From Moscow…Larry James puts the spotlight on a television show which takes its audience to a new level in freedom of speech. It's called "Kukly".

NARRATOR
These are the front line soldiers in a war over free speech. But these "soldiers" are really just puppets. One is a big-eared, doe-eyed president Vladimir Putin, another a bumbling, heavy drinking Boris Yeltsin. Others resemble various communists and dim-witted right-wingers. They are the cast of Kukly - a weekly program of political satire that many Russians consider a litmus test for free speech in the Putin era.

The program has long been Russia's most popular show with more than half the TV sets in the country tuned in each Sunday night for the 15-minute program.

Calling "Kukly" - Russian for puppets - political satire is an understatement. No subject is sacred. Everyone from the President to the Parliament to the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church is fair game.

But Kukly's freewheeling irreverence has caused problems for its producers almost from the day the show went on the air in 1994 -they say, however, that under Vladimir Putin things have gotten a lot worse. Grigory Lyubomirov is a writer and director of Kukly.

GRIGORY LYUBOMIROV (TRANSLATION)
"From my point of view, it's clear that Putin's time is a step back towards censorship, towards managed politics and democracy and the persecution of dissidents."

NARRATOR
Their first run-in began soon after Mr. Putin was named Acting President on December 31, 1999. Kukly broadcast a program in which an unappealing little man - who looked a lot like Mr. Putin - began attributing all manner of virtues and accomplishments to himself. While many Russians considered the spoof hilarious, Mr. Putin is said to have been furious and to have sent word to the Kukly staff that he would like to see the lot of them in jail.

Soon after, according to Grigory Lyubomirov, the authorities launched a legal investigation into the business dealings of Vladimir Gusinsky, the founder of NTV, the network that airs Kukly. Mr. Lyubomirov says the authorities made it clear that the pressure would ease if the show made certain changes.

GRIGORY LYUBOMIROV (TRANSLATION)
"The one of the conditions that was laid out of Mr. Voloshin, the Chief of the Kremlin administration, to our Director, the Director of NTV was to change the policies of Kukly show towards Putin. He demanded elimination of the Putin puppet altogether from the Kukly show."

NARRATOR
Victor Shenderovich is the principle writer for Kukly. He says the pressure from the Putin government reminds him of the bad old days of the communist past.

VICTOR SHENDEROVICH (TRANSLATION)
"We are currently seeing a comeback of Soviet symptoms in Russia - and that is an alarming syndrome as doctors would say it. In and of itself this is not bad, but it is just like a pimple which is not alarming in and of itself, but a sign that something is wrong with your body chemistry. In that sense, you could say that what is happening with society now is that it buckled under Putin, and now no one dares to criticize him openly."

NARRATOR
Another cause for worry, according to writer/director Lyubomirov, is the way many Russians are reacting to the pressure.

GRIGORY LYUBOMIROV (TRANSLATION)
"We've stopped talking as friends. We no longer openly discuss political news like under Yeltsin. We prefer to talk about those matters where no one can over hear us."

NARRATOR
Grigory Lyubomirov says it is not just the average Russian behaving this way. He sees it among journalists as well. He says ever since Mr. Putin came to power, they have stopped writing the truth. Mr. Putin's office declined VOA's requests to respond to this issue. The president himself, however, has said publicly that he supports free speech and is not out to get Mr. Gusinsky, the NTV network or anyone else. Those involved with Kukly see it differently. Grigory Lyubomirov says that if Russia under Yeltsin was a step toward democracy, then the Putin era is a step back from it.

His colleague, Victor Shenderovich, while sharing many of those concerns, does not believe Russia can return to its communist past.

VICTOR SHENDEROVICH (TRANSLATION)
"The changes that took place in Russia during the last 15 years, in my estimation, are irreversible. There was a strong leap forward and then maybe a roll back, and then finally a big push forward. We can roll back a bit but, there is no way authorities cannot pretend the past 15 years didn't happen."

NARRATOR
If Kukly's writers and producers have a say in the matter, anyone daring to take Russia back to the past will first have to overcome the front-line soldiers -- of Kukly.

Larry James, VOA News, Moscow.

For more information on Russia and this story, see:
- New Media:Digital Glasnost - http://www.wired.com/news/topstories/0,1287,11851,00.html
- Embassy of the Russian Federation - http://www.russianembassy.org/
- The World Press Freedom Review - http://www.freemedia.at/archive97/world.html
- Freedom House: Press Freedom Survey 2000 -http://www.freedomhouse.org/pfs2000/reports.html#russ
- FreedomForum - http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=13331
- Digital Freedom Network - http://www.dfn.org/region/europe.htm