26 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019
has championed shows far edgier than
otherwise appear on state airwaves. In
2012, Ernst aired “Anton’s Right Here,”
a documentary about an autistic teen-
ager living in a cramped apartment with
his ailing mother. Autism is given little
attention in Russian society, and the
film treats the young man with a rare
degree of dignity, which earned it praise
from many liberals who are generally
wary of Channel One. In 2013, Ernst
broadcast “Thaw,” a dramatic series set
in the nineteen-sixties, during a brief
period of relaxed control over culture
and politics. During one episode, view-
ers learn that a likable main character
is gay. The show came at an acute mo-
ment of conservative revanchism in Rus-
sia’s politics, when the parliament had
just passed a bill outlawing so-called
“homosexual propaganda.” Ernst con-
tinues to indulge his art-house tastes,
even as he’s keenly aware of the lines
that can’t be crossed. In 2017, he aired
the American series “Fargo,” dubbed
into Russian, but a few disparaging lines
about Putin were altered to refer to the
leaders of North Korea.
Ernst has managed to retain the affec-
tion of many liberal cultural figures, who
praise the artistry and integrity of some
of Channel One’s programming. He is
no less at ease among the country’s po-
litical class. “He knows how to seem
one of the gang everywhere,” said Ni-
kolay Kartozia, a producer who has
known Ernst for years. “You can spend
three hours talking to him, and you’ll
see you have so much in common you’ll
be sure you’re from the same circle. I
have the sense it works quite the same
in the Kremlin.”
Putin’s administration hosts weekly
planning meetings for media bosses
which are the subject of much specula-
tion. Kachkaeva, the television critic, told
me that Ernst “hints at such conversa-
tions, but he never gives de-
tails, never talks about what
is asked of him.” Among the
producers at Channel One,
the Kremlin meetings are known as
“going behind the ramparts”—a refer-
ence to the crenellated fortress walls.
When we spoke, Ernst downplayed the
meetings as largely administrative. “They
might tell us: ‘Here is the President’s
schedule,’ or some other upcoming events,
or maybe the government is planning to
impose a new tax, or raise the pension
age.” But it is evident to the channel’s
staff that Ernst and other top television
bosses are given some guidance, though
perhaps only as vague hints and shrugs.
“Nobody comes back from those meet-
ings and says, ‘Now we have to do this,’”
Pankratova, the former news anchor, told
me. “Maybe later that afternoon you see
the top editor for a particular show call
over one of the hosts to say something,
to give some instructions. Or maybe you
notice that a certain Russian region sud-
denly gets more coverage.”
Part of what makes Ernst so good at
his job is his ability to pick up shifts in
the official mood and to subtly pass them
along to his staff. He occasionally gives
clear directives; Vladimir Pozner, the
host of a major talk show, has said that
he and Ernst agreed on a blacklist of a
dozen people who were not to appear
on his program. But Pankratova told me
that, more often, she was expected to
intuit the rules rather than have them
spelled out, a system that made every-
one err on the side of caution. Later in
her tenure, she didn’t even think to in-
quire whether she could mention pro-
tests organized by Alexei Navalny, an
anti-corruption activist who had emerged
as the country’s leading opposition pol-
itician. When I asked Ernst whether
certain topics or people were off-limits,
he said, “No one ever tells you, ‘Don’t
show Navalny, don’t use his name.’” I n-
stead, he explained, “such messages aren’t
conveyed with words. After all, federal
television channels are run by people
who aren’t stupid.”I
n 2007, Russia was chosen to host
the 2014 Winter Olympics, which
would be held in Sochi, a resort town
on the Black Sea. Putin promised to
spend billions to introduce a “new Rus-
sia” to the rest of the world. Ernst was
put in charge of producing
the opening ceremony. “We
wanted to show that Rus-
sia is part of the global cul-
tural village,” Andrei Boltenko, Ernst’s
Channel One colleague, who became
the creative director and screenwriter of
the ceremony, said. As time went on, the
show became more ambitious, and the
main stadium had to be redesigned to
accommodate its technical complexity.
“In certain moments, Ernst had to con-vince Putin personally,” Boltenko said.
In February, 2014, Ernst watched the
ceremony from a control center high
above the stadium in Sochi. It opened
with a troika of translucent horses lit
up in white neon galloping across the
night sky, gliding along invisible rails
hung from the ceiling. Balloons in bright
colors stood in for the onion domes of
St. Basil’s Cathedral; Peter the Great’s
ships sailed across a dark and wavy ocean
seemingly printed with an inky wood-
cut. A steam locomotive bathed in red
light barrelled down, a reference to Sta-
lin’s industrialization drive. The Second
World War was represented by the rum-
ble of approaching airplanes. The post-
war years were rendered as an era of
athletes, cosmonauts, students, and sti-
lyagi—Soviet proto-hipsters who liked
jazz and dressed in Western fashions.
As the show concluded and chants of
“Ro-ssi-ya!” echoed through the stadium,
Ernst leaped from his chair in the com-
mand center. “We’ve done it!” he yelled.
The ceremony was received rapturously,
even among those hostile to the Putin
state. Navalny called the immediate af-
terglow “Nice and unifying—excellent.”
Ernst did not have long to savor the
fantasy he’d brought to life. By the time
the stadium in Sochi hosted the closing
ceremony, which he also produced, two
and a half weeks later, street protests
in Kyiv, Ukraine, had overthrown the
government of President Viktor Yanu-
kovych, who had fled and left a power
vacuum in his wake. Putin was incensed—
he had long seen Ukraine’s geopolitical
orientation as a proxy struggle with the
West—and was intent on exacting re-
venge. Within days, Russian special-forces
soldiers in unmarked uniforms appeared
in Crimea, and, within a month, Russia
had annexed the territory. Western op-
probrium, sanctions, and attempts at iso-
lation followed, deepening after the out-
break of war in the Donbass, in eastern
Ukraine, where Russia spurred on a sep-
aratist insurgency, supplying funds, weap-
ons, and diplomatic cover.
Back home, the Russian media
adopted a hysterical and bellicose tone.
The country was seizing its birthright
as a superpower by standing up to the
West. Channel One’s news programs
were consumed with talk of a coup in
Kyiv, NATO’s dark intentions, and the
supposed neo-fascists who took over