that he had created 
an evening of theater called Cabaret.doc that mocked politicians and jabbed 
at the cacophony of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and new holidays that fill 
Russia's calendar, and spawn ever more concerts.

The concerts have plenty of competition as Russia's oil and commodities 
wealth bankrolls elaborate television serials and miniseries with Hollywood 
production values, as well as singing contests similar to "American Idol." 
Yet the biggest of the government concerts regularly draw Top 10 ratings and 
nationwide viewing audience shares of 30 percent or more.

Not that all viewers are enthralled. "I work in the kitchen with the 
television on, cleaning potatoes, and my hands are too dirty to turn the 
channel," said Tatyana Makulova, a pensioner who was a theater director and 
watches the concerts with a trained professional eye.
"A catastrophe" is how she describes most of the acts. "The lyrics are 
awful," she said, although she acknowledges that the concerts reflect a need 
for "something patriotic and heroic."

One of the highest-rated concerts is invariably on Militia Day, in November, 
which has held an unshakeable place in Russian entertainment for decades. In 
Soviet times, performing artists used these concerts as an opportunity to 
seek powerful patrons and resolve any problems they might have with the law.

The tradition continues today, said Artemy Troitsky, a music critic and 
cultural commentator, who said performers come to the concerts "for 
indulgences" from the authorities. "Russia is a country that lives and is 
ruled according to feudal laws," he said.
The evening-gowned and tuxedoed emcees of this year's concert kept 
repeating, like a mantra, "The militia is not just a profession, it's a way 
of life," a morale booster given that polls regularly indicate that the 
public considers the militia among the most corrupt representatives of 
power.

"In Russia there is always an alienation between the authorities and society 
and these concerts are a way of overcoming this alienation," said Sergei 
Markov, a political analyst who finds the concerts fascinating. "The biggest 
concert was for the Interior Ministry because the militia was respected 
least of all, and most of all required compensation for this lack of 
respect."