I myself conducted meeting in Saint Petersburg, and nobody instructed me about items on the agenda. We were vexed by insoluble question how make selection out of all wishing to tell certain words in protection of mass media independence of state, in protection NTV from disrepute Kokh and Iordan, pretending that they gained an understanding of mass media, citizens rights for information, role of independent mass-media in democracy, and something in democracy upon the whole. Slaves cannot not be free even if they were born in America. And on the other hand there were odd things happening. Exit of the nearest to mass-meeting subway station was closed, the trains passed without a stop, then the militia for some reason kept on diligently reducing the number of arrivals to meeting, and ORT and RTR TV stations actually held back such insignificant event as that one.
Lackeys are like that everywhere even if they learned to wear a tie.
You see there are workers on hiring under the authority, yet there are wildly ecstatic mercenaries, - the lackeys. In the decent democratic country the structure such as Gazprom would never start information business, and the decent authority would do all the best for retaining independent of it mass media which got into a scrape. Nevertheless the civil society in Russia is maturing. Meetings run last week have shown it. It s not Europe yet though Soviet Union any more.