Whoever is trying to keep track of the events in Turkmenistan knows of the difficulties with availability of information in this country. For example, it is impossible to subscribe to a Russian newspaper in Turkmenistan, Radio Mayak is not on the air, and Channel One or ORT broadcasts of the Russian TV are restricted to only two hours per day.
Let us focus our attention precisely on the latter because few abroad know of the degree of lunacy Turkmen censors are prepared to go to when they "prepare" some program or other for the air.
First, ORT broadcasts are never live. Second, program selection is absolutely unpredictable. As a rule, Turkmen TV channels show daily news (10 minutes) and follow it with an entertainment program or two (as long as they are apolitical, that is) and an episode from some Brazilian soap opera.
Programs like "Wait For Me" where the audience feels for the participants and sometimes even weeps over their misfortunes are no-go. Ditto all kinds of scandalous talk-shows. In the meantime, Turkmen censorship knows all too well that even the programs that look innocent at first sight do contain certain nuances the Turkmen audience must be spared. And the audience is being spared. The nuances are scissored out.
ORT ran a documentary titled "Birth of a Legend" not long ago. Director Vladimir Menshov and others who had made the famous "Moscow Has No Faith In Tears" with him gave a thorough account of the making of the film genuinely loved by the millions. Lucky is the man who has not seen what Turkmen censors did to the documentary and who therefore has no idea to what pains they must have gone to cut out every mention of "Soviet", "Lenin", "perestroika", "Khruschev's thaw", or "Brezhnev" from the narration.
Words and phrases like "boozer", "vodka", "Lenin Library", "Brezhnev discovered..." were edited out too. Every now and then this merciless use of scissors lost the audience completely because what was narrated sounded like absolute gibberish. Gentlemen, why do you bother to put on the air a program with whole episodes cut out from it?
As a matter of fact, words like "call girl", "abortion" or "carcinoma of uterine tubes" are diligently edited even from soap operas. Actually, the words "girl" or "carcinoma" may be left and the audience gets definitely confused.
Entertainment programs are sometimes permitted, but watching them is a real waste of time because satirical pieces are unmercifully edited. Probably because satire is history in Turkmenistan itself?
So, who are the censors taking such care of? Youths of course, young Turkmens whose vocabulary is not supposed to include the notions like "Soviet era", "Komsomol construction project", or "first Soviet cosmonaut", who are not supposed to know anything about that. Cutting out the words and terms known and dear to elder generations who remember both Brezhnev and the perestroika, censors brainwash the population into forgetting them.
Editing out any mention of sexes and episodes with kisses or, God forbid, sexual intercourse and cutting out all references to the existence of prostitution, heavy drinking, or drug addiction, TV bureaucrats prove themselves hopeless canting hypocrites.
It may only be added here that the job of newspaper, TV, and radio censors is one of the best-paid in Turkmenistan, and not a single censor has ever been sacked yet.
Along with self-censorship, along with department directors and editors who scrutinize every material, every publication also includes two permanently attached officials of the Committee for State Secrets Protection. Many more of them are attached to TV channels where they champion high moral principles of the Golden Age of Turkmenistan.
