As was expected, the hostage-taking tragedy at the "Nord-Ost" musical is still sending ripples through the country's public and political life. Everyone was predicting that the events at the Moscow theater would have an indelible effect on the country, dividing life into a distinct before and after, as in the United States following Sept. 11.

Theoretically, there was the possibility that the events could be used to unite the nation and stir patriotic feelings, but the reality of traditional politics quickly took over. Everything has gone back to the usual rules, by which any news event can serve as a pretext for boosting one's own political capital or dealing a blow to an adversary.

One person who didn't hesitate to make use of the Nord-Ost tragedy was Pavel Borodin, the notorious secretary of the Russian-Belarusian Union, and former detainee of a U.S. prison. On the fourth day after the storm, when the first funerals for the dead were being held, Borodin's assistants rounded up journalists to visit a children's hospital, where Borodin was to present gifts to those children who were among the freed hostages.

The journalists were only too happy to go along, hoping to get a chance to talk with eyewitnesses of the dramatic events. Borodin got himself filmed presenting lavish bouquets of flowers to the children and making banal speeches, mostly about himself, comparing the hostages' three days in captivity to his three months in an American prison. Neither the children nor the doctors seemed to understand just why Borodin had bothered to come and what all the fuss was about.

Cynical it may have been, but Borodin's PR stunt was at least harmless. The Duma and the government, for their part, have taken a more serious approach. Duma deputies immediately began proposing various new legislative measures. First, they proposed going to the second reading of the budget in order to increase the funds allocated to combating terrorism.

President Vladimir Putin made an order to draw up a new national security strategy that would provide for using the Army for internal order during emergency situations, and for making preventive strikes against terrorist bases even if they are located outside Russia. The Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has announced the start of wide-scale but "targeted" special operations in Chechnya to find and destroy terrorists.

In the meantime, the authorities have decided to deal with the media. Journalists came under a lot of fire for their coverage of the hostage drama. Officials, analysts and ordinary people began to call more openly for the need for some kind of censorship. Now their wish has come true. The Duma has approved amendments to the law on the media and the Media Ministry is drawing up recommendations on how the media should behave itself in covering emergency situations.

The recommendations contain 16 points that would impose tighter compliance with the laws on media and the fight against terrorism. Some of these demands amount to voluntary censorship by journalists, and some of them concern ethical standards, such as the demand to show more sensitivity towards victims' families and to avoid too much graphic detail. In the West, after all, professional standards demand that journalists not film dead bodies, while in Russia, these kinds of attention-grabbing images are splashed on the front pages of newspapers.

But these demands raise many questions as to who will decide what gets published, and using what criteria. The biggest question is how to ensure civil control over the secret services if all information concerning them must first be approved.

This question became all the more pertinent last week when the people from the prosecutor's office searched the premises of Versia, a newspaper specializing in investigative journalism. The prosecutors seized a server and several computers. Journalists said they were trying to prevent an issue about the hostage drama containing a version of events different to the official version from going to print.

But the newspaper proved that there are also ways of getting around such threats. The chief editor of Versia later recounted how the journalists held up the investigators for several hours by saying the person with access to the server wasn't there, and meanwhile copied all the files onto reserve disks. In the end, the issue came out, but if the authorities really decide to get tough, it will be enough to simply give the order to the Duma.

The anti-FATF list

Russia was more than offended at the way the anti-money laundering organization FATF kept including it on the list of countries accused of money laundering. Now that Russia is finally off the list, those who felt the most insulted have decided to make their feelings felt.

The National Investment Council, a public organization founded three years ago by the National Reserve Bank (NRB) and presided over by NRB head Alexander Lebedev and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, is said to have prepared an "anti-FATF" list naming Western banks that take part in capital flight from Russia. The list's aim is to be a warning for potential counteragents of these banks.

Although it sounds serious, the list is really just words. Analysts put it partly down to Lebedev's own wounded feelings linked to his bank's long-running legal dispute with French bank Credit Agricole.

(Ekaterina Larina is assistant editor of The Russia Journal.
E-mail Katya at katya@russiajournal.com)