22 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019
Ernst’s work combines cosmopolitan savviness with subservience to the state.
LETTERFROM MOSCOW
CHANNELLING PUTIN
The TV producer behind Russia’s new era of propaganda.
BYJOSHUAYAFFA
ILLUSTRATION BY CHLOE CUSHMAN
I
n the final days of 1999, Konstantin
Ernst prepared to film the Russian
President’s annual New Year’s address,
just as he had every December for sev-
eral years. Ernst, who was thirty-eight,
with floppy brown hair and a look of
perpetual bemusement, had recently be-
come the head of Channel One, the
state television network with the larg-
est reach, a post he retains today. The
position makes him one of the most
powerful men in Russia, with the abil-
ity to set the visual style for the coun-
try’s political life—at least the part its
rulers wish to transmit to the public.
The ritual of the New Year’s address
began in the seventies, under Leonid
Brezhnev, who sat stolidly atop the So-
viet hierarchy for two decades, and con-
tinued in the eighties under Mikhail
Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika.
After the Soviet collapse, Boris Yeltsin,
the first President of independent Rus-
sia, kept the tradition alive. Yeltsin began
his term as a charismatic advocate of
democratic reform, but, by the late nine-
ties, he seemed aged and defeated. Rus-
sia was only a year removed from a dev-
astating financial crash that led the
government to default on its debt, and
its troops were fighting their second
costly war in a decade in Chechnya, a
would-be breakaway republic in the
Caucasus. Yeltsin seemed primarily con-
cerned with leaving office in a way that
would keep him and his family immune
from prosecution. On December 29th,
Ernst and a crew from Channel One
made their way to the Kremlin to film
his address.
Ernst watched as Yeltsin sat in front
of a tinsel-covered fir tree in a recep-
tion hall and held forth on the oppor-
tunities of the New Year, which in-
cluded, in the spring, a Presidential
election that would determine his suc-
cessor. As the Channel One staff was
packing up, Yeltsin told Ernst that he
wasn’t satisfied—he was hoarse, and
didn’t like the way his words had come
out—and asked if they might record a
new version in the coming days. Ernst
agreed to go back on New Year’s Eve
at five in the morning.
When he returned, he was handed a
copy of the new address, and tried
to contain his shock: Yeltsin was about
to resign, voluntarily giving up power
before his term was over, an unprece-
dented gesture in Russian history. His
chosen successor was Vladimir Putin, a
politician whom most Russians were
just getting to know: Putin had risen
from bureaucratic obscurity to become
the head of the F.S.B., the post-Soviet
successor to the K.G.B., and had been
named Yeltsin’s Prime Minister only four
months earlier. Ernst had a production
assistant enter the text of the speech into
the teleprompter without letting the rest
of the crew in on the news. It would
come as a surprise to everyone.
Yeltsin spoke with the labored ca-
dence of a tired man. “I said that we
would leap from the gray, stagnating to-
talitarian past into a bright, prosperous,
and civilized future,” he said. “I believed
that we would cover the distance in one
leap. We didn’t.” He went on, “I am leav-
ing now. I have done everything I could.”
He rubbed a tear from his eye. Some-
one from Channel One started to clap,
and soon they were all giving him a stand-
ing ovation. A woman cried, “Boris Ni-
kolayevich, how can it be?” Yeltsin and
the journalists drank champagne, and
marvelled at the scene they had shared.
Soon after, Channel One filmed a
New Year’s address from Putin, which
would air after Yeltsin’s. “The powers of
the head of state have been turned over
to me today,” Putin said, his tone calm-
ing and businesslike. “I assure you that
